Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 667
“Santa Maria! Tigre! He’s there!” he whispered. “He’s there, beside the body of something he’s killed. He’s been there all night. He was there when we first heard him. We thought he was trailing. Muella, I must see closer. Stay back — you must not follow!”
But as he crept under the low palms she followed him. They came to the open clearing. Tigre lay across the trail, his beautiful yellow and black body stretched in lax grace, his terrible sightless eyes riveted on a dead man beside him.
“Muella — stay back — I fear — I fear!” said Augustine.
He crept yet a little farther, and returned with pale face and quivering jaw.
“Muella, it’s Bernardo! He’s dead — has been dead for days. When you started off that day to warn me, Bernardo must have run round by the old wagon road to head off Tigre. The blind brute killed him!”
“Bernardo repented!” moaned Muella. “He repented!”
V. — THE RUBBER HUNTER
IQUITOS WAS A magnet for wanderers and a safe hiding-place for men who must turn their faces from civilization. Rubber drew adventurers and criminals to this Peruvian frontier town as gold lured them to the Klondike.
Among the motley crowd of rubber hunters boarding the Amazonas for the up-river trip was a Spaniard, upon whom all eyes were trained. At the end of the gangplank, Captain Valdez stopped him and tried to send him back. The rubber hunter, however, appeared to be a man whom it would be impossible to turn aside.
“There’s my passage,” he shouted. “I’m going aboard.”
No one in Iquitos knew him by any other name than Manuel. He headed the list of outlaw rubber hunters, and was suspected of being a slave hunter as well. Beyond the Andes was a government which, if it knew aught of the slave traffic, had no power on that remote frontier. Valdez and the other boat owners, however, had leagued themselves together and taken the law into their own hands, for the outlaws destroyed the rubber trees instead of tapping them, which was the legitimate work, and thus threatened to ruin the rubber industry. Moreover, the slave dealers alienated the Indians, and so made them hostile.
Captain Valdez now looked doubtfully at Manuel. The Spaniard was of unusual stature; his cavernous eyes glowed from under shaggy brows; his thin beard, never shaven, showed the hard lines of his set jaw. In that crowd of desperate men he stood out conspicuously. He had made and squandered more money than any six rubber hunters on the river; he drank chicha and had a passion for games of chance; he had fought and killed his men.
“I’m going aboard,” he repeated, pushing past Valdez.
“One more trip, then, Manuel,” said the captain slowly. We’re going to shut down on you outlaws.”
“They’re all outlaws. Every man who has nerve enough to go as far as the Pachitier is an outlaw. Valdez, do you think I’m a slaver?”
“You’re suspected — among others,” replied the captain warily.
“I never hunted slaves,” bellowed Manuel, waving his brawny arms. “I never needed to sell slaves. I always found cowcha more than any man on the river.”
“Manuel, I’ll take you on your word. But listen — if you are ever caught with Indians, you’ll get the chain gang or be sent adrift down the Amazon.”
“Valdez, I’ll take my last trip on those terms,” returned Manuel. “I’m going far — I’ll come in rich.”
Soon after that the Amazonas cast off. She was a stern wheeler with two decks — an old craft as rough-looking as her cargo of human freight. On the upper deck were the pilot house, the captain’s quarters, and a small, first-class cabin, which was unoccupied. The twenty-four passengers on board traveled second-class, down on the lower deck. Forward it was open, and here the crew and passengers slept, some in hammocks and the rest sprawled on the floor. Then came the machinery. Wood was the fuel used, and stops were made along the river when a fresh supply was needed.
Aft was the dining saloon, a gloomy hole, narrow and about twelve feet long, with benches running on two sides. At meal times, the table was lowered from the ceiling by a crude device of ropes and pulleys.
The night of the departure this saloon was a spectacle. The little room, with its dim, smelly lamp and blue haze of smoke, seemed weirdly set between the vast reaches of the black river. The passengers crowded there, smoking, drinking, gambling. These hunters, when they got together, spoke in very loud tones, for in the primeval silence and solitude of the Amazonian wilderness they grew unaccustomed to the sound of their own voices. Many languages were spoken, but Spanish was the one that gave them general intercourse.
