THE THIRTY GANG
A Complete Novelette
by Arthur O. Friel
Author of "Cat o' Mountain," "Black White," etc.
THAT is quite true, señor. Every man must be his own judge as to the kind of gun he should use.
There are fashions in guns, and in the way of carrying them, too, and no doubt those styles are different in different places. But any one who follows any fashion that does not suit his own needs is unwise, even if it be only a question of shoes or hat. And in the matter of a gun—if he lets fashion force him into carrying a gun unfit for his own build and his own wants he is a fool.
So, señor, since you and your partner find your .30 repeaters best for you, take them with you on your gold-hunt up the Rio Caroní. As I have told you, this Venezuela of ours is a .44 country; but if you brought plenty of ammunition from your North America you need not care for that.
Como? How is that? You have two thousand rounds for the rifles alone? Valgame Dios! I have known revolutionists to capture half the towns on this Orinoco with less. You will not use a quarter of them, unless you stay in the Caroní bush much longer than you now expect; and you will find that so many cartridges are most infernally heavy to carry. Still, it is better to have too many than too few.
Besides, if you decide later to lighten your load you can do so at a good profit. You have only to tell the Indians up there that you have cartridges of .30 caliber to trade, and very soon you will be visited by brown men bringing little bags of gold. They will buy every cartridge you are willing to sell—and your rifles also, if you are careless enough to part with them.
Oh, no, señor, those Indios themselves will not use the cartridges. They are bow-and-arrow men, having no guns except a few long muzzle-loading small bores. But they will buy your thirties because they know they can trade them in turn to the Cuadrilla Treinta, as we call it—La Cuadrilla de Treinta—"The Thirty Gang." Have I not told you of that mysterious band, which from time to time crosses the whole length of the unknown Guayana highlands in order to buy cartridges of .30 caliber?
They are Indians all; Indians of the Maquiritare nation, and descendants of the old fighting Caribs who held this land when the first white men came; Indians who live in the jungled mountains from which spring the rivers Caura and Ventuari, and in which only two white men ever walk. One of those white men is I, Loco León, the only blond Spaniard in all the back bush of Venezuela, and, therefore, much whiter than any other white to be found there. The other is Black White—El Blanco Negro—the North American whose skin and whose mind both were turned black years ago by a Maquiritare maiden, and who consequently is white only in name.
It is for him, for Black White, that those Indios cross the cruel Parima mountains and buy cartridges. By some secret trade-route of their own they go all the way to the river Cuyuni, in Guayana Inglesa (British Guiana), where men hunt diamonds and gold; and from those gold-hunters, who have ways of getting cartridges in spite of the laws, they buy those bullets—always of caliber .30.
That is why the Cuyuni men call them the "Thirty Gang." And because the Thirty Gang pays high and always has plenty of gold, though no man has ever learned where they find it, some of those Cuyuni men have smuggled in rifles as well as cartridges for sale to the brown men. And Black White, the renegade who brought into the Maquiritare land the first high-power rifle ever seen there, now has about him a little force so well-armed and so wily that I do not believe the whole federal army of Venezuela could ever capture him if it tried.
I learned of those guns in a rather odd way, and since that time I have puzzled more than once over what then came about; or, rather, over the thing that Black White then did. To any one not acquainted with White, as I am, it might not seem so strange. But I know him to be a madman: a man ruined, heart and soul, by the terrible secret drink of the Caribs which was given him by the Maquiritare girl whom he had made his plaything and whom he then intended to abandon; a man who was heartless enough before that time, and who since then has been bitter against man, woman, and God. And to think that such a man
But let me begin at the beginning. This ron anciado has a way of making the tongue wag off sidewise, unless one takes enough to keep it well oiled. Tobalito! Here, muchacho! Another bottle of the same, and charge it to my account. And bring fresh glasses for three!
I
NOW, as I have told you, señores, before this, I am a rover of the balata rubber country where the Maquiritares live. In the dry time, when no balata can be gathered, I ramble in those wild mountains both for business and for pleasure: I scout for new rubber trees, I visit the tribe-houses of my Maquiritare friends, and I enjoy the freedom and the sudden adventures of the untamed highlands. In the rainy season my Maquiritares work the balata for me at the places I have chosen, and when the crop is in I bring it down the Orinoco to sell to Blum's commission house here in Ciudad Bolívar. Then I return to the uplands.
I am the only blanco in all Venezuela who can follow this life among the Maquiritares, for I am the only one whom they trust. Throughout their land the name of Loco León is known as that of an amigo and a buen hombre, who always keeps his word and treats them justly.
There are other men, of course, who also work the balata in the up-Orinoco country—but none who work it in the home-land of the Maquiritares. They would do so if they could, but they know the brown men would not let them. Perhaps when this tale of mine is done you will understand why the Indians keep those brutes out of their hills.
It was three years ago when this thing came about. It was also three years from the time when White had been turned into Black White by Juana, daughter of the chief of the Maquiritares of Uauana, at the top of the perilous river Ventuari.
Since that day I never had seen the face of that blackened man, nor did I wish to; for he has sworn that no white man shall look on his face and live to tell of it, and he means what he says. But I had heard his voice at times, and knew he still lived; for sometimes at night he would arrive unexpectedly and, standing back in the darkness where the light of my little camp-fire would not reveal him, he would order me to talk to him in English; and I would talk until, as suddenly as he had come, he went. I knew, too, that the girl Juana always was with him, for I heard her voice also.
But except for these things I knew nothing of him, because the Maquiritares would not talk about him, even to me.
Now, in that year of which I speak, I had finished my season's work, brought my balata down the Orinoco to Bolívar, taken my annual holiday, and gone back up the big river. Thus I had come to San Fernando de Atabapo, the only town in the big Territorio de Amazonas, and the place from which the murder-maniac Tomas Funes and his cut-throat army ruled the whole up-Orinoco country. It was also the place where my rivals in the balata trade lived in the dry season.
They had no love for me, those San Fernando men, nor I for them. They were jealous of me because, thanks to my straight dealings with the Maquiritares, I always got far bigger cargoes of balata than they could gather by brutal methods. My feelings toward them and their town was that of any normal man toward a den of snakes.
But, for several reasons, it was necessary for me to stop at San Fernando. I had to change boats, leaving the piragua in which my crew had poled up from the rapids of Maipures and transferring my trade-goods to the long curial which I use on the Ventuari. I had to visit Funes and tell him what I had seen and heard down the river; every one traveling up had to do this or risk being executed for disrespect to the tyrant. And I had to walk about, meet my enemies and look them in the eye, and let them see that I was not afraid of them. So I stopped at the town and did all these things.
Funes was in a sour mood that day, but I told him several funny stories about happenings here in Bolívar, and before I left him he was roaring like an areguato monkey. Then I strolled about the town, taking a drink here and there, listening to what I might hear, and talking to men who ached to kill me.
There was not the least doubt in my mind as to what those enemies of mine wanted to do. But I did not swagger about with rifle ready as if seeking trouble. Indeed, I had deliberately left my rifle in Funes' house, asking one of his bodyguard to take care of it for me; and my poniard and revolver were at my waist under my loose white coat—though the coat was unbuttoned. Nor did those men who longed to see my blood spattering on the ground speak what was in their black hearts. Things were not done so roughly in Funes' town—unless Funes himself ordered it.
"Hola, Loco León!" was the hearty greeting I got from the snake-tongued men. "Como 'stá uste', amigo? How are things below? Come and have a drink!"
And their hands would carelessly slip a little nearer to their belts.
"Gracia', Lucio," I would say. "I will have that drink and) buy you two in return. All is well down the river. How is it with you?"
And my arm would accidentally brush my coat back a trifle more from my hips.
And while we smiled and spoke so with our lips, their eyes would say—
"Your life hangs by a thread, and at my own time I shall cut it."
And mine would answer—
"It will take a better man than you to do it."
So we would drink and joke—with our mouths; and all would look as peaceful as windless water.
Yet these men who greeted me so cordially had boasted about what they would do to me when next I should come to town. Those brags had come to my ears, and now I was giving them their chance to "start something," as you North Americans say. And I was not the only one who waited to see how well the boasters made good their threats. While I stood and drank in the Casa del Pueblo, other men came carelessly drifting in or loitered around the doors, looking very innocent but watching and listening to what went on.
They kept on waiting, for nothing happened. I drank with every one of the men who had talked so loudly when I was far away, and they still did nothing but talk; what is more, they were careful how they talked.
Several times one or another of them passed behind my back, but I gave no attention to them; I knew that at that moment Tomas Funes felt good-humored toward me, and that every man in town was aware of it, and so every one of them knew that whoever stabbed me in the back would very soon be beheaded at Funes' order. Of course, if I should be killed in a fight, or by accident, that would be another matter.
Since nobody started a fight and there seemed to be little chance of an "accident" just then, I decided to quit drinking. I had had enough, and the boasters had not even boasted in my hearing, so there was no sense in wasting more time and money there. There was a full cup of caballo blanco (white rum) on the bar before me, and after tossing it off I would leave the place. But I never drank that liquor.
The little room was very hot, and the man at my right pushed away from the bar and went to the door. Another man stepped into his place, with his rifle swinging at his left leg. Glancing at him, I saw that he was a hard fellow, named Diego, who belonged to one of my snaky enemies, Otón Argel. And Argel himself had been standing for some time at my other side, and still stood there. So I was between Argel and his man.
Now, this Argel was supposed to be one of Tomás Funes' pets. I say "supposed to be," because no man ever could be sure of himself with Funes. No matter how slavishly he obeyed the tyrant's whims, he might suddenly find himself out of favor and lucky if he escaped with his life; for Funes trusted nobody, and many of the men killed by his order were murdered because he suspected them of plotting against him.
He did not even trust his own mistress—in which, perhaps, he was wise. Still, as I say, this Argel was believed to be in the good graces of Funes—though he had not succeeded in convincing his master that I ought to be executed, as he probably had tried to do.
He had been drinking there with me for some time, but I knew he had taken no more than I. Yet now he began to act drunk. He laughed very loud, slapped the bar with his hands, and threw his shoulders about quite clumsily. And Diego, saying nothing, stood loosely at my right side, his gun-butt on the floor and his eyes on the rum before him. His left hand hung down beside his rifle.
I was no stranger to San Fernando and its ways, and I smelt an "accident." Paying no attention to Diego, I watched the staggering Argel cornerwise and moved my right hand toward my cup of rum. At that instant Argel lurched heavily toward me.
My hand clutched the edge of the bar and I threw myself back with all my strength. In the same second Diego's gun belched flame across my abdomen. Burning powder stung my flesh. Argel gave a hoarse, horrible sound. His thick body thumped on the floor, and he writhed on the spot where my feet had just been.
II
"ADIOS MIO!" yelled Diego. "The gun has exploded! Loco León is hurt!"
He yelled it even as his master was falling; yelled it too quickly, showing that he had the words ready to shout as soon as his bullet tore through me. With the words he twitched his left hand to drop the black thread, now broken, by which he had pulled the trigger of his cocked gun when his master shoved me.
It was not a very new trick in San Fernando, but up to now it had always worked well. An "accidental" push against a loaded rifle—an "accidental" explosion—made an "accident" that was always loudly bemoaned by the fellow with the gun, but not by the victim. A .44 slug sent upward from under the ribs blows all moans out of a man.
But when Diego saw whom that bullet had caught, the other things he had ready to say stuck in his throat. Argel struggled over on one side before he died, and his wicked eyes glared up at Diego, who stood like a stone.
" roast you forever!" gasped Argel. Then he crumpled up and was quiet. Diego, still holding his thread, lifted his face in a dazed way and stared at me.
"A slight mistake, Diego," I said. "It is not Loco León who is hurt. But that is the fault of Argel, not yours. You had better find a patrón who is not so clumsy."
I was angry enough to kill him—a powder burn across the belly does not improve a man's temper—but I let him live. He was only a tool, and the real assassin—Argel—had paid in full. Later I laughed long over the joke of it, but just then I was not in a merry mood.
His hand went to his machete, but he did not draw. His rifle was on the floor, where it had dropped in the "accident," and he let it lie. I gave him a hard shove that sent him sprawling, and then started for the door. But before I reached it there was work to do.
Erasmo Argel, brother of the dead man, let out a squall like a maddened cat and jumped for me.
"My brother! León has killed my brother!" he screeched. His dagger was out, and he stabbed for my throat. Other men, too, snarled. I had to fight fast if I was to leave that place alive.
I dodged the knife and shot Erasmo in the stomach. And then, with revolver in one hand and poniard in the other, I shot and stabbed my way straight out of there. I did not pick my men—I had no friends there, and I attacked everybody in my way. The watchers at the door broke and scattered to get away from me. They had nothing in particular against me, and had come only to see what might take place, and now they were well pleased with the show. So, with gun empty but knife ready, I walked away without further trouble.
There was mad swearing back in the rum-shop, but the outsiders laughed and called after me:
"Well fought, León! The Coronel will make you a sargento primero in the army!"
And I heard one say:
"Por Dios, but, this Loco León is well named! When he fights he is a mad lion in truth!"
But, Mad Lion though I might be, I was a lone lion among a big pack of treacherous dogs, and I had no wish to stay there. Those who cheered me now might shoot me down in the next ten minutes; Funes might laugh over the end of the Argel brothers, or he might have me tied to a tree and beheaded. I decided to make a complaint to Funes himself before others could complain of me, and then to get away as quickly as possible. So, reloading as I went, I swiftly crossed the plaza to Funes' headquarters.
It had grown dark now, and I was halted sharply at Funes' door and held there until a lantern was put to my face. The guard had been changed at sundown, and it happened to be under command of Amalio Lopez, who was by far the best man in Funes' whole force: a brave, sensible fellow, who, when Funes finally was captured and executed in 1921 by the army of Cedeño, died fighting to the last for his chief. He was the one man in the place worthy of any respect.
"Ah, it is Loco León," he said. "You can not see the Coronel now, Loco. He orders that nobody disturb him before morning, as he entertains two women. What was the shooting over there?"
"It was my shooting," I answered boldly. "See, my shirt is shot away by that hound of an Otón Argel. He tried the rifle accident on me. Erasmo tried stabbing me. Both are dead, and others also. Now I want to know if this was done by the order of the Coronel. If he wants my life why does he not take it in the usual way?"
"Whenever he wants it he will take it in that way," Amalio answered grimly. "He gave the Argels no instructions. They are dead? I am glad of it. But this may be serious for you, Loco. The chief had use for them."
"He has use for me also," I snapped back. "I pay him a larger balata tax than any other man in this Rio Negro country. What is more, it was only a little while ago that I amused him much, and that is worth more than money. And if those dogs would try killing me without authority, would they not do other things against authority? Might they not even try to murder the chief himself? Who knows?"
"That is so," Amalio slowly agreed. The one thought always in the mind of Funes and his men was that some one would try to kill him. "Well, you will see him tomorrow. Then he will do as he sees fit. Now, go!"
I intended to go farther than he meant me to, for I suspected that Funes might be ugly-tempered in the morning; but I gave no sign of my intentions. I only said:
"Bueno. But give me my rifle, which I left here. I may need it before sunrise."
He grinned a little and ordered that my gun be brought. By this time other men had gathered, but none came too near. When my rifle was in my hands I said to those watching:
"I go walking, and I sleep alone. Let none of you try to follow. Amalio, thank you, and buen' noche'."
"Buen' noche'," he yawned. And I walked away into the dark, and none followed.
I walked southward, as if heading for the house where I usually slept when in the town. But at the first dark corner I slipped around and loped down toward the river Atabapo, where my loaded curial lay.
Whether my crew of mestizos, who usually paddled me as far as my first sitio on the Ventuari, was at the canoe now I did not know, though I had ordered that two men sleep there in order to prevent thievery from my supplies. But luck was with me—they all were there, gambling on a box-top and laughing or cursing as the tumbling dice gave them suertes or azares. My movements since the fight had been so rapid that nobody had yet come down to tell them about it.
"We have now," I said, jumping among them before they realized that I was arriving. "Out into the river! Move!"
They gaped a second or two. One spoke.
"Leave now? Tonight? In darkness?"
"We leave now!" I growled. "There is trouble. Unless we jump out of here there will be more. Vamos!"
They jumped. Sudden trouble was nothing new to them—they were San Fernando men themselves, of the peon class—and they knew the value of acting first and thinking afterward. In less than a minute we were aboard and had shoved away, and I had blown out the lantern.
"Straight out," I ordered. "Then downstream."
Their paddles thumped for a couple of minutes on the gunwales before any call came from behind. Then sounded a yell.
"Loco León! You dog, you pig, you ! Come here and fight!"
Lanterns were swinging down the sloping shore toward the spot where the canoe had lain. Somebody had seen me dodge around that corner, and now the dog-pack was beginning to yelp. I cocked my gun and stood up, intending to teach them manners. But then, realizing that my gun-flash would give them a target, I held my fire. With only the dull thump of the receding paddles to shoot at, they were hardly likely to do me any harm; and I had spilled enough blood there for one night.
Getting no answer, they yelped all the more boldly. Half a dozen rifles blazed at me, but the bullets flew wild. My men, without orders, began silencing their strokes. With hardly a sound, we slid on toward the midstream island, the current carrying us downward all the time. Then from the shore sounded a voice speaking loudly to the other men.
"Save your bullets, save your bullets! Let the fool go. Do you not know that Paco Peldóm waits for him at the boca del Ventuari? The gang of Paco will not fail."
A rumble of other voices followed, and the lanterns began to move back toward the streets. Then I answered them in a way that I knew would madden them more than bullets or curses. I laughed; laughed loud and high, as if I found them only amusing and contemptible.
They bawled curses, of course, but I gave none in return. We now were far enough out to avoid the rocky point below the town, and I gave the word to head straight down the river. I was out of San Fernando, and I had no time to think further of what lay behind. I was already figuring on what waited ahead.
