get through after all. You must never lose hope.
It was then that we met the Xinguays. I don’t know how long we had been on the river. We didn’t keep count of days, but I should say it was about three weeks when we came to the Xinguay village. It wasn’t on the main stream. We were darned hard up for food, and coming to a big backwater or lagoon, we went into it, hoping to find game. We hadn’t seen a sign of Indians for days. We hadn’t heard a war drum since we had taken to the raft. And as it looked like a game country and we had to have food, we decided to risk meeting any stray Indians and to go into the bush on a hunt. No one wanted to remain on the raft alone; and no one wanted to go into the jungle alone. We all wanted to keep together, and as we had no equipment to lose we moored the raft and started into the forest. Of course we separated somewhat. But game seemed as scarce as ever. Still, we found some deer tracks and that was promising, and after a time I knocked over a big crested curassow that I saw in a tree. We stopped right there and cooked and ate him. We felt better then, but we were just as madly off for our next meal as before. So we went on.
After an hour or two we came to a hill, or rather a small mountain. It was the first high land we had seen since leaving Merced, and as we might get a good idea of the country from its summit, and as it was as good a place to hunt for game as any, we decided to climb to the top. For the first five or six hundred feet the slopes were jungle covered. Then we came to open forest. At about fifteen hundred feet we came out of the forest to the edge of a lake and there was the Xinguay village. We came upon it so suddenly and unexpectedly that we didn’t have time to dodge back before we were seen. I knew the moment I saw the people that they were an unknown tribe. They were a taller, lighter race—no “white Indians” of course, but not brown like the Campas and Jivarros. And their head dresses and ornaments were new to me. Of course they saw us instantly and scuttled into their houses like so many scared rabbits. Matson swore and grinned. “Now we’ll get food,” he exclaimed. “No danger from that bunch, they’re scared stiff at sight of us. Come along. And if any one of ’em shows fight just knock him down. There aren’t more than a couple of dozen bucks in the place, so if anything breaks we can clean ’em out easy enough.”
“Look here, Matson,” I said, “If you treat these people decently I don’t believe we’ll have any trouble. I doubt if they have ever before seen white men—that’s why they ran off at sight of us. But don’t fool yourself into thinking they’re harmless if aroused. And for Heaven’s sake don’t start your rough-house tactics here—we’ve had enough trouble through your methods already.”
He ignored me completely and turned to the others. “Remember what I told you,” he said. “Don’t stand any nonsense, and this time if trouble starts, clean ’em up—that’s where we made a mistake with that other bunch. Come along.
The Village of the Xinguay Indians
THERE wasn’t a soul visible when we entered the village, but we knew the Indians were there. And if they had been hostile they could easily have killed us from their hiding places. Of course I didn’t know their dialect, but I thought they might understand Putamo, which is a sort of lingua-franca of the bush, you know, so I shouted out that we were friends and wanted to trade for food. Evidently they got the meaning, for pretty soon one or two men appeared, and I had the jolt of my life for they wore heavy beards falling over their chests. Yes, just like those bearded Sirionos you reported from Bolivia. And I noticed they didn’t carry blow guns, just heavy bows and wooden-tipped arrows and war clubs. They couldn’t speak Putamo, even if they understood it, but they were good at sign language and they led us to a big open space and passed around chicha and food—roasted wild yams, manioc and some smoked meat. One by one others appeared, but most of them kept some distance away. They were friendly enough, and even Matson couldn’t find any excuse for brutality, but the only things we had to trade were the clothes on our backs and whatever odds and ends we had in our pockets. I spoke to Matson about this and he laughed. But he wouldn’t answer me directly and turned to Jerome. “Tell Mr. Know-it-all, that I’m not going to do any dickering with this bunch,” he said. “We’ll stay here till we get fed up and rested, then we’ll help ourselves and beat it. These fellows with the whiskers are about as dangerous as a couple of canary birds. I’ll bet if we shot one of the bunch, the others would turn tail and run—like as not they’ve never even heard a gunshot.”
I was about to say something but bit my lip. What was the use? Matson was brutal, conceited, utterly incompetent. It was a great pity he hadn’t been killed in place of Barlow or Condon or one of the others. If he had, what followed wouldn’t have occurred and the rest of us would have come through. But it wasn’t Matson himself I was thinking of. He deserved all that was coming to him. No, the worst of it was that we—the others—would be the ones to suffer for his crazy-headed behavior. Still, the Xinguays seemed so peaceable and timid that I felt that even if we did help ourselves to their supplies they probably wouldn’t resist or even protest, and so there wouldn’t be any trouble. God, how little I knew them!
Finding the Death Drum
AFTER we’d eaten and rested a while we began wandering about the village—that is, I wandered about among the houses, for I was tremendously interested in the people and their customs—but the others went over to the edge of the lake for a swim. “Say, Doc!” exclaimed Pembroke when they came back, “there’s a queer looking dingus over back of the big house that may interest you—looks like pipes out of a church organ.”
