The sounds meant nothing, but Juan could see the dark man whispering when he looked out of the hut again. His head was close to that of the man in the hammock. Juan could not see the expression of the red headed man. He could not see a look of horror and unbelief changing slowly to one of dawning suspicion.
“We were to play with you until tomorrow,” the whisper went on, while Juan did certain things which were only possible by virtue of a dash of Spanish blood. “That was so you’d help paddle the last stretch. And tomorrow night⸺”
While the red headed Yanqui listened, staring, the lean fingers of the dark man darted out. There was a little sound—not enough to waken a sleeping man no more than two yards away. And then a horrible, silent, struggle began. The dark man bent over the hammock like some monstrous vulture. His hands were closed about the throat of the man with red hair, who fought frenziedly in the toils of his hampering hammock to tear away the grip that shut off his breath. There was no sound at all except the ghastly rustling of the hammock cloth. Juan deliberately waited as the struggles slackened, as the writhings of the red headed man became less. After all, these men were madmen ... And the cause of Juan’s calmness may have been chicha and the motive for his action may have been love of a woman, or covetousness, or it may have been pure fear. But Juan had fitted a long arrow to the string of the tall Araucanian bow in his hands. Standing in the darkness, he drew that arrow to his ear. He released it.
And then everything was very quiet.
Dawn was breaking as the gray eyed Yanqui woke. He tumbled out of his hammock. He stared about him. He stiffened and looked about in what was almost terror. He plunged through the ashes of a dead camp-fire toward his companions.
The red headed man was breathing. A little. A very little. The gray eyed man brought him slowly back to life. For the dark man, of course, nothing could be done. An arrow stuck out a foot beyond his back.
The red headed man could not talk, because of his swollen throat, but by gestures he told what he knew. It was only then that the gray eyed gringo looked for the packet of emeralds. Juan had opened that package, and he had fingered the stones, and he had flung them contemptuously aside. Juan, you see, was not a madman. Juan was gone. And so were the dark man’s boots.
“M-my God!” said the gray eyed Yanqui shakenly. “M-my God! You’d have killed me for a girl, and—he’d have killed both of us for the emeralds—and—and that damned Indian killed him for his boots!”
Which, somehow, seems to point a moral of some sort. But it is elusive.
Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the August 15, 1929 issue of Adventure magazine.