Hunters Run Page 0,70

should bear the heavier load, but his twin was bent on putting the soft-handed Amadora banker in his place, and Ramon recognized the impulse clearly enough to know there was no point arguing.

By noon, they had enough raw materials to put the raft together. Ramon fashioned a rough harness from two cut branches and a length of bright blue panama ivy and used it to haul the cane and the branches down the short path to the water. The man allowed him that much, bringing the armful of stripped bark and iceroot leaves instead. Ramon figured it meant his twin was feeling tired.

The sandbar was smaller than Ramon remembered it, but just as cluttered with debris. Without consulting the man walking behind him, he pulled the load to the bank just downstream. The bar created a still place in the waters. The eddy was a good place to test their raft before they launched themselves out into the unforgiving flow.

Ramon shrugged off the harness and squatted on the bank. In the still water, he could see himself reflected, and his twin standing behind him. Two men, similar, but not yet identical. Ramon's growing beard was softer and lighter. His hair hung closer to his head than it had before, changing the shape of his face a little. Still, they might have been brothers. Since he knew to look for it, he could see where the moles on his twin's cheek and neck were echoed by minute discolorations on his own. The scar on his belly twinged.

"Not bad," the man said, and spat thoughtfully into the water, the ripples disturbing its soft mirror. The raft was going to be big. The lower gravity of S?o Paulo lent itself to fast-growing trees, and rather than take the time to cut the long saplings twice, they'd used them all at their full height. It wasn't luxury, but there would be easy room for them both. "We should put some shelter on it, though."

"Like a cabin?" Ramon asked, looking at the collection of sticks before him.

"A lean-to. Something to sleep in, get out of the weather. And if we got enough wood, we can add a fire grate, too. Line the bottom with iceroot leaves, fill it a couple hands high with good sand, and we can keep warm on the river."

Ramon squinted at the man, then upriver, back toward where Maneck and the chupacabra had done battle. He tried to guess how long he'd been in the water, how far he'd swum. He couldn't be sure. It had felt like a long time, a huge distance. But he'd been on the verge of death, so his impressions probably weren't all that good.

"Let's put those on farther down the river," he said. "I want to get away from here first."

"You scared?" the man jeered. His tone was taunting, and Ramon felt anger and embarrassment surge through him. Ramon could see the frustration in the other man, the anger always simmering under the skin, ready to be fanned awake, the desire to strike out and make himself feel better by hurting someone, and felt its twin in his own breast. He'd have to tread carefully here, or they'd end up in a fight neither could afford.

"Scared to face down a pissed-off chupacabra with a field knife and a stick?" he said. "Anyone isn't scared of that's stupid or crazy."

The man's expression hardened at the insult, but he shrugged casually.

"There's two of us," he said, turning half away from Ramon. "We could take him."

"Maybe," Ramon said, letting the obvious lie stand. They could no more take down a chupacabra than flap their arms and fly to Fiddler's Jump. If he pressed it, though, they'd end up fighting about it. "Thing is, what if the alien won?"

"Against a chupacabra?" the man asked, incredulous. It was easy to summon up the bravado to say they could kill the beast, but hard to stretch the imagination far enough to think that Maneck might win against the same odds. Ramon kept his expression somber.

"It was looking pretty even when I got out of there," he said. "The alien had a gun of some kind, and it shot the chupacabra at least twice; maybe that weakened it. I wasn't going to hang around to find out how it ended, you know? Besides, if the fucking alien is still alive and still has that gun, we don't want it catching up with us."

"Fine," the man said. "If it makes you feel better,