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body. I was trembling, knowing that if the snake had bitten me, I would have died.

I picked up its green body and peeled its skin like a banana, revealing its pinkish flesh. I cleaned the internal organs out with one flick of my finger and was left holding the flesh. What should I do with it? Eat it or use it for bait? I threw it down to the riverbank. I would decide what to do with it after I got down.

Down on the riverbank I took one of the large tin cans that had been tied to the pack. It had two cups and a spoon inside. I drank from the river and then gathered up the fruit, filling the can with those I didn't eat.

I no longer had any desire to make a meal of the snake. I couldn't have started a fire anyway, because everything was still damp, and I certainly wasn't about to eat it raw. I found the fishing line in the pack, but the river was too rocky and the water too turbulent to fish.

I sat on the pack a while, leaning against the cliff, the rain still beating down on me. Kevin couldn't have continued walking along the riverbank, I reasoned, so he must be walking up on the ledge above the stone walls. There wasn't much chance of his seeing the poncho from there. I couldn't see any point in waiting by the river any longer. I might as well climb up to the ledge myself. I retrieved the poncho, folded it into the pack, put the pack on my back, and started scaling the wall back toward the plum tree.

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