Arthur O. Friel

“ Ramón Rodriguez was gone. Where he had last stood was a crimson mess which was not a man, nor even parts of a man; a hash of cloth and hair and meat that was only a hideous blob on the clean sand. Watching those grim-faced killers advance on us, I cocked my rifle and braced myself.
"Alto ahí!" I commanded. "Halt where you are!"
They came straight on. But one spoke in Spanish.
"We know you, Loco León. You are a friend." ”

“ Your Maquiritares have nothing to say about it—or you either. What Ramón Rodriguez wants, he takes."
He was putting more force behind every word, working into his usual loud boldness. I decided to show him and all the listeners where he stood in the opinion of Loco León.
"You need not yell at me," I told him. "I am not deaf. And do not forget that while any dog can growl and show his teeth, it is one thing to bark and another to anger a león. The wise cur is the one who knows enough to make little noise when the león is near enough to use his claws." ”

“ What interested me was the fact that she was there with Rodriguez.
She was young, just past her girlhood—perhaps fifteen years old; the Indian girls in our country become women early, and the change is swift. She was plump, strongly built, firm-breasted, and very light of skin; light even for the forest-dwelling Maquiritares, who are much more fair than the Guahibos and other Indians of the sunburned plains. Except for the fact that her face had the flatness so often found among Indians, she was attractive to the eye of almost any Venezolano. ”