As San Fernando lies on a point, with the river Atabapo in front and the Orinoco behind, these enemies of mine might cut across to get me when I passed up the Orinoco. I thought this improbable, however, for it meant half a mile of walking through the night, and they were much more likely to go back to the rum-shop—especially since they knew that Paco Peldóm was waiting for me. It was Paco and his gang, lurking at the mouth of my own river, that gave me some real thinking to do. The drunken fool who blurted that out had done me an unintended favor.
The plot was bigger than I had supposed. This Paco was no balata merchant, like the brothers Argel and others who hated me for business reasons. He was a killer, and head of a small but deadly band of men outlawed from Venezuela, Colombia, and Brazil; one of Funes' tools, and so inhuman that he was nicknamed El Carnicero—the Butcher.
There were many such brutes in the "army" of Funes; for birds of a feather flock together, and Funes, himself a murderous outlaw, drew around him the worst men in three countries. They took orders, of course, from the master cut-throat himself; but they also operated on their own accounts, killing and robbing for loot, for lust, or for pay. During the eight years of terror in the up-Orinoco country, many a hideous crime was committed which Tomás Funes never intended. And if any of his men was worse than this Paco Peldóm, I have not heard of that man.
Now, since I carry little money up the river with me—I leave almost all of it in bank here at Bolívar—Paco could expect no plunder from my boat except my Indian trade-goods, which would hardly tempt him. There had been no trouble between us, so he was not seeking revenge. Funes had shown no desire to kill me yet. The only good reason I could see, then, for this gang to want my life was for pay. And the only people likely to pay them much for their trouble were my business enemies.
So I concluded that those enemies had sent Paco up to the Ventuari to take care of me when I should arrive there, and that the Argel "accident" had come about because Otón was not satisfied to let well enough alone; if I was killed in San Fernando he would not have to pay Paco for my head.
With me dead, perhaps the plan was to seize my balata country in force and compel my Maquiritare friends to work it, or bring in other, weaker Indians, as slaves. With me alive, there was not much chance for those schemers to get anything on the Ventuari except bullets and arrows.
All this I thought over while we slid down the Atabapo and swung around the point into the Orinoco. And then, making a map of the Ventuari and the Orinoco in my mind, I began to laugh.
"Paco," I said to the night, "you and your wolves never fail, no? Well, we shall see."
III
THE delta of the Ventuari, señores, is a puzzling place. There, two powerful rivers, the Orinoco and the Ventuari, both born in the eastern mountains, meet each other head-on, like a pair of bulls locking boras. Since neither can push the other back into its own mountains, and both must go somewhere, they stagger off westward together until they meet the Atabapo and the Guaviare, which help the Orinoco to go northward again.
I suppose it is this everlasting fight between the two rivers which has gouged out the land all around their meeting-place and made the great Raudal de Santa Barbara. At any rate, the raudal is there, and it is a huge bay full of islands, big and little. And among these islands an experienced riverman can pick quite a number of channels if he will. And I, who had worked rubber for years on the Alto Orinoco before moving to the Ventuari, knew most of the ways through that labyrinth. So, if I had known just where Paco waited to kill me, I could have dodged around his gang with little trouble. That is, I could have done so if he had been among the islands of the delta.
But Paco, too, knew his Orinoco. And, since he was there for the purpose of getting me, he would hardly wait at any place where there was any chance for me to slip past him. He would go far enough up the Ventuari to be clear of the islands, and make camp at some point where he could not fail to see me. He would be a fool to do otherwise.
Yet there was still a way of getting around him. It was a long way and a hard way, and a way open to only one white man in the world—to me, Loco León, rover of the wilds and friend of the Maquiritares. And, rough though that way was, the thought of it was what had made me laugh there on the dark Orinoco; for no road is too hard for the man who would cheat his foes and save his life.
Besides, I had plenty of time and little to do, and I could see a bit of new country by taking this long swing. And so far as my San Fernando friends were concerned, I could disappear completely. Not even the mestizos who now peddled my canoe would be able to tell of my trail.
So I lay back in the carroza and chuckled, and the paddlers thumped on through the darkness with never a word. I knew they had heard that loud voice and what it said, but I did not believe they knew anything more than that; for they had been my crew on the journey to Bolívar and back, and so their recent stop in San Fernando had been no longer than my own; and the plan of having me killed by the Butcher probably was not generally known in the town, since it was made without the knowledge of Funes himself. At the same time, I did not trust them any too much.
When we had gone far enough up the Orinoco to be well beyond the town, I made them work to the north shore and paddle on until the lantern, now burning again, showed us a bare rock. There we tied up.
"You will sleep on the stone," I told them. "And do not come aboard before dawn."
They made no objection. They only asked that I give them the lantern, so that no tigre might pounce on them in the night. Since it is customary to burn a lantern in that way when sleeping so, I let them have it. They picked their places and lay down, and I stretched out inside the little cabin. But I did not sleep at once. They were talking low among themselves, and I knew that presently they would speak a little louder, as they always did when discussing something.
Soon I caught the name "el Carnicero." And before long one argued:
"But no, Tito, why should he spare us? He drinks blood like a murciélago—a vampire bat. Do you think he will let us go to tell of what he did to el capitán? You are simple."
That was what I had listened for. It told me that these men had not been bribed to kill me, and that they worried for fear Paco would murder them as well as me—which was not at all unlikely. So I knew I could sleep peacefully that night.
"Oh, be quiet!" I growled, as if disturbed by their voices. "The Butcher is a fool, and I will make a monkey of him. He will not even see you."
"Como, capitán?" somebody asked eagerly. "How?"
"I will show you. Now be still."
They hushed, and I went to sleep.
At dawn we were up, and at sunrise we were away. And all that day, and all the next, we crawled on up the river undisturbed. Two or three dugouts and one piragua passed us, but all were going down-stream. From San Fernando came no boat.
My men had traveled with' me before, and they knew I had the habit of getting the better of any one who attacked me. They also knew I would pay them well for their work, and that it was best for them not to desert me.
Still, the thought of the Butcher worked on their minds, as was only natural. So did the fact that I, who had not the reputation of running away from anybody, had left the town in such a hurry. And on the second day, as we neared the big raudal, one of them made bold to ask me why Paco wanted me.
I told them I did not know, unless he was hired for the job. I also told them just what had come about at San Fernando, and they laughed about it for half an hour afterward, for none of them liked the Argels. And then, deciding that it was time to hearten them and to tell them what they must know in a few hours, I added:
"Paco waits for us in the Ventuari. Let us wish him a pleasant time there. He thinks himself very clever, but there are many things he does not know. One of them is that on this trip I do not go up the Ventuari, but up the Orinoco."
They stared.
"Como? You are quitting your Ventuari grounds?" one asked.
"The grounds on the lower Ventuari are worked out, and the upper river is so dangerous that it would be very hard to bring out the crop next year," I answered. This was true. "So I shall look at another river."
But the other rivers where balata grows are the grounds of other men," the man said.
"That is their affair and mine, not yours," I reminded him. "We go up the Orinoco, and Paco waits up the Ventuari and swears."
They laughed again, much relieved. If I wanted to steal some other man's ground, that was nothing to them; indeed, it would be another joke for them to tell when they returned to San Fernando.
They wondered, of course, what river I had in mind, but I did not tell them. Their job was to do my paddling, not my planning. And now, with three jokes to think about—Otón killed in his own trap,—Paco fooled, and somebody's balata grounds jumped by Loco León—they paddled right merrily.
In the next few days we worked through Santa Barbara, seeing nothing of the Butcher's gang; swung southward, and then eastward, up the Orinoco; and passed river after river flowing in from the mountains at the north. At each of these rivers my men looked at me, and the steersman called forward:
"Aquí, capitán? Here?"
"No," I answered.
And we kept on.
After I had said this at half a dozen river-mouths, it became a sort of joke with them, and even at little caños where they knew I would not turn they asked—
"Aquí?"
They did not care how far we went, for the longer we traveled the more pesos they earned. And when, about forty leagues from the great raudal, I suddenly answered, "Si," to their question, they seemed astonished.
We had reached the mouth of the Cunucunuma: a wild, rough river dashing straight south from high mountains, and very hard to travel because it is full of raudales. In the country up this river grows the balata, and some of this balata had been worked during the previous wet season by Pascual Rivero of San Fernando.
But the balata of Rivero did not interest me. What had brought me there was the fact that on the Cunucunuma lived a tribe of Maquiritares.
YEARS before, while I was on the river Padamo, near the head of the Orinoco, some of those Maquiritares of the Cunucunuma had worked for me. So, though I never had been up their stream, I was known to those Indians. And, though the Maquiritares change their homes at times, moving from river to river for reasons known only to themselves, the Cunucunuma men had been in their old place during the season just past, and some of them had worked for Rivero. So they probably were there now; and I had use for them.
When I told my crew to enter the Cunucunuma they were a little slow in obeying, and their faces showed that they were thinking about something. But they made no objection, and I would not ask them what was on their minds. They probably would tell me when they had thought about it long enough.
Up into the northern river we turned, and after a little hard paddling against its stiff current we halted to cut poles; for the water was only a yard or two deep, so that poling would be easier than swinging the paddle.
While the men chopped their poles and trimmed the bark from them I heard low-toned talking, and I looked up the dark, clear water, wondering what bothered them now. Nobody would be on that stream at that time of year except the Maquiritares, I thought, and my men surely must know that all Maquiritares were my friends. When they came back, though, I learned something.
"Capitân," said the steersman, "do you know that Ramón Rodriguez is on this river?"
I stared, then scowled. Ramón Rodriguez was the foreman of Rivero. He kept the balata work moving in its season and had much more to do with the workmen than Rivero himself; and he was somewhat more aggressive than his chief.
Rivero was sly; he was as bad as Rodriguez, or worse, but he was the sort of man who gets what he wants by lying, cheating, and letting others stand in his place if any danger has to be faced.
Rodriguez had more courage, though none too much; he could bluster and drive men who seemed unlikely to turn on him, but if he had to meet an enemy he would rather shoot him from behind than fight him face to face. He and his chief had gotten along with the Maquiritares of this river because the Indians were paid something, though very little, in trade goods by Rivero, and because they cared nothing for Ramón's loud talk so long as he did nothing worse than talk.
But a loud mouth deceives some people into thinking a man far more bold and reckless than he is; and these mestizos of mine were a little troubled about carrying me up to seize Rivera's grounds when they knew Rodriguez was likely to see them do it. To tell all San Fernando about it afterward would be one thing, but to face Rodriguez on the Cunucunuma was another.
I snorted at the idea of any one fearing that man, but I was none too well pleased to find him or any other outsider here; for I had amused myself so much with the thought of fooling every one that I hated to see my joke spoiled.
"How is that?" I demanded. "This is not the rubber season."
"He is here," was the answer. "We heard he had a woman here, and he came up a week before us."
"A woman! On the Cunucunuma? What sort of woman?"
"A young one. A light Indian. He told about her when he was drunk at San Fernando. He has come back to her."
"A Maquiritare?"
"Si."
"If that is so," I laughed. "I will take her away from him. Vamos!"
So we went on. And as we went, I chuckled and scowled by turns. Rodriguez was a drunken liar and the San Fernando rum-drinkers believed him, I would tell myself.
But then again, I was not so sure. If Rodriguez really was up there and making bold with some Maquiritare woman, trouble was likely to be in the air; and when it came it would break like one of those up- Orinoco thunderstorms, sudden and dangerous. I had not lived so long among the Maquiritares without knowing how they felt about their women.
Two days up the river I suddenly became sure that Rodriguez was on the Cunucunuma. It was nearly noon, and we had passed through a bad raudal and were poling quietly along smooth water, when we smelt smoke. Then, rounding a big rock, we came on several men just beyond, clustered around a small cooking-fire on the sandy shore. One of them jumped up with a startled curse. He was Rodriguez.
And among the cotton-shirted figures which remained squatting and staring at us was one without a shirt. It was a woman.
IV
RODRIGUEZ stood there a moment with his rifle half-raised, his thumb on its hammer, and his eyes on us. He was by no means handsome at any time, and now, scowling and glowering, he looked an ugly brute indeed. His men, who were mestizos like my own, kept wooden faces.
"Who in are these men?" he growled. I was still sitting in the carróza, and he could not see me well.
"The crew of Loco León," one of his paddlers told him. I crept out and stood up, and as Rodriguez looked at me his face grew uglier than before.
"Buenas tardes, Ramón," I greeted him. "Do you travel up or down?"
"What is that to you?" he snarled. "What in the name of el diablo are you doing up here, León?"
"I am riding in a curial, as you can see for yourself," I coolly replied. "And I am stopping to eat almuerzo with you."
With that my canoe grounded, and, holding my rifle forward, I stepped overboard and ashore, looking him in the eye all the time.
He opened his jaws as if to say something, but thought better of it. With a sour grumble he stepped back a little, glancing down at the woman. After swiftly surveying his men and noting that they showed no sign of backing their disagreeable master, I too looked at her.
She was looking straight back at me with much interest. As I have said, I am the only blond Venezolano on the whole upper Orinoco, and when I travel on the big river I always let the hair grow on my face—it helps to keep off the mosquitoes; and by this time my yellow beard was quite long and very odd-looking in that land of black hair. My blue eyes, too, always are noticed by strangers who are used to seeing only brown or black ones.
So, being accustomed to stares from people who had not seen me before, I gave no attention to her steady regard. 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.
"Did you come here to eat or to look at my woman?" Rodriguez demanded roughly.
"To eat. But since the woman is here, I look at her. And since I know something about Maquiritares, Ramón, I ask you how you got her. The Maquiritares do not let their girls go out to live with Venezolanos."
"No?" he sneered. "You see that this one goes out with me, do you not? 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."
Ramón had to fight then and there or give ground. He did not fight; did not even make a move to show he thought of fighting. After a very quiet minute, while all the others held their breath, he laughed loudly, as if at a good joke.
"You are becoming wise, I see," I went on. "But not so wise, either. You seem to have barked yourself into the belief that you are a guapo. And because the Maquiritares are quiet, good-humored fellows you think they are Macos. You are mistaken, both in yourself and in them." [1]
I glanced down again at the girl, and back at him.
"If you took this girl away as you say, you will find that her people will say something about it if you ever come here again," I added. "But you never took her so. You would not dare. So she must be going with you of her own will, though I cannot understand why. She certainly cannot have fallen in love with your mud-turtle face."
At this my mestizos cackled, and even the men of Rodriguez snickered. Ramón seemed to bloat with rage. I had told him the exact truth about himself, and it stung as the truth sometimes does. And to be ridiculed so before men who would tell it all over San Fernando was more than he could stand.
"I would not dare?" he yelled. "I, Ramón Rodriguez, would fear those Indios? Caramba! I fear nobody—neither Maquiritare nor Loco León! I took this woman today from her people—threw her into my curial and made her come! And I stop here to eat—I take my time—I do not run from her whole tribe! Let them come on if they dare! Bah! They know better than to follow Ramón Rodriguez!"
He was shouting again, as usual, to prove how brave he was—as if bravery were a matter of mouth. But his way of saying it made me think perhaps he was telling the truth about his way of gaining the girl. I took my eyes off him long enough to glance at the faces of his men; and one of them nodded to me. The others looked around them a little uneasily. It was true. Rodriguez had stolen the girl.
"Then you are a bigger fool than I thought," I told him. "I had already decided that I would not eat at your fire, but now I do not even want to talk longer to you."
With that I stepped away from him—though I did not turn my back to him and ordered my men to make our own fire at a little distance from that of the Rodriguez crowd.
I was not yet through with talking to him, for I intended to say a good deal more about that girl-stealing before he should go on down the river. But just then he offended me as would something rotten. I felt like breathing cleaner air. Why I should feel so I do not know, for I am used to rough things, and woman-stealing was nothing new in the Rio Negro country. Perhaps it was because I liked Maquiritares and disliked Rodriguez.
Looking over at them from my own fire, I saw that the girl could not keep her eyes off me. Rodriguez saw it too, and growled at her; then, when she still watched me, he gave her a shove that threw her on her back. She rolled over and rose to her feet in one quick move, and for an instant she stood looking dumbly at him. Cursing, he lunged at her again. With another swift movement she dodged him. And then she dashed around him and came running straight to me.
"Ha!" said I to myself. "This makes it much more simple."
The girl had puzzled me a little. Until now she had given no sign of dislike for Rodriguez; and it is always possible that when a woman is carried off by a man she is not very unwilling, and in that case another man is likely to make a fool of himself by interfering. But now she was fleeing from him to me for protection—and I was very glad to give it to her.
In no time at all she was beside me; and, looking me in the eye and pointing back at him, she shook her head. I gave her a nod and pushed her behind me. Then I waited for Rodriguez to act.
He stared, his mouth twisting in muttered oaths. Then, his face black, he came walking swiftly toward us, cocking his gun as he strode over the sand. Whether he would have had the courage to attack me at the end I never shall know. He never reached me.
A sudden rush sounded in the dense bush beyond the sand. No life had made itself known in that green tangle since I landed; but now it appeared with the suddenness of a squall. Out on the sand bounded human tigers, coming with the speed of the storm-wind.
Rodriguez halted in mid-stride, his feet wide apart. For a second he seemed paralyzed. Then, with a hoarse cry of fear, he swung his gun and fired without aim. And that was the end of him.
The brown men were on him. Machetes gleamed in the sun-light. There was a chop—chop—chop of blades, a crunching sound of bones split and severed, a horrible bubbling gasp. Then Rodriguez disappeared. I could see only a little ring of Maquiritares, a blur of red steel rapidly swinging up and down.
