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colchicum, or what looked like one, but without the bulging ‘corm’ at the base; a gloriosa with, by God, pink petals; a Chaya only eight inches tall. Lot of junk, too, of course, and maybe more treasures—I wouldn’t know. I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye—and there, just off Miguel’s reservation, the girl stood in the shadows.
    “Herf!”
he snorted, “once in the West Indies I cut into a jungle glade and saw a wild magnolia as big as my head. It was so big, so pale in the dimness that I was actually scared; might just as well’ve been a lion for a second or so, the way I jumped. This kid, she gleamed out of the shadows the same way.
    “Like the big brainless buffalo I am, I had to straighten up and wave and grin, and before I could blink the old lady flashed off and collared the kid. My God, you wouldn’t believe how that two-toncarcass could
move!
She’d caught her and had cuffed her in the face, forward and back, three times before I could get the slack out of my jaw.
    “I don’t know what sort of a noise I made but whatever it was it stopped her as if I’d thrown a brick. I got the girl away from her and then I went back and with my machete I chopped up the specimens into ensilage. Talk about substitution! I was wild!
    “When the red fog went away I conveyed to Miguel that there was no
chapa
for him this day nor any other day when I saw them strike a child. Once he got the idea he turned and bitterly berated his wife, who screamed some things the gist of which was that I was an ungrateful scut because she had hit the child only for bringing no specimens. Miguel bellowed something to her and then turned to me all scrapes and smiles, and promised to arrange everything any way I wanted it.
    “I growled like a grampus and charged off downstream. I was mad at everything and everybody. I’ve since gotten a cormless colchicum but I never saw another dwarf Chaya. Well … the things you do …
    “I’d stamped along perhaps a hundred yards before I became aware that I still held the girl’s arm. I stopped at once and hunkered down and gave her a hug and told her how sorry I was.
    “She had two angry welts on one side of her face and three on the other; and she had those eyes; and you know, those eyes were just the way they’d been when I first saw them, fearless and untouched and untouchable.
    “I’d had a strange semi-dream the day before, when I was trying to sleep through the throbbing of my arm. It was a sort of visualization of what would have happened in the flood if I hadn’t been there, like a cinematograph, if you’ve ever seen one of the things. There she stood, and when the water reached her it turned and went around her, and the wind too, just as if she were under a bell-jar. Hm! But it wasn’t like that, and here were the bruises on her face to prove it. At the same time the vision was correct, for no matter what happened to her, it couldn’t really reach her. See what I mean?”
    “Cowed,” I said. “Poor kid.”
    He put his hands together and squeezed them for a moment. I think he was angry at me. Then he relaxed. “Not cowed, Chip. You have to be afraid for that. Fearless, don’t you understand? As much fear as a granite cliff looking at a hurricane, as much as a rose listening to garden shears.”
    “Beyond me,” I said.
    “Beyond me too,” he said immediately. He looked at me. “I’ll stop now?”
    “Stop? No!”
    “Very well. Don’t forget, I didn’t tell you to believe me. All I said was that it was the truth.” He looked up at the sky. “I must hurry …
    “She didn’t answer my hug or my apologies, but somehow I knew they reached the places where fear could not. Then I remembered what was in my specimen bag. I’d managed to find a child’s dress in the trading post at Kofa. It was white with blue polka dots all over it, made of some heavy, hard-finish material that ought to wear a hole in sandpaper. I didn’t think too much of it