“I hear nothing,” repeated Manuel. This time, out of curiosity and indefinable portent, he lied.
“No! You’re sure?” asked Señor huskily. He placed a shaking hand on Manuel. “You heard no cry—like—like—” He drew up sharply. “Perhaps I only thought I heard something—I’m fanciful at times.”
He stirred the camp fire and renewed it with dry sticks. Evidently he wanted light. A slight blaze flickered up, intensifying the somber dusk. A vampire bat wheeled in the lighted circle. Manuel watched his companion, studying the face, somehow still white through the swollen fly blotches and scorch of sun, marveling at its expression. What had Señor imagined he had heard?
Again the falling note! Clearer than the clearest bell, sweeter than the saddest music, wailed out of a succession of melancholy, descending tones, to linger mournfully, to hold the last note in exquisite suspense, to hush away, and leave its phantom echo in the charged air. A woman, dying in agony and glad to die, not from disease or violence, but from unutterable woe, might have wailed out that last note to the last beat of a broken heart.
Señor gripped Manuel’s arm.
“You heard that—you heard it? Tell me!”
“Oh, is that what you meant? Surely I heard it,” replied Manuel. “That’s only the Perde-alma.”
“Perde-alma?” echoed Señor.
“Bird of the Lost Soul. Sounded like a woman, didn’t it? We rubber hunters like his song. The Indians believe he sings only when death is near. But that signifies nothing. For above the Pachitea life and death are one. Life is here, and a step there is death! Perde-alma sings seldom. I was years on the river before I heard him.”
“Bird of the Lost Soul! A bird! Manuel, I did not think that cry came from any living thing.”