Golden Spikes

GOLDEN SPIKES

Jay Clayton Wilson

Published by Jay Clayton Wilson

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 Jay Clayton Wilson

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GOLDEN SPIKES

CHAPTER 1

High on the canyon wall was a narrow, rock ledge. It was hardly wide enough to conceal the slender Laotian man who crawled and slithered along its length. Percolating water from last season's monsoon rain seeped its insidious way between ancient cracks in the stratified rock and dripped onto the ledge, leaving the surface wet and slippery.

A rock protruded in front of the wiry man who wiggled along the algae laden shelf. The ledge narrowed to the point where the slick surface was no longer wide enough for him. The searching eyes of the three heavily armed men who walked beside a mountain stream two hundred feet below made it impossible for him to stand and climb around the protrusion. He had gone as far up the canyon as he dared. So he lay in a prone silence, listening to his own heartbeat, tasting the sweat that ran down his face, fearing that he might be seen.

Subterranean waters had washed and polished the slabs of uplifted rock for thousands of years, shaping and molding them. Sunshine poured its early afternoon rays onto the formations and reflected back to the heavens in a glistening array of light and color. Shadows were cast into artistic images by the sharp angles of fractured rock that had yielded to an ageless struggle against gravity and erosion.

The beauty went unnoticed by the prone figure that clung to the glistening ledge. His bare toes probed the mossy rock in search of supporting purchase. The earth tones of his knee length pants and sleeveless fatigue jacket subdued the reflection from the burning sun.

Throughout the ages earth tremors had shaken larger slabs of rock loose from the canyon wall and plummeted them into the ravine where they joined uncountable others that had fallen to crush and pulverize their predecessors. Huge boulders that had fallen from the cliff formed a jagged layer of irregularly shaped obstructions to the flow of the mountain stream. It splashed against them, turned, and followed a gravity dictated course down the canyon until it swirled around yet another boulder, thus defining a vigorous, sibilant flow that carried tiny grains of sand and minerals to their deposits at lower elevations.

Aromas of moss, wet rock, and pure mountain water filled the nostrils of the hidden man who had scooted himself along the brink to the point where he was forced to stop. Only one of his shoulders was supported by the narrow ledge, leaving him uncomfortably overbalanced. Slowly, cautiously, he let his right hand slip over the edge and work its way along the wall until it touched an unseen handhold near the protrusion. But he accidentally touched the root of a tendril vine. It tugged against the wall above and pulled loose some of the dirt that surrounded a shard. It tottered precariously. Then it fell onto his shoulder, warning that it would be followed by the noisy clatter of fragments. Rocks tumbled.

What was that?

Three men, shirtless and clad in various colors of short pants, scanned upward. Distorted shadows obscured all but the most prominent features of the cliff. They spoke to each other in the dialect of the Laotian mountain people.

I don’t see anything. It was probably just another rock that has fallen to make our way more difficult.

Another of the men said, I don’t like patrolling these ravines. Someday a falling rock will hit one of us and end his toil forever. I would rather patrol the flat plateaus up above. They are safer.

And, said the one who had heard the rock, it is a lot easier to walk up there. These rocks are so sharp and slippery that a man could be killed, not only by what is falling, but what has already fallen.

The brown skinned man lay very still on the ledge, listening. His back was baked in the sun while his chest was cooled by the water that trickled beneath him. Water that dripped onto his nylon backpack began to collect. Within five minutes the pool had deepened to the point that it spilled over and ran down his side and drained onto the ledge. He dared to push his hair back under his black bandanna and peek over the edge to see whether the men had moved farther downstream. They had not.

I’m hungry. Let's stop here for lunch, said one of the armed men.

Never, yelled another. I am not going to cling to one of these rocks and try to eat with one hand. I have watched my rice slide off into the water all too often. Let's go downstream until we find a flat place.

After the men had move on, the barefooted man on the ledge rose to a crouched position and worked his way around the protrusion as nimbly as a gymnast might mount the balance beam. From his new vantage point he could see three quarters of a mile upstream.

The noise of the falling pebbles was no longer a concern. Now that the armed men in the ravine were gone, he would not be seen unless someone looked over the edge of the precipice above. That was possible because searchers on the plateau, like those in the ravine, were well paid to find intruders and kill them. But finding them was difficult. Crumbling rock at the unstable edge of the plateau made it dangerous to walk on. That was why the other men had to climb down into the ravines to ferret hiding places and take care of those who were not authorized to be there.

