WHERE NO WHITE MEN GO
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!”