“You’re right,” said Nicky soberly, and nodded with a smile of real gratitude to his Indian friend. The youth nodded briefly and walked away. The tribe was pleasant and fed the youths plentifully with such food as they had, all cooked in the one big pot, and renewed by dropping in whatever the day’s hunting brought home. But friendliness was absent.
Nicky wondered why they were kept there, and finally he learned.
The guide who had brought them to the village came to their hut with another, a taller, very old and very stern looking fellow. He made signs to Tom, pointing to his pocket and then toward the small fire in a little ovenlike place in a corner.
“Know what he’s trying to tell you?” Cliff said. “He wants you to show that lighter of Bill’s. He must have seen us use it in the woods, when we lit the fire the first night.”
That, clearly, was what he wanted for when Tom drew out the lighter and made it work, the old Indian looked on with amazement. Tom made a half gesture to hand it to him but he drew back and Cliff whispered hurriedly:
“Don’t let them get your ‘magic’—that must be what they think it is. Keep it in your pocket and use it as seldom as you can. The gasoline may be dried out or the flint worn, and then it won’t work.”
“That’s so. I’ll save it all I can.” Tom agreed and put back the small mechanical apparatus with which man has improved on the old custom of making fire by use of flint and steel: now the steel is a wheel and by whisking it sharply against a prepared bit of flint, a spark is made to fall on a wick soaked with gasoline, which ignites.
Soon after the lighter was demonstrated, the Indians beckoned to the youths, and by signs bade them follow. Half a dozen young men had packs slung on their backs. Led by the aged Indian, and with the three white youths in the line, they started off into a different jungle trail that wound upward steadily, and got more difficult and hotter and more unpleasant every hour.
“Where do you suppose they are taking us?” Nicky wondered.
Tom caught up to their guide and in pantomime tried to make him see that they wanted to know where they were going. He pointed forward, then to himself, then to the trail, and then forward again. The man seemed to understand.