An Angel in Stone

by Peggy Nicholson

  The nearest Punan followed her gaze to the patch of roiling purple and nodded agreeably.

  “Please tell me it’s not going to rain like this for the next six months,” Raine begged. Surely the weather would ramp up to the monsoon, not change overnight? “’Cause swimming or walking, I’m out of here tomorrow.” If she could figure no way to ask White Dog about the twin-peaked mountain, then she’d find it without him.

  When the next downpour swept across the forest, they crawled back into White Dog’s sleeping platform. Unbelievably, another two men crawled in after them.

  “Poker party?” Raine guessed. “Or how many Punan can you fit in a phone booth?” If she hadn’t been wedged in the middle, she’d have definitely fled to her hammock.

  White Dog tapped the top of her pack and said something, that in any language meant, “Tell us a story.”

  Well, it was better than trying to make small talk in an unknown language. Raine sighed, took out the notebook and read:

  “So now we’ve got a safe place to hide the beast. And to sleep dry while we dig it. Prof isn’t happy. He sez we have a duty to get on down to the coast and scout the Japs. That once we get there, we’ll figure some way to steal a boat and get back to base.

  “We’ll end up in a POW camp, eating rats for the rest of the war, sez I. How about a vote on it? Who wants to stick around here with a bunch of half-naked dames and dig treasure? And who wants to stumble through five hundred miles of snakes, so they can end up in jail?”

  “Let me guess who won,” Raine said dryly, and turned the page.

  Bowing reluctantly to majority rule, Prof had helped his fellows start their dig. The Texan had gained some field experience in fossil excavation while studying geology in college. Without his expertise, most likely the amateurs would have wrecked the skeleton.

  He showed them how to chip away most of the rock, but leave a protective matrix around the skull. Then how to carefully tunnel beneath it, so that the heavy mass stood on narrowing piers of stone. He also engineered the graded ramp from the dig site to the cave, along which they’d eventually drag their find—once they’d built a sledge beneath it, then cut away the piers, to leave the sledge resting on log rollers.

  Meanwhile White Dog’s people had not forsaken them. The soldiers slept in the cave, but several nights a week they’d hike down the mountain to where the Punan had camped. They’d trade one tiny glass bead for a meal of roasted meat—and a chance to flirt with the unmarried girls of the tribe. Each time they went up the mountain again, the Punan begged them to stay. They should keep away from the bad thing up there! It was very bad luck! It would eat their hearts!

  But as time passed and the soldiers weren’t devoured by an evil spirit, the Punans’ curiosity got the better of them. Day by day, they crept closer to the dig. By the second week, they crouched around the site, watching in fearful fascination. “Like watching a scary movie, waiting and hoping for something bad to jump out,” noted Szabo.

  Something bad did happen, but it was more subtle than a monster rising from the grave, to slay its impudent defilers. The soldiers’ hands had blistered from constant digging with their two folding shovels, plus their improvised picks of jagged stone and bamboo. Szabo got the idea of paying the unmarried girls of the tribe two beads per day, if they’d help in the digging and chipping.

  Soon it was only the girls laboring alongside Prof, while the other soldiers lounged around. Or snuck off to go hunting with the Punan men.

  “Guys.” Raine snorted—and glanced up.

  Hopelessly, unapologetically male, her audience beamed back at her. One of the hunters patted the page and made an encouraging noise.

  “Yeah, and if you can’t go spear something, then you might as well listen to foreign rap music?” But she smiled and continued.

  Finally Prof threw down his shovel and declared he’d had enough. “Said he’d signed up to fight a war, and this dinosaur was nothing but a distraction. Big hero!” sneered Szabo. “He said we could do what we liked, but him, he was heading for the coast.”

  The other three voted to stay. At Prof’s suggestion, each of them wrote a letter to his loved ones. The Texan would carry theirs out and mail them if he could, in case they never made it back alive. They’d keep his for the same reason. But since he might be captured and their letters fall to enemy hands, he warned his friends not to give any details that could betray their location.

