“I suppose you do,” Hal agreed thoughtfully. “But it’s tough on you, Miss Felice.”
The girl’s face lighted up with a radiant smile.
“Not a bit,” she said cheerfully. “I’ve Grandfather to look after right now and just when I was beginning to worry, along you came. And there’s a lot of you to come along, Mr. Hal,” she added slyly. “When I first spied you, I was inclined to think it was a jaguar moving in the bushes; you backed away so, I was startled. The brownish color of your suit and the flash of your hair in the sunlight seemed terribly like the creature until I saw your vast height popping out of the bushes.”
“Gosh, a jaguar wouldn’t be so bold as to come out on the river bank, right in the daylight?”
“If we are to believe the story the Pallidas circulated, the jaguar runs and cries at unexpected times. Especially the jaguar in whom they believe my father has been reincarnated. They say he runs up and down these river banks trying to lead us to his body and that he has been caught beneath one of the rapids. Of course, it’s absurd, but I am always startled when I hear the cry of a jaguar or see one flash through the brush.”
“They know about how you’re waiting to get your father’s body then, huh?”
“Of course. Indians have a way of gossiping among themselves, the same as the white men. And as they’re so terribly superstitious I suppose it pleased their fancy to make up the jaguar story out of that ghostly cry that sounds up in their region at night.”
“And this fabled jaguar is supposed to have a human voice, huh?”
“Yes, how do you know, Mr. Hal?”
“I heard it myself. It’s queer, darn queer....”