He remembered that Grico, he of the one eye and the split nose, had come close to him and jostled him several times, as though by accident, during his journey through the jungle. At the time, Bomba had thought it chance. Now he saw in it design. Perhaps it was Grico who had robbed him of his treasures.
Grico, to be sure, had saved his life, and for that Bomba was grateful. The fact modified the anger that assailed him. Still he vowed that, if his suspicions were correct, he would get that revolver and harmonica back. He would pay the debt he owed Grico in some other way.
He was meditating gloomily upon his loss when his attention was attracted by a slight rustling in the underbrush.
Swift as thought, he fitted an arrow to his bow and stood on the alert.
He could dimly see the form of some animal, and not knowing but what it might be a jaguar, he shot. The law of the jungle, he had learned, was to shoot first and investigate afterward.
There was a startled grunt, a floundering about in the bushes, and then silence.
Bomba crept forward cautiously, prepared for a second shot, but relaxed when he saw lying dead before him a peccary, the wild pig of the jungle.
He was not especially pleased at this, for the peccaries usually traveled in droves and companions of the dead one might be near at hand. As a rule, he gave the animals a wide berth, for nothing is more ferocious than the peccaries, whose murderous tusks, if they get to work, can tear a man into ribbons.
So he waited for a while, close to a tree up which he could climb if the drove bore down upon him.
But none appeared, and Bomba came to the conclusion that this was a young pig that had wandered from the drove and lost its way in the jungle.