Climbing over boulders, under ledges, and around fissures took him upstream another three miles. Then he worked his way down into the canyon where he walked in running water. His destination was just ahead.

Two stones were clapped together. A lookout called in the Sao Soung dialect of the Laotian mountain people, Lim! Up here. Be careful not to trip over that broken shovel handle.

Lim located the lookout. Then he sat down in a pool of cold water, letting it wash away the sweat and dirt from his slanted eyes. He removed the bandanna and, with a splash, he washed long, black hair away from his face. Beneath it were scars that testified to his years in the seamy bars along the Mekong River. His knuckles were also scarred. His eyes were hard, steely mirrors of distrust.

The patrol came though about an hour ago. You must have seen them. They were probably still eating some of the rice cakes that we handed out so freely. The lookout meant that the patrol had demanded the usual squeeze for allowing him and his family to remain in the ravine. It was located on property of the most private kind.

I saw them, Lim replied. I nearly dropped a rock right on top of them.

Be careful about dropping rocks. If you accidentally killed one, he might be replaced by some greedy bastard who would demand even more squeeze. Already we pay more than we can afford just to be here during the dry season. We don’t need additional expenses.

Lim, whose concentration had centered on his abused chins and knees, did not reply. Instead, he got out of the water and accompanied the lookout to his family campsite.

I must get these lazy children of mine back to work, said an old man who sat on the bank mending a broken bucket. Things have been very encouraging for the last ten days, Lim. 1972 is going to be a good year for us and for the people up stream.

All appearances supported the graying old man's optimism. A dozen people rushed from one task to another, carrying shovels, pans, and lengths of timber. Part of the stream had been blocked with a dam constructed of large stones. Most of the activity centered around it. Three people sat in the water on their haunches, swirling, peering, and pouring.

The old man's wife, bent and weathered, moved a nondescript rock to one side, revealing a little cave from which she took a metal box. She handed it over with gnarled hands that had only recently worked the muddy rice paddies. Now they toiled in fresh running streams. Her husband opened the box and handed its contents to Lim.

Please excuse me now. I have to keep these youngsters busy while there is money to be made. You must hurry upstream. I heard that a fault in the rock near the mouth of this ravine slipped several feet and dumped tons of rubble into the water. It was rich!

A small, fairly accurate, triple beam balance was removed from Lim’s soaked nylon pack along with a package of kips, the Laotian currency. They found a flat rock, set up the scale, and incremented the weights one gram at a time until the dial stopped at the zero mark. Then Lim repacked the scale, counted three hundred dollars worth of kips and tendered it into the woman’s calloused hand.

Twelve ounces of glittering yellow gold were poured into a plastic bag and secured inside his backpack. Then Lim resumed his trek upstream toward the head of the ravine.

CHAPTER 2

The man's nose would have been the most prominent feature on his dark, Oriental face. Its wide, flat bridge would have dominated the scar that ran from his ear to his throat. But it could not because part of the nose was missing. It had been lost in a knife fight on the waterfront two years earlier. An eyebrow was also missing over a blood shot eye.

The abused face was evil and fierce. Lang's disposition was even worse.

Lim looked even more sinister and dangerous although he had fewer scars on his face. He listened to Lang complain while they poured nearly two hundred pounds of gold nuggets and flakes into black plastic bags.

"I have waded every river and mountain stream from Luang Prabang all the way south to Pakxe. I’ve had to bargain with crazy prospectors and greedy women who would rather pan for gold than spread themselves. I have slept in a real bed only twice in six weeks and I can count on one finger the number of times we have gotten laid since we met that wild man who we call our boss.

"It isn’t fair. He sent us out with thousands of dollars of his own money to buy gold. Before meeting him, no one would have trusted us with one cent. Not even our favorite bartender would trust us with one single drop of his whiskey unless we paid for it in advance.

We should do the right thing and run away with his money. What’s gone wrong with us?

Lim understood his old friend's plight. "I remember the old days when we would get into a good knife fight in some Thai bar on the waterfront, slash our way through a dozen men, and spend the rest of the night with whores who tried to steal our wallets before we even got undressed. Now, we earn more money than we can hide and we don’t have time to spend any of it. So what's the value of wages?

