At the edge of the rugged tree-line encampment, a weather-beaten old pine dangled its gnarled limbs like a gallows. The sun rose straight up in a ruddy equatorial dawn, and the rebels gathered for the duel.
Smith hadn’t slept a wink, in part because of his mortal terror, in part because of Yaquita’s amorous attempts to make him forget his mortal terror.
Now he stood waiting under the ominous tree, dressed in a combat jungle uniform. The gnarled pine’s nearest overhanging limb hung thirty feet off the rocky ground. In the dirt around the trunk, dark patches of hardened mud showed where blood had dried in pools.
Thick liana vines trailed from the high limb of the dueling tree to the trampled ground where their ends lay in a tangle. Smith tied one of the four burros to the nearest vine, lo
