Two more steps, and Tucu stopped, head thrust forward, eyes boring into something on the ground. The rest, taking care not to touch one another's weapons, crowded around and looked down at the huddled form of a man. A matted mass of black hair, a neck burned copper brown by sun, tattered cotton shirt and trousers, big, bare dirty feet, a rusty repeating rifle of heavy caliber--these were what they saw first. The man lay straight, his face in the dirt, his hands a little ahead as if he had been crawling forward at the moment of death. Tucu turned him on his back, revealing a blanched yellow-brown face which was proof positive of his race. "Peruvian," said Pedro. "What got him?" demanded Knowlton. "No wound on him." Lourenço questioned Tucu. The leader, who evidently knew just where to look, tore open the thin shirt at the left side and pointed to a tiny discoloration surrounding a red dot under the ribs. He muttered a few laconic words. "A blowgun trap," Lourenço explained. "The gun is set a little way beyond here. This man, sneaking along the path, broke the little cord which shot the gun. The poisoned dart struck in his side. He must have pulled out the dart, but he could not go far before his legs became paralyzed, and he fell. Then, still trying to crawl, he died." Pedro picked up the dead man's gun and worked the lever. The weapon was fully loaded and showed no sign of recent firing. Pedro coolly pumped it empty, gathered up the blunt .44 cartridges, and pocketed them for his own use. Tucu watched the proceeding in satirical approval. Then, leaving the body where it lay, he went stooping along the path ahead, his keen eyes searching the undergrowth. In a few minutes he returned with the blood-stained dart which, as Lourenço had guessed, the stricken prowler had pulled from his flesh and dropped. This he passed to a blowgun man. The latter carefully opened his poison pouch, redipped the point of the dart, held it a moment to dry in a shaft of sunlight, and slipped it into his dart case among a score of unused missiles. "No waste of ammunition here," was McKay's dry comment. "What happens to this corpse now?" Through Lourenço's mouth Tucu answered. "It will be left here until police warriors come from the _malocas_. Certain men travel the paths daily to inspect the traps. When they find this man they will cut off his hands and feet with their wooden knives and throw the rest aside to be eaten by the animals. He has not been dead long or he would have been devoured by some wild thing before we came. The trail travelers will set the trap again and take the hands and feet to the _malocas_, where they will be washed, cooked, and eaten." The faces of the Americans contracted slightly. A simultaneous thought made them flash startled glances at each other. "Tim--" Knowlton said, and paused. Lourenço smiled.