"Wages, what a nasty word.

You know, Lang, when we got out of that gunfight at Viet Soo and the other one up on the China border, I thought I knew what capitalism was all about. I liked it. Now I'm not so sure. It’s a hell of a lot of hard work.

Lim tied the last bag closed and got ready to leave the hotel room where they had been consolidating the gold.

Come on. The boss is waiting. You carry the big bag and I'll carry the small one. I'll cover you until you get to the Jeep and get your gun ready. Then you cover me.

They left their meeting place in the ancient city of Luang Prabang. Luang Prabang, once the old capital city in central Laos, was unsafe at any hour. It was absolutely dangerous at night for any person who had a day's wages in his pocket. That’s why they moved in broad daylight. If anyone had known that the black plastic garbage bags contained nearly eighty thousand dollars worth of almost pure gold, they would have smashed the very idols they worshiped over peoples heads to get it. No divine assistance would have been required from that point. They would have simply followed their natural instinct to kill and rob.

Fortunately, no one paid any attention to either of the dangerous wharf rats who carried garbage bags to a rusty old Jeep. The bags looked heavy. They could have been disposing of someone's body. No one wanted to pay any attention.

It was only a short drive to the waterfront where they moved the bags into an old, deteriorating rowboat.

The docks at Luang Prabang were steamy in the midday humidity. Conical shaped, sweat stained coolie hats afforded scant protection to the workers and forklift drivers that loaded and unloaded crates at the Asian Trading Company warehouse.

Lim was well known to them all. No one raised an eyebrow when he rowed under the dock and tied up. He slipped into the water and dove to the bottom where he knotted the bags to a piling with the others. Then he and Lang walked wearily into the office adjacent to the dock. If the heat had not been so oppressive, someone might have wondered about Lang’s sanity when he and Lim returned to the rusty Jeep carrying nothing more than two straw baskets that contained hard, dry, left over rice. But hidden beneath the day old rice were thousands of kips. Neither Lim nor Lang would have time to spend even one night in a real bed. They had to return immediately to the riverbeds and mountain streams to buy more gold before the rainy season started.

Explain something to me, Lim. What becomes of all that gold dust?

Who knows? I guess he sells it.

Where?

How should I know? Maybe in Bangkok.

How much is it worth?

Lang, will you shut up and drive. I don't know anything about it. Who cares anyway?

You should care, that's who. You’re probably the most trusted employee he has. You and I, a pair of thieves and cutthroats, were hired right out of that flop house, forced to chase whores all over town, thrown into those two gun fights, and put in charge of all of the company's riverboat crews. It looked like we were really going places. But now all we do is make more money than we can spend and slosh up and down rivers all day. Why?

Maybe we like being trusted. Maybe its because we've been in gunfights with him and we know can trust him. Who knows?

Lim had no education. That quality was fortified by an extremely bad disposition. Answering questions, as his friend knew, was one of his least favorite pastimes. Not only did he have an aversion to conversation, he neither knew nor cared about the answers to these or most other inquiries. He only cared about short term results. A job would be given to him. He would make the most direct plans for its execution, and he would perform without regard to personal risk. That was his weakness and it was his strength. Occam's razor could not have reduced matters to core issues of absolute necessity with less wasted effort than Lim did as he pursued his single minded purpose -- the law of parsimony on the waterfront.

Regardless of Lim's limitations, Lang was being insistent. Ignoring him would only lead to another deluge of questions. So he told all he knew.

Maybe he sells it for more that we pay for it. Maybe you and I are the only ones who are stupid enough to give all this cash to the panners instead of running away with it. There, that should hold him until we get to the bus station.

But it did not.

Why do the panners sell it to us instead of selling it in Bangkok where they could get a higher price?

I don't know.

Yes you do.

All right! I have heard that the panners used to try to sell their own gold in Vientiane. But they were either robbed on the way or cheated by the traders. And, when they got back to their camps, someone else had taken their spot while they were gone. So they’d rather sell to us.

Lim, you know it's just a matter time until someone figures out that we are carrying all of this cash and gold. They are going to slit our throats and help themselves.

