After the girl's announcement the mucker had continued to sit with bowed head staring at the ground. Afternoon had deepened into evening, and now the brief twilight of the tropics was upon them--in a few moments it would be dark.
Presently Byrne looked up. His eyes wandered about the tiny clearing. Suddenly he staggered to his feet. Barbara Harding sprang up, startled by the evident alarm in the man's attitude.
"What is it?" she whispered. "What is the matter?"
"De Chink!" he cried. "Where is de Chink?"
And, sure enough, Oda Iseka had disappeared!
The youthful daimio had taken advantage of the preoccupation of his captors during the last moments of Theriere to gnaw in two the grass rope which bound him to the mucker, and with hands still fast bound behind him had slunk into the jungle path that led toward his village.
"They will be upon us again now at any moment," whispered the girl. "What can we do?"
"We better duck," replied the mucker. "I hates to run away from a bunch of Chinks, but I guess it's up to us to beat it."
"But poor Mr. Theriere?" asked the girl.
"I'll have to bury him close by," replied the mucker. "I don't tink I could pack him very fer tonight--I don't feel jest quite fit agin yet. You wouldn't mind much if I buried him here, would you?"
"There is no other way, Mr. Byrne," replied the girl. "You mustn't think of trying to carry him far. We have done all we can for poor Mr. Theriere--you have almost given your life for him already--and it wouldn't do any good to carry his dead body with us."
"I hates to tink o' dem head-huntin' Chinks gettin' him," replied Byrne; "but maybe I kin hide his grave so's dey won't tumble to it."
"You are in no condition to carry him at all," said the girl. "I doubt if you can go far even without any burden."
The mucker grinned.
"Youse don't know me, miss," he said, and stooping he lifted the body of the Frenchman to his broad shoulder, and started up the hillside through the trackless underbrush.
It would have been an impossible feat for an ordinary man in the pink of condition, but the mucker, weak from pain and loss of blood, strode sturdily upward while the marveling girl followed close behind him. A hundred yards above the spring they came upon a little level spot, and here with the two swords of Oda Yorimoto which they still carried they scooped a shallow grave in which they placed all that was mortal of the Count de Cadenet.