Chop—chop—chop—chop! Then silence. The bush-knives were still. Some one grunted. It was the first human sound the Indians had made since they burst from the trees.
They looked swiftly around; at the mestizos of Rodriguez, who still were paralyzed, and at us. Then, their eyes blazing, their skins smeared with great gouts of red, their machetes dripping, they walked steadily toward us.
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."
At once I lowered the gun. Since they recognized me, I was in no danger. A few steps more, and they stopped beside me. After looking a minute at the young woman, who had come from behind me, they turned their eyes again to me.
"Why are you here?" asked one.
"I come to visit the Maquiritares," I answered. "How do you know me? None of my Padamo friends are among you."
"We heard you talk with Ramón. We heard your name. We have heard of Loco León."
"I see. You now go back to your paragua?"
"It is so."
"I go with you."
"It is good."
The paddlers of Rodriguez were sneaking now to their canoe. The Maquiritares turned and watched them, but made no move toward them. I called to them.
"You need not run. These men would have killed you before now if they intended to do so. Wait, and you shall have companions."
To my own crew I said:
"You had best leave me here. Go back to San Fernando with those men. I will pay you now."
They were only too glad to leave me, after what they had just seen; for they knew that though Loco León might be welcome among those killers, they themselves had no such welcome. And I too knew that I should be better off without them. It had been my intention to send them back as soon as my curial should reach the Maquiritare settlement, as my further movements were to be made with the knowledge of the Indians alone. Now it was best for all that I get rid of them here.
So I paid them, and they crowded into the Rodriguez canoe. At once the double crew pushed out and shot down-stream, turning their heads for one last look at the awful thing that had been Ramón. Then they were gone.
"Once more I am among my friends," I said. "It is good."
And the Maquiritares, their hard eyes on the fragments of the man who had outraged their tribe, echoed—
"It is good."
V
IN SENDING away my mestizos I had, of course, relied on the Indians to carry me onward to their settlement. For any other blanco than Loco León, this would have been a very poor time indeed to hope for aid from the Cunucunuma men; and, in spite of my well-known friendship toward all the Maquiritare nation, not even I should have been sure of a welcome just then if I had not known that those men had seen and heard what took place before they broke from the bush.
As it was, they had convincing proof that I was no friend of Rodriguez and that I had stood ready to defend the girl from him. And now, without waiting for me to ask them, they manned my curial as coolly as if they had come there for that purpose.
We got away at once; for I had lost my appetite—perhaps because the black zamuros had already dropped from the sky to attend to what remained of Ramón—and the Indians, having completed the little job for which they had come there, saw no sense in lingering. There were about a dozen of them, and half entered my canoe, while the rest, with the girl, disappeared into the bush. First, though, every man bathed himself and his machete, scrubbing off the blood of Rodriguez as if it were pollution.
A few rods up-stream we found, among rocks on the eastern shore, the two canoes in which the avengers had followed the woman-stealer until they smelt his smoke. We did not pause; the others would bring the boats on. With paddle and pole, my new men forced the curial northward far faster than my mestizos would have moved it; for they knew every current and every channel among the raudales, and they were determined to reach their tribe-house before night.
In all that afternoon I said no word. To try to give them orders about the work would have been foolish, and they spoke of nothing else. At first they were moody and silent, but after a while the river-work drove all other thoughts from their minds, and they became such good-humored fellows as Maquiritares usually are.
Whenever one of them slipped and fell into the water, as happened more than once in a raudal, the rest laughed at him like a crowd of boys. And when the following canoes appeared at times behind us there was railing back and forth between crews. To any man not well acquainted with their ways it would have seemed impossible that those merry young men could show such ferocity as they had vented on Rodriguez.
Sunset brought us to the paragua of Yaracuma, capitán of the Maquiritares of the Cunucunuma. As we drew up at the bank, another canoe came driving down-stream and swung in to tie beside ours. In it were several Indians, all of whom looked curiously at me but seemed undisturbed by the coming of a new white.
One of them, older than the rest, had a quiet air of authority which told me he was the chief; and the bodies of several baquidos (wild hogs) in the canoe showed that he had been on a hunt. I began to understand now something which had puzzled me—why Yaracuma had not led his men when they chased Rodriguez. He had been away when the crime of Ramón took place.
This proved true. My paddlers at once told him of what had come about, and for a minute he glared like an angry tigre. But then, learning that the girl was safe and Ramón cut to pieces, he gave a grunt of satisfaction. When he was told who I was he grunted again, and studied me sharply. Then the other two canoes from downstream arrived; he asked the girl a few questions, which she answered quietly; and in the first darkness of night we all climbed the slope to the tribe-house.
There I was led into the big central room where the men always gather. And there Yaracuma called a couple of names. Two young fellows came forward, grinning at me, and. I recognized them as men who once had gathered my balata on the Padamo.
"Como 'stá uste', Loco León?" they greeted me. "How are you?"
"Bien," I answered. "Y ustedes?"
"Bien."
They kept on grinning, but said no more. I looked at Yaracuma, and we both smiled, for we understood each other. Although he had been told who I was, he wanted to see with his own eyes that I was recognized as Loco León by men who knew Loco León. There was no longer any chance of doubt.
Soon we ate, and then we talked. As the killing of Rodriguez was the most important subject, we talked first of that; and now I learned more about how Ramón had captured his woman. In their tale to the chief his men had spoken their own dialect, which is so queer that I never have learned more than a few words of it. But Yaracuma spoke fair Spanish, and he told me what he knew of the matter.
Ramón had not taken her from her people in the bold way he wanted me to believe. He had stayed at the tribe-house several days, saying he came to make sure that the Maquiritares would be ready to work again for Rivero in the next wet season.
There was nothing strange about that, except that it was very early for him to make such a trip. He had tried several times to talk to the young woman, but she had avoided him; and he had laughed loudly, as if it were only a joke; so, though the men kept an eye on him and hoped he would go soon, none was disturbed about it.
This morning she and several other girls had gone, as usual, to the plantation, half a mile away, in order to dig yuca roots for the making of cassava. Ram6n had suddenly decided to return to the Orinoco, and he had gone down-stream in his canoe. But while the girls were busy at their work and the one who had taken his fancy was a little away from the others, he suddenly jumped out from the trees, grabbed her, stopped her mouth, and dragged her away.
The other girls did not see this done, and it was some time before they succeeded in puzzling out what had taken place. Then they returned to the paragua, where they found that most of the men were out hunting and fishing. Before the pursuit could start, Ramón had time to travel a long way. But the pursuers went fast after they did start, and Ramón's own foolishness in stopping ended whatever chance he might have had.
I smoked awhile after hearing this, and I saw something which, I knew, must be also in the mind of Yaracuma. The two crews—mine and that of Rodriguez—would travel fast down the river to San Fernando, and there they would tell of what the Indians had done. And Rivero and all his friends would be enraged—not at Rodriguez, but at the Maquiritares.
To most men of the wild Territorio de Amazonas an Indian is a dog, to be beaten or shot or outraged at will; he has no rights and no protection, and he is a creature made only for the use and abuse of the "white man." And for him to defend himself and avenge his wrongs is a crime calling for death—and not always a quick death. So now, with the town full of men who delighted in murder, it would be odd if an armed gang did not soon appear on the Cunucunuma to teach the "Indian dogs" a lesson.
It was quite likely, indeed, that those killers would start even before the crews should reach San Fernando; for if the mestizos should meet Paco, the Butcher—which was not at all improbable—they would tell him all they knew, and Paco probably would come up the Orinoco at once. It would be just such work as he and his gang would like: a chance to kill me for pay, to butcher the Indian men for sport, and to enslave the maidens for pleasure.
Yaracuma did not yet know about Paco, and I decided not to tell about him for awhile. It might not be necessary to speak of him at all. I was quite sure I knew what thought was in the chief's mind, and I was willing to let that thought grow without forcing it too much.
"Do you come to work the balata here?" he asked after a time.
"No. This is not so good a place as my own river. I come to visit the Cunucunuma men and then go on to my Ventuari."
"It is a long journey."
"Not so long for Loco León, the rover. I do not go back by the Orinoco, if my friends here will help me overland."
He looked thoughtfully at me.
"How do you go?" he asked.
"I have heard that there is a pass through the mountains from the Cunucunuma to the Iurebe," I explained. "Down the Iurebe to the Ventuari is not far. So I reach the Ventuari well above the boca and go on to my sitio near the fall of Quencua. And I have seen new country."
"It is so," he said, and thought awhile longer. It was well known that in the dry time I was a rambler of the wilds, always seeking something new; so it did not seem very odd to him that I proposed this overland journey.
"But the way is hard," he added, "and you have much weight to carry."
"Si. I have just come from down the great river, and I bring many things. There are good presents among them for all my Maquiritare friends who help me across."
He was silent for several minutes. I decided to help him think.
"How long have the people of Yaracuma lived on the Cunucunuma?" I asked.
"Many moons."
"Ever since I was on the Padamo?"
"Yes."
"Is it not a long time for Maquiritares to live in one place?"
"A long time."
"Is not this a good time to move to some other river?"
He agreed so quickly that I knew my guess as to his thoughts had been right.
"It is so. We have lived too long on the Cunucunuma. It is no longer a good place for us."
"The Ventuari is a good river," I suggested. "It has much game and fish. There are other Maquiritares on the Ventuari. The people of Yaracuma are too much alone here. And now there will be no more balata work on the Cunucunuma. If the men of Yaracuma would like to bleed the balata another year and have new knives and machetes, beads and cloth, matches and fish-hooks and other things, they can get them all on the Ventuari. I, Loco León, can give all those things."
The men squatting around or sitting in hammocks gave a murmur. They knew as well as Yaracuma and I that they must move, or live in dread and die in hopeless battle; for, fight as they might with arrow and blow-gun and spear, they could not win against the bullets of the merciless men who almost certainly would come.
And here was Loco León, friend of all Maquiritares, arriving at their time of need to point out the way to a safer land and treat them well after they entered it. It was great luck for the people of Yaracuma. They did not know it was greater luck for Loco León.
Yaracuma considered it awhile, however, in his deliberate Indian way, and I knew better than to expect an immediate answer. He was still thinking about it when I curled up in my hammock and went to sleep. Or perhaps he had already decided and was thinking about the travel-plans. At any rate, I heard nothing more from him about it until morning.
Then, as calmly as if the abandonment of home and crops and the passage of his whole tribe over the mountains were things done every day, he said:
"The people of Yaracuma go to the Iurebe."
"It is good," I said, as if it meant nothing to me.
Every woman was put to work at once in making cassava. Every man made the necessary preparations for the journey. And three days later, with everything worth carrying packed in the canoes and everything else destroyed—except the house itself—we pushed away up the Cunucunuma. Behind us the big paragua stood empty of all life, never again to be used by the men of Yaracuma. Yet, though the house itself would tell nothing to those who should come later, it held a message for the Butcher.
One of the Indians had killed a big red areguato the day before we went. And when it was brought in a foolish idea came to me. So, telling the Maquiritares that we would leave a monkey to plague our enemies, I had them stuff the skin with leaves, sew it up, and fasten one of its hands in a position which, in our country, is a mortal insult from man to man. Then, as we were leaving, we hung that ribald thing in the doorway facing the river. And from its neck I slung a slip of paper on which I had written:
El Carnicero:
"Hâgame V. el favor de irse al diablo.
"Con la más distinguida consideración su afmo."LOCO LEON."
VI
WHEN a Maquiritare tells you, señores, that a journey is hard, you may believe that it is hard. Those sons of the jungled mountains and rocky rivers give little thought to a trip that would make a white man consider twice. True, they are not in the habit of carrying heavy burdens, and any well-hardened man can traverse bad ground when he has no weight on his back. But, weight or no weight, you can always be sure that any journey in their country is much more difficult than they say it is.
So, warned both by Yaracuma's hesitation and by my own knowledge of the land to the eastward, near the Padamo, I now looked for no easy trip. I knew that not far to the east were such huge masses as the Cerro Duida, which shoots up into the air for more than a mile, and Maravaca, whose top is at least two miles above the Orinoco; and that westward were other great mountain-blocks. What lay ahead I did not know, but I was quite sure it would be rough. And it was.
Through raudal after raudal we toiled until at last the canoes could go no farther. Then we took to our legs. Every one of us bore a burden, except the children too young to carry anything but themselves. The men were loaded with my belongings and their own; the women and girls with baskets of food or with babies. Progress was slow. But it was steady, and every sunset found us higher among the hills and nearer to the Ventuari.
We passed the unknown Cerro Cuchamacari, and kept on to the north. We struggled through a maze of cliff-blocks and slanted to the northwest, following the line of the high pass between Queneveba and Queneveta. We sweat by day and froze by night, unprotected from the cold of the lofty hills. We ate all our food, and lived on what we could kill—and we killed anything that moved: birds, beasts, snakes, toads.
We paused only to eat, to rest, and to burn our dead—for more than one death came about, especially among the children. Yet there was no murmuring against the hardships of the traverse; for man, woman, and child knew what would have befallen the whole tribe if it had remained on the Cunucunuma after the death of Rodriguez became known.
In those days there was little laughter or light talk; for our bodies grew too tired and our stomachs too empty to let us think of jokes. Nor were there many signs of comradeship among men or of affection between man and woman, unless the action of a father in sharing food with his woman and children could be called so. Every one carried his or her own load, and women killed any small thing to eat just as the men did.
Yet, though I provided for myself and expected no aid from the Maquiritares under such conditions, I began to find that there was one who seemed always to be near me whenever we stopped. That one was the girl whom I had intended to protect from Rodriguez.
With my rifle I was able at times to knock over more meat than I could eat all at once, and so I gave what I could spare to those who happened to be at hand. And, since the girl—who was called Nama—usually was close by, she got food when I had it. Once I laughed at her, and said:
"You are a wise young woman. You know where to get your meals."
She smiled slowly, for she did not understand me: she knew no Spanish. I forgot the matter very soon, and whenever I saw her near me I thought she was merely looking for a few mouthfuls of meat. But then came a day when I shot nothing at all, and the Maquiritares had only half enough for themselves, so that I went hungry. And while I was making new holes in my belt and trying to forget how empty I was, Nama came to me.
"No tengo nada," I grumbled, only half-looking at her. "I have nothing. Go."
But she stepped up to me and held something forward. I took it, and she went away at once. It was a little bag of plalant leaf, tied with bush-cord, and hot—just brought from the edge of a fire. And when I opened it, inside I found five baked tree-toads. I was so much astonished that I squatted there staring as if I had never seen such things. I must have looked rather foolish, for when I glanced up I found several of the Maquiritare men grinning. The girl was nowhere in sight.
So I ate the little hoppers, and, though they made a scant meal for a hungry man, my stomach stopped complaining. The tired men grinned again at me, and I grinned back, making a joke of it. For Loco León, rover and killer of the biggest game, to be fed on toads by a woman really was a rich joke to the Maquiritares. But when I lay back in my hammock and thought it over it did not seem so funny to me.
It began to look as if the young woman had been lingering near me for another reason than that of getting food. I remembered how steadily she had looked at me when she first saw me, and how she had run to me from Rodriguez without knowing who I was—for it was hardly likely that the name "Loco León" meant anything to her just then.
At that time I had thought she stared because I looked odd, and came to me only to escape from the roughness of Ramón; but now I was not so sure that was all of it.
I do not pretend to know how the mind of a woman works, but I am not blind, and this was a most unusual thing for a Maquiritare maiden to do.
It did not give me any worriment for my safety, either then or later, for the Maquiritare men were not likely to make any objection even to my taking her as my woman, if she and I both felt inclined to have it so. I was no Ramón Rodriguez, nor even a stray blanco traveler who soon would leave their land. I was as nearly one of their own nation as any white man could be who did not actually live the Indian life, and I was trusted and respected.
If I wished to do so, señores, I have no doubt that I could take not only one, but three or four, of those fair-skinned Indian girls to my sitio as my wives, without losing the friendship of the Maquiritares. But if I did that I should lose some of their respect, and more of my own respect, for Loco León. I am no better than other men, but I am a little too proud of my white blood to wish to become a—what do you say?—ah, yes, a "squaw-man."
So the thing bothered me a little, and I decided that Nama must not be allowed to develop any useless ideas about me. And, since I did not wish to hurt her or to make others laugh at her, it seemed that the best way was simply to appear blind: to treat her like any one else, but otherwise to ignore her. And that was what I did.
It happened that the next day I killed a tapir, so that there was much meat to be given out. I cut it up myself, and to Nama, who was near as usual, I gave no more than to the others; nor did I do more than glance at her as she took it. Later, though, when the flesh was cooked, she brought me the tenderest part of her portion. I acted surprized, showed her that I had plenty of meat of my own, and refused her offering.
She looked a little disappointed, but ate it herself without further sign of feeling. And from that time on she offered me nothing. For that matter, I always managed to provide something for myself after that—good, poor, or bad, but always something.
Then we reached the Iurebe. It was a mere thread of water among rocks at that point, but it was the end of our hard life in the highlands. We had only to work down along it in almost open country, killing plenty of game in the woods beside the stream, sleeping warm at night, and joking about the rage of the San Fernando men who might even now be on the Cunucunuma. They never would find our trail, for we had journeyed on the river for days after leaving the tribe-house.
Even if they did find it, they would not dare to follow it. It was too perilous a road.
Yaracuma and his people still did not know that Paco the Butcher was on the Ventuari, and I still did not tell them. It was quite possible that he was no longer there: that he had gone up the Orinoco. And the joy of those hard-worn people on reaching their promised land was such that I had not the heart to spoil it with news of another danger.
After they had rested awhile at a place half-way down the stream, where the water was deep enough to hold many fish and the bush was alive with baquido and paují and other fine game, they became a merry crowd. The young men sported like boys, the women laughed as they played with the babies, Yaracuma himself talked smilingly of the new home they intended to build in the uplands above Quencua—and the girl, Nama, hung closer than ever to me, saying nothing but looking long with her deep dark eyes.