Yeah? Well, all my life people have been trying to slit my throat. None of them ever lived long enough to finish the job. Now get out of here. I'll see you in three weeks.

Lang hopped into his own Jeep and headed south. Lim drove north from Luang Prabang toward the China border which was only sixty miles away. Five miles south of the border he turned west on a narrow, dirt road that went over a pass and back down to the Mekong.

It was very late in the afternoon when he reached the river. A slow, torturous route had to be taken around Muang Sing because the village was infested with those who would sell information about a stranger for a pack of cigarettes. Such information would spread like a virus until it fell into the hands of men who would become murderously suspiciously. They cared not for gold. Their jobs were to defend much more profitable crops from trespassers. The head of a stranger was worth more than cigarettes. The bearer might be favored with a job as a security patrolman for those who controlled the area – controlled the area with the force and authority of ancient feudal warlords.

Low range four wheel drive took the Jeep south along the river's bank where no road had ever been constructed. Rocks, sand holes, and deep washes similar to the arroyos of Northern New Mexico slowed his progress even further. It was nightfall when he drove across the axle deep water of the sandy Muang Long River that was one of the gold rich tributaries of the Mekong.

A dense copse provided a good hiding place for the Jeep on the southern bank. A sixty mile trek lay ahead of him. For his efforts he expected no more than twenty or thirty pounds of the precious metal that he sought. Afterward he intended to drive south to the next tributary and repeat the process.

But that was not to be.

Five miles up the tributary he approached the first gold panning camp. Two rocks were clapped together in the prearranged sequence by which he had agreed to be announced to all of his customers. Although wicked and sinister looking, he was hailed and greeted as a long lost friend.

Lim! Up here. We’ve been waiting for you with good news.

Lim was unaccustomed to good news from any source. Such a greeting was usually a predicate for trouble. So he stepped under a tree to be shaded from the moonlight and slipped the Kovitch AL-21 machine pistol out of his backpack.

The weapon had become his closest friend from the first time he had pulled its trigger and been astonished by its fire power. Standard issue Colt .45's were hardly any larger. But its sixty round clip of ammunition would explode in a paroxysm of devastation. Its rate of fire was near seventy rounds per second with virtually no recoil.

Ah, said the man who came to greet him, the Kovitch. You will not need it here. However, we have all heard stories about the patrol that you cut to pieces up north on the China border. Fifty-three empty brass cartridges were found nearby. Six guards were hit. Four of them died. They say it was an ambush.

It wasn't me.

Well, never mind. It was probably your boss. So spend the night with us, eat, and meet a friend.

Such things as new friends did not exist. Lim pushed the pistol into his waistband with the safety catch set to full automatic.

At the campfire the man who had greeted him said, This is a panner who would like to have you call him Taune. In his dialect it means 'friend’.

The little country of Laos was landlocked. China was on its northern border. The tip of its southern dragon's tail plunged all the way to Cambodia. The Mekong River separated Laos from Burma and Thailand on the west and Vietnam was on the east. Many of its three and one half million inhabitants were simple tribesmen who lived without knowledge of the political and social dynamics that had given their country its prominence in modern Southeast Asia. More than seventy ethnic groups, some with their own kings, shared four or five major dialects. Taune spoke a garbled Lao Theung patois of the mountainside people. Lim could hardly understand him.

Shrewd eyes and an extraordinarily large frame set him apart from the majority of the people who panned for gold in the river bottoms. A machete stuck from the waistband of his knee length pants. Scars on the back of his right hand evidenced that he had used it to cut his own paths through the jungles along the tributaries. The scars in his eyebrows evidenced that he had cut his swath through mankind as well.

I have come to you with an offer, he mumbled through his drooping mustache. He kicked an ant off of one bare foot with the toe of the other, that you may find helpful. Lim won't believe me. But it's worth a try. Interested?

What kind of offer?

Nervously, Taune began his story. A few weeks ago you climbed the ravines and waterfalls of the next tributary to the south in order to buy gold. I know that area better than anyone else and I know the people who pan for gold up there. I will buy their gold and bring it down to you. You won’t have to go up there any more.

Greed and avarice presented themselves as distinctive features on the man's young but unpleasant face. They were deeply embedded in his natural physiognomy.

Good, Lim said. Meet me here when you have the gold.

