CHAPTER XXX
PALE DEATH
It rained terrifically that night, lashing this way and that through the clearing. Truly, it was a night to deter the most venturesome, but as Hal had high regard for Señor Goncalves as a moving force, he did not keep to his hut and hammock. Instead, with Joaquim’s invaluable aid and two Colt revolvers, they kept vigil under a tree at the river.
“You heard Señor Goncalves say he come tonight, Señor Hal?” Joaquim asked.
“Exactly,” Hal answered. “I think he meant to do it last night, but he didn’t have the nerve. He said something about making it look as if the Indians had done it—the Pallidas! Do you think it was they who killed Mr. Pemberton’s son?”
Joaquim shrugged his broad shoulders.
“Pallidas think evil spirits get out when white man digs deep in the ground, Señor. They would kill him for that maybe. Pallidas hate Señor Pemberton for chasing them from settlement. Maybe they kill—we do not know.”
“And what do you think about Señor Rene, Joaquim?”
“I think, like master, that maybe Señor Rene is being punished for angry talk about you falling in plane. I think Ceara he hold him there a time so he will not talk.”
“So you and Mr. Pemberton think Señor Renan didn’t like the treatment I got, huh? Well, maybe it’s so. At least I like to think that that’s the sort of a bird he is.”
Joaquim nodded as if to say that Renan Pemberton was exactly that kind. Be that as it may, thinking was often convincing to Hal and he had no further qualms in that direction. His present anxiety was on the river and from time to time he wondered just what Goncalves had in his mind.