Then the men began to talk of felling trees and burning out new canoes to carry us all up the Ventuari. But I had been thinking about this and decided against it. Such work meant much smoke, which might be seen far; and, though I believed Paco had gone before now, he might be nearer than I thought.
The mouth of the Iurebe was only two days' journey up from that of the Ventuari, and I remembered that only a little way below it was a rocky point which would be a good place to watch the river in both directions. For all I knew, the Butcher might now be at that very point; and I had, not brought these people so far to lead them to slaughter.
So, without giving any reason except that my plan meant less work—which is always a good reason to Indians—I proposed another idea.
"Between here and my sitio below the fall of Quencua," I said, "the land is open sabana. Across that sabana some of the young men can walk easily in a few days, carrying no weights. I can give them a paper showing how the river runs and where the caños are and where the sun rises, and by that they can go straight to Quencua. At my sitio they will find good canoes lying idle, and to men of mine who always are there they can give my orders and this ring, which they know."
I showed them this ring, señores, which, as you see, has the head of a gold león with emerald eyes.
"Then the canoes can come to us here in five days or less," I went on, "and instead of working we shall rest and hunt and grow fat while we wait. Is the plan good, Yaracuma?"
The chief agreed that it was.
"Then let it be done," I said. "But first let us send scouts to the mouth of this stream to look about and make sure that no men of San Fernando are near to harm the people of Yaracuma. It is not likely, but it is always best to be sure."
Yaracuma agreed again, and the next morning several of the men were sent to the Ventuari. After they left, some of the other Indians looked rather soberly at me, but I gave no sign that I expected the scouts to find any one. So they thought no more of it, and in the three days before the absent men returned there was no anxiety about them.
When they did come, though, they brought news. On the Ventuari they had found no sign of any enemy. But on the Iurebe, about one day's march down from our halting-place, they had come upon a camp.
It seemed to have been used by a hunting-party, which had left not long before our men arrived there. Bones of wild hogs and turkeys were there, and the camp was such as might have been made by themselves; it had a Maquiritare look to their eyes. But it puzzled them, because this Iurebe was not in the Maquiritare, but in the Maco, country. Also, there was a hut, and the Maquiritares usually do not make huts for short stays at a place in the dry season.
Something about the hut made the scouts think it had been used by a white man and a woman. And in the bush not far from the camp they had found what was left of a dead tigre, and near it a couple of cartridge-shells. These shells they had brought to me.
Both were bottle-necked rifle-shells. And both were of caliber .30.
VII
AS SOON as I studied those brass tubes I thought of Black White. So far as I knew, his was the only rifle of that size in all our Guayana country. The "white-man house" described by the Maquiritares, too, seemed likely to be his. The woman who shared it with him would be Juana, his Indian shadow. But that he should be down here in the Maco country, so far from the Parima highlands of the Caura and the Caroní where he usually wandered, looked queer.
Yet, as I thought about it, it did not appear so puzzling; for El Blanco Negro was restless as a tigre, and if he decided to tramp down into this region there was no good reason why he should not. Certainly it was nothing to cause any concern to us. If the shells had been .44, and the camp had not looked to be that of Indians, we might have had cause to look sharply about us.
Whether Yaracuma, who had lived so far from other Maquiritares, knew anything of Black White I was not sure; but I found that he did.
"El Blanco Negro," I said, holding up the shells.
"Si," he answered quietly. His face did not change, but I felt that he was relieved. I asked him then if he had ever seen Black White; and he gave me no reply at all. This did not annoy me, for I had long been used to this silence of all Maquiritares concerning the white man who had been changed into an unwilling member of their nation. It was quite clear that the Cunucunuma men knew of him, and that was answer enough.
I though it as well, however, to tell Yaracuma that I too knew that man; that I had been with him when his skin was changed, and that sometimes since then he had visited me. The capitán and the others who understood Spanish listened with interest, and later I saw them talking with the rest in their own language, looking now and then at me.
Then we sent away our messengers to Quencua. With a small map which I carefully explained, and with my león ring and orders to my Quencua men, eight young fellows set out at sunrise, carrying only their weapons, hammocks, and some roasted quarters of baquido. Yaracuma gave them strict commands to let nothing delay them. We watched them swing away northeastward and disappear among the rolling knolls. And then we, too, moved.
Down the Iurebe we traveled, walking in the sabana beyond the tree-line of the stream, and taking our time—for the canoes could not reach this water for more than a week. In this easy journeying along through the open, where I had a chance to look at other things than what was just ahead, I noticed that the girl Nama sometimes walked and talked with a well-built young fellow near her own age; and I was glad of it. She had seen her mistake, I thought—although she still stayed near me at the stopping-places. She would mate with this young man, probably, when the new paragua had been built. So I gave no more thought to her.
At the deserted camp reported by our scouts we stopped for a night, finding nothing new. It was just as they had described it, and we saw no sign to show why its makers had come or where they had gone. The next day we left it and journeyed on. When we reached a place which we judged to be half a day from the Ventuari we baited and made a camp where we could wait for canoes to come to us.
In this lazy walk we had used up as much time as it had taken our scouts to travel all the way to the Ventuari and return with their report—three days. The canoes from Quencua could not reach us for several more days. I grew restless, and decided to go on a tramp.
Off to the northeast, perhaps a day's march away across the sabana, I had noticed a rugged cerro shaped somewhat like a man's fist, standing up boldly against the sky; and near it, I knew, must flow the little Caño Paró, where hunting should be good. So, warning Yaracuma to keep on using only the driest wood for cooking, in order to avoid smoke, I set out with several of the younger Maquiritares who felt as restless as I.
We moved about for four days, finding the hunting no better than on the Iurebe. Indeed, we did not care so much about killing animals as about killing time. So we gave less attention to the caño than to the hill near it. And, in rambling around that cerro, we found at its base another camp like that on our own stream.
No cartridge-shells were there, and the camp was not so good as the other. Yet the Maquiritares, after looking it all over very carefully, said it had been used by the same people, and that it was at least as old as the first one we had found; probably a little older. Black White and his little party—if they were the camp-makers—seemed to have made these places while heading southwest; and they had not yet come back.
It gave us something to talk about, and that was all. But on the morning of the fifth day something new made us not only talk but act. In the southwestern sky, rising from the point where we had left Yaracuma and the rest of his tribe, rose a tower of black smoke.
The Maquiritares stared and muttered, and I scowled and swore. Had Yaracuma become a fool? Or had the Butcher found them, slaughtered them, burned their camp? Or, perhaps, had the canoes arrived, and was this a signal for us to come in? We did not know. But we started at once for the Iurebe.
I told the fastest man in the little party to push ahead as swiftly as possible, leaving with us everything but his bow and a few arrows, and learn what was taking place. The rest of us held to a steady, rapid walk.
The smoke kept rising hour after hour, too steadily to be that of a destroyed camp. I concluded that Yaracuma either had decided to call us in or had tired of waiting for the Quencua boats and was burning out logs to make dugouts of his own. In either case, I cursed him for an idiot. Yet I had to scold myself as well; for I had given him no good reason to suppose that any enemy was near.
About mid-day the smudge died away. We were traveling faster on this day than when we had left the Iurebe, and already we had put behind us much more than half of the return journey. By this time, perhaps, our runner had reached the caño. We kept on without a pause to eat, gnawing at chunks of cooked meat as we walked. And about the middle of the afternoon we approached the camp.
The runner had not come back. But now, as we slowed and spread out in order to come upon the little settlement quietly, several men of Yaracuma's emerged from the edge of the bush and walked toward us as if they had been waiting. They showed no hurry or concern, and when they came near they grinned.
"What is wrong?" I demanded.
"Nothing. All is well," one answered.
"Then why was all the smoke?"
"El capitán said to make it."
"But why?"
They only grinned again. I bit my tongue to keep from swearing. I knew that the more I might rave the more they would grin and the hotter I should grow; and after that long fast walk I was hot enough. I saved my remarks for Yaracuma.
But, though the men who had met us would give me no satisfaction, they told something in their own tongue to the Maquiritares with me. My companions grunted, and all looked up-stream. I looked also, of course, but saw nothing new. And then we entered the trees.
At the camp I found Yaracuma and the rest. All looked a little amused when I demanded why that smoke had been sent up.
"It is nearly time for the boats," Yaracuma answered calmly.
"Diablo! Do I not know it?" I snapped. "But they are not yet here, and why in el infierno do you blacken the sky?"
"It is time for my men to be here."
"Porqué? For what? There is nothing to do. Do you tell all the world you are here because you want these men to squat and look at you?"
"They are men of Yaracuma. Yaracuma wants them here."
I was angry enough to choke him. But it was true that they were his men, not mine. And he seemed to be enjoying my rage. The others, too, looked as if they saw a joke in the matter. So I shut my mouth, turned my back on them all, and went to my usual sleeping-place; hung my hammock there, and took a cooling bath at the edge of the water. Then I lay and rested for an hour, watching them and listening to talk which I could not understand.
They were speaking of something which seemed to concern me, for they looked my way at times. But, whatever it was, it was nothing about which they were worried. And I was quite sure that if they knew of any danger to me they would tell me of it at once.
It seemed, though, that something or some one was missing. The place looked unchanged, so I glanced at the faces of men and women—and then I knew what was lacking. The girl Nama was nowhere in sight, and she had not been near me since my return. I had become so used to seeing her standing about and watching me that now I missed her, just as I should miss a tree or a stone or any other thing which usually stood in a certain place. The young man with whom I had seen her talking at times also was gone.
"Perhaps they have mated already," I thought, "and made a little hut in the bush where they can be away from the rest a few days. Bueno! May their first-born be a strong boy!"
And I laughed and forgot them in speculation about where my canoes now were.
Then came the evening meal, and the usual noises of birds and beasts of the bush at the end of the day; and night and a half-moon. Little fires burned here and there to keep off tigres, and it was time for all to swing in their hammocks and sleep. But, though many lay down, none slept yet. There was talking, and some of the men squatted by the fires, as if all were expecting something.
I wondered, of course, what this meant. But I would not ask questions. I had a fire of my own, which had been made by some of the Maquiritare boys, and it seemed larger than usual and too bright. I let it burn, though, and lay drowsily looking at it and thinking of various things. One of those things was Black White, marching across this down-river country and heading southwest. Possibly, I thought, he might stop at my sitio below Quencua when he came back, and there we should have another of those queer talks in which I never saw him.
And while I was thinking of this, some one moved among the trees behind me. I gave little attention to the movement; it was only some Cunucunuma man, I thought. But the soft footsteps came nearer, then stopped. I turned then, for I always like to know who stands at my back.
There, quite clear in the light of the fire, was Nama.
She stood looking at me, and on her face was a little smile. I started to speak; but I remembered that she knew no Spanish, so I said nothing. Then from behind her sounded the voice of another woman, speaking my own language.
"Buen' noche', Loco León" it said.
"Quién es?" I asked, squinting past Nama but seeing nobody.
"Juana de Uaunana," answered the voice.
"Juana!" I echoed. "The woman of Black White! Buen' noche', Juana! Donde esté El Blanco? Where is White?"
"Est' aquí," she replied. "He is here."
And from a dark place a few feet to the right broke a harsh voice which I knew well.
"Evening, Loco! Talk English to me.
VIII
USUALLY, when the voice of Black White comes out of the night to me in that sudden way, I lie back in my hammock and talk until I feel that he is gone. I know his mind is not quite right, his temper is fierce, and his hands hold a rifle; also, that he comes not to talk but to listen, to hear the language of his own lost land. It is a pitiful thing, too, señores, this English-hunger of his, and, gun or no gun, I should be a dog to deny him so small a comfort.
Yet on this night felt that the talking should not be all on my side, for there were things I wished to know. And, instead of obliging him at once, as usual, I made a bargain with him.
"Good evening, White. I hope you are well," I said. "I will talk gladly, and tell you all I know. But this time you must talk too. I wish to learn a few things."
"Talk, you!" was the savage answer. His rifle-hammer clicked.
"Not unless you talk in return," I refused. "That is only fair. If you will not, and if you want to shoot me now and kill your last chance to hear English—then shoot and have it done!"
With that I lit a cigarrillo and blew smoke.
He growled something. Then he agreed.
"All right. That goes. Now talk!"
So I began.
I gave him the story of what had come about at San Fernando, and of what I had heard about Paco Peldóm. I went on to speak of my journey to the Cunucunuma, and of the end of Ramón Rodriguez, and the movement of the people of Yaracuma from their old paragua to the Iurebe. Then, as he still listened, I told of our trip to the cerro in the northeast, of finding his camp, and of the smoke which had called us back. When I stopped, he knew the whole tale of my recent travels.
He seemed to give more attention to the things I told him than to the way in which those events were told. When I described the deaths of Argel and Rodriguez he chuckled hoarsely; and when I mentioned the monkey I had left for the Butcher to swear at, he laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh to hear, but it showed he was amused. Never before had I know him to show such interest in what I said. But at length I learned that there was a reason for this.
"That all?" he asked, when I was done.
"That is all I think of now, and I have talked a long time," I said. "Now tell me—was it you who sent up that smoke today? And why?"
"Not me. But I told this man Yaracuma I wanted to see you. He got you that way."
"I see. And you waited until night at some place above here. Some man of Yaracuma came and told you I had arrived. Is it so?"
He grunted an Indian "yes."
"You have been to the mouth of the Ventuari?" I went on.
Again he grunted.
"Did you find any gang there?"
"Not the one you mean. Your 'Butcher' is gone. Saw his camp."
"That is good. Then Yaracuma is not the fool I thought him. But how come you here, so far from the high hills?"
"Had some killing to do. Had to come here to do it."
"Como? How is that?"
There was no answer for a minute. Then I heard him growl a few words. Feet moved toward me from some place a little farther back. They stopped, and again came the growl. And still I saw only Nama.
"Takes too many words," Black White grumbled then. "This man will tell you."
Another grunt, and then sounded a new voice; that of a Maquiritare man speaking Spanish.
"Loco, this was the way of this thing:
"There came into our country a bad man from the Orinoco. He came up the Caura. He went toward San Fernando. His name was Bayona."
"Oho!" I muttered. I knew this Bayona; an ugly, overbearing brute who called himself "Coronel," and who worked balata when he could get men—which was only when he could catch them. His name was so bad that it was known not only to the Maquiritares but to other Indian tribes; to the Puinabes and the Banivas, west and south of San Fernando, and even to the Yaviteros and the Barés, still farther away.
During the last wet season he had gathered a rubber crop by making slaves of some Banivas and driving them like beasts, killing half of them before the dry time ended the work. And he had taken this crop down the river to Caicara and sold it there, knowing that if he dared show his face in Bolívar he would be imprisoned for old crimes. From Caicara to the Caura is not far; and I soon learned why he had gone up the Caura.
"Bayona brought with him other bad men," the Indian went on. "They had guns and many bullets. They came suddenly and caught men and women of our nation. They did not go to big places like Uaunana. They struck small paraguas where fighters were few. They shot and killed and made slaves of men. They did vile things to women and girls. They would take the men down the Ventuari and keep them until the rains come. Then they would make them work balata.
"The men who tried to run away were tortured. At the Caño Estuca we found a dead Maquiritare tied to a tree. He had been beaten dead. Many broken sticks were around him. He was a strong man. It would take half a day of beating to kill him so.
"El Blanco was far away when Bayona came. He was at the Caroní. But the word of what Bayona was doing reached to him. We turned west and followed Bayona.
"We visited the paraguas of the Ventuari and learned all Bayona had done. We drove our canoes to the falls of Oso. Bayona was days ahead. El Blanco said we must leave the river and march straight through the sabana to the Ventuari mouth. We walked this sabana. We walked straight. While Bayona delayed to pass raudales or to hunt we reached the delta.
"Then Bayona came in a canoe. The slaves walked, driven by men with guns. We were on both sides of the river. When the slaves came we killed the men with the guns. El Blanco killed Bayona.
"We left alive only one man of Bayona. The slaves said that man had not been so bad to them. We put him in the canoe of Bayona and let him go.
"Before he went we fed Bayona to the caribe fishes. We told that man to tell other blancos not to bother the Maquiritares. If they do they will be made food for fish. He went away very fast.
"We go back to our hills. The Maquiritares who were slaves are free. Bayona and his men are dead. It is good."
The voice was still. For a minute all was very quiet. Then from all about us rose a deep hum of the voices of men who had heard and understood.
"Es bueno!" they echoed. "It is good."
And I too, knowing what I knew of Bayona, rejoiced as I heard of his end.
"Si, it is good!" I said. "Even if the does nothing more to Bayona than to torment him as he tormented his poor victims here, it will take a long time to square the account. And the men of San Fernando now will think twice before they visit the Ventuari again. Yet there may be more trouble because you let that one man go, White. Bayona was a friend of Funes."
A harsh laugh came out of the bush.
"To with Funes!" jeered White's voice. "He can come himself if he's got the guts. We take all comers."
"You had better get some guns before you say that," I told him. "He has an army of guapos, and many guns brought from Brazil. I do not see how you even managed to kill Bayona and his men, with only your one gun. The arrows of your men are poor weapons against bullet."
Another laugh came; and this time more than one throat made that laugh. The Indians too were chuckling, as if they had a joke on me. But nobody explained what the joke might be. And, as before, I would not ask what amused them.
Feet began to move again; feet in that place where El Blanco Negro and his men had stood. They were going. Only Nama still stood there, looking at me in that patient way of hers. I knew White was leaving me, as he always did, without a farewell; and I gave him no adios. With my eyes on the girl but my thoughts on what I had heard, I spoke to her in a careless way, forgetting for the moment that she did not know Spanish.