  “So now we split the pie three ways,” gloated Szabo as they watched Prof walk off to the east, guided by White Dog and another hunter. “Good riddance to the Eagle Scout. He was nothin’ but a pain in the butt, anyway.”

  “I hope you guys aren’t going to insist on a happy ending?” Raine said, closing the notebook. “’Cause something tells me—”

  But the Punan were already scrambling for the exit. The rain had stopped again.

  This time the gap in the leaves showed blue sky. But it was too late in the day to leave, and Raine still had no directions to follow. She wandered around the camp, turning down offers of jerky, watching Abat weave some of the beads Raine had given her into a strip of bark cloth. The children were playing in a puddle, forming human figures and animals out of—

  “Wait a minute!” Raine crouched beside them. “Clay! Where did you get this?”

  They took her hands and led her to a bank of it, along the nearby creek. “All right, now we’re talking!” She gathered pounds of the squishy material onto several elephant ear leaves and carried it back to camp. Commenced modeling alongside the children.

  An hour later, when White Dog sauntered over to see what the strange Ren-Bungan was doing now, she showed him her efforts. From the clay and the earth itself, she’d fashioned a three-dimensional map. She’d scooped out a butterfly-shaped lake and filled it with water. Built a range of mountains to its southeast. Mounded up a twin-peaked mountain to the north. “Does this ring any bells?” Raine walked her index and forefinger around the lake, then toward the double mountain.

  The headman squatted beside her and stared at the scene.

  “Have you been there before?” she asked urgently.

  With a mystified frown, he looked at her.

  She tapped the mountain. “Is this where you found…” And she swung around to touch the clay model her body had been blocking from his view. “Where you found a dinosaur tooth—like this?” She’d sculpted the tooth life-size. Then to prod his memory, she’d embedded one of her necklace opals in its sticky surface.

  He let out a grunt of surprise. Glanced sharply from Raine to the tooth, then back again.

  “Yes!” Raine agreed. “That’s why I’ve come. I want that. Where did you find it? Did you find it…” Again she walked her two fingers from the lake to the mountain—then showed them pouncing on the jeweled tooth. “Here? The tooth came from this mountain, yes?”

  This time he nodded vigorous agreement—expanded this with a stream of excited comments and gestures.

  “Great!” Raine tapped her chest, then tapped the twin-peaked mountain. “I need to go there. That is my heart’s desire. Could you help me?”

  Chapter 26

  “Look, if you’re going to cry about it, I think we should stop,” Raine suggested, the following night.

  White Dog and two other hunters were escorting her on a trek toward the twin mountain. After they’d made camp at day’s end, they’d insisted she read to them by the banked fire. Anything to keep her guides happy, she’d figured.

  Except they weren’t happy. Though they didn’t understand a word of the paratroopers’ story, they were exquisitely attuned to her emotions. Watching her face as she read, they’d started silently weeping about a page back.

  “We should tell knock-knock jokes. Or go to bed.” They’d covered a good twenty miles today at a hunter’s fluid pace and Raine was exhausted. But at least they were making excellent time.

  And she’d recognized her first landmark from the watch’s map, when they’d topped a high ridge aro
und noon. Far off to the south, she’d caught a glimpse of the butterfly lake.

  She’d expected they’d head that direction and stop on its shore. Instead they’d swerved in a wide arc around it; they were camping dry tonight. But though there was no way to wash up, they had plenty to drink. White Dog had shown her how to cut the lianas that grew around camp. Chop the stem and out gushed a clear liquid, purer and tastier than the filtered river water she’d been living on, these past few weeks.

  “Really, why don’t we go to bed?” she tried again, waving a hand at her waiting hammock.

  The tears dried up; the chins stuck out in stubborn disapproval. They wanted their story. “Okay, okay. The Greeks liked their tragedies, so why not you guys?” She stood to stir the coals of their fire. Plenty of damp wood was making a nice smudge that kept the mosquitoes at bay. Sitting in the pungent smoke, she opened the notebook again. “Where were we?”

