Part 5 (1/2)
”Good Lord!” groaned McKay ”Even here at the end of the world one can't get away from those beastly instruments”
A throaty chuckle fro a big bottle
”Yet there is one thing to be thankful for, gentlemen,” he said ”In all this town there is not one hed Thomaz appeared with bottles and thick cups Corks were drawn, liquids gurgled,Schwandorf shot a question through the gloom:
”Have you seen Cabral--the superintendent?”
”Yes”
”Ask him about the wilddefinite He suggested that we see you”
”So”
A pause, while Schwandorf's cigar end glowed like a flaan, abruptly ”Twenty-four days by canoe, five days through the bush on the east shore That would bring you to their main settle tribe, as tribes go Ever been here before?”
”No Not here,” Knowlton told him ”I've been in Rio, and McKay here has knocked around in--”
A stealthy kick fro the sentence, he concluded, ”--in a number of places”
”So” Another pause ”Then I should explain about tribes Tribes here generally consist of fro houses called '_, one house holds them all There may be any number of _malocas_, the inhabitants of which are all of the saovernment is concerned, a tribe to itself, controlled by a chief No _maloca_ owes any duty to any other _maloca_ There is no supre thehbors At tihbors You understand”
”'When Greek meets Greek--'” quoted McKay
”Just so When I say, then, that the Red Bones are a big tribe, I mean that there are about five hundred--maybe more--individuals in theirtribe-house like the Mayorunas They are not Mayorunas, in fact; they paint differently, are darker of skin, and more cruel
”The Mayorunas, by the way, are not so debased as you h cannibals, they do not kill for the sake of eating 'long pig,'
like the cannibals of the South Seas Neither do they eat the whole body Only the hands and feet of their dead enemies are devoured These are carefully cooked and eaten as delicacies along with s prepared for a feast in honor of a victory The eating of huery Further for victiainst them as eneers ely on the ability of the strangers to convince the savages that they were friends The difficulty is that the savages consider all strangers to be enemies until friendshi+p is proved”
”A sizable difficulty,” McKay reht be done Mind, I speak now of the Mayorunas, not of the Red Bones I tell you again that the Red Bone country is closed”
”And where is the Mayoruna region?”
”In the saeneral section The Mayorunas are much more widely distributed They are on both banks of the Javary and extend as far west as the Ucayali