Bows instantly twanged in the jungle, and two arrows swished through the thickets around his position. Dwight took off his helmet and peered furtively through every vista, searching every tree trunk, but not a sign could he discover whence they came.
Then came the cough of Sadok’s sumpitan from somewhere, and a small black-bearded hill man rose suddenly out of the bushes, not thirty feet away, and fell over backward, silently.
“Me go! Me-fellah catch’m bow’n arrow!” whispered Baderoon, from the ground, wringing his wrists vigorously and eying Dwight’s hunting knife longingly.
Dwight nodded approval. Two could play at this bushwhacking game! And none better than their own native bushman. He handed Baderoon the knife and the Papuan melted off into the undergrowth toward the body of the dead pygmy.
A long, sinister silence set in. Dwight watched in every direction, scanning the forest intensely through his leafy screen, but nothing that he could fire at appeared. Then a sudden shock of fright went through him. Surely that bush over there was much nearer now than when he had looked at it last! Surely it was not natural, growing so close to the roots of that giant euphorbia that towered up near it! Nature did not grow bushes in such dense shade! He was about to fire into it, when a long black arm struck out from behind the tree trunk and there was a flash of bright steel, while the bush writhed in convulsions and then lay still.
Baderoon! In spite of his religious taboo against steel, he had broken it for them. Dwight could appreciate that, and he began to have immense confidence in their two wild allies. In the jungle, where he and the curator and Nicky were helpless, these two were masters. They could beat the pygmies at their own game.
“That’s three,” muttered the boy to himself. Then the essential need to prevent the other two getting away to the main war parties of the pygmies and telling them of their presence presented itself. It seemed vital, to the boy’s imagination, and he even thought of sacrificing himself by exposing his position to draw their fire, so that they could be shot by the others and their plans for running the gantlet during the storm could go through.
He was maturing the idea, when a faint rustle in the jungle back of him turned him around, with the hair rising under his helmet with alarm and his pistol ready for instant fire. He saw Sadok’s sumpitan rise up cautiously out of the green and lowered again, and the boy breathed relievedly. Presently he caught a glimpse of the Dyak’s brown body moving serpentlike toward the upas vine. Out of the depths between it and the trunk of the larger tree overhead the leaves moved. Then came a quick, silent jab of Sadok’s kriss into the blood-red bark of the vine. It flashed down again, and Dwight could see the thick, white juice oozing from the wound in the bark. Two brown hands rose out of the foliage and tied on the tiny bamboo poison cup with gingerly care, and then all signs of movement in that direction ceased.
After a long wait, two low calls of the lory came out of the jungle near by. Dwight answered them.
“Come on out, Dwight,” came the curator’s voice. “They’re gone. We’re over this way.”