  No place good, was where. With Professor’s leaving, the situation had gone rapidly downhill. The Punan girls were growing bored with the drudgery of digging. Working till you blistered was a civilized concept, not the nomads’ way.

  To encourage them to work longer and faster, Szabo and his friends upped their daily pay to three beads, then four. But the girls quickly learned that sulking and working slower earned them more beads, not less. Besides, with this raise in salary they’d accumulated enough beads to create bands for their foreheads and shapely calves; who needed more?

  Frustrated by the girls, Szabo turned to the hunters for help, but the males of the tribe scorned to work for beads. Tobacco might have tempted them, but the soldiers had smoked all the weed they’d saved from the lake.

  “‘We’ve gotta do something!’ Szabo had fretted in his journal.

  “Prof said before he left that the wet season’s coming in another month. After that, there’ll be no way to get these heathen to dig in the rain. Besides, the game’s just about played out around here. I’m betting when White Dog comes back from the coast, the tribe’ll move on to better hunting. We’ve got to find some way to make ’em help us, and find it now.”

  “Hoo, boy,” Raine muttered as she came to it.

  “So we took a good-behavior hostage this morning,” Szabo wrote. “White Dog’s son.” They’d lured the child into the cave. Then they’d leashed him there like a puppy, with Carleton to keep watch so that nobody freed him.

  Naturally the boy’s mother, then everyone, had protested. In the Punan way, the elders of the tribe had come up the mountain to discuss this grave matter; a consensus must be reached.

  “They jabbered and jabbered and nagged at us. I tried to tell ’em to forget it. That all we wanted was some help digging, and soon as we’d dug up the dinosaur, we’d let the boy go. But they kept on fuming and fussing till I couldn’t take anymore. So I shot one of their dogs.”

  It was the first time the soldiers had fired a gun. They only had two, with no more than forty bullets. Prof had counseled from the start that they should save their ammunition for emergencies, learn to hunt the native way.

  “‘But I figured one bullet and one dead dog would get my point across,’ wrote Szabo. ‘That if they want to stay healthy and happy, they should do things our way. Just because we’ve treated ’em fair and friendly, that don’t mean we can be disrespected.’”

  Astonished and terrified by this needle that flew through the air, the Punan had retreated for the night, their women weeping as they went.

  “‘But not the men,’ said Szabo, ‘which seems sort of funny. When Carleton hurt his foot digging last week, they cried more than he did.’”

  Raine blew out a gusty sigh, and glanced up—to find her own outrage mirrored in every face. “We really ought to go to bed,” she said again, though she wasn’t going to sleep easy after this.

  But they wanted to know the end of the story—or at least to feel it—and there were only a few more pages to go.

  “‘Wasn’t sure if any of ’em would show up for digging the next day, but by God, they did,’ Szabo wrote.

  “We set ’em a good example, me and Jonesy swapped time on the shovel, while the one not digging kept lookout with our second gun. Just in case any of the men get any notion to stick a poison dart in somebody.”

  The excavation proceeded—slowly. Sullenly. The girls no longer flirted or teased, and the soldiers were obviously feeling guilty. They raised the standard salary to five beads per day; their generosity won no smiles or forgiveness.

  The only one having a half-passable time was young Carleton in the cave; he was teaching his charge how to play the harmonica. “‘But a few days of grin and bear it and it’ll all be over,’ Szabo wrote.

  “I ordered the men to go cut logs for the sledge today, and gather rattan to tie it all together. The ramp’s about smoothed out. Three days from now we ought to be able to cut the head loose from its pilings and drag it down to the cave.

  “After that, I’m thinking we’ll have to call it quits. If it took a month to dig out the skull, I figure it’d take a year to get the rest of the critter. But I figure the head is what a collector would want to buy most of all. When the sun shines on those teeth, well, I get the cold shivers. It’s like something you’d see coming for you at the Last Trump. Purely amazing.”

