  While the panther was still in midspring, the Indian flung his body sidewise to escape the leap. He struck against the rifle barrel, and the impact knocked the weapon out of Cliff’s hands. Tom, quick as a cat himself, caught the rifle before it touched the ground: the panther’s leap had fallen short by several feet and with its eyes smouldering with hate, its red tongue playing about its snarling lips, teeth bared, it gathered swiftly for a second leap. Nicky jumped to one side as the Indian threw himself away: but Tom, swiftly bringing the rifle to his shoulder, said to himself: “Now be steady. This shot must save our lives.” And he said a quick, earnest little prayer in his mind. The trigger tensed: the cartridge exploded. Crouched with muscles like steel springs, the panther never launched his body into the air. The bullet struck his eye and thence penetrated his skull. He rolled over, threshing his great paws, snarling and biting at his own flesh in his impotent helplessness. Swiftly the Indian recovered himself, and, selecting an arrow from his quiver he watched his chance and managed to get to a point where, in an instant of comparative quiet, he drove the arrow like a lance, burying its point deep in the animal’s throat. There was renewed turmoil in that jungle path, but it was short. The jaguar, or panther, according to the natural history you choose to believe about the black species of Central America, lay still. The Indian turned from watching the beast and regarded the youths with stolid, but awakened interest. His manner was not hostile. He seemed to be wondering what course to take. “I think he saw our fire last night and has been watching us ever since,” Nicky said, his first remark since the exciting adventure, for Nicky, without a weapon, felt just a trifle ashamed because he had thought of his own safety first and had leaped aside to let Tom try to recover the rifle. “In a way we saved his life,” Cliff said. “Or—Tom did. He ought to be grateful. Let’s try him with what Spanish we know.” But the Indian did not respond either to English or to Spanish. He said no word but turning he beckoned to them to follow him—they sidled past the beast, giving it as wide a berth as possible in case it still retained life enough to thresh out with those claws, curved like scimitars, sharp as steel grapples. The Indian led them up the trail for a short distance and then turned off with the trio following. After an hour on the narrower, almost impenetrable way, where sharp branches caught at them, and poisonous scorpions stood their ground and dared intrusion with their stings all ready to back up their dare, Tom and his comrades saw that they had been brought to a small jungle village. Slatternly, stout, worn old women, and sickly looking younger girls, cleanly athletic young fellows and old men came out to stare and to listen to the very few words with which the Indian explained. “They are as sickly looking as the ones at Porto Bello were,” Cliff confided to his companions. “They certainly need a doctor,” Tom admitted. “It seems as though all the Central American Indians we have seen are degraded and poor looking through carelessness.” “Bad diet, too,” Tom declared. “They eat the same diet year in and year out, and they’re too lazy—or don’t know how—to exercise. I don’t know that we ought to pity them. Still, somehow I do.” “Well, why shouldn’t we pity them?” demanded Nicky. “Because they really belong to a race which had a civilization that seems to have been as fine as ours in many ways,” Tom said. “But the race didn’t keep up to its old standards and so these people have themselves, and their ancestors, to blame.” “I guess you’re right,” Nicky agreed. They were not treated badly: their guide showed them a hut where several women brought them a sort of stew, taken from a big pot at one part of the small cleared square of the village. The stew was not as palatable as some might like; but it was food and seemed to be made in a reasonably clean way, considering the scanty provisions for cleanliness that these people possessed. In that village Tom and his two comrades had to remain for three days. No restraint was put on their movements. The jungle was enough to keep them prisoners. From the village, once they had lost their sense of the direction whence they had come, there was no trace of the way out. Nevertheless people came and went, going into the jungle in the morning and returning with trapped game or birds shot with their finely polished, long, light arrows. Nicky, who was rather good at archery, one day made friends with one of the younger boys who was watching a half dozen women polish and bind pointed thorns onto sticks. “There’s a nice, true one,” said Nicky, knowing that his words were not understood, but intending to use the arrow to demonstrate his own skill and impress the other youth favorably; but the Indian, catching his hand, held him back from the tiny pile on which the arrow lay. “Now, why did he do that?” Nicky wondered. “Maybe they