CHAPTER XXII

FELICE AND HAL

Instinctively they sat down together on the bank. Hal, though weary, was not hungry nor suffering pain of any kind, and if he had been, he secretly thought that just talking to the flower-like Felice would drive it away.

“I heard about you—in fact, I heard about your whole family,” Hal told her. “My uncle and I listened to the story from the captain on the boat to _Manaos_.”

“Not a cheerful story, I’m afraid,” she said wistfully.

“That’s why I made up my mind right then and there to pay you people a visit,” Hal said impulsively. “Funny, how I wanted to do that right away when I heard what hard luck you folks have had. But I didn’t think I’d bust in this way—gosh!”

Her gray eyes twinkled as she regarded him.

“I’m glad to have you too, Mr. Hal,” she said earnestly, “but I’m sorry you had to go through so much to get here. Grandfather will send one of the Indians down to let your uncle know you’re safe. But just as soon as you rest, we’ll walk down and get you into a hammock where you can sleep and recuperate. We don’t have beds up here,” she added with a note of apology; “we live very simply.”

“Say, a hammock will feel like a feather bed after what I’ve been sleeping on,” Hal assured her breezily.

“So the _Pallida_ Indians captured you?” she inquired, interested.

“That what they’re called?”

“By us,” she smiled. “They’re a sort of mixture. _Pallida_ identifies them sufficiently. They’re terribly warlike and superstitious.”

“Well, they were kind enough to me at the go-off. I was in pretty bad shape when they found me—they nursed me back. That is, a fat old medicine man did, and from the way I got well, I guess he’s not all fake. But then they were willing to shoot poisoned arrows into me after going to all the trouble of making me well. If you savvy that, I don’t.”

She laughed, and got him to tell her the story at the Indian settlement right from the beginning.

“I know about their superstition,” she told him when he had finished, “but I didn’t think they’d go to such an extreme as they tried with you. I’ve heard about the demented native, though. They keep him imprisoned in that hut in the jungle and none of the tribe will go toward it, face forward. They back toward it in order to keep the evil spirit from afflicting them. It does seem awful and odd, but it’s their native and their business, and nobody interferes. They never bother us, never in all these years. And they wouldn’t bother to come after you; don’t worry. Particularly, because one of their number came away with you.”

“Poor fellow,” Hal said thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t have had it happen for the world. He deserved a better fate, believe me.”

“It seems that is the way with those we love,” said Felice with a poignancy that did not escape Hal.

“I know,” he said sympathetically. “I heard about your father from the captain, too. It was included in the story. What a tough break for him, huh?”

“Not only for him, but for all of us. You see, he had finally come to the conclusion that he was on the verge of a big discovery. He had kept it quiet, being afraid that it would prove disappointing. Consequently, we have never been able to find out just where the lode was. That it contained some gold was proven by the dust he brought home. The last trip he made was to decide just how much metal the lode would yield and if it would be worth while to go on.”

“And it was up this river—the _Pallida Mors_?”

“Yes,” Felice answered wistfully, “our river of pale death. We were to leave this wilderness and live in civilization if Father’s expectations were realized. I went to school in Rio; we thought of going there to live.”

“And how a girl like you must like to live in Rio,” Hal said, looking around.

“But we have neither the money, nor the heart. You heard, I suppose, that none of us shall leave here for good until Father’s body is recovered?”

“Yes. But that’s making things awfully hard for yourselves, isn’t it? In a river where there’s rapids....”

“I know,” she said with a sigh. “We’ve discussed that times without number. But we always come to the conclusion that Father was seized with one of those uncanny premonitions that should be given serious thought. He had a fear that something was going to happen to him and he had a fear that his dead body would be left unprotected, something ... we’ve not been able to guess why he had that fear. In any event, we’ve waited ten years—we’re too poor to do other than stay where we are and we’re conscience free that we haven’t gone away from the region where Father died, leaving him alone. Even though we haven’t found him we feel better about it than if we had gone away.”

“I suppose you do,” Hal agreed thoughtfully. “But it’s tough on you, Miss Felice.”

The girl’s face lighted up with a radiant smile.

“Not a bit,” she said cheerfully. “I’ve Grandfather to look after right now and just when I was beginning to worry, along you came. And there’s a lot of you to come along, Mr. Hal,” she added slyly. “When I first spied you, I was inclined to think it was a jaguar moving in the bushes; you backed away so, I was startled. The brownish color of your suit and the flash of your hair in the sunlight seemed terribly like the creature until I saw your vast height popping out of the bushes.”

“Gosh, a jaguar wouldn’t be so bold as to come out on the river bank, right in the daylight?”

“If we are to believe the story the _Pallidas_ circulated, the jaguar runs and cries at unexpected times. Especially the jaguar in whom they believe my father has been reincarnated. They say he runs up and down these river banks trying to lead us to his body and that he has been caught beneath one of the rapids. Of course, it’s absurd, but I am always startled when I hear the cry of a jaguar or see one flash through the brush.”

“They know about how you’re waiting to get your father’s body then, huh?”

“Of course. Indians have a way of gossiping among themselves, the same as the white men. And as they’re so terribly superstitious I suppose it pleased their fancy to make up the jaguar story out of that ghostly cry that sounds up in their region at night.”

“And this fabled jaguar is supposed to have a human voice, huh?”

“Yes, how do you know, Mr. Hal?”

“I heard it myself. It’s queer, darn queer....”

“That’s what my brother Rene has said.”

“_Rene?_ Gosh, I’ll always like that name on account of a swell fellow I met. His last name was Carmichael.”

“That’s odd, Mr. Hal. My brother’s middle name is Carmichael.”

“Well, I’ll be darned. That’s not too odd to be a coincidence, Miss Felice. Let’s get together on this.”

And they did.