WHEN she saw the bedraggled and blood-soaked condition of her charge, Ramona’s old duenna threw up her hands and shrieked in holy terror. Ramona’s dress was smeared with mud in the back and with blood in front The cloth which she had ripped away to use for binding Jan’s wounds left a rent that exposed the peach-tinted silk clinging to her trim little figure, which was also considerably spotted with gore.
Don Fernando, who had been walking in the patio nearby, smoking one of his long, slim cigars, came dashing up just as Señora Soledade swooned away.
“Carramba!” he exclaimed, dropping his cigar and catching Ramona in his arms, to the detriment of his immaculate white suit. “Tell me what has happened, my little one! Where are you hurt?”
“I’m not hurt, daddy,” replied Ramona, “but Señora Soledade has fainted.”
“Not hurt! But this blood! These soiled, torn clothes! I don’t understand!”
“It is not my blood, daddy. It’s Jan’s. He saved me from the puma.”
“Madre de Dios! Jan? The puma? What is all this? Tell me, quickly, or I, too, shall collapse!”
“But first let us attend the señora.”
At this moment, Señora Soledade sat up and gazed wildly about her.
Don Fernando stood his daughter on her feet, and gallantly hurried forward to help the old lady. But when she saw the blood on his white suit she shrieked, and seemed about to swoon again.
“Come, come,” he said. “Be brave. Ramona is all right and so am I.”
“But the blood! The—”
“There, there!”
He piloted her gently through the patio gate, seated her on a bench, and returned.
“Now child,” he said. “This puma. This Jan. Tell me about them.”
“Come with me and I’ll show you the puma,” she answered. “It’s dead.”
She related the story of her adventure to her father, as she led him to where the dead carnivore lay. Don Fernando listened gravely to her story, and examined the fallen feline with interest.
“A giant of its kind, that beast,” he said. “A terrible foe. And you say it was slain by a mere boy?”
“I didn’t say a mere boy,” replied Ramona reprovingly. “He was magnificent.”
“Yes, of course my little one. A gallant knight who came to your rescue. But for him I would have lost you.” He threw his arm around her and drew her close. “I wish I could reward him.”
“And why can’t you?”
“Your description of him . . . Do you know who he is?”
“To be sure. He is Jan. He told me so.”
“Yes, but your description of him: red hair, a garment of jaguar skin. He is the wild boy who has slain so many natives during the past two years. Many strange tales have been told about him. When first seen he had two companions—a giant black man and a great hairy ape. Both of these wore jaguar-skin garments, also. They terrorized a small Indian community, killing several. Since then the boy has been seen once or twice with the great ape, but mostly he travels alone. No one knows what has become of the black giant. Do you know what they call this boy?”
“No.”
“They call him the jungle Demon. Some say he is half man, half jaguar. He travels with equal facility on the ground or through the tree tops. When an Indian is found dead, stripped of his weapons and ornaments, they say: ‘It is the jungle Demon again.’ He is more fierce, more terrible and more dangerous than the puma he has slain. All men are his enemies.”
“But he said he liked me.”
“Carramba! Did he? Then promise me this: that you will never leave the house or patio again unless I or one of the men go with you, armed. Some day he will come to steal you—to carry you off to his jungle lair to a horrible fate. It would be a terrible blow to your mother and me, and to poor old Señora Soledade. Won’t you do this much for us? Won’t you promise?”
Don Fernando had long since learned that threats or commands meant nothing to Ramona, but that she could be appealed to in a reasonable manner, and that if she made a promise, that promise would be carried out.
“I don’t know, daddy,” she answered. “I so love to get away by myself once in a while.”
“Yes, I know. But think of the danger. And think of your mother and father, and of your old duenna, who loves you.”
“All right daddy, I’ll promise.”
And so they went into the patio, arm in arm.
As the first man-monster of the ruined temple struck at him with his cudgel, Jan, who had often dodged the swift blow of a jaguar’s paw, easily eluded his clumsy swing. The force of the blow turned the hairy one part way around. Jan leaped in and dealt him a blow on the back of his neck with the keen machete. The monster fell on his face without a sound, his spinal column severed by the sharp blade.
With savage yells the other two closed in to avenge their fallen comrade, but Jan was already running swiftly toward the river.
Sheathing his weapon, he sprang from the top of the bank, in a long, graceful dive. He swam frog-like beneath the surface until a shadow above him told him that he had entered the underground channel. Then he arose and, turning on his back, inhaled the welcome air.