It was a muggy night, and the stuffy saloon reeked with the odors of tobacco and perspiration and the fumes of chicha. The unkempt passengers sat coatless, many of them shirtless, each one adding to the din around the gambling board.
Presently the door of the saloon was filled by the form of a powerful man. From his white face and blond hair he might have been taken for an Englishman. The several gambling groups boisterously invited him to play. He had a weary, hunted look that did not change when he began to gamble. He played indifferently, spoke seldom, and lost at every turn of the cards. There appeared to be no limit to his ill luck or to his supply of money.
Players were attracted from other groups. The game, the stakes, the din, the flow of chicha — all increased as the night wore on.
Like the turn of the tide, the silent man’s luck changed. After nearly every play he raked in the stakes. Darker grew those dark faces about the board, and meaning glances glittered. A knife gleamed low behind the winner’s back, clutched in a lean hand of one of the gamesters. Murder might have been done then, but a big arm swept the gamester off his feet and flung him out of the door, where he disappeared in the blackness.
“Fair play!” roared Manuel, his eyes glowing like phosphorus in the dark. The sudden silence let in the chug of machinery, the splashing of the paddle wheel, the swishing of water. Every eye watched the giant Spaniard. Then the game recommenced, and, under Manuel’s burning eyes, continued on into the night.
At last he flipped a gold piece on the table and ordered chicha for all.
“Men, drink to Manuel’s last trip up the river,” he said. “I’m coming in rich.”
“Rubber or Indians?” sarcastically queried a weasel-featured Spaniard.
“Bustos, you lie in your question,” replied Manuel hotly. “You can’t make a slave hunter of me. I’m after rubber. I’ll bring in canoes full of rubber.”
Most of the outlaws, when they could not find a profitable rubber forest, turned their energies to capturing Indian children and selling them into slavery in the Amazonian settlements.
“Manuel, where will you strike out?” asked one.
“For the headwaters of the Palcazu. Who’ll go with me?”
Few rubber hunters besides Manuel had ever been beyond the junction of the Pachitea and the Ucayali; and the Palcazu headed up in the foothills of the Andes. Little was known of the river, more than that it marked the territory of the Cashibos, a mysterious tribe of cannibals. None of the men manifested a desire to become Manuel’s partner. He leered scornfully at them, and cursed them for a pack of cowards.
After that night he had little to do with his fellow passengers, used tobacco sparingly, drank not at all, and retreated sullenly within himself. Manuel never went into the jungle out of condition.
The Amazonas turned into the Ucayali, and day and night steamed up that thousand-mile river, stopping often for fuel, and here and there to let off the rubber hunters. All of them bade Manuel good-by with a jocund finality. At La Boca, which was the mouth of the Pachitea and the end of Captain Valdez’s run, there were only three passengers left of the original twenty-four — Bustos, Manuel, and the stranger who seemed to have nothing in common with the rubber hunters.
“Manuel,” said Bustos, “you’ve heard what the Palcazu is — fatal midday sun, the death dews, the man-eating Cashibos. You’ll never come in. Adios!”
Then Captain Valdez interrogated Manuel.
“Is it true you are going out to the Palcazu?”
“Yes, captain.”
“That looks bad, Manuel. We know Indians swarm up there — the Chunchus of the Pachitea, and farther out the Cashibos. We’ve never heard of rubber there.”
“Would I go alone into a cannibal country if I hunted slaves?”
“What you couldn’t do has yet not been proven. Remember, Manuel — if we catch you with Indian children, it’s the chain gang or the Amazon.”
Manuel, cursing low, lifted his pack and went down the gangplank. As he stepped upon the dock a man accosted him.
“Do you still want a partner?”
The question was put by the blond passenger. Manuel looked at him keenly for the first time, discovering a man as powerfully built as himself, whose gray eyes had a shadow, and about whom there was a hint of recklessness.
“You’re not a rubber hunter?” asked Manuel.
“No.”