  Szabo decided that once the bones were safely stored, they’d seal up the cave, then make their way toward the coast. “Reckon we’ve about worn out our welcome here anyway,” he observed.

  “Oh, no. Really?” Raine jeered and White Dog growled agreement. His dog pricked his ears, sat up, and added his growl to the chorus—then scratched his neck thoroughly and flopped down again.

  “‘Reckon we’ll find us some other tribe,’ continued Szabo.

  “See if they’d like some company till the war winds down. Once we’ve got a prayer of shipping our treasure home, we’ll come on back and collect it. I’ve been scratching a map in my watch, of what it’d would look like from the air, in case we can hire a float plane, returning. That would sure beat walking.”

  Raine shut the book. “I’ve got to stop, guys. If it gets any worse, I won’t be able to sleep.”

  They complained, then coaxed, turning on the Punan charm. Laughing, she shook her head. “No, honestly. I’m beat. But I’ll tell you one thing.” She leaned to rub the white dog’s ears. “This is your story,” she told his master.

  She cocked her head, considering how she could sign that, then gave it up. “At least, I bet it is. White Dog’s son that they took hostage? I’m guessing he was either your father, or—” Since they seemed to start their families in their teens out here…“Or your grandfather. Your tribe has moved on some, since then, but that’s no surprise. But you’re the only man I’ve met out here who runs with a white dog.” She scratched the hound’s ears again. “So I bet this guy’s great-great-who-knows-how-many-great-grandfather is in this story, too. Wish I could tell you that.”

  The next day didn’t start well.

  Raine spent the night tossing and turning, plagued by nightmares, just as she’d feared. The worst came at dawn, when a T. rex lunged out of her dig site. Flaming teeth clamped down on Cade, ripping him from her arms, dragging him down into the pit. She woke screaming and flailing, fighting her mosquito nets.

  She’d scared the Punan more than she scared herself. They poked their heads out of their sleeping platform—stared at her appalled, as she unzipped and sat up, panting and swearing. Without a word, they vanished again.

  A nightmare wasn’t a mere nasty nuisance, in some parts of the world, Raine reflected, while she caught her breath. It could be an omen. A warning. Give another silly performance like that one, and her guides might decide they wanted no part of this expedition.

  She’d be smarter not to sleep again. But if she rose and stumbled around the camp, she’d disturb the guys, who’d apparently gone back to bed. She reached for her pack, which she’d hung, as always, alongside the hammock, then fished out Szabo’s notebook. If he was going
to trouble her dreams, he might as well entertain her, waking.

  “Moving day went smooth as silk,” he’d written.

  Have to hand it to Professor. He knew his stuff. It took a couple dozen of the tribe, ladies and gents, plus Jonesy, pulling and pushing, to get the skull moving. But after that, the sledge rolled right along. Downhill all the way, past the pool, into the cave. I stood back, supervising, and holding the gun, just to keep everybody’s mind on business.

  But the Punan had business of their own. During the excitement, one of the laborers must have tossed a stone blade to the captive, who’d been tethered at the back of the cavern. The next time the soldiers looked his way, the boy was gone.

  “Which was sort of a shame,” noted Szabo. “I figured on getting one more day’s use out of him.” The following day, he meant to wall up the mouth of the cave. He’d counted on the Punans’ help, lugging stone for the job. “I figured we’d let the kid go, after that.

  “But I reckon since we’ve lost our little bargaining chip, we’ll have to finish the job ourselves.” The soldiers had worked hard all the rest of that day, gathering rocks. “Felt really strange, with none of them hanging around. Even when they were mad at us, they were company. It’s so damn quiet up here now, it makes me jumpy.” Szabo had kept his gun at hand.

  Then at twilight, Carleton had glanced up, let out a cry and pointed. The others had spun around—to see nothing but bushes.