Page:Weird Tales Volume 9 Number 4 (1927-04).djvu/35

 in the deep jungles. But hardly here. What think you, Señores?" he asked the rest of us.

Mostly we shrugged our shoulders and looked wise. Janis, however, made a slight gesture to call attention and asked, "Did you see any tracks?"

The rafter nodded. "Yes, Señor, there was a streak through the grass, and some giant footprints beside it. It surely must be a demon! The blessed mother protect us!"

"Oho!" Connaughton burst forth. "Then there were tracks! I thought demons never left tracks!"

"Tracks or not," Lassignae bristled, "we shall see! We'll look for the thing! Unless the Señores feel that their well-being can not be risked!" he added with an insufferable air of patronage.

Darrell surveyed him with a cold stare. "You damned little porcupine! I'll size up your well-being in a moment!" Lassignae made a gesture which was an insult in itself. "You Americanos! Bah! You always know so much! And then you don't!"

Darrell let out a blood-curdling screech and yelled, "One more slant like that and over you'll go! Right to those damned jacarés! Just look at the pretty things clap their jaws!" And then he laughed.

Janis interfered. "Whoever is sent to the alligators, the sender follows him! I'll see to that!" His voice was chilly and they all knew that he meant what he said. Tall and thin, with a look of innate refinement, he seemed out of place in that bunch. Still, it was the sort of thing he liked. He had trained for medicine, but hated to practise, and hopped around the world in search of adventure.

Janis' words stopped the quarrel and we turned to the rafters.

"But what of San Lorenzo?" asked Don Ramon. "Do they know of the demon there?"

"Oh, yes, they know!"

"And have they seen it?"

"No, Señores! Nobody has seen the demon. They are afraid to! They would see—and then die!"

Arnheimer stroked his beard and evolved another question: "But what becomes of the tracks? Or didn't you follow them?"

The rafter shivered at the memory and grew pale. "Señores," he said hoarsely, "they stopped at the body of Juan Felista, and then—then disappeared!"

"Well, I like that!" said Connaughton with a chuckle that sounded rather ghoulish under the circumstances. "But didn't you follow to the place where they started?"

The rafters hemmed and hawed a bit and finally admitted that they had been afraid to follow the trail into the forest. And that was all we got out of them.

It was a bit unsatisfactory, but just enough to whet our appetite for more. We resolved most certainly to pay the Peninsula del Circulo a visit, and speculated on what we might find.

A few days later we docked at the village of San Lorenzo, below the mouth of the Brazo Occidental. We had to stop there to arrange for the ship and to buy flatboats to ascend the Brazo.

is not much to say about the village, except that the people looked as though they all had malaria. They were listless, thin to emaciation, with a muddy, unhealthy color. The swamps, of course!

During our evening meal in the single café I noticed Connaughton getting very restless. He was always restless, but now he was worse than ever, pecking away at his food, drinking a lot, and eyeing the señoritas on the square. Before the rest of us