“Why do you want to go with me? You heard what kind of a country it is along the Palcazu?”
“Yes, I heard. That’s why I want to go.”
“Ha, ha!” laughed Manuel curiously. “Señor, what shall I call you?”
“It’s no matter.”
“Very well, it shall be Señor.”
Manuel carried his pack to a grove of palms bordering the river, where there was a fleet of canoes. Capmas Indians lounged in the shade, waiting for such opportunity to trade as he presented. Evidently Manuel was a close trader, for the willing Indians hauled up several canoes, from which he selected one. For a canoe, its proportions were immense; it had been hollowed from the trunk of a tree, was fifty feet long, three wide, and as many deep.
“Señor, I’m starting,” said Manuel, throwing his pack into the canoe.
“Let’s be off, then,” replied Señor.
“But — you still want to go?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve taken out strangers to these parts — and they never came back.”
“That’s my chance.”
“Señor, up the Pachitea the breeze seldom blows. It’s hot. Sand flies humming all day long — mosquitoes thicker than smoke — creeping insects — spiders, snakes, crocodiles, poison dews, and fevers — and the Cashibos. If we get back at all, it will be with tons of rubber. I ask no questions. I, too, have gone into the jungle and kept my secret. Señor, do you go?”
Señor silently offered his hand; and these two, outlaw and wanderer, so different in blood and the fortunes of life, exchanged the look that binds men in the wilderness. Whereupon Manuel gave one of the eighteen-foot, wide-bladed paddles to his companion, and, pushing the canoe off the sand, began to pole upstream close to the bank. None but the silent Campas Indians saw their departure, and soon they, and the grove of palms, and the thatched huts disappeared behind a green bend of the river.
The Pachitea, with its smooth current, steamed under the sun. The voyagers kept close to the shady side. The method of propelling the canoe permitted only one to work at a time. Beginning at the bow, he sunk his paddle to the bottom, and, holding it firmly imbedded, he walked the length of the canoe. When he completed his walk to the stern, his companion had passed to the bow. Thus the momentum of their canoe did not slacken, and they made fast time.
Gradually the strip of shade under the full-foliaged bank receded until the sun burned down upon them. When the tangled balls of snakes melted off the branches, and the water smoked and the paddles were too hot to handle, Manuel shoved the canoe into the shade of overhanging vines. It was a time when all living things, except the heat-born sand flies, hid from the direct rays of the midday sun. While the Spaniard draped a net over the bow of the canoe these sand flies hummed by like bullets. Then Manuel motioned his comrade to crawl with him under cover, and there they slept away those hours wherein action was forbidden.
About the middle of the afternoon they awoke to resume their journey; leisurely at first, and then, as the sun declined, with more energy. Fish and crocodiles rippled the surface of the river, and innumerable wild fowl skimmed its green width.
Toward sunset Manuel beached on a sandy bank, where there was a grove of siteka trees. He had gone into the jungle at this point and brought out rubber. The camp site was now waist deep in vegetation, which Manuel mowed down with his machete. Then he built two fires of damp leaves and wood, so they would smoke and somewhat lessen the scourge of mosquitoes. After that he carried up the charcoal box from the canoe and cooked the evening meal.
Manuel found it good to unseal the fountain of speech, that always went dry when he was alone in the jungle. It took him a little while to realize that he did all the talking, that Señor was a silent man who replied only to a direct question, and then mostly in monosyllables. Slowly this dawned upon the voluble Spaniard, and slowly he froze into the silence natural to him in the wilderness.
They finished the meal, eating under their head nets, and then sat a while over the smoky fires, with the splash of fish and the incessant whining hum of mosquitoes in their ears. When the stars came out, lightening the ebony darkness, they manned the canoe again, and for long hours poled up the misty gloom of the river.
In the morning they resumed travel, slept through the sweltering noon, and went on in the night. At the end of the fifth day’s advance, Manuel pointed out the mouth of a small tributary.
“So far I’ve been. Beyond here all is strange to me. White men from Lima have come down the river; but of those who have gone up farther than this, none have ever returned.”