"Where have you been, Nama?" I asked.
She only smiled, as if she would like to please me by answering if she could. But the receding footsteps of White and his men stopped.
"Got a woman now, have you, Loco?" mocked White's voice, farther out than it had been. "You fool! Oh, you fool! Ha-ha-ha!"
"No!" I snapped back. "I have no woman. This girl is not mine."
"Oh, don't lie!" he sneered. "She's yours all over. She's been talking 'Loco León' all day to my woman Juana. Loco León! Nothing but Loco León! Ashamed of her, are you, when another white man calls on you?"
"I tell you, señor, she is nothing to me," I disputed. "Believe what you like, but I speak truth."
He was still for a minute. Then he said:
"Watch yourself, then, hombre. She's after you hard. First thing you know she'll feed you some of that red yucut' 'sehi that turns you black. You'll be a nigger-white like me. A dead man, like me! Dead! Dead! Dead like El Blanco Negro! A dead man walking in the night! Ha-ha-ha-ha!"
His laugh now was mad, a terrible sound that sent a chill crawling over me. The leaves began rustling again, and I said no word. Neither did any one else. Except for that slight sound of movement, everything was silent. The rustling died, and still the silence held. Then from somewhere out of the sabana sounded again that horrible laugh and a wild yell:
"Two dead men now! El Blanco Negro and Loco León! Black! Black! Ah ha, ha-ha-ha-ha!"
Nama shuddered and crept closer to me. I too shuddered, and made no move.
Black White was gone, but he had left behind him something that bothered me that night and long after. And it was not the thought that further trouble might come from the killing of Coronel Bayona.
I knew quite well—though I am sure White never thought of it—that all the blame for the Bayona matter might fall on me. The man spared by the Indians probably knew only that a band of Maquiritares, led by some man with a rifle, had done this killing on the Ventuari.
To the people of San Fernando, Black While was only a name; many believed him to be only a creature of an Indian tale, not a real man. So I, the only man with a rifle known to live on the Ventuari and likely to lead Maquiritares, might at some time have to pay Funes for Bayona's blood with my own.
But, as I say, it was not this that kept me thinking long after the people of Yaracuma slept, or that made me cautious regarding my drink and food for some time afterward.
For the first time in my life, I was afraid of a woman.
IX
WHETHER Black White and his band of killers went straight out into the sabana that night and traveled homeward by moonlight, or whether they returned to some camp farther up the Iurebe, I do not know. From the moment when they left me there in my hammock I neither heard nor saw a sign of them. The next morning, as I walked about in the open and looked to south and east, I could not observe anything to show they had even been there. And I made no journey up the stream, asked no questions of the Maquiritares. Nor did any men of Yaracuma leave their own camp, except for the usual hunting.
As before, I gave no outward attention to Nama. She loitered around near me whenever I was in camp, but I pretended not to see her. Yet I did more thinking about her than ever before; and, as I have said, I was particular about what I drank and ate. I knew White had been made Black White by the girl Juana; I knew Nama had talked about me to Juana; I knew nothing about what Juana might have advised this girl to do. And in my head kept echoing that last cry of the wild man:
"Two dead men now! El Blanco Negro and Loco León! Black! Black!"
Yet Nama did not try to bring me any drink or to cook my meat, and at times I saw her speaking to the same young fellow who had been with her before. All went on as it had been.
Then came the canoes. They reached us about mid-day, manned by the Cunucunuma messengers who had gone overland and by some of my own Maquiritares, who lived all the year at my sitio to do my work and care for my plantation. From these men of mine I learned that Bayona had not been seen at my place and that all was well there. They spent the rest of the day in loading my supplies, and the next morning, soon after dawn, we all were afloat.
Though every curial I own had been brought down—and I keep a little fleet of dugouts always at hand—they were too few to carry all the tribe. When every boat was packed so that the water rose almost to the gunwale, there were still seven men without a boat. So they had to take the land route to Quencua, just as the messengers had done. And they not only reached my sitio safely, but they were there two days before us. They carried no burdens, of course, while we were heavily loaded and held back by raudales and currents.
On that journey of ours, Yaracuma and his people had good proof that I had not lied to them about the richness of my river.
They watched tapirs swimming in the water or standing in their holes in the clay banks; peccaries coming down in file to drink; monkeys of every kind trooping in the trees, wild peacocks and turkeys suddenly appearing and vanishing in the bush, huge ducks floating on the green surface of the stream.
They heard the soft moan of the paují day and night, the trumpeting of the grulla when the sun was high, the rush and splash of pabón and other fish along every sandy playa at sundown.
They saw the assehi palm and the aceite palo trees, which give drink and oil, and the carraña, whose pitch makes torches and fires. And they were content.
They talked, too, with my Maquiritares, learning of the up-river caños and the paraguas of the Indians already there. Yaracuma did not intend either to stay at my place below Quencua or to join any other settlement; he planned to make his new home at the best place he could find, and to lose no time about it. This much I learned from my own men, and I was well satisfied to have it so. It was better for them and for me that they should go their own way after we reached Quencua.
By the time we landed at my sitio Yaracuma had learned all my men could tell him; and that was all he could learn from any man, for I kept those Maquiritares partly because they knew the country so well. He said nothing about where he intended to go, though, until after we had reached my place and I had kept my promise to pay well for the carrying of my supplies from the Cunucunuma. Then, when I had given out the machetes and other things his men had earned, he gave me a surprize.
"The men of the Ventuari tell me," he said, "that Loco León will work the balata at the Caño de Oso, above the parima—the high falling water."
"It is so," I agreed. "On the caño beyond the fall of Oso my friends shall work."
"And above the Caño de Oso is the Caño Uaychamo."
"It is so," I repeated.
"On the Caño Uaychamo shall be the paragua of Yaracuma," he announced.
Now this Caño Uaychamo is in the upper sabana country, and, though it is well wooded, I had not thought of his making a home there; for the Maquiritares like the thick forests beyond the open lands for their houses, and I had expected him to go there. So I was astonished. But I was well pleased, too, for by this I knew Yaracuma intended to help me bleed my trees in the next wet season.
You must understand, señores, that even I, for whom the Maquiritares will do far more than for any other man, am never sure of my workers from one season to another. They are free men and they do as they please; when they wish to work for me they come to me; when they would rather stay at home, or go on one of the long roving trips of which they are fond, or move their whole tribe to some other place, they give no thought to me and my balata. Why should they? Their lives are their own, not mine.
Yet, like any other man whose interests depend on labor, I like to know where that labor is to come from. And I saw that for the next season, at least, I should have willing workers near at hand in the Caño Uaychamo men.
"Es bueno," I told him. "I go soon to the Caño de Oso, and much farther up the Ventuari. I shall walk about and see what I may see, as I do in each dry time. Let Yaracuma make his paragua, and when the rains fall we shall meet again."
"It shall be so."
And the next morning at sunrise Yaracuma and all his people left me. With one of my own Maquiritares to keep them company and show them the shortest route over the sabana, they crossed the river in my canoes and were gone in the trees fining the bank. The last one to fade from sight was Nama, who, after all the rest had disappeared, stood a minute looking over the water at me. I gave no sign that I saw her. As my men shoved away and came paddling my dugouts back to our own creek, the girl turned slowly and followed her people.
"Vaya con Dios, Nama," I said softly. "Go with God—and forget that you ever saw me."
And I walked back to my house, feeling as if a load had been lifted from me. Until then, I had not realized just how heavily Black White's warning had lain on my mind.
Now I turned my attention to preparing for my usual rambling in the highlands. Though I had already decided to gather balata on the Caño de Oso, there were other creeks much farther up where I wished to look about—for it is my custom to work as many grounds in one season as I can, and I am always seeking new, good districts for use in future years.
So, not being in the habit of leaving all my supplies in one house while away, I now had them placed in a number of secret spots known only to me and my trusted men. Then, with two young Maquiritares who usually travel with me in the wilderness, I journeyed up the river to my next sitio, just above the cataract of Oso.
All was well there, and I moved on. The mouth of the Uaychamo showed no sign of life as I passed it, but I knew well enough that somewhere back from the Ventuari—perhaps a mile inland, perhaps much farther—the machetes which the Cunucunuma men had earned from me were swinging steadily, clearing ground and chopping poles for the framework of their new paragua.
Thinking of that, I recalled their old tribe-house on the Cunucunuma, and the stuffed monkey hung in its doorway, and the insulting note to the Butcher. And as we left the caño behind us I chuckled long, picturing Paco frothing with curses and hacking that monkey-skin to ribbons—in a killing rage, and with nothing to kill.
For weeks after that, too, I amused myself with visions of the fury of that baffled murderer. Then I stopped laughing very suddenly.
I had gone about among the nearest paraguas, visiting the Maquiritares and telling them all was well on the Ventuari now that Bayona was dead—though they seemed to know all about that affair before I met them—and I had done some scouting for new balata, when the word came that made me a madman.
It reached me in a camp which I had made on the little Rio Tamara, south of the Ventuari, which was full of rocks but possibly also rich in balata. For days I had seen no Maquiritares except my own two men; and, though there are Maquiritares on the Tamara, they are very wild and live far back, so I expected to see none. Then suddenly five Indians were where only two had been.
A surprized grunt from my own men, who were cleaning a couple of pavas I had shot, gave me my first warning of their coming. The three stood just at the backs of the squatting pair, and their faces were so hard that for an instant I thought them some of those wild Tamara men, angry at finding us there. But then I saw that one of them was that young fellow who had walked and talked with Nama.
"Hola!" I called. "What do you here? Is not all well on the Uaychamo?"
"All is bad on all the Ventuari," one answered shortly.
"Como?" I demanded.
"Bad blancos are here again."
"Diablo!" I swore. "Who? Why?"
"We do not know who. But they are here because Ramón Rodriguez died on the Cunucunuma."
"How do you know that?" I wondered. "Tell me what you know."
They looked hungrily at the two birds in the hands of my men. But those pavas were not yet ready for cooking, nor was a fire built. So they talked.
"We had worked making our paragua," the speaker told me. "One day we saw smoke in the sky. It rose from Quencua. With us was Pepe, who had come to Uaychamo with us from your sitio. He knew you had gone up the Ventuari. There should be no smoke at Quencua.
"Pepe went to see. He did not come back. Then we saw smoke at Oso. We went to see. We saw men with guns. They burned your casa."
I bounced out of my hamomck.
"Burned my house at Oso?"
"It is so. They looked very bad. The one who seemed to be capitán had great black whiskers. He seemed to have no nose. He had very long arms but short legs.
"We kept out of sight. We went back. We told our people to lie quiet. Our capitán told us to go to Quencua. We went over the sabana. At Quencua were no men. But there were zamuros—vultures.
"We swam across. We found your sitio burned. We found Pepe dead. We found the other Maquiritares dead. The zamuros had scattered them. But we saw fire marks on trees. We saw dry blood. The Maquiritares had been tied to the trees and burned. What else was done to them we do not know. But they died slowly.
"We found a stick standing in the ground. On the stick was a stuffed monkey. It was the areguato we left on the Cunucunuma. On the monkey was tabarí. This is the tabarí."
From one ear-lobe he took a little roll of the tabarí bark used in our up-Orinoco country for making cigarets. As I took it I felt sick. The man he had described—long arms, short legs, and almost no nose—was El Carnicero. And as I unrolled the bark I felt more sick.
On it was scrawled in the blood of my good Maquiritares—
Con los obsequies de Ramón Rodriguez y de Paco Peldóm.
X
FOR a few minutes after reading that message from the Butcher I raved so that even my own men hastily got away from me. I could see those Indians of mine at Quencua writhing in flames, mutilated by the torturing knives of the Paco gang; and I was loco in truth.
The burning of my houses was nothing; they were palm structures which could easily be rebuilt. Even if all my concealed supplies had been found and looted, the loss was only that of goods. But that wicked work on my faithful muchachos made me burn to destroy the Butcher—and not to do it quickly, as the men of Yaracuma had destroyed Rodriguez, but poco á poco—bit by bit.
When I could again talk with sense, I told my men to make ready to travel at once. While they took down my hammock and made the other preparations I asked the newcomers—
"The people of the Uaychamo are safe?"
"We do not know. We left them days ago."
"Porqui? Why?"
"To find you and tell you. Then to tell El Blanco Negro."
"Black White? Why tell him? You are not his people."
They made no answer. They calmly picked up the abandoned pavas and began preparing to cook and eat them.
"And this is not the affair of Black White," I added. "It is the fight of Loco León, and Loco León pays his own debts. You will say nothing to Black White. You will return with me to your capitán."
They looked, at me and at one another, their mouths hardening.
"Do you hear me?" I snapped.
"We hear," said one.
"Then go to my curial. I will leave you at the Uaychamo when we pass. Vaya?"
One muttered something to the others. Carrying the birds, they walked away through the bush toward my canoe. I turned and growled at my men, who still were not ready. In a minute or two we followed the men of Yaracuma. But when we reached the boat they were not there.
"Aquí!" I yelled. "Here, you fools!"
"They are gone, capitán," one of my muchachos told me. "They will not come with us."
"Then let them go to the ! Vamos!"
We shoved off and began struggling down through the rocks of the Tamara.
We traveled fast; so fast that we repeatedly bumped rocks in the raudales, which is not good treatment for even the stoutest curial. I was in 'a fever to reach my ravaged sitios and attack the whole Paco gang; and, though I knew that the distance from Tamara to Oso could, by hard paddling with the current, be covered in two days, I cursed because those two days were not two minutes. I feared that the Butcher would be gone when I arrived.
The men of Yaracuma had spent days in traveling to the Tamara. Probably Paco was already gone. I would get him, though, if I had to follow him to San Fernando and shoot him in Funes' own headquarters.
But then, as we surged away down the Ventuari itself, with both my Indians paddling fast and myself steering, I began to use my head. Was the Butcher likely to be satisfied with burning my houses and murdering a few Maquiritares? It was hardly probable. That would get him no pay at San Fernando. More than that, he now wanted my head on his own account, to avenge my ridicule of him on the Cunucunuma.
And, now that I thought of it, I saw a purpose in his work at Quencua and Oso. He probably had tried to torture from my Maquiritares some knowledge of where I was. The only thing they could tell him, if they would, was that I had gone up the river; for I myself never can be sure of what I shall do when I start into those hills—I make few plans, and often change those plans in a moment.
So then, not knowing where to look for me, he might have fired those houses in the hope that I should learn of it through Indians, just as I had done; and that I would do just what I now was doing—rush in rage to the place of his crimes.
The more I thought of it, the more I believed this was so. And if it was so, he now knew that his plan was succeeding: for he knew his message was gone from the stick he had left at Quencua. So he and his cutthroats would be waiting somewhere—perhaps at Oso, perhaps at Quencua, perhaps at both places—to get me when I plunged into their trap.
As for the question of how he had come to my place, that was simple enough. His message and the monkey showed that he had heard of the killing of Rodriguez and of my arrival on the Cunucunuma, and that he had gone there.
I did not believe he had followed us over the mountains. It was more likely that he had canoed back to the Ventuari, heard of the death of Bayona—which by then would be common gossip among all river-men and supposed it was I, not Black White, who led those avenging Maquiritares. So he had come up the Ventuari and found my sitios.
If he still waited for me, though, he might reasonably expect me to come with the same band of Maquiritares who had killed Bayona. Indeed, it seemed almost sure that he would expect this; for he himself always had a gang, he knew I was the friend of Maquiritares, and if he were in my place he would undoubtedly bring as many Indians as he could get. So he probably judged that I would do the same, and he would be alert.
With each of us seeking the blood of the other, the one who would live longest would be he who could trick his enemy.
His strength was in his gang and his guns. Mine was in the fact that I knew my ground much better than he did. Thinking further along the same line, I began to grin. A few minutes ago I had been telling myself that perhaps I should be a fool to go alone against Paco. Now I felt that it was not so foolish an idea. If it was foolish, then I would be a fool to the limit.
I would not even take these last two Maquiritares of mine with me. Worse yet, I would go to fight those gun-men without my rifle.
We traveled that day until darkness halted us, and at daybreak we were up and away. I had told my men I would go first to visit Yaracuma, and asked them whether they knew where he was to be found. One answered that he knew where Pepe had intended to lead the Cunucunuma men, and that he could guide me over the sabana to that spot.
So, when we drew near the Carlo Uaychamo, I looked for a hiding-place for the curial; found a little brook barely wide enough to hold it; slid the canoe in out of sight, tied it, covered it with bushes, and left it. Then we marched northwest, heading across the open land for the place where the new paragua might be.
My men thought, of course, that I meant to take the fighters of Yaracuma with me to Quencua, and I did not tell them of their mistake until we had reached the tribe-house. It was not at the exact place where Pepe had thought it ought to be made, but we had little trouble in finding it; for two armed men met us in the bush and led us to the right spot.
All was quiet there, but everyone was on the alert. While half of the men worked without noise at completing the house, the others scouted, watched for enemies, and hunted meat.
As soon as I arrived Yaracuma and every one else who was near gathered around me. I wasted no time in telling why I came. They knew.
"Where are those diablos who killed my men?" I asked.
"They are at Oso and Quencua," answered Yaracuma.
"Bueno! They wait for Loco León? They shall not wait long. You have many arrows?"
"Si."
"You have curare poison?"
"No."
"Como? No poison?"
"No. The poison we had is gone. We have not had time to trade for more."
I scowled. I knew well enough, of course, that the Maquiritares do not make that poison, though they use it on their blowgun darts for killing much of their meat. They trade for it with the Macos or the Piaroas. But I knew they had had some when they came from the Cunucunuma, and it had not occurred to me that none would be left now.
"That is bad," I grumbled. "I wanted gourds of that swift death for my arrows. I cannot wait until men are sent to the Piaroas for more."
