Ivana glanced at Nini, who nodded as if in answer to a question.

"This must be one of the places where the ape-people leave their dead,"
Nini answered. "The bundles--But come over to them."

Kirby forced his way ahead until he stood beneath a huge, unsavory
bundle wrapped in roughly woven brown fibre, and wedged in a fork
between two limbs. Judging from the ugly odor which overhung the grove,
there could be no question about what the bundle contained. Nini and
Ivana, glancing at the scores of similar bundles which burdened the
trees of the whole grove, made wry faces. Kirby slung his rifle in the
crook of his arm, and nodded toward the trail.

"There must be a village somewhere near," he said.

A mile farther on they found what they were seeking, a colony of seventy
or eighty conical dwellings of mud and thatch, which were ranged in a
double circle about a central common of bare, well-trodden earth. It
took no long reconnaissance to discover that the town was deserted
completely of all inhabitants.

Ivana beckoned and darted to one of the nearest huts, and Kirby,
following her, found lying on the uneven earth floor within, a
half-skinned animal which resembled a small antelope. An obsidion knife
beside the carcass, the disordered condition of a couch of grass, the
sour odor of recent animal occupancy, all told their story.

"The owner left in a hurry," Kirby observed aloud.

Nini, who had gone beyond, to a larger hut which might have belonged to
a king ape, called out excitedly to them.

"A great number of apes have eaten a hurried meal here!"

* * * * *

Kirby entered the shadowed, foul-smelling interior of the central hut to
find her statement true. Broken meats, some raw, some cooked, lay on the
dirt floor, and scattered bits of fruit were mingled with them. The
ashes of a burned out fire at the hut entrance were cold, but had not
been for long.

"Do you think--" Ivana began.

"I think the whole of the Duca's horde came this way, fed, and went on,
taking everyone with them," Kirby finished.

"But which direction did they take?" asked Nini, who was standing at the
door of the big hut and had already begun to examine the crowding,
green, inscrutable walls of jungle which foamed up to the clearing on
all sides.

No less than seven trails wound away into the dark country beyond, and
Kirby saw that the question would not be an easy one.

Having hastily circled the clearing