The Inca Emerald Part 12

"I'll never dare tell 'em about this in Cornwall," exclaimed Jud, earnestly, as the talented fish disappeared. "They'd think I was exaggeratin', an' that's one thing I never do. This trip," he went on reflectively, "is liable to make me believe blame near anything."

It was Professor Ditson who told them that the strange fish was a lung-fish and was a link between the fishes and the reptiles.

A little later, Pinto, with a length of flexible palm-fiber, noosed a garpike, that strange representative of the oldest family of fishes left on earth, and another link with the reptiles. Its vertebrae had ball-and-socket joints like the spine of a snake, and, unlike any other fish, it could move its head independently of its body. Armored scales arranged in diagonal rows ran down its back, being fastened to each other by a system of hooks, instead of lapping over each other like the scales of other fishes. This armor was of such flinty hardness that Pinto struck a spark from it with his steel, and actually lighted from its own scales the fire on which the fish was cooked.

By this pond grew a great orchid with thirty-one flower-stems, on one of which Will counted over a thousand beautiful pearl-and-gold blossoms.

Near the water, too, were many varieties of tropical birds flaming through the trees. Among them were flocks of paraquets colored green and blue and red; little honey-creepers with black, purple, and turquoise plumage and brilliant scarlet feet; and exquisite tiny tanagers like cl.u.s.ters of jewels with their lilac throats, turquoise b.r.e.a.s.t.s, topaz crowns, and purple-black backs shading into ruby red. These were all searching for insects, while among the blossoms whirred dainty little humming-birds of the variety known as "wood-stars." Then there were blood-red macaws with blue-and-gold wings, and l.u.s.trous green-black toucans with white throats, red-and-yellow tail-coverts, and huge black-and-yellow bills.

For the next few days the treasure-hunters followed the narrow, hard-beaten path through stretches of dark jungle and th.o.r.n.y thickets, or found themselves skirting lonely lakes hidden in the very heart of the virgin forest. Everywhere the Trail was omniously clear and hard-trodden. Sometimes they all had that strange knowledge that they were being watched, which human beings who live in the open acquire as well as the wild folk.

At last there came a day when the supplies had run so low that it became necessary for Pinto to do some hunting. Will went with him, and together they silently and cautiously followed one of the many little paths that at irregular intervals branched off from the main trail. This one was so hidden by vines and creepers that it seemed improbable that any one had used it for a long period of time. It led the hunters into one of the patches of open country sometimes found in the forests of the Amazon. This particular one was fringed with great trees and crossed by another path nearly parallel to the one they were following.

Near the center of the clearing, Pinto managed to shoot two cura.s.sows, huge, plump birds which looked and tasted much like turkeys. Leaving these with his companion, the Indian pushed on ahead for more. Suddenly he reappeared among the trees, and Will noticed as he hurried toward him, that his copper-colored face showed gray and drawn, while beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. As he joined the boy, Pinto placed his finger on his lips with a look of ghastly terror and led Will into the deepest part of a near-by thicket. From there, though hidden from sight, they had a view through the close-set bushes of the other path.

Suddenly, from far down that trail, sounded a faint, but regular, clicking noise. As it became louder and louder, rising and falling in a regular cadence, Pinto slipped like a snake deeper into the long jungle-gra.s.s.

"Lie still for your life," he whispered in Will's ear, so faintly that the boy could scarcely make out the words. Then, in an instant, from out of the jungle not twenty feet away there strode along the dim path a figure of nightmare horror--that of a tall naked man, with gaunt and fleshless arms and legs, great k.n.o.bs of bone marking his knee and elbow-joints. His sunken body was painted black, with every bone outlined in a chalky white, so that he seemed a living, walking skeleton.

Around the black and wasted neck, wrinkled like that of a mummy, hung a long string of small bones which, with a thrill of horror, the boy recognized by their nails as those of human fingers. It was these, striking together, which made the clicking noise that Will had heard.

The face of the horror was painted black, except the lips and chin, which showed blood-red, while out of the holes at the corners of the lower lip protruded curved, gleaming peccary-tusks. These ornaments gave an indescribably brutish appearance to the countenance that they ornamented, while above them two snaky black eyes with an expression of implacable cruelty glittered like crumbs of gla.s.s from under overhanging brows. Like a specter, the shape disappeared among the shadows; but it was followed by another and another and another, until a long procession of terrible figures had pa.s.sed.

