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The soldiers, the bushmen, and the reclaimed Raposa, already smeared from head to foot with red stains from their own veins and those of foemen, went stark mad. Before their united ferocity the men of Umanuh dropped as if rolled under by an inexorable machine of war.
It is possible that we may go unharmed among even los Ossos Vermelhos the Red Bones. We shall see. "Of the Raposa I think I do know something. I have seen him." Everyone except Pedro sat up with a start. "You have seen him?" exclaimed the coronel. "When? Where? How? Why have you not spoken of it?" "Because, Coronel, I forgot it until now.
Schwandorf continued shoveling food into his capacious mouth. "Know anything about the Raposa?" Knowlton asked. The Teuton's eyelashes flickered. He ground another chunk of meat between his jaws before answering. "Of course," he said then. "Wild dog. Sharp snout, gray hair, bushy tail. I've shot a couple of them." "This one is a man. Green eyes, streak of white hair over the left ear.
But so long as it was made clear that the Raposa must be caught alive, if caught at all, Lourenço did not trouble about what the Mayorunas might surmise. Now, as the end of the long, pathless trail approached, arose a question of which McKay had previously thought but had not spoken how he was to converse with the Red Bone chief. Lourenço asked Tucu whether the Red Bones spoke the Mayoruna tongue.
"Wherein a goodly portion of the so-called civilized world would fail to measure up to the standards of these cannibals," McKay said. "By the way, have you asked them about the Raposa?" "No, Capitao. It is as well not to put into their heads the idea that we are hunting anyone here. I shall say nothing of that matter until we reach the chief who knows me." "Good idea."
"The Raposa whom we seek is known to the men of Monitaya, but he never has come here to the tribal houses. Hunters from this place have met him at times roving the wild forests, and some of the younger men fear him as the bad spirit of the jungle.
Talk later. Come!" The three gun fighters swiftly obeyed. With a powerful heave Lourenço sent the canoe after the others. Americans, Brazilians, and the Raposa hunched up among the packs, all went sliding down a jungle Styx. A moment later the Red Bone warriors, taking heart from the cessation of firing, poured an avalanche of arrows into the spot where they had been.
So, surrounded by man eaters, the trailers of the Raposa slept far more securely than on any night down the river when their companions had been supposedly civilized Peruvians. Whether a watch was kept by their guards during the night they neither knew nor cared, since they had no intention of attempting escape. They awoke to find the men of Suba diminished in number by half.
He knew nothing of this "Raposa" except that he apparently belonged to a wild tribe living far back in the forest, perhaps allied with the cannibal Mayorunas, who were very fierce; and that he appeared sometimes at Indian settlements, where, without ever speaking, he would help himself to the best food and then leave.
But Lourenço worked a small hole between two logs at the back while I watched the clubmen, and through the hole he whispered with one of the women inside. If only we had known the wild man was here we could have jumped the guards and tried to bring back the women. But of course your business about the Raposa had to be thought of first, so all we could do was to tell them friends were here."
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