are touchy about their own property!” Tom decided. However the youth proposed to show why he had been so quick: he touched Nicky’s arm and the trio followed him to a spot not far away, at the edge of the jungle. Here were several large earthen urns or shallow pots. Each had a lid. The boy called and a companion issued from the brush: there was a brief pantomimic exchange between them and the latest arrival turned back into the woods to come forth again with a cage-like enclosure made of braided heavy vine stems, stiff enough to retain its shape. Within it, hissing and striking, was a furious snake. “That’s a rattler,” confided Cliff. “See its tail!” “And it’s angry, too—I hope he isn’t going to release it!” said Tom. Evidently the youth had another purpose. He took a forked stick and taking the lid off one of the jars, he reached into its depths, which were very unpleasantly odorous, and brought out on the stick a piece of meat. It was in a very bad state of decay already; however the youth, lifting a small slat opening in the top of the withe cage, lowered the stick with the meat on it: then he did all in his power to infuriate the snake by prodding at it with the meat on the stick. In a snake’s rage the rattler struck and struck repeatedly at the meat. Each time, as the boys could see, more of his poison was left in the meat. After a moment the boy took out the stick and returned the meat to the jar, covering it. The snake was killed, the Indians’ signs indicating that his usefulness was ended. But the white youths could see another cage in the brush. “I see,” Nicky said. “They let the snake strike till the old meat is full of poison and then they leave it in these jars for awhile till the poison gets all through the meat and it gets pretty terrible. But then what?” He saw very quickly. The youth brought some of the arrows and dipped the thorn points, repeatedly, then set them aside to dry. “He didn’t want you to shoot with a poisoned arrow,” Tom explained. “The least nick in your skin with one of them might end in fearful agony.” “You’re right,” said Nicky soberly, and nodded with a smile of real gratitude to his Indian friend. The youth nodded briefly and walked away. The tribe was pleasant and fed the youths plentifully with such food as they had, all cooked in the one big pot, and renewed by dropping in whatever the day’s hunting brought home. But friendliness was absent. Nicky wondered why they were kept there, and finally he learned. The guide who had brought them to the village came to their hut with another, a taller, very old and very stern looking fellow. He made signs to Tom, pointing to his pocket and then toward the small fire in a little ovenlike place in a corner. “Know what he’s trying to tell you?” Cliff said. “He wants you to show that lighter of Bill’s. He must have seen us use it in the woods, when we lit the fire the first night.” That, clearly, was what he wanted for when Tom drew out the lighter and made it work, the old Indian looked on with amazement. Tom made a half gesture to hand it to him but he drew back and Cliff whispered hurriedly: “Don’t let them get your ‘magic’—that must be what they think it is. Keep it in your pocket and use it as seldom as you can. The gasoline may be dried out or the flint worn, and then it won’t work.” “That’s so. I’ll save it all I can.” Tom agreed and put back the small mechanical apparatus with which man has improved on the old custom of making fire by use of flint and steel: now the steel is a wheel and by whisking it sharply against a prepared bit of flint, a spark is made to fall on a wick soaked with gasoline, which ignites. Soon after the lighter was demonstrated, the Indians beckoned to the youths, and by signs bade them follow. Half a dozen young men had packs slung on their backs. Led by the aged Indian, and with the three white youths in the line, they started off into a different jungle trail that wound upward steadily, and got more difficult and hotter and more unpleasant every hour. “Where do you suppose they are taking us?” Nicky wondered. Tom caught up to their guide and in pantomime tried to make him see that they wanted to know where they were going. He pointed forward, then to himself, then to the trail, and then forward again. The man seemed to understand. With a great sweep of his arm he described a circle in the air. Then the same circle was made but pointing toward the ground, part of the imaginary line being drawn across the trail. Then he pointed forward and nodded: he pointed backward and shook his head. “Do you remember what my father said about the charmed circle—the circle the Chucunaque Indians have established?” Cliff asked. “Yes,” Tom agreed. “Where few white men go.” “More than that,” Nicky added. “According to the gestures of our brother, who ought to be initiated into the Mystery Boys order and taught some signs that can be understood—according to him, the way leads in but the way doesn’t lead out again!” |
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