Page:Weird Tales Volume 23 Issue 5 (1934 05).djvu/101

 those Indios who slew Smith's crippled kid brother, whom he idolized—the Cuyuni Munduruais.

"Alden will find that branch of the tribe somewhat diminished in numbers—and prone to stay closely within their stockaded village at night. And, Mr. Alden, this is why!

"I must digress a moment to make my point plain. This region, and all the Mud Coast from Demerara to Georgetown, was originally colonized by the Dutch from Java, back in the early Seventeenth Century. They cleared three hundred and more square miles of jungle right away, and planted cassava. In the course of fifty years they had two thousand miles in cultivation. That's all gone back to jungle, except right near the coast.

"They brought fruits and Asiatic bamboo with them from the East. All we have now are a few durians, and that forest of bamboo, over there where the Mazaruni empties into this lake. That is the only Asiatic bamboo forest in the Americas, though there are many indigenous varieties.

"The Dutch brought ten thousand or more East Indian coolies to use as laborers. Their descendants still work the cane and cassava plantations near the coast. The point is, they gave some of their queer Eastern beliefs to the Indios—especially one which had to do with decapitation with the parang, or with the Collins machete. The Mundurucus were head-hunters anyway. Still are. They bone and shrivel their enemies' heads for trophies. So they took to Malay superstitions of this sort with alacrity.

"For the last century or so, I understand, these Indios from the Cuyuni have brought their important captives down to this bamboo grove on the lake. They have had a pleasant custom of binding the captive to the stalk of a giant bamboo, then beheading him.

"One stroke of the machete cuts through the victim's neck, and also through the thin, hard, hollow bamboo bole. Strangely enough, the bamboo utters a bellow or yowl, like a single blast of air through a shattered organ pipe. You can hear it quite plainly from the gallery of this shando."

"Ugh!" shivered Bisbee Alden, smiling uneasily. "Pleasant natives I'm going to handle!" But he was young enough not to seem really displeased.

Natheshire nodded grimly. "That bellow, or whatever you want to call it, is supposed to be the victim's soul, fleeing to Paradise," he continued. "In the bamboo grove you will find eight stumps, new in the course of the past year.

"There were exactly nine Indios concerned in the murder of Smith's young brother. Nine Indios—and one white man!"

His face was grimly stern as he spoke the two concluding sentences straight at Selwyn Landrigan.

"Good Lord!" began Bisbee Alden aghast. "You mean that Smith?"

The sentence died on his lips. From diagonally across the mirror-quiet, moonlit lake came a sudden sound which widened the eyes of all three white men, and made them grasp involuntarily at the arms of their wicker chairs.

It was a single mournful bellow, indescribably suggestive and blood-chilling. Natheshire took a deep inhalation, and his dark eyes narrowed.

"That's likely number nine!" he said, getting up and reaching for his bolstered Browning, hung by a belt from the back of his chair. "I'll wager I find the body—

"You—you——" sputtered Landrigan, leaping to his feet. He was white of