The Pathless Trail Part 17

"That was not all, Senhor Tim. They also put fire ants on me, which bit so cruelly that I nearly lost my mind from pain. Then they went on, intending to have more sport with me when they came back with the rubber. But after they left me two hunters of the cannibal tribe who had been following a tapir's track found me and took me down from the tree.

"Now the Peccaries before this had stolen some women from a Mayoruna _maloca_ and were treating them like dogs--I saw one of those women brutally murdered while I was captive in the outlaw camp. I managed to tell the two hunters I could lead them to the Peccary stronghold and give them revenge. They carried me to their _maloca_--I could not walk--and told their chief what I had said. The chief caused my hurts to be cured, and then I kept my promise.

"I guided the savages to the outlaw camp; they surrounded it, and in the fight that followed every Peccary was killed except their leader. Now that cannibal chief has not forgotten me--"

"Wait a minute," protested Knowlton. "Did that Peccary leader escape?"

"No. He was kept alive until a big herd of peccaries was met. Then, because he called himself 'King of the Peccaries,' he was nailed to a tree, as I had been, and told to make the peccaries take out the thorns.

The wild pigs tore him into ribbons with their tusks."

Calmly he donned his shirt again. Tim, staring at him, twitched his shoulders as if a chill had gone down his back.

"Ugh!" muttered Knowlton.

"So now," Lourenco resumed, "if I can find that chief again--he may have been killed in some tribal fight before now--he may be friendly to all of us. Or he may not. Savages cannot be relied on with much certainty.

But if any of the Mayorunas will help us, he will. It is worth trying."

"And if he is not friendly--" Knowlton paused.

"We do not come back," Pedro finished. "Have you a better plan?"

All shook their heads.

"Laurenco's idea is excellent," said McKay. "I was thinking along the same line, though I did not know he had any such friendly relations with a chief. That makes it all the more advisable to try it, unless we find the Raposa first. We, of course, will not land at the place where Schwandorf told us to go ash.o.r.e, seven days from here."

"By no means," Lourenco concurred. "In five days we leave the river and travel along the _ygarape_. If we go to the _maloca_ it will be from another direction than the river."

He began preparing to travel. The others also went about the work of breaking camp. By the time the canoes were loaded the mists had lifted and the river lay open and empty before them. In the bush around and beyond, gloom still lay thick and the forest life yelped, howled, clattered, and wailed. But out on the water it was broad day, and far overhead sounded the harsh cries of unseen parrots flying two by two in the sunlight above the matted branches. The world of the pathless tropic wilderness, ever dying, ever living, was about its daily business. The five invaders were about theirs.

As the paddlers dipped, however, Knowlton held back.

"Say, Rod, we didn't tell these fellows about Schwandorf's Indian. Hold up a second, men."

While all rested on their paddles he spoke of the mysterious messenger dispatched from Nazareth. Pedro and Lourenco contemplated the river, then frowned.

"That may be of importance, senh.o.r.es," said Lourenco. "It may change everything for us. We saw a lone Indian go past the coronel's place, traveling fast, three days before you came. I would give much to know where he is now and what word he carries. A short man with a bad left leg, you say. We shall keep watch for such a man. Perhaps we may meet him."

Wherein he predicted more accurately than he knew.

The canoes swung out and the paddlers settled into the steady stroke to which they were growing accustomed. Hour after hour they forged on, the Brazilians adjusting their speed to that of the Americans, who had not yet attained the muscular ease of habitual canoemen. The miles flowed slowly but surely behind them, the sun rolled higher and hotter, the silence of approaching noon crept over the jungle on either side. Then, as the time drew near when they would land for a more hearty meal than that of the morning, Pedro pointed ahead.

Up out of the bush on the Peruvian sh.o.r.e rose a vulture. It flapped sullenly away as if disappointed. The bushmen, quick to note anything that might be a sign, paid no attention to the bird's flight, but marked with unerring eye the spot whence it had taken wing.

"Let us cross, comrades, and see what we may see," Pedro called. "If nothing is there, we can eat."

But something was there. All saw it before they landed--the stern of a small, speedy canoe almost concealed in a narrow rift at the bottom of the bank. In the soil of the rising slope were the prints of bare feet.