As the ill-omened clicking died away in the distance Will sprang to his feet.

"No!" hissed the Indian. "Our only chance of life is to lie quiet. That is a Maya war-party on a man-hunt!"

"They'll meet the others on the Trail," whispered Will.

"Six men can't do any more against fifty than two," returned Pinto, practically. "We'll only throw away our lives and not save theirs."

"Stay if you want," returned the boy; "I'll live or die with them!" and he sped back at full speed along the path over which they had come. Just before he reached the Trail he looked back--and there was Pinto at his shoulder.

"Very foolish," the latter muttered, "but--I come too."

Down the Trail the two hurried, and, rounding a bend, burst in suddenly upon the rest of the party lying in the shade of the overhanging trees awaiting their return.

"Mayas! Mayas!" gasped Pinto.

As he spoke, far down the Trail from around a curve sounded the faint, ominous clicking which the two hunters had heard before.

It was then that the old scientist showed that he deserved the right to lead which he claimed.

"Stand still!" he said sternly to Pinto, as the latter seemed inclined to bolt down the Trail away from the fatal sound. "Put up your gun!" he ordered Jud; "the Truce is our only chance."

Then, with quick, decisive commands, he lined the party up so that no part of the body of any one of them extended beyond the surface of the Trail, and yet a s.p.a.ce was left wide enough to allow any others using the path to pa.s.s. At the head of the line he placed the two Indians, Joe and Pinto, so that the Mayas might note the presence in the party of members of their own race.

"Show the peace sign," he snapped sharply to Joe, who led the line.

"Brace up!" he went on, slapping Pinto sharply on his bare back; "don't look so scared. No matter what they do," he said, turning to the rest of the company, "don't leave the Trail for a second or make any kind of attack on them. They will probably try to make us break the Truce of the Trail. If any of us do, we are all lost."

"My peace sign," muttered Jud, grimly, "will be an automatic in one hand an' this little toothpick in the other," and he opened the five-inch blade of the jack-knife with which he had killed old Three Toes, the grizzly, as already chronicled in "The Blue Pearl." "If I'm goin' to be eaten," he went on, "there'll be eighteen Mayas that ain't goin' to have any appet.i.te for the meal"; and he shifted the single clip of cartridges remaining, so that he could feed them into the automatic if it came to a last stand.

All further conversation was ended by the appearance of the same horrible apparition which had so terrified Pinto a short time before. As the gaunt painted skeleton of the first Maya showed against the green background, surmounted by the black and blood-red face with the grinning tusks and implacable eyes, an involuntary gasp went up from the whole waiting party. Jud slipped the safety-catch from his revolver; Pinto's face looked as if suddenly powdered with ashes; Will's hands stole to the hatchet at his belt; while, down at the end of the line, Hen Pine gripped his heavy machete until his great muscles stood out like iron bands. Two of the party alone showed no sign of any emotion: Joe, the descendant of a long line of proud Chippewa chiefs, disdainfully stretched out both empty hands palms up in the peace-sign; while Professor Ditson's calm face seemed to show only the mild interest of a scientist.

As the leading Maya caught sight of the waiting line, he slowed his swift stride and the war-party crept up close and closer. Then came the tense moment which would decide whether the Truce was to hold. As the grim hunters moved up, there was no sign on the face of any of them of any acceptance of the peace which Joe had offered. With short, gliding steps, they made a complete circle around the little party, closing up until their menacing, fearful faces were less than a foot away and the reek of their naked bodies was like the hot taint of jaguars of the jungle in the nostrils of the waiting six. In their left hands they carried bows and quivers of fiercely fanged arrows gummed with fatal venom, while from their belts swung curved, saw-toothed knives and short, heavy clubs, the heads of which were studded with alligators'

teeth.

As the Mayas came closer, the waiting line wavered involuntarily before the terrible menace of their hating, hateful faces. The Mundurucu especially, although no coward, had been taught from earliest childhood to dread these man-eaters, the Mayas. It was Professor Ditson who noticed that, in spite of their menacing approach, not a single warrior had as yet gripped a weapon.

"Steady, Pinto, steady all," he said calmly, "They're trying to stampede us. If one of you leaves the Trail, we're all dead men."

He spoke just in time, for already Pinto was looking longingly toward the refuge of the forest, forgetting that the woodcraft of those hunters of men was superior even to his own. Perhaps even Professor Ditson's voice would not have stopped him if it had not been for a sudden happening.

