“Don’t know yet,” Tom replied tersely, fumbling in the darkness for his flashlight.
In a moment he extracted it from one pocket of his riding breeches, which he had hung on the wall nearby. As he switched on the beam, Bud came wide awake and gave a roar of laughter.
Chow, still half asleep, was sprawled on the floor of the hut, hopelessly tangled in his mosquito netting. He blinked and snorted in the dazzling yellow glow of the flashlight.
“What in thunderation happened?” the Texan grunted.
“Guess you fell out of your hammock,” Tom replied, quaking with laughter.
“Come on. I’ll help you up.”
Chow was hardly back in his swaying billet when loud snores announced that he was fast asleep again.
Tom chuckled. To Bud he whispered, “The fall didn’t hurt him.”
The next morning after breakfast Tom was
20 ELECTRONIC RETROSCOPE
eager to be off. But again Quetzal delayed him.
“First we must have a leave-taking ceremony for the five men of my tribe who will go with you,” the king explained.
The entire tribe gathered around the stone fireplace in the center of the village. All bowed their heads as a native priest blessed the five small men and offered prayers in Spanish.
Then a Maya, taller than the others, stepped forward. He wore metal arm bands, shell necklaces, a skirt made of jaguar skin, and a parrot-feather headdress.
“Now for the real ceremony. This fellow is a medicine man,” Hutchcraft whispered contemptuously to the other Americans. “His tribe clings stubbornly to the pagan practices of its ancestors.”