Something must be wrong, Taune thought. Maybe Lim hadn’t understood. Why would he agree so easily? Oh, well. Maybe the gods will puke on someone else tonight and I’ll make my fortune. All right. Let me have enough money to buy the gold and I’ll leave immediately.

Not hardly, Lim growled. "You bring the gold and then I’ll pay for it." I was born on a Tuesday. But this guy must think it was last Tuesday!

That's more like it, Taune thought. Nothing ever happens without obstacles. Well, I don’t have any money. You’ll have to advance it just this once.

Most likely I would be advancing your vacation in Bangkok or Rangoon.

That's not true, Taune retorted. I’m more honest than you might think.

That wouldn’t be hard to imagine.

Look, Taune said. Let's not get off on the wrong foot. I actually have a very good reputation. Ask anyone here. Try it just once and you’ll agree.

I only have to try it once to lose my money. I wonder what kind of deal can be made with a man like this. He looks tough enough to be semi honest.

You won’t lose anything. Ask these people. They’ll tell you that I am honest and that no one would dare try to steal gold or cash from me. He flexed. Advance the money just this one time.

Umm. No way. But, if these people will recommend you, I might be willing to go this far. Get the gold from the panners who know you and I’ll pay you twenty-five dollars an ounce for it. Then I’ll give you a ten percent commission for your efforts.

Since the kip is almost unknown as a currency throughout the rest of the world, most Laotians can convert between currencies as readily as they can assume aliases. But in the far northern regions there was not enough commerce to teach those skills. So Taune took some time to calculate.

That’s a fair price considering that you take ungraded dust and transport it to Thailand or wherever to resell. And ten percent would make me a wealthy man someday. But I have no money to get the enterprise started. I need at least four thousand dollars as a stake.

The lookout who had greeted Lim said that, while he was not in the business of making recommendations, Taune was known for his honesty, almost as well as for his hot temper.

But Lim said, If I gave you a four thousand dollar stake, my boss would stake me to an anthill. But since you have such a widely known reputation for honesty, impose upon the panners you know. They’ll trust you with small amounts of gold for a few days. Otherwise, they don’t trust you at all.

What you call small amounts of gold, Lim, is an entire month's work to them. It would be like me taking your backpack and all of its money away from you.

Lim raised the Kovitch and aimed at the man's chest.

Taune stepped back and showed his innocence by putting both palms in front of him. No, no. That's not what I meant at all. I was only trying to make a comparison. No threat was intended.

Come, my friends, interrupted the lookout. Eat with us. You can discuss business later. Whee, that was close.

During their meal of rice cakes and fresh fish, Taune conceded. Okay. I’ll try to impose upon my friendship with the panners. I’ll beg for their trust. But I promise nothing. If I meet you here in ten days, I will have been successful. If I am not here, you will have to buy the gold from them without my help.

Doubting that he would ever see the man again, Lim agreed.

Taune, knowing he would see Lim soon, had already collected thirty pounds of gold from the panners who worked the waters in the next tributary. They were afraid to be seen in the company of a stranger. Merely being seen with a man like Lim could get them shot. At a minimum the patrols would use the event as justification to demand additional squeeze. So they had already entrusted their gold to Taune with great relief.

Taune was about to become rich. And he had beguiled Lim, a seasoned negotiator!

* * * * *

The geography of the twenty-three miles between Muang Sing and Muang Long was reasonably flat except for the ravines. The soil on the plateaus was rich enough to support almost any kind of agriculture. Only one crop was cultivated.

Poppies flourished.

For two thousand years Laos has been the melting pot that concocted all of the transients and invaders from China in the north with the Khmer Kings from the west and south. While Europe had languished in the Dark Ages, Laos and its environs were known as Indochina. The Khmer Empire approached its zenith in the seventeenth century before France began to exploit her own political fortunes in Southeast Asia. The powerful Lao Kingdom began to disintegrate when outsiders started to grind away at her borders. But most found the land too remote and inhospitable to subdue into a hegemonic structure. Therefore power fell into the hands of ancient warlords. Their descendants have controlled the northern regions ever since.

