"Mayas! Mayas!" gasped Pinto.
As he spoke, far down the Trail from around a curve sounded the faint, ominous clicking which the two hunters had heard before.
It was then that the old scientist showed that he deserved the right to lead which he claimed.
"Stand still!" he said sternly to Pinto, as the latter seemed inclined to bolt down the Trail away from the fatal sound. "Put up your gun!" he ordered Jud; "the Truce is our only chance."
Then, with quick, decisive commands, he lined the party up so that no part of the body of any one of them extended beyond the surface of the Trail, and yet a space was left wide enough to allow any others using the path to pass. At the head of the line he placed the two Indians, Joe and Pinto, so that the Mayas might note the presence in the party of members of their own race.
"Show the peace sign," he snapped sharply to Joe, who led the line. "Brace up!" he went on, slapping Pinto sharply on his bare back; "don't look so scared. No matter what they do," he said, turning to the rest of the company, "don't leave the Trail for a second or make any kind of attack on them. They will probably try to make us break the Truce of the Trail. If any of us do, we are all lost."
"My peace sign," muttered Jud, grimly, "will be an automatic in one hand an' this little toothpick in the other," and he opened the five-inch blade of the jack-knife with which he had killed old Three Toes, the grizzly, as already chronicled in "The Blue Pearl." "If I'm goin' to be eaten," he went on, "there'll be eighteen Mayas that ain't goin' to have any appetite for the meal"; and he shifted the single clip of cartridges remaining, so that he could feed them into the automatic if it came to a last stand.
All further conversation was ended by the appearance of the same horrible apparition which had so terrified Pinto a short time before. As the gaunt painted skeleton of the first Maya showed against the green background, surmounted by the black and blood-red face with the grinning tusks and implacable eyes, an involuntary gasp went up from the whole waiting party. Jud slipped the safety-catch from his revolver; Pinto's face looked as if suddenly powdered with ashes; Will's hands stole to the hatchet at his belt; while, down at the end of the line, Hen Pine gripped his heavy machete until his great muscles stood out like iron bands. Two of the party alone showed no sign of any emotion: Joe, the descendant of a long line of proud Chippewa chiefs, disdainfully stretched out both empty hands palms up in the peace-sign; while Professor Ditson's calm face seemed to show only the mild interest of a scientist.
As the leading Maya caught sight of the waiting line, he slowed his swift stride and the war-party crept up close and closer. Then came the tense moment which would decide whether the Truce was to hold. As the grim hunters moved up, there was no sign on the face of any of them of any acceptance of the peace which Joe had offered. With short, gliding steps, they made a complete circle around the little party, closing up until their menacing, fearful faces were less than a foot away and the reek of their naked bodies was like the hot taint of jaguars of the jungle in the nostrils of the waiting six. In their left hands they carried bows and quivers of fiercely fanged arrows gummed with fatal venom, while from their belts swung curved, saw-toothed knives and short, heavy clubs, the heads of which were studded with alligators' teeth.
As the Mayas came closer, the waiting line wavered involuntarily before the terrible menace of their hating, hateful faces. The Mundurucu especially, although no coward, had been taught from earliest childhood to dread these man-eaters, the Mayas. It was Professor Ditson who noticed that, in spite of their menacing approach, not a single warrior had as yet gripped a weapon.