As the leader of the Mayas half-circled around Joe, the latter turned to face him, still holding out his arms. The motion flung open his flannel shirt, unb.u.t.toned to the waist, and showed, tattooed red on his brown skin, the curling, twisted totem-mark of intertwined serpents by which Joe had claimed the right of his blood in the lodge of the Great Chief during the quest of the Blue Pearl. As the Maya caught sight of this sign he stopped in his tracks. Little by little the menace died out of his fierce eyes, and, as if drawn by a magnet, he crept in closer and closer with outstretched neck, staring at the tattoo marks which wound down and around Joe's waist. Then, with a sudden gesture, he swept aside the ghastly necklace that he wore. There, outlined against his fleshless chest just over his heart, showed a similar emblem--crimson inter-twining serpents facing in opposite directions, with gaping mouths like those of which the totem-pole was made which towered before the lodge of the Great Chief in far-away Akotan. The Maya chief stood motionless for a moment. Then he stretched both hands out toward Joe, palms up, and stood as if waiting.

"Put your hands in his, boy," hissed Jud, from down the line; "he's waitin' for the brotherhood sign."

Without a word, Joe clasped hands with the Maya chief, and for an instant the two looked into each other's eyes, the spectral cannibal and the lithe son of a French trapper and a Chippewa princess. Then, disengaging his right hand, the Maya fumbled at his belt and suddenly stretched out toward Joe the supple, beautiful tanned skin of a snake, such as but one of the party had ever seen before. It was long and narrow and of a flashing golden-yellow, thickly flecked with tiny red-brown spots. This he wound around the boy's neck, so that it swung gleaming against his gray flannel shirt. Once again with outstretched hands the strange figure stood as if waiting, encircled the while by fierce, impa.s.sive faces with tusks gleaming horribly against blood-red jaws, and white painted bodies showing like ghosts against the green of the forest.

"Give him your tie," dictated Jud. "Don't you know blood-brothers have to exchange presents?"

Joe hesitated. He had a weakness, perhaps inherited from both sides of his family, for neckties of the most barbaric colors. The one that he was wearing was one of Cornwall's best and brightest, a brilliant green-and-purple creation which had cost him a whole dollar at White Wilc.o.x's store. To give it up would leave him tieless in a great wilderness.

"Hurry!" muttered Professor Ditson, as the Maya chief began to lower his outstretched hands.

Thus urged, the boy reluctantly pulled a foot of glimmering silk from his neck, and the next instant the most brilliant tie that ever graced Mr. Wilc.o.x's emporium was gleaming against the gray-white of a necklace of human bones.

The Maya received the enforced present with a grunt of undisguised pleasure, and, raising both hands above his head with palms outstretched, faced his waiting band and began a crooning song filled with strange minor cadences. One by one his men took up the strain, and, led by him, filed away from the trail like ghosts going back to their graves. As the clicking of their necklaces and the notes of their chant sounded faint and fainter and at last died away in the green tangle of the jungle, a long sigh of relief came unconsciously from every member of the expedition. It was Jud who first broke the silence.

"I've always heard," he said, "that Injuns north, south, east, an' west belonged to the four main totems, the Bear, the Wolf, the Snake, an' the Eagle, but I never believed it before to-day. That old tattoo-mark, boy," he went on, turning to Joe, "certainly came in right handy."

"He gone off with my good tie," returned Joe, sorrowfully.

"And a good job, too, I call it," remarked Will, who had never approved his friend's taste in neckwear.

It was the Maya's present which most interested Pinto and Professor Ditson. The Mundurucu Indian sidled up close to Joe and stared at the glittering skin with all his eyes, but without attempting to touch it.

"It's the sacred snake that in the old days only kings and G.o.ds could wear," he murmured.

"He's right," said Professor Ditson, raising the gleaming, golden skin reverently from Joe's neck. "It's the skin of the Yellow Snake which the Aztecs used to wind around the forehead of Atapetl, their terrible G.o.ddess of war. Only her priests knew where to find these snakes, and it was death for any one else even to look at the skin except at the annual sacrifices of the G.o.ddess. This one," he went on, "will be a safe-conduct for the whole party all the way to Peru--and ought to be a lesson to you," he continued severely, turning to Jud, "never to speak against snakes again."

CHAPTER VIII

THE MAN-EATERS

Five days later they came to a great lake which seemed to stretch away through the depths of the forest interminably, with the trail following its winding sh.o.r.es.