Yaracuma looked puzzled. So did all the others.
"Yaracuma does not understand," said the capitán. "Loco León does not use arrows."
"Loco León will use arrows now!" I contradicted. "Listen to what I shall tell you.
"Yaracuma and his people thought I meant them to help me fight those evil men, is it not so? Yaracuma is wrong. This is not the fight of Yaracuma. It has nothing to do with Ramón Rodriguez and the Cunucunuma. It is true that if those men knew Yaracuma was here they would harm his people; but they do not know it, or they would have attacked before now. Those men strike at Loco León alone. Loco León will strike back alone.
"But Loco León is one man, and they are more than one."
"How many are they?"
"They are ten and seven."
"Seventeen? That is more than I thought. But it does not matter. It is all the more reason why I should use arrows. If Loco León, fighting alone, should use his gun, it would make much noise and a bright flash and blue smoke. So they would know where the gun was and would shoot their own guns at it, and soon Loco León would be dead. But the arrow flies with no noise. Now does Yaracuma understand?"
He stared as if he could not believe me. Men looked at one another. One of my own Maquiritares muttered—
"Es loco!"
"Are you just learning it, Frasco?" I laughed. "For what have I been called 'Loco' all these years? Crazy I may be, but I do what I say. I want no man with me. You and Gil both shall stay here."
They both scowled at that. But I gave them no more attention. Yaracuma was asking—
"Can Loco León shoot the bow?"
"Give me one and see," I said.
In my life among the Maquiritares I had amused myself more than once with their weapons, and, though I could not handle their long arrows as easily as if born to their use, I knew how to place them. Now a man standing near handed me his stiff bow and a long-headed tigre arrow. I picked a stump some distance away and drove the arrow at it. The missile struck at one side, gouged out bark, and stopped in the ground beyond.
"That is not a good shot," I said. "Yet if the stump were a man and the arrowhead carried curare, he would quickly die. I came here to ask Yaracuma to give me a good bow and many arrows and plenty of curare. I am sorry there is no poison. I want every arrow to kill."
Yaracuma thought. Men talked among themselves. I noticed that some of them looked at a thin, rather old man with bright, narrow eyes. Yaracuma also looked at that man.
"Loco León would kill his enemies with the poison," he said, as if thinking aloud.
"I would kill those enemies with poison," I corrected him. "Most men I would fight with lead and steel. But those fiends who tortured my poor muchachos with knife and fire, who for years have done every beastly crime known to men—the curare is too good for them! It does not hurt enough. If I knew of a worse thing I would use it. I would send those into with their master's torment already at work."
Faces grew grim, and more than one man nodded agreement. The capitán looked again at the narrow-eyed man, and that man looked back at him. Then Yaracuma said:
"If arrows are used those men will think it done by Indians. They will hunt for Indians and"
"No!" I broke in. "When has Loco León hidden behind his friends? I shall mark every arrow so that those men will know it is Loco León who strikes them down. I want them to know it is Loco León, the man they hunt, who kills them and sneers at them. That is one more reason why I want arrows. They can read those arrows. They could not read bullets."
He smiled a little and walked to the thin man. The two went slowly away together, talking low. The others watched the pair, and a hum of Indian words passed among them. Something was coming, and the Maquiritares had guessed what it was.
Soon Yaracuma came back. The thin man disappeared around the paragua.
"Loco León shall have his wish," the capitán calmly told me. "Bows and arrows are here. Poison will be made."
"Curare?"
"No. We do not make the curare. But there is another poison. It is a very old poison of our race. It must be used only for killing enemies. On the day after tomorrow it shall be ready."
"It is as strong as the curare?"
"It is much worse. It is so bad that it has not been made among our people for many years. Loco León has said he wants a poison fit for devils. He shall have it."
XI
IN THE long day that followed, little work was done at the paragua of Yaracuma. Every one talked. Some of the things that were said I understood, but most of them I did not. Yet I knew that the one thing every one talked about was the mad plan of Loco León.
It was easy to see that some of the men—especially the younger ones—were eager to go with me. The older men, though, who had women and children to think of, were not so reckless. If I had wanted them, no doubt I could have taken with me every fighter in the tribe; for, though the Maquiritares murdered at Quencua were not of the Cunucunuma, they were Maquiritares, and their torturers were hated by every one here.
My own two men, Frasco and Gil, were very sullen, and I could not blame them; they were comrades of the victims. But it now was a matter of personal pride with me to avenge every one of those deaths myself. Also, if I went alone I should have nobody else to think about, and so could direct my movements more easily.
Yaracuma himself, not being a fool, was well satisfied to let me go my way and do my best without aid, since that was what I desired. If I killed all my enemies, well and good; if not, he and his men might fight later on. So he saw to it that the making of the poison went forward—just where and how it was done I do not know, for it was made in some secret spot by the thin man—and he also ordered one of his best bowmen to give me any help needed with the arrows.
With this fellow to watch and correct my manner of holding the weapon, I practised for a time in the morning and improved my shots. The Indians took almost as keen an interest in this work as if I were actually shooting at a man instead of a stump; they were much more serious about it than I was, and every good hit brought a deep grunt from all around me.
When I tired of it, my assistant and half a dozen others went to inspecting the arrows I was to carry, testing the balance of each, examining them for straightness and strength, and throwing aside every one that did not suit their opinions. And I got out the roll of tabarí bark which I always carry up-river, and, with my pencil, printed on the thin sheets a message which would leave no doubt in the mind of the Butcher as to who visited him.
While I was doing this, squatting in the shade and keeping my eyes on my work, some one came and stood before me. At first I did not look up, for I was so much accustomed to being watched by the Indians that I hardly noticed it. But after a time a voice said, very softly—
"Loco!"
Then, lifting my eyes, I saw Nama.
She wanted to say something to me, but had not the words. Yet she gave me her meaning. She pointed to me, then toward Quencua, and shook her head. Then, pointing eastward, she said—
"Negro."
And she waved the pointing hand down along the river-line.
It was her way of telling me I must not go alone to Quencua, and that Black White would come down the Ventuari. I smiled and shook my head. Then, by signs, I showed that I was determined to go as I planned, and that Black White would not come; or, if he did, he would be too late. With that I resumed my pencil-work.
She tried to make me pay attention to something more, but I waved her aside. Then some of the men spoke gruffly—probably telling her she was meddling with matters in which a woman should not interfere. Slowly she went away.
Black White would come? I did not believe it. The raid of Bayona in the hills where White lived and the attack of Paco on the sitio of Loco León were far different matters. My affairs were nothing to him, especially when I asked no help and even forbade the Indians to tell him. I thought no more of it.
When my little messages were finished I tied one around each shaft with bush-cord. That ended my day's work. I left to the Indians the packing of the arrows into quivers and the selection of the bow, as well as the preparation of the poison. Only one thing remained for me to do, and that I did when Yaracuma was with me and nobody else happened to be near.
"Yaracuma," I said quietly, "I have told Frasco and Gil that they must stay here. They do not like it. They wish to go and fight. I ask my friend Yaracuma to watch them when I am gone, and to stop them if they try to follow me. When I shoot the arrows I shall not look to see the faces of the men I shoot at. I do not wish to strike down my friends by mistake. Let no man come after me."
"It shall be as Loco León says," he agreed.
So, with nothing more to be done, I did nothing but eat and sleep.
In the morning I found beside me a stout bow, a quiver with several arrows, a corded bundle of other five-foot shafts, and a large, light, round basket such as the Maquiritares use for packing on their backs yuca roots and other food. The basket seemed filled with flat cakes of cassava.
"All is ready," Yaracuma told me.
"There is cassava enough for six men," I grumbled. "It is far too much. And I see no poison."
He smiled and lifted the top cakes. Then I saw that they formed a lid, and that under them, in a green nest of leaves, were packed two gourd bottles. The necks of the bottles were short, wide, and tightly closed by wooden plugs.
"The basket holds life and death," he said. "Under the black juice is more cassava. There is a sling to carry a gourd. There is a new bow-cord also. All is here."
It was the best packing I had ever seen done by Indians. Before I could reach my foes I must eat, and so the cassava was placed ready at the top. Also, it would protect the poison from the hot sun during my journey. And the extra bow-cord, which I never should have thought of, might be useful in many ways.
"It is better not to carry the poison in the sling," he told me. "But the sling is there if wanted. You should leave the poison at some place after dipping the arrows. You must not let the poison touch your skin. You must handle the arrows carefully. The black juice is very hungry. It eats."
"It must be bad indeed," I said. I looked around for the thin man, but did not see him. "Where is the man who made the juice?"
"Why?"
"I should like to give him a knife."
"He is sick. He will be sick five days. No man can approach him."
"It is because he made the poison?"
"It is so."
I said no more. But I decided to be careful with that poison.
When I had eaten a good breakfast I swung up the basket, settled its strap across my forehead, and had the quiver and the extra arrows slung behind my shoulders. The basket was quite heavy, for cassava is solid food, and the poison-gourds were none too light. The arrows, though, weighed little, as the long shafts were of hollow cane.
With my thin hammock on the basket and my new bow and one arrow in my hands I left the paragua and headed southwest, toward Quencua.
Oso was nearer, but I did not go to Oso for two reasons. One was that I did not wish the brutes of Paco to search for me too close to Uaychamo, and thus, perhaps, discover the people of Yaracuma. The other was that I wanted to repay my enemies on the same ground where they had butchered and burned my Maquiritares. Moreover, the Quencua woods were better for my movements than those of Oso. And I was quite sure that the Oso men would go to Quencua as soon as they knew of what was taking place there.
So, leaving my rifle behind, I walked out into the sabana beyond the caño and began my journey of vengeance. To travel by the river was impossible, for that water was watched. Paco and his men must be cursing, I knew, because my canoe did not appear. They soon would curse for another reason.
All that day I walked. At night I slept without a fire among some trees beside a small stream. At sunrise I traveled on, and about noon I heard the roar of Quencua. Toward the fall I turned, and in another hour or so I was among the trees through which runs the only path around the fall.
In all the march I had seen no man, either ahead or behind. Now I became more guarded; for if any of the butchers were on their way up or down the river they must pass along that narrow track, a mile long, which connects the upper and lower ports of the Quencua raudal. I did not yet smear my arrow-heads with poison, but I made sure that those in the quiver were loose and easy to draw, and I carried one ready in my hand.
Soon I was in the path itself. The damp ground showed that men had passed within a day, going toward Oso. That was good; for it meant that at the lower end of the path must be waiting one of my canoes, in which those men or others above meant to journey down.
The problem of crossing the river had bothered me a little, for unless I could find a canoe it would mean swimming, and that would spoil my only food—the cassava. Now it would be easy.
I walked fast along the winding path, seeing no life but a few birds and a troop of marimundo monkeys. At the end I found the canoe, empty. From among some rocks I got an old paddle which, I remembered, had been thrown there some time ago by one of my men after half its blade split off. It now was partly eaten by ants and woodlice, but it would do. A few minutes later I was swinging around the first bend, heading for my destroyed sitio.
Now, the river at this point winds a good deal, and between the white water of the fall and the place where my house had stood were seven turns. I decided to journey past four of these and then to hide the canoe at a certain spot and finish my trip por tierra—by land. I kept close to shore, cutting across only to skirt the inside of each turn, and moving slowly as I rounded each curve. The first three bends showed me nothing ahead except empty water. But the fourth
I bore back so hard that the rotten paddle cracked. A few rods farther down, heading up-stream, was a canoe with three men.
Helped by a shore eddy, I got back unseen. But there was no cover for the canoe at that place; indeed, I was lucky even to meet a spot where I could scramble up the steep clay bank. I managed it, though, and when I reached the top I also had my bow, several arrows, and one gourd of the poison, which I had grabbed as if it were harmless as an empty calabash.
The canoe lay in plain sight, held by a snag.
In the bush at the top I wrenched the cork from the gourd and swiftly dipped four arrow-heads into the sticky black mess within. There was no time to be careful—I jabbed them in one by one, pulled them out, and arose ready to fight. A yard or two away was a small opening in the greenery, and at once I was there.
"Mira! Un curial!" cried a surprized voice. "Look! A canoe!"
The other canoe had come around the turn. All its men stared. I recognized every one of them—villains named Blas, Salomón, and Gaspar, more cruel than El Diablo himself. Looking at them, I saw my Maquiritares twisting and gasping in agony while the red knives of those men slowly cut off their fingers, and gouged out their eyes. And the red of that steel went into my own brain. I saw them in a fiery haze.
I do not just remember my movements for a minute or two. I do remember oaths, yells, gunshots, bullets smashing through the bush around me. Then their canoe was drifting back slowly in the current. Salomón was huddled up, motionless. Blas was trying to pull an arrow from his stomach. Gaspar had yanked another arrow from his right shoulder and was looking at it with eyes full of terror.
"Veneno! Poison!" he yelled. "It is black with poison! O Dios!"
Blas gave a choking moan and writhed on his seat.
"Los Indios, los Indios!" he gasped.
"Veneno!" repeated Gaspar, his voice more shrill. "It is fire—it is knives—it is vitriol!"
He threw the arrow down. Its point struck the gunwale and stuck there. Staggering, clutching his shoulder, yet he somehow spied the tabarí bark bound to the shaft. He dropped his hands and tore it off.
"Cien mil diablos!" he screeched. "It is not Indios! It is Loco León! Mira! Listen to the note on the arrow:
"Aquí está su billcie para el Infierno. Loco León."
"Loco León?" howled Blas. "Ah, ! They did not get him! Oh Cristo! What pain! This is the very fire of in my bowels!"
Gaspar began to twist again. His knees gave way, and he fell into the bottom of the boat. Both of them squirmed and kicked and swore. They cursed me, they cursed Paco, they cursed themselves. They began to scream like madmen. And then the canoe faded out of sight around the turn.
XII
WHEN the noise of the dying brutes had become silence—as it soon did—I went back to my poison-gourd and stared down at it.
"Yaracuma spoke truth," I said to myself. "This is a poison fit for fiends."
For a minute I felt like throwing the infernal stuff into the river and continuing my war with unvenomed arrows. But then I saw again my tortured Maquiritares. So, instead of casting the gourd away, I plugged it, wrapped leaves around it, and slid down the bank as carefully as if I carried a bomb. Back in the curial, I laid the bundle down like an egg and looked myself over to make sure that none of the black poison had stuck to my clothing. Then I pushed out.
When I rounded the turn for the second time I saw no life. The other canoe still was in sight, drifting down ahead, but it now held only three corpses. Stroking carefully to avoid a complete collapse of the wrecked paddle, I headed for the hiding-place I had had in mind. Soon I was there. With the curial drawn into the narrow inlet and bushes bent down as a curtain behind it, I considered my next step.
The drifting death-boat soon would reach my old sitio, and the men remaining there undoubtedly would see it, take it in, and learn that Loco León was near. I had not intended to let them know this until I was in my own woods and ready to attack at my own time; but there was no help for it now, and the sooner I finished my journey the better.
By making a long swing through the sabana, first to the south and then back to the north, I could reach my woods from the rear with a good chance of avoiding any guards. And, once there, I might be able to do a little more work of vengeance that night.
So I dipped a half-dozen arrows in the poison-pot, shouldered the rest of my equipment, and struck into the hills to the south. When I had passed through the tree-belt along the river and entered the open I had no cover except the little cerros, which meant a good deal of turning in order to keep from showing against the sky-line. Yet I made good speed, and not once did I meet men. And as sundown drew near I was at my own little caño and stealing northward among its trees. Just at dark I reached one of the little huts in which I had hidden my trade-goods before starting up the river.
Everything there was as I had left it. Whether the other two hiding-houses had been found I did not know, but this one evidently had not. Soon all grew black around me; but I used no light. Later on, I knew, there would be a moon.
While I rested and chewed cassava I kept my ears open to every sound. Nothing stirred, though, except the usual animal life. No voices came to me. If any guards were posted, they probably were at the river or at the big clearing where my house had stood, and where the gang now should be camping. No well-used paths were near this little hut, and it was hardly likely that men would stand all night in what seemed empty bush.
So, when the moon came and made things a little more visible, I started toward the river. The bush was not too thick for quiet travel if one moved slowly, and I took care to travel without noise. With me I carried the six arrows, freshly smeared, which had been in my left hand all the afternoon. They now hung in the quiver slanting across my back.
At length I reached the edge of the clearing. The moon now was well up, and the open space was quite light. I saw at once that my casa was gone, and so were two other palm houses where my Indians used to sleep; but one shelter still stood. It was an open-sided shed in which various belongings of mine had been kept. Now it was the sleeping-quarters of the gang. There I could see the vague curves of hammocks and the red spots of glowing cigarets, and hear growling voices. No guard was in sight.
Moving very carefully, I worked along the edge until I was as near the house as I could come without showing myself. It was near enough to hear what was said.
"Paco is a fool, and this proves it," somebody was grumbling. "‘Wait,' says Paco, 'and he will come t© be killed.' And we wait in this hole and feed the mosquitoes with our blood—caramba, I am an itch from hair to toes! And does he come? No! And while Paco sits on his rump at Oso the Indios walk in between and kill us. Phew! What a stench was Blas!"
"Si," said another man, "and Salómon too. And all three of them black as the Rio Negro. I would not have touched them or one of those arrows for a hundred pesos."
Several other voices grunted agreement. And thus I learned that the dead men must have been left to float on downward, carrying my arrows with them, and so nobody yet knew that I was near. That was good. But Paco himself, the man I most wanted, was not there, and that was not so good.
"I say again what I said before," rumbled a third voice, "that this thing was not done by Maquiritares. Those Indios use only curare, and no curare would bloat and burst men as that poison did. There must be other Indios here. Perhaps a few of those Guaharibo fiends who five east of the Padamo have come here on a raid. They must be few, or they would have taken the rifles from the curial."
