Lewis is a heavy-built man and it was more difficult for him to keep up the hot pace uphill. I hurried on and got quite close to them. Simon spoke to his boy, who turned around and gave a little jump of astonishment to see me so close. He spoke sharply to his father, who turned around. Just as he turned around I purposely pulled my revolver from the holster with a great flourish.
To these native Indians our revolvers are wonderful and fearful things. They regard them with awe and also with fear. That so small a thing held lightly in the hand could deal death is one of the most amazing things they know about. When Simon saw this he at once slackened his pace and gave me another bland smile.
“Me-a-ree. Me-a-ree!” he said.
“Me-a-ree,” I replied, but kept my revolver in my hand. After that he slowed up and made no attempt to lose us, but he kept looking back frequently and earnestly to make sure that I was not pointing the deadly “mystery gun” at him.
We passed many small platforms lashed to tall trees. I thought they were the “graves” of Indians, as I knew that many of our American Indians had the custom of leaving their dead on high platforms. But the Boviander explained that they were hunting stations. The Indians climb up and kneel on these platforms motionless for hours, waiting for game to pass so that they can kill it with blowpipes, spears, bows and arrows or with their crude guns.
It was getting late and I had just begun to wonder if we would have to camp in that dismal swamp all night when I heard the sound of a horn. It was some Indian call made by blowing on a shell. Simon nodded, meaning that it was the village.
Soon we came into a great clearing. I expected to see a thriving village, since I had been assured that Assura was the largest of the Indian villages. And it was the largest, yet it consisted of only seven houses, with A-shaped roofs of reeds, and one larger or communal house with a conical roof.
Three of the mangiest, sorriest looking dogs I had ever beheld, howled mournfully when we came into the clearing, then tucked their tails between their legs and ran away to hide, having performed their duty of warning the villagers of our approach.
I was greatly interested, for the villagers did not know that we were coming and I was sure to find them in their primitive life without “putting on” for company. They flocked about us, more curious than we, for we had seen Indians and knew something about their customs by this time, but few of them had seen any white men except the Dutch and half-breed Dutch “pork-knockers,” or wandering diamond miners.