What a light flashed from the eyes of his partner! Manuel was slow to see anything singular in men. But this served to focus his mind on the strangest companion with whom he had ever traveled.
Señor was exceedingly strong and implacably tireless; a perfect fiend for action. He minded not the toil, nor the flies, nor the mosquitoes, nor the heat; nothing concerned him except standing still. Señor never lagged, never shirked his part of the labor, never stole the bigger share of food, which was more than remarkable in the partner of a rubber hunter.
So Manuel passed through stages of attention, from a vague stirring of interest to respect and admiration, and from these to wonder and liking, emotions long dormant within him. The result was for him to become absorbed in covert observation of his strange comrade.
Señor ate little, and appeared to force that. He slept only a few hours every day, and his slumbers were restless, broken by turning and mumbling. Sometimes Manuel awakened to find him pacing the canoe or along a sandy strip of shore. All the hot hours of their toil he bent his broad shoulders to the paddle, wet with sweat. Indeed, he invited the torture of the sun and flies. His white face, that Manuel likened to a woman’s, was burned red and bitten black and streaked with blood.
When Manuel told him to take the gun and kill wild fowl, he reached instinctively for it with the action of a man used to sport, and then he drew back and let his companion do the shooting. He never struck at one of the thousands of snakes, or slapped at one of the millions of flies, or crushed one of the millions of flies, or one of the billions of mosquitoes.
When Manuel called to Señor, as was frequently necessary in the management of the canoe, he would start as if recalled from engrossing thought. Then he would work like an ox, so that it began to be vexatious for Manuel to find himself doing the lesser share. Slowly he realized Señor’s intensity, the burning in him, the tremendous driving power that appeared to have no definite end.
For years Manuel had been wandering in wild places, and, as the men with whom he came in contact were brutal and callous, answering only to savage impulses, so the evil in him, the worst of him, had risen to meet its like. But with this man of shadowed eye Manuel felt the flux and reflux of old forces, dim shades drawn from old memories the painful resurrection of dead good, the rising of the phantom of what had once been the best in him.
The days passed, and the Pachitea narrowed and grew swifter, and its green color took on a tinge of blue.
“Aha!” cried Manuel. “The Palcazu is blue. We must be near the mouth. Listen.”
Above the hum of the sand flies rose a rumble, like low thunder, only a long, unending roll. It was the roar of rapids. The men leaned on their paddles and trudged the length of the canoe, steadily gliding upstream, covering the interminable reaches, winding the serpentine bends. The rumble lulled and swelled, and then, as they turned a bend, burst upon their ears with clear thunder. The Palcazu entered the larger river by splitting round a rocky island. On one side tumbled a current that raced across the Pachitea to buffet a stony bluff. On the other side sloped a long incline of beautiful blue-green water, shining like painted glass.
Manuel poled up the left shore as far as possible, then leaped out to wade at the bow. Señor waded at the stern, and thus they strove against the current. It was shallow, but so swift that it made progress laboriously slow, and it climbed in thin sheets up the limbs of the travelers. Foot by foot they ascended the rapid, at last to surmount it and beach the canoe in a rocky shore.
“Water from the Andes!” exclaimed Manuel. “It’s years since I felt such water. Here’s a bad place to float a canoe full of rubber.”
“You’ll have jolly sport shooting this rapid,” replied Señor.
“We’re entering Cashibos country now. We must eat fish — no firing the guns.”
Wild cane grew thick on the bank; groves of the white sitekas led to the dark forest where the giant capirona trees stood out, their tall trunks bare and crimson against the green; and beyond ranged densely wooded hills to far distant purple outline of mountains or clouds.
“There’s cowcha here, but not enough,” said Manuel.
They rested, as usual during the blistering noon hours, then faced up the Palcazu. Before them stretched a tropical scene. The blue water reflected the blue sky and the white clouds, and the hanging vines and leaning orchid-tufted, creeper-covered trees. Green parrots hung back downward from the branches, feeding on pods; macaws of gaudy plumage wheeled overhead; herons of many hues took to lumbering flight before the canoe.