A fourth broke out with curses upon all Indians.
"Snakes, all!" he swore. "Guaharibos or Maquiritares or whatever they may be, they are snakes. See what they did to Ramón Rodriguez. And those accursed Maquiritares we found here—would one of them talk? Would they tell where to find that dog of a León? Pah! They"
"We were too gentle with them," somebody interrupted. A chorus of cruel laughter followed. I grew hot and drew an arrow.
"Mira! What is that?" some one asked sharply. "Do you not see something move there?"
I stood perfectly still. There was a silence.
"There is something light, but it does not move. Moonlight on the leaves," another said then. "Nothing can come from the river without being seen. Miguel is on the watch. And no Indios would dare come so near us in the bush, knowing we are awake."
But another silence followed. Somebody stirred. A man came out, leaning forward and squinting, and stopped.
"It was not there a little while ago," I heard him muttering. "It is— Diablo! My gun, Lázaro! Quick!"
He spun on his heels. I let fly the arrow.
A shriek broke from him, and he stumbled, clutching at one leg. Like lightning I drew and shot two more arrows at the hammocks, where cigarets had suddenly dropped and rifle-clicks sounded. Then I threw myself sidewise and down.
I had not touched the ground when bullets were ripping over me. While I plunged forward on hands and knees, gripping my bow in one fist, more bullets crashed through the moving bushes. One stung my chin; another nipped my right thigh. But I got away. Nobody had the courage to rush at the bush and close with me, and the bullets did not quite find me. Perhaps the yells of the men I had hit—there were two, at least—helped me to escape.
"El veneno! The poison!" they screamed. "It is the black poison! O Santo Dios!"
Alarmed curses sounded from other men as the guns became still. The screams became louder and higher. I did not linger there, but those sounds followed me far into the tangle as I went.
"So," I said, "you who laughed a minute ago over your 'gentleness' to my faithful men now scream over a quicker death than they had. You yell now to God, do you? It is far too late for Him to listen to you."
And I worked onward under the moon toward my hut, feeling no pity for the howling cowards behind.
Yet, when I lay in my hammock and thought about it before falling asleep—which was not long, for I was very tired—I was not so well satisfied with my Indian way of fighting as I had thought I should be. To imagine those brutes dying in torment had been a joy, but to see and hear it was not quite so pleasant. And, though I told myself that this kind of death was no worse than they deserved, I felt more and more that I was not fighting as a white man should fight. The impulse to destroy that deadly mess in the gourds became stronger than it had been on the river.
In another way, too, I was not well pleased with the use of the bow and arrow. The bow was a clumsy thing to handle in the bush, and so was the long arrow. I could not crouch or lie flat and thus cover myself, as when using a rifle. And when I had been crawling for my life just now the bow had caught in vines and the arrows in leaves, hindering my movements.
An Indian would have handled them much more easily, of course; but I was no Indian. And I was learning that shooting at a stump outside a Maquiritare paragua and fighting live enemies in the woods were not the same. I wished I had brought my rifle; and I was glad that I still wore my revolver and poniard.
Then I went to sleep and forgot it all.
The next morning, though, while I ate, I looked at the gourds and gave up all thought of abandoning them. Now that I had begun this kind of war I must continue it; for, since my revolver was short of barrel and good only for close work, the arrow was the only weapon with which I could strike from any distance. And unless my figuring was wrong, I ought to be able to wipe out the rest of this Quencua gang today or tonight.
There were seventeen in all, the Indians had said. The Butcher, expecting me to come past Oso, would hardly leave more than half his force at Quencua—eight men. Yesterday I had killed at least half of those eight; in fact, I was almost sure of five deaths. Not more than three men, then, remained here. I would get them in the next few hours.
So, with fresh arrows, I slipped out again into the trees. Moving even more stealthily and slowly than last night, I went again to the clearing. Reaching it, I found nobody there.
I had not expected, of course, to see my enemies in plain sight. Warned by my messages, they would be hidden in the bush, watching and waiting for me to return. But, as I too waited, trying to spy some slight movement or catch some sound to indicate where those men might be, I felt more and more that the place was empty of human life. Birds came, some monkeys passed about, but the man-feeling—if you señores understand what I mean by that—was not in the air.
Yet I did not trust my senses. I would not believe the men were gone until I proved it. Moving with extreme care, keeping always covered, I circled the clearing. Then I became sure. Those last men had fled.
When I came out into the open and walked toward the sleeping-house I saw why they had gone. There, on the ground, were three horrible things which had been men. Those arrows which I had shot last night had done their work well. Whether all three had made hits, or whether one had missed and another had wounded two men, I could not know; but three corpses now lay under the hammocks. They were so frightful that I could not go near them. I hastily got back into the bush and left the place.
The last two men had not even dared to drag those bodies to the river and get them away from there. They themselves had gone instead, under the moon. Where? To Oso, no doubt, to tell their chief.
For a while I thought of following them to Oso, walking the sabana. Then I decided to wait for the Butcher to come to me. He probably would come with all speed.
So I traveled the bush to another of my hidden shelters, where I could find coffee and make a fire and have a better meal than for some time. Finding it undisturbed, I quickly cooked the coffee and drank until I could hold no more. Then I stretched myself and lay down on the supplies for a siesta.
"The luck of Loco León still holds good," I told myself. "Soon my account with El Carnicero will be closed, and then we shall have peace on the Ventuari."
Yet before sunset I was to feel that all luck had deserted me.
XIII
IWAS in ambush on the river-bank when my luck failed.
It was late in the day, and Paco and the rest of his gang might possibly be nearing the place. I did not really expect them so soon, for the river between Quencua and Oso is so bad that it would take hard, fast work for those up-bound men to reach him and bring him back in so short a time. Still, it was possible. So, having nothing else to do, I was watching the river from a little bushy point at the entrance of my caño, up which was the landing-place for canoes.
Before me stood a big mora tree, which would give me cover from bullets. Around me stood a few bushes, and on two of these, in crotches hip-high from the ground, lay a dozen ready arrows. By trimming branches with my knife I had made those bushes into a rack for the shafts, easier to reach than any back-quiver,
The deadly heads all pointed forward, and when the time should come I could snatch the cane shafts rapidly enough to drive them in a stream at the canoe-men. Meanwhile I leaned against the tree, giving all my attention to the river. The three dead men in the clearing behind me were not likely to do me any harm, and I knew of no other men.
Across the river a couple of areguatos were howling at each other, making the horrible noise those monkeys always make. If it had not been for their roaring I might have turned in time to make a better fight. As it was, I heard nothing near me until several quiet clicks struck my ears. Then I whirled—too late.
Five rifles covered me. Behind them stood men of San Fernando. And farther back, along the path, I saw more men holding guns ready to throw to an aim.
For a few seconds I stood dumb. And the more I stared, the more amazed I grew. These men did not belong to the gang of the Butcher.
"Caramba!" I said when my breath came back. "What is this? What are you doing here?"
"We are catching a león asleep," one of them mocked. "Come forward—with your hands up."
I stood still, looking at faces. Like Paco, these men were of the army of Funes; and they were no better than the brutes of the Butcher. I suspected—and soon found it true—that they were another pack sent out from San Fernando to get me; but I wanted to know why.
"Does the Coronel order this?" I demanded.
"Come here!" was the snarling answer. "Lift those hands!"
I knew then that this was not the work of Funes. If it had been, they would have said so; for an army party usually made a formal "arrest" in the name of the Coronel—though it often executed its prisoner immediately afterward. Not that I should have meekly surrendered if they had used Funes' name. I asked only because I was amazed and puzzled.
I took a slow step forward as if obeying, and I raised my hands. But I did not raise them far or keep them empty. Letting my bow drop, I snatched my revolver, fired, and fell, all in the same movement.
The rifles roared almost in my face. But the bullets smashed my hat instead of my head. I kept shooting as fast as I could shift my aim from man to man—and that was very fast indeed. At that short range I could not miss. Every man of those five staggered. Two of them fell.
My gun empty, I sprang up and jumped toward the river, intending to dive off, swim down-stream under water, and try to get into the bush. But I had hardly turned and begun to move outward when a terrible blow struck my right leg. With the blow came another gun-shot. I tumbled sprawling on my face.
Before I could drag myself forward, men were on me. I fought, squirmed over, drew my poniard, struck at somebody. My arm was caught and twisted. A rifle-barrel crashed on my head. Everything went black.
When I could see again, a ring of men stood around me. One was squatting beside me and tying up my hurt leg with a strip cut from my trousers. My revolver and poniard were gone.
Much surprised to find myself still alive, and still more astonished to see that some care was being given my wound, I lay still and stared around. I was in the same place where I had fallen, and felt that I had not been long unconscious.
Scanning faces, I now saw that one was that of Jaime Pecoro, a corporal under Funes and a gang leader on his own account. He was as merciless as Paco the Butcher, except that he was not so cruel: a killer, but not a torturer.
"Well, Jaime," I said, "it seems that you are the winner. But since when have you let your men do your work while you skulked behind? You were not here when I fought."
"I was at the clearing beyond," he growled. "We were looking in all directions for you, and these men found you. You , you have killed two of them."
"Only two?" I mocked. "My cartridges must be bad. What of the other three?"
Jaime smiled sourly. Several others chuckled in a grim way.
"They are hit, but they are tough," he said. "The fools should have shot first and talked afterward. But you are not so clever as men say, if you let them walk so near to you."
"I was watching for a dear friend of mine—El Carnicero," I retorted. "He may come at any moment. You had best be careful."
"The roast him!" Jaime snorted. "He is nothing, that Paco. You are slow, or you would have killed him before now. El Carnicero? Bah! El Rebuznador!" [1]
"I fear that you do not like the gentleman," I said, "it is a pity. But why do you come here and interrupt my plan to receive him?"
He grinned again, but his eyes were cold as those of a snake.
"Why? Because he is not good enough for his work. He has been given time enough to do a dozen such jobs."
"I see. And now you have been given the work instead, yes? I thought so. Then why do you not finish it now?"
"There is no hurry," he said, with a careless wave of the hand. "You will not run with that leg, and you will not shoot again, with no gun. I will attend to you when I am ready. Until then we shall talk and be comfortable."
I studied him and then laughed, though I did not feel at all merry. He meant just what he said. When he was ready he would chop off my head with no more feeling than if he were cutting a bush. But while I lived I intended to seem as cool as he was.
"That is quite agreeable," I said. "I wish you had kept away until I had seen Paco—I have a personal account to settle with him. But that can not be helped now. I am sorry also that I can not receive you in my casa, but you must blame Paco for that. He burned it while I was away."
He nodded shortly.
"Where are your Indios?" he demanded.
"I have no Indios," I denied.
"That is a lie! Every one knows you have the Maquiritares in your hand. You and they killed Coronel Bayona. We met on the river a canoe with three bodies—phew!—and arrows. We find more bodies and more arrows here. Where are those Indios?"
I held my tongue a minute. He did not know those arrows had been shot by Loco León. It would do me no good to tell him so, or to let him know of those other arrows so near us. I might yet find some chance to save myself.
"They are not here—" I was about to say, when every man jumped. From the entrance of the caño, just beyond the mora tree, sounded the bump of a paddle against the side of a canoe.
"Hola!" Jaime called sharply. "Who comes?"
"Paco Peldóm!" growled an answering voice. "Who are you?"
Jaime grinned once more. His teeth looked like the bared fangs of a tigre.
"Paco Peldóm?" he sneered. "You are too slow and too late, Paco. Your game is trapped by Jaime Pecoro. Travel onward."
A savage curse sounded from the water. The ring of men around me swung back and became a line, facing the caño and holding their guns half-raised. I turned over on an elbow and looked, but saw only the bush between me and the edge of the bank.
"What game do you mean?" yelled the Butcher. "How come you here, you"
"The game you were not good enough to catch!" Pecoro taunted him. "You have been away for weeks and done nothing. Now Jaime Pecoro comes here and catches your león in less than an hour after going ashore. Go on down the river to San Fernando, Peldóm, and ask the Coronel for a place as grave-digger. You are growing too old for this work."
The men standing behind me laughed jeeringly. The Butcher roared a string of foul names which only made Jaime grin wider than ever.
"You lie!" Paco raved. "You catch León? You? You could not catch a sick monkey! And I am old, am I? You son of a ! Get off this river before I show you how old I am! You will come here to steal my meat, will you? You crawling snake"
I looked at Jaime. His eyes were glittering, but he still grinned that cold grin. He was enjoying Paco's rage too much to shoot. I sat up.
"Give me a gun, Jaime—a revolver—anything," I asked. "Let me settle my score with that filthy brute. After that"
"Si, after that you will shoot me also, León," he jeered. "You are not to be trusted with a gun. Lie down again before I kick you down!"
But I did not lie down. I started to crawl toward my arrows, which nobody had noticed. I was determined to kill the Butcher before I should die in my turn.
Somebody fell on me and forced me flat on the ground. Then came another roar from the caño.
"Diablo! It is the truth? You have León there? Then, por Dios, you shall give him to me! He is mine, and I will have him!"
Water splashed and paddles bumped. Jaime's rifle clicked. But he was not yet through with talking.
"Si, he is here, but he belongs to a better man than you," he called. "Go back to San Fernando with your tail between your legs, if you know what is best for you—or you will never return there at all."
A snarl was the only answer. A scrambling sound on the bank—then the ugly face of Paco arose beside the mora tree. Gripping his rifle, glowering like a mad dog, he came lunging savagely toward me. The man holding me jumped up. More gun-clicks sounded behind me. In one more second there would have been shooting.
But in that one second something else happened. Paco gave a sudden grunt, grabbed at his stomach, halted as if struck, looked down. For the space of three breaths he stood like a block of wood. Then he jumped back as if from a snake.
His rifle dropped. His face lifted, and it was gray-white. His mouth worked; his tongue made a horrid sound without words. And down the front of his dirty shirt and breeches showed a row of black spots surrounded by red.
He had run straight upon the points of my waiting arrows.
XIV
JAIME and his men must have thought I had suddenly gone mad. I let out a wild screech of laughter.
"Welcome, Paco!" I yelled. "Welcome to the place where you burned helpless Maquiritares! Welcome to the pleasures of ! I received your message written in the blood of those poor tortured ones, and my answer is marked on your belly in red and black. I trust that you will enjoy our meeting as much as I."
His face twisted, and he stooped toward his gun. But he did not pick it up. His hands went to his stomach, and he stood humped over.
"Ah-h-h!" he groaned. "Ah, Cristo! El veneno!"
A grunt ran among the men of Jaime. I struggled up to my feet, and nobody touched me. Standing on my one good leg, I laughed again. However I might have felt about the use of that poison before, I now could keenly enjoy the misery of this inhuman beast.
"It was most amusing, was it not, to watch my muchachos twist and writhe under the torment?" I went on. "But the rest of us were not here to see it, Paco. Will you not show us how they danced and sang for you? If you cannot think of anything to sing, there is a little sentence on each of those shafts which is most appropriate. Take one of them off, Carnicero mio, and read it, and then sing to us while you can. That will not be long, unfortunately."
He staggered, tried to straighten up, but did not touch the arrows. His men, no doubt, had told him what that message on the tabarí bark was. He groaned again and looked at me with eyes full of hate.
"Ah! Oh! Demonio!" he gasped. "León—you diablo del infierno—you are Ah! Dios!"
He doubled over again.
"What is this, León?" demanded Jaime. "Is it a snake there in the bush that has struck him? What is this talk?"
I gave him no answer. In another minute he was more puzzled than before.
Behind the Butcher arose other heads—those of his men, climbing the bank. They stopped, watched their master with faces growing harder, and pointed to the arrows, which they now could see. An ugly growl sounded in their throats. Then, as Paco began reeling about and groaning more loudly, they surrounded him.
There was a struggle. Paco fell and thrashed about. The men, dodging him as if he were a serpent, hurried toward us, lifting their hands high as they came. One held the Butcher's gun as well as his own. Another carried Paco's belt, with revolver, poniard and machete. They had taken all his weapons and were leaving him to die like a poisoned dog.
"Peace!" one said, shortly. "We join you, Pecoro. He dies, and he will be mad before he goes. It was so with the others. So we take his arms. You had best throw him into the river before he bursts and becomes foul."
"What is it?" Jaime demanded again.
"Poison of the Indios," the Butcher's man replied. "A most horrible poison found by this fiend of a León. You had best kill him too, and quickly."
"Diablo! So that is it?"
Jaime gave me a hard look. But before he could think more about it Paco became violent.
Yelling and foaming, he fought up upon his legs. Before any of us guessed what he would do, he had grabbed several of the long arrows into a bundle and swung the points toward us. He drew back his arm
I dropped flat, and just in time. With a screech, Paco heaved his fistful of death at us, throwing the shafts all at once as if they were a spear. Then he fell, laughing horribly. The arrows separated in the air. A frightful yell of fear broke out behind me.
Turning, I found three men wounded by the black points. Two more arrows had dropped and stuck in the dirt. An instant later, gunshots roared.
The three doomed men were shot in their tracks by their companions. It was a merciful death for them. More bullets tore into Paco, rolling and kicking in the bushes. Some one shot at me too, and why he missed I do not know, unless his gun was knocked down in the confusion. As it was, the bullet spattered dirt into my face and eyes. For a few seconds I could not see.
When I had wiped the dirt away I saw men dragging the three bodies to the river. Paco was being lifted by four men, who held his hands and feet and yanked him to the bank. He was still twitching and making a low moaning noise. The four gave him a swing forward, back, forward—and let go. He went sprawling out into the air like a great toad.
A heavy splash sounded, followed by three more, as the other arrow-struck men were dropped. And then the cannibal caribe fish had a meal which, no doubt, killed them also.
