Page:Amazing Stories v08n02 1933-05.djvu/21

Rh they had never even heard a gunshot. But they couldn’t outrun bullets.

For the first time in my life I wanted to kill. I don’t know why, exactly. Probably because they had tried to get me. Maybe because these savages were after the Xinguays and the Xinguays were my friends—my people as I had almost come to think of them. I’ve had trouble with hostile Indians before then, but I’d never felt any urge to do any unnecessary killing—if they went off and left me I was satisfied. But this was different. I was mad to kill, and I blazed away as fast as I could shoot. I don’t know how many I hit. But I saw several go down. Then, suddenly, I heard that sound—the throbbing of the Death Drum, and the blood seemed to freeze in my veins. Suppose the Xinguays should turn the horrible thing in my direction! They were bent on wiping out the “devils.” The woods were full of the raiders. The Xinguays didn’t know I was there and at any instant—Seized with a panic of fear I leaped up and raced blindly, madly through the jungle, unmindful of danger, heedless of possible savages and poisoned darts, my one idea to escape that awful sound vibrating through the forest in my rear. Not until I fell, utterly exhausted, did I stop. Then, burying my face in the ground, covering my ears, I waited. But nothing happened. At last, with an effort, I sat up, listened.

LL was silent. The awful sound of the Death Drum had ceased.

Still trembling I looked about, trying to get my bearings, I was far up the hillside. Below me between the trees I could see the gleam of the lake. It was lucky for me that I had run. As I slowly retraced my steps towards the village, I almost stepped on what remained of one of the “devils.” I had thought that nothing on earth, nothing in hell could be more awful, more horrible than—than what I had seen there on the village plaza. But this thing in the jungle was worse. And made even more unspeakably horrible by the painted stripes and figures covering it. Nauseated, filled with dread loathing, as terrified of finding another of the things, as a small boy in a cemetery at midnight, I picked my way onward, staring ahead, shaking with dread at what I might see. But I couldn’t avoid them. Good Lord! the jungle was full of them! And here and there, too, I came upon little piles of feather-covered pulp, remains of birds struck down by that devilish sound.

Yet all that I had seen in the forest was nothing to the sight which greeted me when at last I reached the village. The place was a charnel house. No, NO! A thousand times worse than that! Oh, my God, words cannot describe it! I don’t know how many of the savages had attacked the villagers. I don’t know how many had been destroyed. I turned away sick, faint with the horror of it. Yet some of the raiders must have survived. Some must have managed to escape the vibrations of the Death Drum, for I saw Xinguay women wailing beside the bodies of their men. And all of these slain Xinguays were headless!

HAT explained it. The “devils” were head-hunters. And that was why the Xinguays regarded them as devils, for by taking their victims’ heads the raiders robbed them of their souls, according to Xinguay belief. A headless body could not even be placed in the burial caves among the other Xinguay dead. It was merely offal, and as such was consigned to the same fate as the disintegrated remains of the head-hunters. What that fate was I soon learned. At one spot on the mountain side there was a bare rocky cliff, inaccessible from below, and at its base was a yawning black hole—the opening to some bottomless subterranean fissure whence, at times, a column of sulphurous steam floated upward. I had found the place during my wanderings, but I had given little heed to it, aside from making a mental note that it proved the volcano wasn’t as dead as it seemed, but was only sleeping. And I never dreamed—never could have imagined—the use to which it was put by the Xinguays. It was their Inferno—their private hell! Carrying the decapitated bodies of their slain comrades, and the shapeless things that had been head-hunters, the Indians climbed to the summit of the cliff and dropped their burdens into the yawning, steaming pit below—consigned them directly to Hades—to the place where “devils” belonged!

It’s funny how a man’s mind works sometimes. In the midst of all the horrors a quaint thought came to me, and I actually chuckled. What would be the result should the Xinguays get possession of the shrunken heads of their tribesmen? How could they adjust matters, once the headless bodies had been destroyed and then the bodyless heads were recovered?

But I soon found out. A party of the Xinguays came out from the jungle carrying two human heads. The beards proved them Xinguays. Evidently some of the fleeting raiders had been overtaken and killed and their grisly trophies had been retaken. Of course there was a great to-do. A funeral ceremonial dance was held, and the two heads were carried off and placed in the burial cave. You see the heads were all that counted. They were the abiding places of the souls, and the rest of the body didn’t amount to anything. That discovery was like a tonic to me. I was so interested, scientifically, that, for a time, I was quite happy. Even that damnable, maddening reverberation in my head seemed to let up. It really was a great discovery, for it was the key to the origin of head hunting.

You see it, don’t you? By taking an enemy’s head an Indian not only destroyed his foe’s chances of a happy hereafter, but—so he believed—had the soul under his control—literally took possession of the