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‘Why not?’ I demanded - although I knew the answer before the question was out of my mouth.
‘Because you are a girl.’
‘And you are a stubborn, chauvinistic son of a bachelor!’
‘Thank you for the compliment, Mr Linton.’
He snapped the gun shut with a sharp click and put it away.
‘Come on!’ I pleaded, knowing that I sounded like I was whining, and not caring. ‘It’s not as if we’re hard pressed for ammunition, is it? We took the Brazilians’ weapons, packhorses and bullets. We could shoot down every monkey in this jungle and still have enough bullets left to stage a coup in Rio de Janeiro!’
‘Which we are not going to do, Mr Linton.’
Placing one hand over my heart, I raised the other in the air. ‘If you teach me to shoot, I swear I will abandon all revolutionary ambitions. I’ll also promise to never use my newly acquired skills to try and shoot you.’
He cocked his head, giving me a long, long look. ‘The fact that you would have to promise that does not exactly raise my confidence in you, Mr Linton.’
‘Is that a yes?’
‘No. It’s a no.’
‘But-’
He raised a warning finger, cutting me off in mid-protest. ‘No argument, Mr Linton!’
And I didn’t argue.
Instead, I practised patience until we camped that night and the sun had set, snuck up to the packhorses and pinched a gun. It was a bloody big thing, and heavy. It didn’t have that nice revolving cylinder with the seven bullets that was the prime feature of Mr Ambrose’s guns. But it was a gun. I took it off into the jungle until I found a nasty-looking yellow-orange plant that seemed shootworthy and took aim.
Now…breathe deeply. Raise your arm and keep it steady. You’ve seen men do this, right? So it can’t be that difficult.
My eyes zeroed in over the barrel on a poisonous-looking bloom. Holding my breath, I took aim, crooked my finger around the trigger and…
Click.
Hey…Wait just a moment! Click? That wasn’t right! It was supposed to go kaboom!
I shook the gun. Maybe it was a bit stubborn? Well, there was nothing for it but trying again.
Click. Click. Cli-
‘I took out the bullets, Mr Linton.’
The voice from behind me came so suddenly, I whirled around instinctively, raised the gun, and-
Click!
‘And well I did,’ Mr Ambrose said with dangerous calm, ‘or my head would be a collection of bloody splatters on the tree behind me right now.’
‘Oh. Um…oops. Sorry about that.’ My ears started to burn. But then his first words registered. ‘Wait a minute - you did what?’
‘I took the bullets out of all the guns we acquired. Or, to be more precise, I had Karim do it. I knew that sooner or later you would try to sneak off to blow up some innocent tree. I know you.’
‘If you know me,’ I said sweetly, stepping towards him, clutching the gun like a cudgel, ‘do you know what I would like to do to you right now?’
‘If I would hazard a guess, I would say it involves inappropriate violence.’
‘Violence? Oh yes, it does! But inappropriate? I beg to differ!’
