The tribe’s trails were marked, but ingeniously so. Markers appeared only once every twelve or eighteen feet and were simply small branches that the blazer had half broken and then bent backward. To anyone but a Cinta Larga, these markers were indistinguishable from any of a million other broken and bent branches in the rain forest. A change of direction was indicated by nothing more than a slightly larger broken branch whose bent end vaguely pointed the way. Only the Cinta Larga knew, moreover, that the markers also showed the direction to and from their camp: In a system like that used in
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