IV.
STANDING and shoving with the poles, kneeling and plying our paddles, we drove the raft over shallows and depths. The slow current helped us, and luckily we met no bends too sharp to let our clumsy craft pass. There were turns in plenty, but all were wide enough to allow us to swing around them. So, considering the awkwardness of the thing we rode on, we made fair speed along that winding waterway.
We ate as we worked, chewing mouthfuls of meat and washing it down with handfuls of water dipped from the creek. And all the time we kept watch for any trace of a landing by the man we followed. But the bushy, sloping banks slid past with no sign that any one had ever set foot on them.
After we had settled down to our working and watching I began to do some thinking. I tried to put myself in the other man's place and to judge what he would do.
If I had shot a man and dragged a girl from a camp, knowing that two other men with guns were near, I should do as he had done with the canoes—take both of them, so that the other men could not follow. Having gotten away, I should go as fast and as far as possible in the first few hours. Darkness would not stop me for the night; I should stay in my boat even if I could only drift with the current, knowing that the drift would carry me several miles before dawn. When day came I should keep paddling until I was too tired and hungry to travel farther without rest and food. Then I should go ashore at some inlet where I could hide my boat and leave no sign on the shore.
But within the first mile or two, while I was doing my best to make speed, I should learn that the second canoe dragging behind was slowing me up. Since it was worse than useless, I should rid myself of it as soon as possible. The natural way to do this would be to hide it in some side stream or cove. And if the two men behind me were on the right bank, I should conceal that dugout on the left shore, where it could not be found if they followed down the edge of the stream.
Having figured this all out, I spoke of it to my companions. Senhor Tom, who had not spoken since leaving land, nodded. Pedro dryly answered that he had been watching the left bank sharply all the time. I said no more. The idea which had cost me so much thought had been in his head before we started.
But it was sound sense, even if it had taken me some time to see it. We had not gone another quarter-mile when Pedro muttered something and peered keenly at a bush-grown hollow in the left bank. The rising sun showed us dark water under those bushes. And as we pushed our raft toward them we saw that some of them had been cut by a machete.
The same thought jumped into our minds—here was the hiding-place of our canoe. And in our eagerness to reach it we both forgot what sort of thing we were traveling on. We shoved hard with our paddles. The clumsy raft tipped. Before we could right ourselves, one side of it ran up on a dark snag hidden just under the surface. We were thrown sprawling into deep water.
All three of us could swim, and we came up at once. Senhor Tom rose beside me, and I steered him to the logs. The raft had floated clear of the snag and was drifting down-stream. When we tried to lift ourselves over its edge it tilted again under our weight. It took several attempts before Pedro and I could climb on the crazy thing, and then we had trouble in helping Senhor Tom aboard. When all three of us were again on the logs we sat panting and laughing in relief.
Then our laughter died as if somebody had grabbed our throats. We were safe on the raft. Our wet hammocks, too, still clung to the logs. But nothing else was there. Our paddles, our poles, our ax, had gone overboard. So had our guns.
For an instant I felt numb. The loss of our guns struck me like a sickening blow. We had drifted some distance during our struggles, tilting the raft time and again, and where those weapons. now lay was more than we could know. Staring around, I saw only the paddles and poles floating away ahead of us.
“Hold on, senhor,” Pedro said coolly. “We are going after the paddles.”
He jumped off. I followed. We let the poles go, but saved the paddles and swam back to the logs. With them we worked the raft back to the left shore.
“We have nothing left to lose now, Senhor Tom, except our lives—and that cursed money of the Hawk's,” I said bitterly. “And we may not be long in losing them. Our guns are gone.”
“Good !” he exclaimed. “Overboard? How deep is the water?”
“Too deep, I fear. It is black, and the bottom is probably mud and snags. We shall look, but I doubt if we shall find them. We have drifted.”
His blank blue eyes stared ahead at nothing. His right hand felt for his revolver. It still hung in its holster.
“Well, dang it, we've still got a few shots left here,” he said, with a faint grin. “What are you kicking about? Anybody'd think we were out of luck, from your croaking. Come on, let's find the rest of the guns. If we can't, let's go.”
Looking into his face, I felt ashamed of myself. Blind, helpless, he sat there and said, “Let's go!” And I, with all my strength and all my senses, was moaning because our guns were lost.
“I am an old woman, comrade,” I said disgustedly. “We shall go on and get our man.”
“Now you're talking! Remember, there's a girl somewhere down ahead.” His face tightened.
“We have not forgotten.”
Then, telling him to sit quiet, we attacked the bush with our machetes as savagely as if it had been an enemy. A few minutes of swift cutting brought us back to the hollow where the dark water lay.
“Ha!” said Pedro. “A bit of good fortune at last.”
There, shoved well up on the dirt, was our canoe.
