With this and kindred subjects, aided by the attentive ministrations of 'Tonio, the afternoon passed swiftly. Dinner proved a feast, the pièce de résistance being tender, well-cooked meat which the Americans took for roast beef, but which really was roast tapir. More cigars, coupled with the fatigue of the past two days of paddling, eventually caused the visitors to seek their rooms, where McKay and Knowlton paired off and Tim took José as his "bunkie."
When Tim awoke the next morning he found himself deserted.
To Knowlton, who drew from the small gold-chest the hundred dollars allotted to José and handed it to him before redressing his wound, the puntero quietly revealed his intention to go before sunrise.
"Say nothing, señor," he requested. "You need know nothing of it, if you like. I am here to-night—I am gone to-morrow—that is all. I am of no further use to you, I am unwelcome in this house of Nunes, and I go. Oh, have no fear for me! I have my gun, my knife, and my good right arm, and I can take care of myself very well. No doubt the coronel will be astonished to find that on leaving to-night I have neither cut anyone's throat nor stolen anything—ha! I have a black name on this river, and it is well earned, perhaps. Yet few men are as bad as those who dislike them think they are. I may borrow a small canoe, but any Indian would do the same. An unoccupied canoe is any man's property.
"Before our ways part, señor, let me say that as José Martinez never forgets his enemies, so he never forgets friends. Where some men would have turned me loose like a sick dog with my eighteen dollars, you and Señor McKay give me a hundred. And far more than that, you saved my life at a time when many men would have said, 'Bah! let the bloody one die! He is nothing but scum of the border and leader of that murdering crew.' You had only to let me lie a few minutes longer and you would be rid of me. No, José does not forget.
"That is all, except—if you will, in parting, take the hand of a man known as a killer and other things—"
Knowlton gripped that hand with swift heartiness. He would have protested against such a departure, but the other's steady gaze betokened inflexible purpose. So he merely said:
"Then good luck, old chap! And if you meet Schwandorf give him our affectionate regards."
"Si, señor," was the sardonic answer. "I will do that thing. And here is something that may be of interest to you. I happen to know that before we left Remate de Males a swift one-man canoe left Nazareth, and that the man in it was an Indian who is in the German's control. It went upstream while we were loading your supplies, and it has not returned. By this time it must be many hours above this place. I do not know what message that Indian carries, nor where he goes. But he is a short man, and his left leg is crooked. If you meet such a one make him talk. Good-by, señor."
Just how and when the puntero cat-footed his way out that night none ever knew but himself. But before the next dawn he had vanished from the Brazilian shore.