two skulls, bits of tawny
fur, a long bow, several big-game arrows. Around them the ground was
marked with many tracks. Most of the imprints were of the vultures which
had stripped the bones, but there were others--those of a barefoot man,
of a great cat, and of a couple of wild hogs. The peccary tracks went
straight on, but those of the man and the cat showed that a fierce
struggle had occurred. And one of the two grinning skulls was that of a
jaguar.

The story was plain. The hunter, following fast on the trail of the
hogs, had suddenly met the jaguar. He had shot it; one arrow, blood
stained for more than a foot above the barb, proved that. But in the few
seconds of life left to it the animal had sprung and fatally torn the
man. Then, as usual, had dropped the black scavengers of the sky to rend
them both.

Silently the men of the bush and the men of the north looked down at the
brief history written in the mud--a story only a week old, yet ancient
as human life itself--primitive man and ferocious brute destroying each
other as in the prehistoric days when saber-toothed tiger and troglodyte
hunted and slew for the right to live. And as it had been then, so it
was now. The living read the tale of tragedy and passed on, leaving the
bones behind them. Only, before they went, the Mayorunas threw the
remnants of the jaguar aside and piled the bones of their dead comrade
together in one place. Then, bearing with them his bow and arrows, they
resumed their way without a word.

CHAPTER XIV.

A DUEL WITH DEATH

Rain came and went.

The first night's camp of the strangely assorted company was a wet one,
for well on in the day the skies poured down the watery weight which had
been troubling them once morning. Yet even in such miserable weather the
four tribesmen of the Mayorunas declined to sleep in the same camp with
the whites. They accepted the food tendered them, but when it was eaten
they withdrew to some covert of their own to spend the night. Whereby
the whites knew that, though their guides now could no longer suspect
them of killing the lone hunter, they still were not accepted as
friends.

"Did ye say them guys had a trick of jabbin' men in their hammicks at
night, Renzo?" was Tim's significant question after the Indians had
departed.

"Have no fear," Lourenco assured him. "They have promised to take us
safely to their chief."

"How much is the word of a cannibal worth?" asked Knowlton.

"Worth