It was bare as bone. Not even a paddle was in it. But it was our own stout, speedy canoe in which we three had journeyed all the way from the headquarters of our old coronel, back on the Javary, and it was undamaged. The thief had not spent the time, even if he had the tool, to cut through its bottom and make it useless.
Pedro loped back to the raft and got the paddles, and I heard Senhor Tom's brief comment on the news.
“Uh-huh. Luck's swinging our way again. Hurry up!”
But before we returned to our North American partner we made desperate efforts to find our guns. Both of us were poor divers, and both of us knew well that more than one kind of death or injury might be waiting under the surface; but we went down again and again by turns, clawing around down there in the muck until we had to rise exhausted. In some places we could not reach the bottom. In others our hands met oozy mud or tangles of sunken trees whose slimy touch was like that of snakes. That was all we found.
The guns were gone forever.
Taking Senhor Tom aboard, we settled ourselves to make speed—Pedro in his usual place in the bow, the blind man in the middle, and I at the stern. Pain was in Senhor Tom's face again, and he held one hand to his head, though he made no complaint. We told him to lie down, and when he did so we put wet cloths on his head. It was all we could do for him.
“Move on, move on!” he growled. “Never mind about me.”
“We are moving,” Pedro told him. “But before we meet further trouble, will you lend me your revolver?”
He hesitated. Then, with a grim laugh, he held out the weapon.
“Never handed over my gun before to anybody,” he said. “But here it is. Only don't waste a shot.”
Pedro shoved it under his belt, and we sunk our paddles in the water. Once more we were on our way—in a real boat, but armed now only with one revolver, which neither of us two Brazilians could handle skilfully. With rifles or machetes we both could do deadly work, but we were not accustomed to hand-guns. And the man we followed had a rifle and cartridges enough to kill us twenty times over.
But there are more ways than one of fighting in the bush; and before we could fight our man we had to find him. Now we leaned on our paddles and drove down-stream fast—though not too fast to keep watch along shore. We looked not so much for signs of a landing as for marks of bumps at the turns; for we calculated that the fugitive had not had time to go far from the place where he abandoned the canoe before darkness had fallen on him. Then, unless he had the eyes of a cat, he would be likely to hit the bank at times.
Before we found such a sign, though, we had rounded a number of bends, and I began to fear we had deceived ourselves. Pedro, watching keenly, knocked this fear out of my head when he pointed to a place on shore where something had struck. It was at a curve where the current ran close to the land, and a boat had grounded there so forcibly that its paddler had had to push hard against the bank to free it. I grunted in satisfaction. We put a little more speed into our stroke.
The sun-shadows had grown much longer when we slowed again. Time after time we had found bump-marks along the way, and we knew the canoe had gone on with the current all night. We knew, too, that after a night of constant strain the paddler of that canoe would be tired at dawn. Now the marks had ended, and we judged that from this point he had been able to see his way. And at the place where he had begun to gain speed, we began to lose it; for we then had to scan both banks carefully for the place where he would leave the creek. But we believed he was not far ahead, and that he thought himself safe from us.
IT MIGHT have been an hour later when our search ended. The sloping banks had sunk and drawn away from the water, leaving a rather wide hollow which, in the wet season, would be a lagoon, but which now was a mass of bush. Through this the creek wormed sluggishly, and several inlets led off from it into the rank growth. It would be a poor place for honest men to camp, but a good refuge for a man who must have a few hours of sleep and who must hide while resting.
Very quietly we slipped our canoe up the first little waterway and looked about. We came out again with no result. The next one also was blank. So was the third. But up the fourth, which was deeper and on the other side of the creek, we found something.
There, its nose on shore, lay the canoe we had hunted.
But nothing was in it. It was as bare as the one in which we had chased it. No sound came from the bush around it, except the mournful call of some unseen bird. No smoke was in the air. The place seemed empty of all human life.
In the mud beside the deserted dugout, though, were man-tracks. Bare feet had stepped all about the bow—the feet of at least half a dozen men. Mud was in the bottom of the boat, too: wet mud which showed that the men had come into it from the shore, leaving their tracks on the wood. And the tracks were fresh.
Breathing a warning to Senhor Tom, we two bushmen stepped ashore and, with the revolver and our machetes drawn, stole along the trail made by those bare feet. It led back for about a rod into the tangle. Then we halted as if shot.
Sprawled on the ground before us was a man.
Short, stocky, ugly, brown of skin, clothed in torn shirt and ragged breeches, he lay with eyes and mouth partly open, still as a log. The shirt was sodden with blood, and the ground around him was soaked with it. In his body gaped several big wounds. From his throat jutted a broken arrow.
We had run down our man. But now that we had him, we could do nothing to him. And the girl who had been his prisoner was swallowed up by the jungle.