There was life in the trees overhead, heard but unseen. Once Rick recognized the howl of monkeys. Again, by the side of the trail, there was a sudden chittering and a tiny furry form made a fantastic leap to the safety of a rattan vine. Rick caught a glimpse of a monkeylike face and huge eyes.
"A tarsier," Zircon remarked. "Shannon had hoped to collect one."
Rick wondered whether Shannon and Briotti had hiked up this trail. The headman of the Bagobo village had told Lacson that the Americans had not been seen by his people. Might they have vanished on this trail?
He wiped his face and neck with a sodden handkerchief and plodded ahead through the green steam bath. Insects formed a cloud around his head, flew into his eyes and even into his mouth. He bore it stoically. It was as bad for the others.
Anyone who walked off the beaten trails would be helplessly lost without a compass or an experienced guide. A man could wander in the dense growth until death in some unpleasant form claimed him. One couldn't even see a trail from more than a few feet away.
Half an hour later, Rick saw that the growth was giving way to a different kind of jungle forest, as the trail sloped upward. In a short time they entered a more normal forest of tall, white lauans over a hundred feet high, with strange roots like flying buttresses.
Soon the forest gave way to open plain, sparsely dotted with papaya trees and a lone mango. Lacson called that they were almost at their destination. Rick wiped his face and was grateful. His clothes hung on him as though he had been caught in a torrential rain. In spite of the insect repellent, he had been chewed by assorted bugs.
He forgot his discomfort at the sight of the village. Apparently civilization had reached the Bagobos. The huts were of sawed lumber and tin roofing material. He saw one roof made from an American gasoline sign.
In contrast with the drab surroundings, the people were bright spots of color. They eyed the group with frank curiosity, then followed as Juan led the way to the headman's hut.
The headman met them with dignified courtesy. Rick saw that the man was nearly six feet tall, with a lean, hawklike face, the skin stretched tightly over high cheekbones. He looked like an American Indian, but his skin was the color of a white man who has spent his life outdoors in the tropics. The Bagobos clearly were of a different race than the Filipinos.