Scott smiled. "You're the skipper of this hunt. We'll stay here."
Hurst scratched his head. "If I was you, sir, I'd git up in a tree—an' I'd sweeten th' powder in that musket. I've got my rifle loaded with two balls. Better watch close, too; Hamzah says tigers are almighty quiet when they want to be an' almighty fast on their feet."
Scott and Peary climbed to a thick bough overhanging the trail to water. There, twenty feet or so above the ground, they drew the charges of their muskets and pistols and reloaded with dry powder. Then they settled down to wait.
By now the normal noises of the rain forest, the cries of birds and monkeys, were dying out; soon there was silence broken only by the lulling sound of water rushing over and past rocks in the bed of the narrow stream. The perch Scott and Peary had chosen was not comfortable and, moreover, was infested by ants and ticks. The mate took a flask from the pocket of his coat and, without offering it to the captain, drank deeply.
After awhile the noise of the beaters, faint in the distance and muffled by the dense growth, came to them. Peary scratched himself, cursed in a tense whisper, and tilted his bottle again. He had not been entirely sober since the quarrel with Scott. The captain, who had little use for Dutch courage, listened to the slowly increasing sound of horns, drums, rattles and whistles. If that tiger's anywhere around, he thought nervously, he'll be popping out of the woods pretty soon. That racket would wake the dead.
"Scott," Peary said suddenly, his voice roughened by drink.
The captain looked at him appraisingly. He was startled to notice that the man's eyes were narrow, hard and malevolent in a flushed face, and that he was casually pointing his musket in his direction.
"Careful with that musket, man," Scott said irritably, feeling a slight chill run along his spine. "It might go off."
"It might, at that," Peary agreed. "Drop your musket, Scott."
Scott stiffened in real alarm. "You're drunk, Clay."
"So I am. Drop it!"
Scott didn't argue. Peary was only eight or nine feet from him and the muzzle of his weapon yawned like the mouth of a cannon. He let the musket fall to the soft humus of the ages-old forest floor.
"What are you about, Clay?" he asked angrily despite sudden cold fear.
"Drop your pistols," Peary commanded. "And don't try to use 'em."
Scott complied helplessly. "You're drunk, Clay."
"You said that before."
Scott looked at the unwavering musket. He saw and heard Peary draw back the hammer. He knew there wasn't a chance the man could miss hitting him with a one-ounce lead ball if he pulled the trigger. Sweat broke out all over him.
"Scared, Scott?" Peary asked mockingly. The smile on his face was satisfied, and evil.
The captain didn't lie to him. He was searching his mind for the reason behind this outbreak of malevolence; it had to be more than mere drunkenness. Desperately he wondered if he could reach the musket; but his position on the thick bough was such that he could not move easily. He tried to speak lightly, though. "I am—if it makes you feel any better." "It does, Scott. It does. I want you to sweat awhile." The insistent noise made by the beaters was nearer now and steadily increasing in volume, but the captain barely heard the swelling cacophony. His mouth was so cottony that he had difficulty in speaking. "You're mad, man. Mad." The mate laughed mockingly. "Perhaps. Does it matter?" Scott was convinced the man really was insane; that his mind had snapped... from heat, from drink, from fever, from brooding over some fancied slight or injury... from any one of these things or any combination of them. His memory skipped back over clashes they had had. There was nothing in any of them, in so far as he could recall, to warrant murder. And he was convinced his brother-in-law intended to slay him in cold blood. He tried to fill his mouth with saliva, so as to speak with more facility, but the glands seemed to have run dry.
"I think you've guessed it, Scott," Peary said softly. "I am going to kill you. It'll be an accident, you understand—just an understandable mishap with a musket—but you'll be dead. Very dead."
Scott's voice was a croak. "But why, Clay? Why?"
"Because you killed her, Scott."
"Killed who, for God's sake?"
Peary's voice softened even more. "Rowena."
The captain started so that he almost fell into the trail below. "Rowena! You are crazy, Clay! I was at sea and you were with me when she died."
"Don't rationalize, Scott. But for you, there would have been no baby. But for the baby, there would have been no death. You killed her and I'm going to kill you."
Scott stalled desperately for time. He knew he had to get Peary off balance, even if for only a moment. Better to die trying for life than to sit and perish. "Rowena was my wife. I loved her; she loved me. What was wrong with such a relationship?"
"Don't get any ideas about grabbing this musket, Scott, I know you pretty well, you know."
"Tell me!" Scott insisted.
"I never really got used to the idea of your being married to her while she was alive, Scott, but after her death I tried to like you. I rationalized to myself; I told myself you really had loved her and meant well by her; I almost convinced myself you were worthy of her. But already you're after other women . . . that Spanish hussy, for one, and the native girl you've been sleeping with."
"Rowena is dead, man. I am not hurting her."
"There's more to it than that, Scott. Much more. I could stand your winning Rowena, but I can't tolerate your faithfulness to her memory."
"In God's name, Clay, what are you driving at?"
"Just sit tight, Scott. Don't make me shoot you before I'm ready. They'll think I'm shooting at the tiger, you know." Peary paused, then spoke on in a curiously tight voice. "I loved Rowena, too."
"Why shouldn't you? She was your sister."
"But I didn't love her as a sister. That"—Peary's face became twisted with sudden agony—"that was why she hated me. You knew she hated me, didn't you, Scott?"
The full implication of the man's words hit Scott like a bony fist in the solar plexus. His stomach revolted. Nausea threatened him. No wonder his wife had disliked, perhaps even feared, her brother. The reason was sickeningly clear.
Peary's next words hammered on Scott's consciousness.
"That makes you sick, doesn't it, brother-in-law? You can't understand it, but still it makes you ill to know it. You got what I couldn't have, and you killed her." Suddenly his voice rose shrilly. "Now, by God, you're sure I'm going to kill you, aren't you?"
In blind fury Scott lunged for the musket, hating the perverted man holding it as he had never hated anyone before. He moved so quickly that he got hold of the barrel before Peary could pull the trigger. The musket went off deafeningly even as the two men fell from the tree, both still clinging to the weapon. They hit the thick mat of decayed vegetable matter without hurt and scrambled frantically to their feet, each determined to kill.
It was then that the tiger—broad-faced, green-eyed, and reduced by age and old hurts to the hunting and slaying of humans—burst from the jungle. Maddened by the tumult set up by the beaters, terrorized by the number of his tormentors, the great beast crashed into the open. It snarled ferociously. Scott saw it as a tawny flash that struck down Clay Peary without effort, then quickly bunched its muscles to leap to a rock in midstream.
The tiger paused only momentarily on the rock, but it was long enough for Hurst and Darus to see it. They fired together. Darus missed in his shaking excitement, but both the balls in the woodsman's rifle struck its spine. It roared in anguish and fury as it fell into the shallow water.