“Because the tribe that guards El Dorado would have let loose a landslide if they saw strangers coming their way. I was mighty glad to find you waiting here. I knew you couldn’t have gone up through El Porto Del Diablo.”
“But we did go up through.”
As Joe Nara stared incredulously, Mr. Brewster described all that had happened.
“Now that the ravine is blocked,” he finished, “I suppose you can’t take us to your fabulous El Dorado.”
“On the contrary,” returned Nara, with a quick smile, “I can take you to the mine by the short way.” He spoke to Igo and Ubi in dialect; then, as the Indians went to the split rock, Nara announced, “I told them to summon some bearers.”
Igo and Ubi shouted up through the ravine, and their calls seemed to echo back. Soon, squatty Indians appeared from the Devil’s Gateway until a dozen of them had lined silently in front of Joe Nara. Kamuka undertoned to Biff:
“These are the men who pushed stones from hill.”
“I figured that,” said Biff. “I wonder whether they are surprised or sorry to see us still alive.”
“They are neither. They think Nara has made us live again because we are his friends. They think Nara is El Dorado.”
From the furtive glances that the squatty Indians gave toward the Brewster party, along with the way they were awaiting Nara’s bidding, Biff decided that Kamuka had guessed right.