On the way Lewis told me what was worrying him. During his previous prospecting trip when he went up the river to make sure that there were diamond fields before sending for me, he had found an old Indian very sick at one of the villages. This was Simon’s father. Lewis did what he could for the sick old Indian, giving him quinine pills, the universal cure-all in the jungle, but the old man died.
On this trip one of our men had heard that Simon believed Lewis had purposely killed his father and that he did it with the “magic pills,” as he called the quinine.
“They say Simon has acted queerly ever since,” explained Lewis, “and he may imagine that I really did kill his father and start a little ‘ka-ni-a-mer’ of his own between just him and me.”
“And what on earth is a ‘ka-ni-a-mer’?” I demanded.
“Just about the same as an old Kentucky feud where two families try for years to kill each other off. So you see I’m not extremely trustful of this bland Simon Injun,” said Lewis.
“And to top it all,” he added, “I dreamed the other night that my mother came and warned me to look out as I was to be in great danger.”
This made me decidedly uneasy and I was determined to keep my eye on Simon every minute, staying between him and Lewis.
The trip to the village seemed long. There was considerable uphill going. Every once in a while Simon would turn and jabber at his boy, who would instantly look around at us, then reply to his father, who would hurry on faster than ever. They were setting a terrific pace. Already wearied with our travels before we came to Simon’s hut, this was overdoing it just a little. But, worse than that, I got the idea that Simon was trying to lose us, to rush on far ahead and then hide and kill us—or kill Lewis anyway, with his blowpipe from ambush. I knew that just a scratch from the poisoned tip of one of those slender arrows would finish Lewis, or anyone else.
“You take my gun,” I said to Lewis, “and take it easy, while I keep up with him and keep him right in plain sight.”