"Out here you matter."
They sat for a while, the lack of a sign giving them little inducement to look farther. Then something big flicked out of sight.
"Kangaroo!" Tucker breathed.
"No," said Daniel, suddenly uneasy and sitting straighter. "It didn't jump like that." He peered hard at the shadowy brush but couldn't see any movement. "It was that guy again. Come on!" They trotted to where they'd seen the figure and separated, looking for tracks.
"Uh-oh," Tucker called. "Oh boy. You were right."
Daniel came over. As the eastern sky glowed a brighter pink, he saw what his companion was hypnotized by. It was a human boot print, but not one of their own. The waffle soles of a hiking boot. He looked closer. The tread design was peculiar. The grid looked like a street map.
"We got company," Tucker said. "Is that good?"
Daniel glanced around. "It must be another Outback Adventurer. Why'd he run?"
"Maybe he's a loner."
"Maybe he knows the way to water."
They followed the tracks, winding circuitously through the brush. The course seemed deliberately confusing. "He's trying to lose us," Daniel said. "Or get us lost."
"So where is camp?"
"We'll see the breakfast smoke when Ico and Amaya wake up. He must have seen our fire last night."
"So why doesn't he just say hello? This is weird."
As the sun broke the horizon they saw another flicker of movement at a low ridge crest. As soon as they saw it, the stranger was gone.
"Goddamnit." Tucker bolted ahead, moving agilely for such a big man. He bounded up the lower sand slopes of the ridge and scrabbled toward the steeper rocks.
"Tucker! Wait up!" Daniel trotted after him with his spear.
Tucker was up on the ridge now, hoisting himself through the boulders in hopes of getting a glimpse of the elusive fugitive. He climbed heedless of caution, half leaping from one hold to another. Daniel stopped to map a more prudent route.
Then Tucker screamed, springing backward from the rocks as if he had been fired from a cannon. He made a twisting loop, roaring and flinging his right arm, launching something long and rubbery into space. Then he crashed into the dirt at the base of the rocks and rolled downward, Daniel following through Tucker's cloud of dust.
"Snake!" Tucker shouted, curling into a ball and holding his arm. "Snake, snake, snake! Oh-my-God-it-hurts!"
"Tucker, stop! Where's the snake?" Daniel pulled at him wildly, fearfully looking for the reptile before realizing that it must have been flung away. The big man no doubt put his hand into a nest in his anxious scramble upward. Now Daniel grabbed his bitten hand and saw fang marks plain in the flesh in back of the thumb, the skin beginning to swell. He paled. Australia had some of the most venomous snakes in the world.
"It hurts so bad," Tucker moaned. "I hate snakes!"
"Then you should have gone to the Arctic." It was a lame attempt at levity. Daniel yanked at the man's shirtsleeve, ripping it from the shoulder. He wound the material around the forearm and pulled tight to make a tourniquet. A pocketknife made a quick, bloody incision and he squeezed the flesh, hoping he was squeezing some venom out. His friend howled as he did it, blood spraying to spatter gray leaves.
"Jesus, what a mess!" How poisonous was it?
Tucker was sweating despite the dawn cool, his chest heaving frantically. Daniel was frightened he was going to die. "Okay, lay back, I'm going to get some help," he told his friend with more reassurance than he felt. Their antivenin kit had been lost in the flood. "You're going to be all right, understand?"
Tucker nodded, pale with fear. "Where's the snake? I'm afraid of the snake."
"The snake? You must have put it in orbit. Don't worry about snakes, your thrashing has just about scared the shit out of everything in Australia, with legs or without."
"That's good." He gave a grimaced smile. "Man, I'm hurt from the fall too. What a screw-up mess."
"I'll be right back, okay? Just wait."
He groaned. "Like I'm going to go anywhere."
Daniel could hear the confused calls of the others and shouted back, jogging off in that direction. They were only a few hundred yards away. He stumbled into camp.
"Where's Tucker?"
"Snakebite," he gasped.
The other two looked stricken.
"And I was right, someone else is sneaking around here."
They looked about wildly.
"Look, I think the stranger's gone, but Tucker's in bad shape. We'll have to carry him into camp."
"We can't carry Tucker!" Ico protested. "He weighs a ton!"
"I think we have to."
They hurried back to the weakening man. He was delirious when they got to him, curled again and shaking, looking like a ghost from the coating of dust. "Holy shit," Ico breathed. "He looks like he's dying."
"What kind of snake?" Amaya asked.
"How do I know? It's not like it matters now."
"How can we move him?"
It was Ico who had the idea to build a triangular travois like the Plains Indians and drag their big companion. They cut branches and vines to fasten a crude frame, rolled Tucker onto it despite his roar of protest, tied him down, and gave a tentative heave. The poles dragged along the ground with less friction than his full body. "Okay, this will work," Daniel said. "Here we go. One, two, three, pull!" A jerk and they were off, dust spurting from the ends of the two poles. Weaving this way and that, they pulled him back between the mulga trees and got to camp at mid-morning.
When they returned, all their food- except the sack Amaya had hung from a bush- was gone. Their campsite was spotted with the strange maplike grid of a waffle-soled boot.
A trail of boot prints led east and so they went that way too. The four of them had one gallon of water left to share and the temperature was arcing with the sun. Tucker had slipped into uneasy sleep on his travois, his bandaged arm grotesquely swollen. Flies crawled across his sweating face.
They managed half a mile per hour and collapsed by noon. The sled was exhausting.
"Look, we have to leave him," Ico croaked.
"No way!" protested Amaya.
"Just until we find water. Then we come back and get him."
"Ico, he could die!"
"We'll all die if we don't get some water."
She shook her head. "You two go ahead then. I'll wait with him."
Daniel vetoed that. "I'm not leaving you alone with this crazy guy wandering around. And I don't want just one of us scouting for water, either. We have to stay together."
"Dyson…"
"Come on. This guy, or guys, must be heading to water too. We follow them as a group. It's the safest way."
By mid-afternoon, though, the growing impossibility was obvious. Their water was gone. The desert shimmered, its heat climaxing near one hundred degrees. The trio was exhausted from their turns pulling the travois. Tucker seemed to be slipping into permanent unconsciousness. And the landscape was unchanged.
They dropped into the shade of a stunted tree, a parade of ants marching up its twisted trunk. A kite wheeled in the cloudless sky. They felt absolutely demoralized and exhausted.
"We're done," Ico said.
"Don't say that," Amaya pleaded.
"Even if we find water we've lost too much gear. We don't have much food, we don't have tools… what did we last, a week and a half? They'd laugh, if they ever knew."
"We've just had bad luck. That guy robbed us. That's like trying to murder us."
"Ten to one he's succeeded within twenty-four hours."
"But why?"
"Maybe he got hungry himself. So he preys on the newcomers. Dog eat dog. There's a survival lesson for you."
"Then why not just slit our throats? He could have, last night."
"Maybe he's fastidious."
Daniel looked up at the desert sky. Not a cloud, not a plane, not a hope. He hadn't known it was possible to feel so alone. "Okay, Ico, you go on ahead," he conceded. "It's our only chance. Take the water containers and we'll wait with Tucker. I don't want to leave Amaya alone."