I heard a grim chuckle overhead, and looked up at Jaime. He was unhurt, and cool as ever. I did not laugh with him, for my leg was hurting badly now, and I felt sick. But I did grin a little when he told the joke.
"Adios, Paco!" he said. "You had to blunder even in dying. You bumped into your own death without seeing it. And when you tried to kill me you only destroyed three of your own men. Not a man of mine was touched by an arrow. Ha, ha!"
Then he moved like a flash. His rifle covered somebody behind me.
"Alto!" he snapped. "What do you do with that?"
Turning my head, I saw one of Paco's brutes holding an arrow. Its point was directed at my back.
"I will give this accursed León his own dose," the man snarled. "I want to see him squirm as my cousin did last night."
"No, you will not," Jaime told him. "Throw that thing into the river! I take this man's head to San Fernando. I will have no poison in it. Throw that arrow!"
Muttering something, the man stepped to the bank and cast the deadly shaft outward.
"And remember that Jaime Pecoro commands here, you dog!" Jaime went on. "What I want done will be done, and nothing else. If you make one more move without my orders it will be your last. Do you understand me?"
He understood. So did the others left from the Butcher's gang. Not one of them even spoke in my hearing after that.
Jaime lowered his rifle and looked again at me.
"So you are the band of Indios," he said. "Are there more of those arrows?"
"That is for you to learn," I retorted. "Since you promise me only death, I need not tell you anything."
"As you like," he said, with a shrug. "I will not promise you life, since I came here to take your head. Men, look there in the bush for more arrows. If any are there, burn them."
Moving very carefully, men searched and found all the arrows left. Soon they, and my bow as well, were feeding a little fire.
"Now go and bring up the canoes," he ordered. "Move fast, for it will soon be dark. Heberto and Carlos, remain here to help me watch this mad león. I am afraid of him"
He grinned again. But his joke was half-truth, for he stepped out of my reach and kept his eyes on me while the rest were gone; and the two who stayed with him also watched me steadily. Jaime squatted, made a cigarro, and smoked it, never losing sight of me for an instant.
"Since you will not talk," he said, "it was a waste of time to bind up your leg. I did not want you to bleed to death too soon. Why not talk awhile? You will live no longer by being sulky."
"When do you expect to kill me?" I asked, feeling a natural curiosity on that subject.
"Before I sleep. You are too dangerous to be kept alive over night. We shall smoke your head a little, so that it will not spoil before we reach San Fernando. I will save you until after I eat, because a beheaded man bleeds much, and it might spoil my appetite. After that—whenever I feel sleepy I will put you to sleep also."
"You are as cold as a fish!" I said. "But do not forget that you are likely to get into serious trouble with the Coronel for killing me without his order. I am worth something to him, with my balata tax."
"That does not worry me. You are worth a very good price—it has doubled since you killed Bayona and his men—and as soon as I collect my money I shall quit Funes. He is a madman and not to be trusted, and I work always for the good of Jaime Pecoro."
"I see. You are a man of business."
He nodded.
"Since that is so," I went on, "possibly I can overbid your employers. My head is worth more to me than to any one else. I have money"
"Where? Here?"
"Not much here, but plenty in Bolívar"
"Ha!" he sneered. "I do no business on credit. Let you go to Bolívar for your money? I am not such a fool! At San Fernando I shall get solid silver money for you. But I talk too much. What was that you said to Paco about torturing Maquiritares? And what was it about burning your house? I am curious."
"I will tell you that," I said, "if you will first tell me how you got behind me and caught me."
"It was very simple," he explained. "I brought from San Fernando one of your men who knows this place. Instead of coming by boat to your caño, we tied up at one farther down and walked overland. Then we came through the woods and looked around the clearing, and I sent men in different directions to hunt for signs. And here you stood against that tree, sound asleep. It was too easy."
He laughed again, and I cursed those howling monkeys which had spoiled my hearing; cursed that San Fernando mestizo who had led this gang here, too, though it was no more than could be expected—such a man would do anything for a few pesos. But I kept my curses inside my own head; I would not give him the fun of hearing me swear, as Paco had done.
Then I told him of the Butcher's treatment of my muchachos and his destruction of my place, as I had promised to do. But I said nothing of the people of Yaracuma or of how I had obtained my poison, nor did I deny that I had killed Bayona. There was no use in either. I held the talk to Paco and what I knew of him. And while I talked I was trying to see some way of escape—and finding none.
The canoes came, and after they reached the landing-place up the caño the men rejoined Jaime at the point. The sun now was down, and it would quickly be dark. Jaime arose and ordered me carried to the landing-place.
"Hold his arms tight, and when you let him go give him no chance to snatch a weapon from you," he commanded. "León, you had best try no tricks, or you will eat no cena tonight."
I was seized, firmly held, and borne along the path to the landing. There dry wood was quickly gathered and several good fires made. By the time darkness had come the whole place was well lit up, and more wood was piled at hand. I felt a little chilly when I noticed that some green stuff also was brought and laid near one fire. It was meant for smoking my head.
There was no chance for me. Men were all about, and I was kept in the brightest light. I looked longingly at the steep bushy bank just across the caño, now a black mass. If only I could reach it—but I could not.
So I made the best of it, determined that when the time came I would take it with my eyes open—and that I would make whatever poor fight I could. Hands and teeth could not do much damage, but I would leave a few marks behind me. And in the meantime I would eat and drink and keep my nerves steady. A man is never dead until he is a corpse.
Jaime and I ate facing each other, with men and fires in a ring around. He had some tapir-meat, plantains, and coffee, besides the usual farina; and after eating cassava alone for days I found those things good, especially the meat and the fried plantains. Both of us ate heavily, as if nothing further were to take place. And when the meal was done we both smoked cigarros.
"You are a better executioner than El Carnicero, Jaime," I said, with a laugh that I tried to make real. "Instead of eating and smoking with me he would have begun at my toes in cutting off my head."
"Si," he nodded. "That was his way. And where is he now? Such work is not business. To me it is not pleasure either. A clean, sure job with quick pay—that is the way of Jaime Pecoro."
"There are worse ways," I agreed.
And we smoked on.
It became very still. The men around us smoked and watched. None of them spoke. Jaime asked no more questions. My own tongue became dry. Something cold began to creep around my heart. Time seemed to drag, and yet to go all too fast.
I wanted to talk, but I could think of nothing to say. Never before had I been in such a position. Death is nothing, I told myself. But that slow silence, that unfeeling "business man" deliberately taking his time, that green pile ready to smoke my head in a few minutes more—those things gnawed at me.
Jaime's cigarro was smoked down to a butt before he moved. The quietness had become a cold horror. There seemed to be no animal noises in the night, and even the breathing of the men seemed to have stopped. Then Jaime dropped his burned-out roll of tobacco. His face stretched in a long yawn. Calmly he arose.
"I am sleepy," he said.
And he drew his machete.
"If you will bend over, León, and rest on your hands, it will be easier," he suggested. "A clean cut. I do not like ragged work."
I looked about me. No chance, no hope, was within reach. Jaime was raising the machete.
"Give me time to set my knees," I said.
I began to move my bad leg around. I drooped forward a little, but not enough for his swing. If I could brace my knees under me I meant to spring at him, to try to seize machete—revolver—anything—and fight till death. While I moved I kept my shoulders hunched, shortening my neck, giving no chance for the "clean cut" he wanted. I did not look up at him. I feared he would read my eye.
And then
A harsh voice yelled. It was in the bush across the caño. Instantly flame spat from that bush.
Gunshots cracked my ears. Jaime staggered. Other men leaped and screamed. I jumped forward. Jaime fell over me. He stayed down.
The streaks of flame shot out again—again—again. The keen reports made a ragged rip that did not stop. The men of Jaime Pecoro jumped and yelled and fired and fell. The caño seemed bursting with noise.
I threw myself at Jaime, who lay still, a hole in his head. I wrenched out his revolver and emptied it at his men. And then there were no men. There was nothing but the blazing fires—sprawling bodies—another harsh yell—and sudden silence.
"Quién es?" I shouted, staring at that black bush.
A wild laugh screamed back at me. That same harsh voice tore across the water.
"Ha! ha! ha!" it yelled. "Dead men walking in the night! Dead men walking in the night! Poor murdered Indians with bows and arrows! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"
XV
ILOOKED around, seeking any living man of Jaime or of Paco who might still be dangerous. I saw none. There were two or three who moved a little, but it was plain that they would not move long. Then I suddenly felt very old and tired; and I sank down beside dead Jaime, caring little for what might happen next.
The bushes across the caño rustled loudly. Bold splashes and sounds of swimming followed. Beside the canoes arose wet Indians. They came up the sloping shore, carrying tigre spears, and walked swiftly around among the bodies. Into every man's heart they slipped their spearheads, making sure that none should escape by pretending death. Then they gathered before me.
"Como 'stá usté, Loco?" asked one.
He was Frasco, one of my own Maquiritares. And another of them, I now saw, was Gil.
"I am not very well," I grumbled. "How come you here? I told you to stay with Yaracuma."
"El Blanco Negro told us to come," answered Gil. "Yaracuma too is here. We shall bring the fighters."
With no more words, they turned back to the caño. Across it they shoved the canoes. There was much bush-rustling, crossing and recrossing of boats, landing of men. Then the place was full of Maquiritares and of Maquiritares alone. Black White, their leader, did not cross. He remained in the masking bush, seeing all, and himself unseen.
Among those Indians were at least a score with guns: long repeating rifles with box magazines, which looked very powerful. Across the chests of those men hung stout shoulder-belts of woven fibre, studded with cartridges held in loops.
Each man wore two of those bandoleros; and each had also a hip-belt from which hung one of those straight narrow-bladed machetes called casanareno—a knife like a sword, made for stabbing as well as for slashing. The men themselves looked more hard and stern than Maquiritares usually do, and every one of them had the build of a fierce fighter.
These men walked about among the bodies as the ones with spears had done, but not for the same purpose. They took from every dead man his weapons, which they laid on the ground: rifles, revolvers, machetes, knives, cartridges, each kind in its own little pile, each pile close to the others.
Then they drew together and stood there, leaning on their own guns. One of them gave brief orders to the Uaychamo Indians. These picked up the bodies and, with torches taken from the fires, walked out along the path to the river. Soon they came back empty-handed.
In less than fifteen minutes from the time when Jaime stood up and drew his machete, he and all his gang had disappeared forever from the eyes of men. So had the treacherous mestizo who had led them there. So had the last of the Butcher's killers. They never would reach the Orinoco—the caribes would see to that. And only we men of the Ventuari knew what had become of them.
I looked up at Yaracuma, who stood quietly near me, armed with a stout bow and a full quiver of arrows. I glanced around at his men, carrying the weapons of their race, who now were soberly watching me. I let my eyes drift again over the gunfighting force which I never had seen before, but which I was to know thereafter as the Thirty Gang of El Blanco Negro. I looked long at the silent bush beyond the water, where Black White himself was watching me. And in my heart I thanked God for such friends as these.
Then I gave thanks also to the man across the caño.
"Gracias, Blanco," I called. "Perhaps some day I can repay this. You came at a good time. But why?"
"What?" answered the rough voice. "No thanks to me! Go thank your woman! Has she fed you the yucut' 'sehi yet? Ha-ha-ha!"
"My woman? You mean Nama?"
"Who else?" he jeered. "Have you other women too? That's bad business, Loco! I played that game before I died. I fooled with 'em all—and they got me in the end. Black! Black! Black as the soot of ! Yah! God!"
"But what do you mean?" I persisted. "What had Nama to do with this?"
"She sent her brother to me, you fool! You saw him at the Tamara. She and my woman Juana got thick as thieves that day on the Iurebe. Juana told me how things were between you. When I was alive I'd do anything to accommodate the ladies—except marry 'em—ya-ha-ha! Now that I'm dead I still listen to 'em. So when my woman and yours both wanted you helped and there was more killing in sight to make it interesting
"Well, here we are. I'm tired of talking. Shut up!"
I did shut up. I sat there marveling. So that young fellow with whom Nama had walked was her brother? And I owed my life to two women? And the wild man over there had done this because of them? It all seemed impossible. But I was feeling more and more tired and sick. I stopped thinking, and lay back on the ground, and let myself slip off into nowhere.
I stayed in that Land of Nowhere for some time. I do not remember anything more that night, or in several days and nights after that. Then I was lying in a hammock, and over me was a new leaf-roof, and in other hammocks near me lay Yaracuma and the thin Indian who had made the terrible black poison.
It was late in the day, and cloudy and cool. The chief and his medicine man were dozing, and I looked around to see where I was. The house was one of those quickly-made Maquiritare shelters of pole and plataní, and two others stood near. The trees beyond were those of my own clearing.
The thin man opened one eye and looked at me. Then he opened both and arose. He studied me very sharply and grunted something to Yaracuma, who had joined him. Both looked well satisfied.
"You are better," said Yaracuma. "It is good."
"Fever?" I asked.
"It is so. The fever was bad. The leg was bad. But you soon will walk."
"Tell me what has been done," I requested.
"We have cleaned this place. We piled wood and burned that house of death and what was in it. We made these new houses. This man has made drinks for you. He has killed your fever. He is making your leg whole.
"El Blanco Negro is gone. He went when the next sun came. My men stayed one day. Some are here now. I sent the others home. There is much work for them. The women and children must be protected."
I nodded, and let my mind go back to the last night I remembered. Then I asked—
"The brother of Nama went to Black White?"
"It is so."
"Why?"
"To tell of the bad blancos."
"I know that. But did Nama ask that it be done?"
"She asked it. And I ordered it."
"Oh. It was by the command of Yaracuma?"
"I ordered it," he repeated. "I did it because you ought to know what was done here. El Blanco Negro too should know."
"Then it was your work and not hers?"
"She asked it. But it was done because it was sense."
"I see." But I did not quite see, either. I wondered that she had dared to tell the chief what he ought to do. Then a possible reason came to me.
"Is she of your blood?" I asked.
"She is the child of my sister."
"I see," I said again. That was a different matter.
There was a little silence. Yaracuma watched me, and after a time his eyes smiled.
"Nama soon will mate," he told me.
"Is it so?" Perhaps I looked relieved, for the capitán now smiled with mouth as well as eyes.
"It is so," he replied. "For a time she dreamed she might mate with Loco León. The young sometimes dream foolishly. But the dream has passed."
I said nothing. Soon he went on.
"Before Loco León came to us Nama looked kindly on one of my young men. Then came Ramón Rodriguez like a spirit of evil, and Loco León like a spirit of good. In her dark hour her heart turned to Loco León. The young man of her tribe was forgotten.
"In those days she had good counsel and bad. Her brother spoke to her the truth that it is bad for Maquiritare and blanco to mate; that it is worse for Maquiritare woman to think of a blanco who does not think of her; that Loco León wants no woman, and she must think no more of him. But on the Iurebe the woman Juana of Uaunana spoke other words. She told Nama that Loco León could be made black like El Blanco Negro; that then he would not go out among other men for shame; that no other woman would want him. So he should be hers alone.
"Nama thought upon these things. But in the end she saw that Loco León did not want her. She saw that even if made black he would not want her; he would hate her with a bitter hate. She does not want Loco León ever to hate her. So the good counsel of her brother became strong in her mind. Her eyes were opened again, and she saw once more the young man she had forgotten, and she found him good. So there will be no more dreaming, and all is as it should be."
"Si," I agreed. "She has judged wisely and rightly. I shall be ever a friend to Nama, and to all the people of Yaracuma. But my heart does not turn to her, and where the heart does not turn the body should not be given—or taken."
"It is so," Yaracuma said solemnly. And we said no more.
In a little while I slept again.
Before many days I was again on my legs, and then Yaracuma and his medicine-man and the others of his tribe returned to their Caño Uaychamo, leaving me with Frasco and Gil. And one of the first things I did was to visit that hut where my two gourds of poison lay, and to have a deep hole dug and the gourds dropped into the bottom. Then Frasco and Gil filled the hole with stones, crushing the gourds to nothing.
I was through with fighting like a savage. If my own pride in being a white man had not been strong enough to make me abandon such weapons, the fact that Black White's men used guns would have shamed me. For when Indians fight like white men, a white who uses poisoned arrows is far lower than Indians—he is no better than a snake.
Now that I had seen those gun-men of Black White, I tried to learn, by questioning my own Maquiritares and others, how they armed themselves. But, as always when asked about El Blanco Negro, they were dumb. It was not until later, when I met in the wild hills a little band of Macusi Indians from Guayana Inglesa and talked with them, that I was told of that mysterious trade in bullets and gold at the Cuyuni which caused the name "The Thirty Gang."
But I can tell you, señores, that that small force would be a terrible machine to fight against in its own hills; and any expedition that ever tries to force its way to the lair of Black White had best make its peace with God before it starts.
So now I know what the Thirty Gang is. But there is another thing which I do not know, and probably never shall learn. What was it, in the mind of that half-mad Black White, that drove him down the Ventuari again to help me fight my foes?
It was not because Yaracuma asked it. The wishes of an Indian capitán are nothing to him. I do not believe it was friendship to me; for I am the man who led him to his doom, though it was through no fault of mine that he met it. Neither can I feel that it was because I had fought for him in the past; he was always ungrateful.
Can it be that he told me truth on that last night in his mocking talk, and that he really acted for the sake of the girl who wanted me? Is it possible that memory tortures him now with the tears and heartaches and despair of girls whose trust he betrayed in other days, and that now he would atone for his wrongs by aiding an Indian maid to win happiness in love? Or was it only the blood-call of a fierce animal, driving him to a killing, that brought him down to my caño?
I do not know. It might be either, or both, or neither one. Such a mind as his is in the hands of God—or of the devil. It is one more of those puzzles which the great hills of the Land of Falling Waters hold, and for which there is no answer.
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