Feral River

A boat with the charred body of a man crucified on its mast turns up at the mouth of the river in Romero, a town on the frontier. The boat belongs to the owner of the printing-firm that publishes the local newspaper. He engages Marqués, who is from the east coast and claims that he can write, to head upriver to find out the causes of the boatman's death. His only deckhand is a mestizo boy called Cordel who's learned his trade from the previous boatman ('What you steer isn't the boat, it's t...