As happened in Medieval Europe, stable governments controlled parts of the land, fought battles, lost territory, collapsed, and rebuilt themselves. Feudal lords rose and fell in the process. But things were somewhat different in Laos. Opium poppies handed the warlords an economy that, while illegal, supported them while they held out against the societal pressures of civilization. In the mid eighteen hundreds the British assisted immensely by popularizing opium around the world and by teaching the true art of its use while generating a sound economy upon the dross of the men who had been crushed by its addicting influence. The riches that literally poured into the hands of the feudal warlords from the tiny slits that the clappers cut in the poppy flower made them wealthy and invincible. Their privileged position did not deteriorate in modern Laos. They continued to dominate the lands they controlled and presented the Constitutional Monarchy with an unyielding law unto themselves. It would have been dangerous for the King or anyone else to challenge them.

The French had fought their war and the Americans were in the midst of theirs. But the poppies continued to grow. Certainly the citizens of Laos did not object to their presence. The warlords hired more of the population to work in the poppy fields and heroin processing plants than industry hired in all their factories and mills put together.

Nevertheless, certain predators ranged the northern empires preying upon unprotected fields and distant heroin processing plants. The predators wore civilian or paramilitary clothing, carried AK-47 assault rifles, and were willing to risk open warfare for a few pounds of China White or a few acres of poppies. As in the days of old, they were privateers. Warlords hired virtual armies to search for them and kill them. Only the technology of the weapons had changed. The process itself was endless.

The following afternoon was sunny and hot. Walking in the cool river afforded an opportunity for Lim to splash water over himself in and offset the effect of oppressive humidity. The water, which had been almost pellucid, became gray as if the bottom had been stirred up. Lim was two hundred yards downstream from the largest gold panning operation on the river.

Several women sat on flat rocks in knee deep water. They swirled wooden pans that they used to scrape sand and pebbles from the bottom. They swirled until all of the larger pebbles had fallen over the side along with much of the water. After several minutes the wooden pan contained only the smallest, densest particles that had been scraped from the bottom. The presence of tiny flakes of gold was indicated by its fulgent color. The unpracticed eye could usually find the large flakes if there were any. Only the practiced eye could see grains of gold among the other, usually dark, minerals that swirled.

Men sought pockets of auferious sand in the rock along the banks where nature had performed her own panning process and deposited the heavy mineral into hidden places. Gravity dug out the pockets and poured them into pans for others to swirl.

Additionally, seven separate areas of the northern bank had been partially dammed with stones. Wooden sluices transported the rock and mineral laden waters from the pools into pans where they were likewise swirled in search of minute amounts of the glitter that provided the panners with their livelihood.

Flakes and rare nuggets were removed from the pans with tweezers. The remaining black sand had to be mashed into a thimble full of mercury by rubbing and smearing it into an even mixture with the sand. Even though the two metals are inert and won’t react with each other, gold clings to mercury. The mercury is then collected by picking it up with cotton balls. Excess water is squeezed out of the cotton and it is left to dry on a piece of sheet metal. Finally, the dried cotton and its contents are incinerated with the blue flame of a blowtorch. Little droplets of twenty-two carat gold are all that is left.

In the late sixties gold sold cheap on the international markets. As late as 1970, when the United States Treasury Department rescinded the requirement that its currency be backed by gold equal to twenty-five percent of its denominated value, gold bullion could often be purchased for as little as twenty-five dollars per ounce. Then its value began to appreciate dramatically. The economic activity surrounding the glittering mineral gave Lim his job. He did it well. He had bought thirteen pounds for five thousand dollars. He had no idea what the gold was worth in Bangkok. He only did what his boss had told him to do. The panners were happy to sell at such a price. It was far in excess of what they had gotten in the past. Of more importance, Lim, not they, ran the risk of being robbed on the way to or from one of the cities where gold could be traded for cash. Better still, he was the one who ran the risk of running into the warlords’ searchers. Best of all, Lim was willing to pay in kips. That was the currency of choice in remote northern Laos. What good were dollars? In a friendly, direct tone that was completely inconsistent with his mendacious appearance, Lim offered what they wanted.

But a muffled pounding from the sky halted this particular offer.

Here they come again, said one of the panners. This will cost us.

The pounding became more intense. Suddenly, two helicopters flew over the south wall of the canyon at about sixty knots. They crossed over the north wall and flew south. Even though helicopters were common sights to the panners, they all stopped their work, shaded their eyes against the sun, and watched them until they disappeared.