As he drew himself up on the bank in the semi-darkness, he hesitated for a moment. These men were deadly enemies. Being bearded like Dr. Bracken and the brutal Jake Grubb on the ship, they were doubly hateful. He wanted to go back—to stalk and slay them.
But the jungle, his jungle, was calling. Already he was longing to swing through its sun-dappled branches and lianas again, and tread the soft leaf mold in its deeper shadows. And beyond the jungle was a beautiful being—Ramona.
Jan groped his way back to the falls. Then he descended the notched cut in the cliff, dived through the curtain of water into the pool, and came up beneath his tree-hut. Shaking the water from his glistening body, he climbed up and found Chicma dozing peacefully in her compartment. She gave a little grunt of greeting as he looked in, then went to sleep once more.
As time went on she had been paying less and less attention to his comings and goings. No longer did she romp with him in mimic combat, or play at tag with him through the tree tops. She liked her soft nest, and rarely left it except when urged by hunger or thirst. Chicma was getting very old.
Jan took up his favorite bow and a well-filled quiver of arrows, and left. As he plunged into his jungle, it was good to feel the soft leaf mold under his bare feet, the cool leaves brushing against his face and body.
He was meat-hungry, and his archery soon won him an unwary curassow. Having eaten, he hurried onward with a fixed purpose—to reach, as soon as possible, the place where he had found Ramona. With Borno gone and Chicma become grouchy and unsociable, he longed for the companionship of a friend. And Ramona was the only other living creature who had shown friendship for him.
She attracted him, too, in a different way from the others. At thought of her his pulse would quicken in a manner quite impossible to explain.
He shortened what had been a four-day journey to three. Arriving at the edge of Don Fernando’s grove of young rubber trees, he hurried to the place where he had last seen her. But he found only the gnawed bones of the puma.
Recalling the direction in which she had gone when called, he went that way and eventually arrived at the patio gate. It was made from heavy planks which fitted a high-arched gateway. He looked through a crack between two planks and saw the object of his quest, seated beneath a tree and holding before her the basket of white leaves with little black tracks on them.
Jan knew nothing of the mechanism of the gate, and the smooth, plastered surface of the high patio wall offered no opportunity for a finger hold, but he observed that a branch of the tree under which the girl was sitting overhung the wall near a branch of a rubber tree outside. This made a clear path for the jungle-trained Jan.
Hearing a slight sound in the tree above her, Ramona was about to cry out in fear, but she stifled the sound when her knight-errant dropped softly beside her.
“Jan!” she whispered. “You startled me!
“Come see you,” he responded. “Jan like you.”
“Shh! Not so loud. You will wake my duenna.”
“Jan don’ understan’,” he said, imitating her low tones.
She rose, and drew aside the branch of a bushy shrub, one of a clump. Just behind it he saw a short and very round woman in black, seated in a gaudily striped lawn chair with her hands folded in her lap, snoring quite audibly. The thought flashed to his mind that this must be some deadly enemy of Ramona’s. With a low growl he whipped his bow and arrow from the quiver, and took quick aim at the old lady.
The horrified girl caught his hand.
“No, no! You must not hurt her! She is my friend. She loves me. But she must not know that you are here with me.”
Puzzled, the youth replaced bow and arrow in his quiver.
“Jan try understan’,” he whispered.
She laid a hand on his arm.
“Sit here beside me,” she said, “so you will not be seen. Then, if we talk quietly, no one will know that you are here, and perhaps you may come again.”
They talked for nearly half an hour, Jan asking questions in his limited broken English aided by the universal language of signs and Ramona trying to explain things to him. He asked her about the little basket of white leaves covered with many black tracks, and she told him the little tracks talked to her. She told him the basket was called a “book,” and that the tracks were called “letters,” while groups of tracks were called “words.”
At the end of a half hour Ramona said:
“You must go now, Jan. As soon as Señora Soledade finishes her siesta she will look for me and I don’t want her to see you. Come tomorrow at this time, and I will be here.”
Jan left without protest, going over the wall as he had come. Once in the jungle, he shot a peccary, ate his fill, drank deeply at the river, and crept beneath the roots of a ceiba to dream of a pair of lustrous brown eyes.
And Ramona, having sent him away, was thrilled by her power over this handsome youth who, though he was a mighty slayer of fierce beasts and savage men, obeyed her, lightest request without question.