And Pedro, scanning the tracks narrowly after he and the others reached sh.o.r.e, a.s.serted, "These were not made to-day."

Up the bank they climbed, silent and watchful. At the top Lourenco took the lead. In under big trees the five pa.s.sed in file. A short distance from the edge Lourenco stopped, looking at the ground. The others spread out and stared at the thing he had found.

Between the b.u.t.tress roots of a tall tree was a crude shelter of palm leaves. Before this lay the scattered bones of a man. The skull had been crushed by a mighty blow.

The bones were picked clean--had been stripped and torn asunder days before, and the vulture which had just left had gotten nothing for its belated visit. Among them were remnants of cloth, a belt and a machete, and strands of coa.r.s.e black hair. A few feet away lay a cheap "trade"

gun. Lourenco inspected the weapon and laid it back.

"Did he shoot before he was downed?" asked Knowlton.

"No. The gun is loaded. His death came from above." The bushman ran his eye up the towering tree, then pointed to a large dark object on the ground near by.

"Castanha--Brazil-nut tree," he explained. "That heavy nut fell and smashed the Indian's skull like an egg. Indian, yes. His gun, his shelter, and his hair show that. And"--stooping and pointing at one of the bones--"that bone shows who he was. See, Capitao."

McKay looked down on a leg bone. At some time the leg had been broken and badly set, if set at all. The bone was crooked.

"A short Indian with a crooked leg. Schwandorf's messenger!"

"_Si._ No man will ever receive the message he bore. He camped here days ago. Now he camps here forever."

CHAPTER XII.

THE ARROW

Slowly, silently, two canoes glided along the still, dark water of a gloomy creek over-arched by the interlaced limbs of lofty trees.

The first, propelled by the slow-dipping blades of two Brazilian bushmen, seemed to be seeking something; for it nosed along with frequent pauses of the paddles, during which it drifted almost to a stop while its crew searched the solemn jungle depths reaching away from the right-hand sh.o.r.e. The second, carrying three bronzed and bearded men of another continent, was only trailing the leader. It moved and paused like the first, but the recurrent scrutiny of the farther gloom by its paddlers was that of men who saw only a meaningless, monotonous bulk of b.u.t.tresses and trunks and tangle of looping lianas. In this dimness and bewildering chaos the trio might as well have been blind. The eyes of the tiny fleet were in the first boat.

The progress of the dugouts was almost stealthy. Not a paddle thumped or splashed, not a voice spoke. They moved with the alert caution born not of fear, but of wary readiness for any sudden event--like prowling jungle creatures which, themselves seeking quarry, must be ever on guard lest they become the hunted instead of the hunters.

For the past two days they had moved thus. The last fresh meat had been shot miles down the river, where a well-placed bullet from the rifle of McKay had downed a fat swamp deer. Since that day not a gun had been fired. The rations now were tough jerked beef and monkey meat, slabs of salt pirarucu fish, and farinha, varied by tinned delicacies from the stores of the Americans. Henceforth gunfire was taboo unless it should become necessary in self-defense.

At length the fore canoe halted with an abruptness that told of back strokes of the blades hidden under water. McKay, bowman of the trailing craft, also backed water, while his mates held their paddles rigid. The two boats drifted together.

"This is the place," Lourenco said, speaking low.

The Americans, scanning the sh.o.r.e, saw nothing to differentiate the spot from the rest of the wilderness growth. Yet Lourenco's tone was sure.

Pedro's face also showed recognition of his surroundings. With no apparent motion of the paddles--though the wrists of the paddlers moved almost imperceptibly--the canoe of the bushmen floated to the bank. They picked up their rifles, twitched their bow up on land, and turned their faces to the forest.

"Stay here," was Pedro's subdued command, "until you hear the bird-call which we taught you down the river."

He and Lourenco faded into the dimness and were gone.

"Beats me how them guys find their way 'round," muttered Tim. "I could land here twenty times hand-runnin', but if I went away and then come back I'd never know the place."

"It's all in the feel of it," was McKay's low-toned explanation. "They find places and travel the bush as an Indian does--by a sixth sense.

Take them to New York City, guide them around, then turn them loose--and they'd be hopelessly lost in ten minutes."