What do you mean? Lim asked, knowing exactly what they meant.

"Those helicopters are owned by Kublam. He owns or controls all of the land from Muang Sing to the third tributary. The men in the helicopters are supposed to help patrol the plateaus, rivers and ravines and search for anyone who is not supposed to be there. Their orders are simple -- kill them.

"But that isn’t all they do. They know we are here. They know we have no interest in opium. So they allow us to stay only if we pay them the squeeze that they demand every time they come through.

"Twice you have bought our gold. You can see how many of our family members work here. So you know that each one of us earns less than one hundred dollars per month. That is the money we live on during the rainy season. We must use it to buy our food and tools. That explains why we still use these wooden pans instead of metal ones. We can’t afford them.

They think we are rich because we pan gold. But we’re not. The squeeze is very difficult to pay!

Lim thanked all of the gods whose names he had long since forgotten that he worked for the Asian Trading Company. While the average per capita income was only fifty dollars per month in the industrialized area of Laos, his boss paid him twenty times that much, plus substantial bonuses. He did not share that information with his host. Instead, he gathered his backpack, put the Kovitch on its lanyard, and returned to his journey upstream.

Four days and thirty miles later the morning weather became cloudy. Thunder rolled across the mountains and the valley darkened and turned the rushing water into an uninviting gray that blended with the color of the fallen rocks. The canyon narrowed between steep walls that had been defined by the sculpting, exfoliating forces of nature. Huge slabs of rock had broken away to crash down onto their ancient predecessors. House sized monoliths stood in a disordered array between giant boulders, all victims of her tools, mere flecks chiseled away from the rest of the world by weather and gravity.

Gradually, the south wall became less sheer and ultimately folded into rolling hills that drained at their leisure into the stream. But the north wall became higher and steeper. Thin sheets of rock cantilevered over the canyon like drawers left open in a chest. They stuck out over the precipice.

Lim traversed the ledges on the north wall. Headway wasn’t as easy as it would have been on the other side. But it would be harder for searchers to see him. Frequently he scanned the rocks and boulders ahead and, less often, to the rear.

A sliprock projected from the face of the cliff to the water at a forty degree downward angle. Its width spanned one hundred feet along the bank and presented an unprotected area that had to be crossed. Lim stopped before stepping out onto its slippery surface to insure that no one was watching. He sensed that he was alone.

But he was not.

The stealthy searcher who followed him hurried from one hiding place to another, gaining ground, trying to find a place to get a good shot at the trespasser.

Lim had gone one third of the way across the sliprock. Suddenly the figure of a man appeared at the top of a boulder in front of him. The man climbed quickly from boulder to boulder, stopping at the top of each one to search in all directions, exploring every potential hiding place.

Lim froze like a chameleon on the sliprock, not moving, not even breathing.

The man ducked into a hallway-sized crack between two giant sentinels to search for anyone who might have encroached upon the domain of Kublam. Instantly, Lim turned to run back to safety. Shots rang out. Someone had been following him. Blue puffs of gun smoke pumped from the barrel of an AK-47 and ricocheting bullets whizzed off the stones on the far side of the sliprock. The rifleman's natural instinct had enabled him to move with stealth. But it had not trained him to shoot straight.

Lim grabbed the Kovitch that hung from its lanyard, fired a short, noisy burst, and ran back. There were plenty of boulders at the base of the cliff. None of them were in a position to protect him from both searchers. So he ducked under the nearest.

The two searchers began shouting instructions to each other. Both men began firing at the approximate place where he had disappeared.

Lim faked an agonal scream.

The searcher on the far side was too canny to show himself to the sights of the Kovitch, even one in the hands of a wounded or dying man. But the man who had been following leaped to the top of a megalith not forty feet above Lim and opened fire again, hoping to hit his quarry with a stray ricochet.

The shooting stopped. Both men tried to reposition themselves for a clean shot at their prey. Lim could see neither of them. There was nothing for him to shoot at. Another hail of bullets tore into the rocks around him. Those from above hit closest. Fragments of lead bounced off the rock next to his head.

Cunning and desperate, he removed two clips and taped them bottom to bottom. Then he scanned the cliff for a particular target. He found it seventy feet above. It was a rock shelf that was seven