looking sharply right and left; but when we
came to the camp the doctor quietly walked by me, remarking, "My eyes
are better than yours, colonel; if he is in sight I'll point him out
to you, as you have the rifle." However, he was not there, and the
others soon joined us with the welcome news that they had found the
carbine.

The murderer had stood to one side of the path and killed his victim,
when a dozen paces off, with deliberate and malignant purpose. Then
evidently his murderous hatred had at once given way to his innate
cowardice; and, perhaps hearing some one coming along the path, he
fled in panic terror into the wilderness. A tree had knocked the
carbine from his hand. His footsteps showed that after going some rods
he had started to return, doubtless for the carbine, but had fled
again, probably because the body had then been discovered. It was
questionable whether or not he would live to reach the Indian
villages, which were probably his goal. He was not a man to feel
remorse--never a common feeling; but surely that murderer was in a
living hell, as, with fever and famine leering at him from the
shadows, he made his way through the empty desolation of the
wilderness. Franca, the cook, quoted out of the melancholy proverbial
philosophy of the people the proverb: "No man knows the heart of any
one"; and then expressed with deep conviction a weird ghostly belief I
had never encountered before: "Paishon is following Julio now, and
will follow him until he dies; Paishon fell forward on his hands and
knees, and when a murdered man falls like that his ghost will follow
the slayer as long as the slayer lives."

We did not attempt to pursue the murderer. We could not legally put
him to death, although he was a soldier who in cold blood had just
deliberately killed a fellow soldier. If we had been near civilization
we would have done our best to bring him in and turn him over to
justice. But we were in the wilderness, and how many weeks' journey
were ahead of us we could not tell. Our food was running low, sickness
was beginning to appear among the men, and both their courage and
their strength were gradually ebbing. Our first duty was to save the
lives and the health of the men of the expedition who had honestly
been performing, and had still to perform, so much perilous labor. If
we brought the murderer in he would have to be guarded night and day
on an expedition where there were always loaded firearms about, an