The Vanishing Tribe by Alex Archer

Author:Alex Archer
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Worldwide Library
Published: 2013-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

24

The sun was still making its way over the mountains in the distance when Porter and his men arrived at the San village. Excited to have more visitors, the children scurried out to greet them. But as the men got out of the vehicles with guns in their hands, the children raced back the way they had come with cries of fear and shouts of warning.

Today’s visitors, it seemed, were very different from their guest of the night before.

Bryant and his men rounded up all of the people they could find—man, woman and child—and forced them to assemble as a group in the center of the village. Porter stepped forward and brandished a pistol to get them to quiet down. “I’m looking for a white woman, alone and on foot. She would have come through here last night or early this morning. Has anyone seen her?”

The villagers didn’t say a word. From the expressions on some of their faces, Porter wasn’t sure they understood him.

He turned and gestured to Dr. Crane, who reluctantly stepped forward. Several of the villagers called out when they saw him, but Porter didn’t know if they were reacting to the man’s presence or the fact that his hands were bound securely in front of him, indicating that he, too, was a prisoner. Frankly, Porter didn’t care either way. All he wanted the doctor to do was translate what he said.

“I know you speak that damned language of theirs,” Porter snapped. “Tell them I want to know where the American woman went.”

Crane turned to the assembled villagers and spoke to them in their own language. There was a pause and then a man of about twenty-five stepped to the front of the crowd and addressed Crane. The two conversed for a moment.

“He says that they’ve only recently set up camp and haven’t had any visitors from the tour companies yet,” Crane translated. “They haven’t seen this woman you are asking about.”

Porter took in the well-built huts, the lived-in look to the village, even the amount of what looked to be recent ash in the fire pit. The man was lying. Just how stupid did they think he was?

Without a word Porter lifted his pistol and shot the young man in the chest. He went down like a sack of bricks.

For a second the only sound that could be heard was the echo of the gunshot and then the moment was shattered by cries of grief and horror. A few of the men surged forward but were quickly knocked back with hard, sharp blows from the ends of the assault rifles Porter’s men carried.

Porter didn’t want the villagers to have any time to think, so he stepped forward, grabbed a woman who was too slow to shrink back out of reach and pulled her upright in front of him with one arm locked around her neck. As the shouting and screaming continued, he raised his pistol in the air and fired again.

The sound of the shot brought silence in its wake.

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