The Pathless Trail

CONTENTS


I. SONS OF THE NORTH

II. AT SUNDOWN

III. THE VOICE OF THE WILDS

IV. THE GERMAN

V. INTO THE BUSH

VI. IN THE NIGHT WATCH

VII. COLD STEEL

VII. THE DOUBLE-CROSS

IX. FIDDLERS THREE

X. BY THE LIGHT OF STORM

XI. OUT OF THE AIR

XII. THE ARROW

XIII. THE WAY OF THE JUNGLE

XIV. A DUEL WITH DEATH

XV. THE CANNIBALS

XVI. BLACKBEARD

XVII. FEVER

XIX. FRUIT OF THE TRAP

XIX. THE RED BONES

XX. THE RAPOSA

XXI. SHADOWS OF THE NIGHT

XXII. THE SIREN OF WAR

XXIII. STRATEGY

XXIV. THE BATTLE OF THE TRIBES

XXV. THE PASSING OF SCHWANDORF

XXVI. PARTNERS




THE PATHLESS TRAIL




CHAPTER I.

SONS OF THE NORTH


Three men stood ankle deep in mud on the shore of a jungle river,
silently watching a ribbon of smoke drift and dissolve above the somber
mass of trees to the northwest.

Three men of widely different types they were, yet all cradled in the
same far-off northern land. The tallest, lean bodied but broad
shouldered, black of hair and gray of eye, held himself in soldierly
fashion and gazed unmoved. His two mates--one stocky, red faced and red
headed; the other slender, bronzed and blond--betrayed their thoughts in
their blue eyes. The red man squinted quizzically at the smoke feather
as if it mattered little to him where he was. The blond watched it with
the wistfulness of one who sees the last sign of his own world fade out.

Behind them, at a respectful distance, a number of swarthy individuals
of both sexes in nondescript garments smoked and stared at the trio with
the interest always accorded strangers by the dwellers of the Out
Places. They eyed the uncompromising back of the tall one, the easy
lounge of the red one, the thoughtful attitude of the light one. The
copper-faced men peered at the rifles hanging in the right hands of the
newcomers, their knee boots, khaki clothing, and wide hats. The women
let their eyes rove over the boxes and bundles reposing in the mud
beside the three.

"_Ingles?_" hazarded a woman, speaking through the stem of the black
pipe clutched in her filed teeth.

"_Notre-Americano_," asserted a man, nodding toward the broad hats.
"Englishmen would wear the round helmets of pith."

"_Mercadores?_ Traders?" suggested the woman, hopefully running an eye
again over the bundles.

"_Exploradores_," the man corrected. "Explorers of the bush. Have you no
eyes? Do you not see the guns and high boots?"

The woman subsided. The others continued what seemed to be their only
occupation--smoking.

The smoke streamer in the north vanished. As if moved by the same
impulse, the three strangers turned their heads and looked
south-westward, upriver. The red-haired man spoke.

"So we've lit at last, as the feller said when him and his airyplane
landed in a sewer. Faith, I dunno but he was better off than us, at
that--he wasn't two thousand miles from nowheres like we are. The
steamer's gone, and us three pore li'l' boys are left a long ways from
home."