Juan squatted in the darkness. The flickering firelight fitfully glinted red upon his eyes. They moved from time to time, as he gazed alternately from the tossing hammock to the hide wrapped bundle, and from the bundle to the boots. Juan was wholly scornful now, and his three-sixteenths of Spanish blood was wholly in the ascendant. These men were plainly mad. They made much ado over small green pebbles not even bright enough to be used for beads. They made a long recitative over them in a monotonous voice. They rewrapped the green pebbles, and one then kicked the package. Madness. Pure madness!
A burned-through stick collapsed and sent up a slender fountain of sparks. The dark man had been silent, had been as motionless as Juan himself. Yet Juan had seen his eyes darting from one to the other of his companions. He remained motionless now, but his eyes moved from one hammock to the other, and then to the wrapped hide package on the floor.
The stillness was so complete that a sudden snore caused even Juan to start a little. That snore came from the hammock of the gray eyed man. And Juan saw the dark man rise slowly. Juan saw his face clearly, and it was the face of a devil. He saw the long hands work strangely, saw them go to the revolver in his holster, saw them drop away again. And the Indian in Juan felt death in the air.
The jungle may have found the next few moments subtly humorous to watch. As the dark man reached his full height, Juan moved very quietly. As the dark man moved soundlessly toward the hammock in which the wakeful man lay, Juan began to crawl with infinite stealth into his hut. He vanished within its doorway as a startled voice said—
“What’s the matter?”
And Juan was feeling his way very delicately about the abysmal blackness of the hut when the man outside hissed sibilantly for silence. No one knows, of course, just why Juan first looked for and found a second jug of chicha from which he took an encouraging draught. It may have been that Juan was afraid, or it may be that he was covetous, or it is of course possible that he was merely in love with a woman. Chicha, however, is helpful in all three of those emotions.
He looked out of the doorway and saw the dark man close by the hammock of the red headed gringo. He was talking in an urgent low tone. Tumbled, incomprehensible syllables reached Juan’s ears. And Juan could see the dark man’s face as demoniacal in the fire glow.
“Listen to me,” he was saying softly. “Last night, Walker proposed that we should kill you and divide the emeralds two ways instead of three.”
Juan felt the chicha begin to warm his inwards. He felt for and found another possession of his, in the hut.
“I pretended to fall in with him.”