Presently Maliche rose, and mumbling that he was going on a hunt to secure food for the morrow, he vanished among the trees. It was the last time I ever saw him alive. Perhaps half an hour after he had left I was startled by a faint, far-away scream, the terrified cry of a human being, and I leaped to my feet, alert, listening, filled with fears. Then once again came the scream, suddenly cut short in a faint, choking groan. Something had happened. Maliche was in trouble! Leaping forward, dashing between the trees, I sped in the direction of the sound. Presently, I saw a lighter spot, the trees thinned, and before me stretched an open space in the forest. At the sight that met my eyes, the blood seemed to freeze in my veins. I fairly shook with terror, and a horrified cry rose to my lips. Squatting in the center of the open space was the most monstrous, the most horrible, the most repulsive being that ever the eyes of man have looked upon. At first sight I had thought the thing a hideous sculptured stone idol. There, fully thirty feet above the ground, was the great, misshapen, grotesque head, a head adorned with an upstanding crest of huge spikes, a head with bestial fiery red eyes, with a gaping cavernous mouth armed with immense, curved white fangs. There was the great monolithic body of dull-green, covered with intricate geometric patterns in relief. There were the crooked short arms with talons in place of fingers, and there were the columnar bowed legs, all as massive, as hard, as unreal as any sculptured Mayan god. But the illusion was only momentary. Behind the terrifying monster extended a gigantic scaly tail, the huge corpse-white paunch rose and fell as the thing breathed, the scarlet eyes moved from side to side. The stupendous, indescribably horrible thing was alive, a creature of flesh and blood! I felt sick, faint, nauseated as my bewildered brain and horror-filled eyes took in the scene. In one gigantic front foot, clasped tightly against its chest, the monster held the body of Maliche! * * * * * [Illustration: Squatting in the center of the open space was the most monstrous, the most horrible, the most repulsive being that ever the eyes of man had looked upon] * * * * * Blood dripped down the livid white belly and crimson foam drooled from the huge mouth, as the fiendish thing masticated something in its titanic jaws. The next instant I realized what it was crunching between its terrible teeth. The mangled decapitated body of the Indian told the story. It was Maliche’s head!