"Neither, I think, senhor. The girls were captured by more than one man, and I doubt if this one had been here before. Probably he was one of those lone prowlers of the bush whose hand is against every man. He is a half-breed, as you see, and came, perhaps, to steal a girl for himself. The jungle is well rid of him."
"Uh-huh. Guess you're right. Say, I'd like to see how that blowgun trap operates. Can't understand what blows the dart when nobody is here."
"I do not know, either, senhor. Perhaps Tucu will show us."
The savage guide, after a moment's hesitation, pointed along the trail and stalked away, the others at his heels. At a spot some fifteen yards farther on he turned into the bush at the right, walked a few paces away from the path, turned again sharply to the left, advanced once more, and halted. Before them, not easy to discern in the masking brush, even though they were looking for it, hung the long barrel of the blowgun, lashed to a couple of small trees and pointing toward the path.
Tucu stepped to the mouthpiece of the slender tube and pointed to a sapling, just behind and in line with it, which had been cut off about shoulder-high from the ground. From the tip of this thin trunk dangled a wide strip of bark. The savage, having indicated this, stood as if the action of the device were perfectly clear.
"Too deep for me," admitted McKay, after a puzzled study of the tube and the trunk. The others nodded agreement. Lourenço confessed to the Indian the blindness of all.
Thereupon Tucu bent the sapling far over and released it. As it sprang erect the bark strip slapped the end of the gun. Also, the watchers saw something hitherto unnoticed—a thin, flexible vine attached to the top of the thin stump. Lourenço's face showed understanding.
"See, comrades, this is it: The little tree is bent far down and held by the long vine. The vine passes around a low branch, then up over other limbs, and out across the path, where it is fastened to a root near the ground. A man following the path breaks the vine. The little tree then flies up and the bark sheet strikes the wide mouthpiece of the gun. The air forced into that mouthpiece by the blow of the bark shoots the little dart. The dart does not fly as hard as if blown by a man, but it goes swiftly enough to pierce the skin of anything except a tapir. As soon as the poison is in the blood the work is done."
"It sure is done," Knowlton echoed, thinking of the short distance covered by the dead Peruvian after passing this spot. "Mighty ingenious apparatus. These people are no fools, I'll say."
"You say rightly," Pedro muttered. Turning, they went out to the path, looking askance at the thin death tube as they passed along it.