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At night Yan-coo, mute with vengeance, left the camp for the secret hollow, in a mass of granite which held the implements and elements of his craft. While Wylo slumbered and slept the malicious sorcerer directed with every atom of fervour he possessed the grisly death-bone towards him from the distance of half a mile.
Wylo, who had promptly confessed to the crime in the terms, "Me bin kill 'em that fella one time finish," but who was denied the right of explaining that Yan-coo had been prosecuting designs against his life quite as effectual as a spear, and that Yan-coo had been "justifiably killed," was sent to gaol for several years.
His physical condition was perfect, his spirits boisterous. The skill of the medicine-man, the whole dread influence of the death-bone were at issue, and to give effect to both Yan-coo whispered that he had employed the death bone against Wylo, because Wylo had become too "flash." The recital of the deed struck horror and dismay into Yan-coo's confidant.
Rather have no debil-debil than one subject to Wylo's profane but splendid marksmanship. So the naked black kiddies danced about Wylo, while Yan-coo fortified himself with the grim knowledge that he had Wylo's heart's blood securely sealed up, and that Wylo had a pebble in his body which would make him squirm sooner or later. But, strange though it was, nothing happened to the arrogant Wylo.
How was it possible to live without his precious blood, now sealed up in the death-bone? And he had a horrible pain in his side where the stone was just as Yan-coo had said. All the camp knew what had happened. Yancoo's reputation had been grimly asserted. Every one now dreaded him anew. Again he was king.
When they found Yan-coo next morning he was still kneeling on one knee, for the polished spear had impaled him, and, sticking six inches into the ground before him, kept him from falling. With his chin on his left shoulder and his right hand still retaining the string of the death-bone, he had died as unconscious of the hand of the artist as the artist had been primarily of his wizardry.
Perfectly unconscious of the dastard trick played upon him, Wylo continued for several days to flirt and fight. He had a glorious time, and so, too, had the piccaninnies, for Yan-coo, for reputation's sake, dared not model debils-debils merely to have their horrible heads knocked off with irreverent grass darts.
Though it was contrary to all precedent to point the death-bone at a member of the tribe, yet had Yan-coo made a law unto himself and his own justification, and the proudest testimonial to his skill was Wylo's deplorable condition. Wylo became thinner and weaker every day, for Yan-coo, seething, with malignity, stood aloof, declining to interfere.
Yan-coo, the wit of the tribe, a stubby, grim old man, who spent most of his time making dilly-bags and modelling grotesque debils-debils in a pliant blending of bees' wax and loam, to the horror of every piccaninny, soon found that Wylo could talk back with such withering effect, such shatteringly gross personalities that he, who with the spiteful ironies of his venomous tongue had kept the camp in awe, was dazed to gloomy silence by Wylo's vivid flashes of wit.
In the fulness of his vanity and wit, Wylo began to make gratuitous fun of Yan-coo, who fretted and fumed and terrified the piccaninnies with still more hideous debils-debils. I saw one of them. It resembled a span-long plesiosaurus, afflicted with elephantiasis, and a forked, lolling, tongue extruded from a head that swayed ominously right and left.
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