“Yes,” said Curlie. “But we’d better be getting down. Some of them might suspect. It wouldn’t be nice to be found here.”
“These natives,” Curlie said as they crept along down a steep trail, “as you know of course, are very superstitious. It’s a pity. One who is afraid of many things is never happy. Voodooism is really a sort of Devil worship.
“They are afraid to offend the Mama Lou and the Papa Lou, who are witch doctors. But most of all they are afraid of the Loupe Garoe, who doesn’t exist at all, except in their imaginations. When your dog howled they thought him the Loupe Garoe who, so they believe, is half wolf and half man. He carries off little children and when he is about it is a very bad sign.”
“I have heard all that,” said the girl, “but I didn’t think of it in the way you did. You are a wise one. I thank you.
“If only we could get their goat,” she said after a time. “Goats that are all black are hard to find and according to their superstitious notions, only an all black goat will suffice for a sacrifice before some desperate undertaking.”
In a moment of stress and great danger, perfect strangers become comrades for the hour. Once the danger is passed they more often than not become strangers once more. It was so with Curlie and the girl, or so it seemed to Curlie. He had hoped she would tell him who she was and where she lived. She did not. She told him nothing.
One thing he did not need to be told. They had not been scouting down the trail for a half hour before he realized that she needed no directing from him. She was far better acquainted with the jungle than he. Once when he hesitated at a forking of the way, she forged straight on. At another time she gripped his arm just in time to save him from a dangerous fall. At this time he learned one more fact; slender girl that she was, there was power in her good right arm. Hers was the grip of a man.
“I go this way,” she said quite suddenly when, after an hour of almost unbroken silence, they came to a fork in the trail.
Curlie found himself sorely tempted to say, “So do I.” But this he knew would be an untruth.
Since he valued truth and above all prized this girl’s opinion, he said, “I go up.”