Timba Gold (standard:adventure, 2931 words)
Author: GXD	Added: Sep 09 2007	Views/Reads: 3495/2305	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A century ago, Colombia's Timba River was paved with gold. Today, only a few gold bars are left, buried under a sandy ridge -- and I've got the map.

TIMBA GOLD 

I was making my way among the guadua stalks near Timba, in southern
Colombia, together with Rafael and Jorge.  They hacked and whacked 
until the stalks tumbled.  Somehow or other we came mucking through.  I 
wondered why the farmers hadn't left a swath-road when they reaped.  
Jorge lugged the bags and magnets I needed, together with some plastic 
tags.  Rafael toted my flashlight, the shovel and a pole.  Both used 
their machetes skillfully. 

We burst through the brush onto a graveyard of stones.  These stretched
from horizon to horizon, stones and rubble humped up from underneath 
the river bed.  Mostly, the stones were round, oblong, grayish-brown in 
color, and weighed from five to fifty pounds, with a few larger ones.  
They nestled uneasily in each other's crotches, with pools of algae in 
soot-blackened sockets. 

I rested while the boys scampered up one pile and scuttled out of sight
behind another.  Above the cobbled parapets, reflections of fairy- 
castles danced in the clouds.  Noon sun bore down.  A buzzing silence 
droned. 

"How could I have let them talk me into this wild goose chase," I asked
myself, "for a measly fifteen hundred bucks?"  What things wouldn't I 
do for money!" But sooner or later, fate foretold, one venture or 
another would finally have to lead to pay dirt.  This promised to be 
the one.  If the ore samples assayed more than seven percent iron, we 
would be in business.  But getting samples of the ore turned out to be 
a mammoth task; it could take months. 

Before long, Rafael appeared, shouting, one hand held high. 

"Aqui, Senor, aqui!"  He pointed down toward his feet.  Within me,
something quickened. 

I clambered up, wedging my rubber soles into the treacherous ledges of
stone.  Dragging the backpack, I climbed to a crest and watched the 
boys squatting at the edge of a pool.  Its other end opened up, a long 
ways off, and led to the river.  Something was moving across the water, 
away from them  --  a caiman?  --  and their shrieks of glee echoed 
from the stones. 

"Mira, Senor, lo que dejaron los mineros."  Jorge was bent over, tugging
at something. 

Skeptically, I asked, "Okay, what did the miners leave behind?" 

Wavelets lapped at my soles and quint-crabs scrabbled for cover under
the sun-glint surface of the little lake.  Halfway across the pool some 
sleek animal -- was it an alligator?  an anaconda?  -- nosed a vee 
toward the other shore.  I waded out into the shallows, where Rafael 
and Jorge were uncovering some rusty tools.  They found an adz, 
chisels, crowbars and a nest of rusty pipe, each with a hook or a 
coupling on its end.  We pried, the boys and I, to drive the rods 
apart, but they were chain-bound.  Their far end was beyond our wading 
depth.  I wasn't about to battle water snakes, piranhas or electric 
eels for such worthless booty. 

"Let it go," I said, "we can come back."  We could always come back:
manana, next month, next year.  The tools and junk had already been 
lying there for a century. 

"No, no, boss," protested Jorge, "These heavy square bars must be worth
a lot!"  He plunged both arms underwater and tugged in vain. 

"It's garbage, I tell you.  Come on!"  I was barking now, anxious to get
downstream to the mineral deposits.  What use were rusty iron pipes 
when -- right under our noses -- the shoreline was jet black with 
valuable, high-grade iron ore.  Even more might be lying underneath 
these stones! 

Sunlight twinkled off the ripples and flashed from shards of glass here
and there among the stones.  The air tasted of sweet putrid decay, of 
bloated fish, of par-broiled flatfish and salamanders.  Grudgingly, the 
two boys turned away and waded out past me onto the stone piles.  


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