Gumersindo's automobile turned out to be one of those cheap American
machines which one finds everywhere. Its only peculiarity was an extra
gasolene-tank which filled the greater part of the body of the car,
and which must have given the old rattletrap a cruising-radius of a
thousand or fifteen hundred miles.
Just as the negro and the white man were getting into the car the man
with the knot of hair at the back of his head strolled into the garage.
He called to Gumersindo that the _Americano_ was to take him on the
expedition which was just starting.
The black editor looked up and stared.
"Take you!"
"_Sí_, señor, me. This _caballero_--" he nodded at
Strawbridge--"promised to take me along for the courtesy of directing
him to ... well ... to a certain address."
Strawbridge heard this with the surprise an American always feels when
a Latin street-runner begins manufacturing charges for his service.
"The devil I did! I said nothing about taking you along. I didn't know
where I was going. I still don't know."
"_Caramba!_" The man with the hair spread his hands in amazement. "Did
I not say we would go to the same address, and did not you agree to it!"
"But, you damn fool, you know I meant the address here in Caracas! Good
Lord! you know I didn't propose to take you a thousand miles!"
The man with the hair made a strong gesture.
"That's not Lubito, señor!" he declared. "That's not Lubito. When a
man attaches himself to me in friendly confidence, I'm not the man to
break with him the moment he has served my purpose. No, I will see you
through!"
"But--damnation, man!--I don't want you to see me through!"
"_Cá!_ You don't! You go back on your trade!"
The American snapped his fingers and motioned toward the door of the
garage.
"Beat it!"
The man with the hair flared up suddenly and began talking the most
furious Spanish:
"_Diantre! Bien, bien, bien!_ I'll establish my trade! I'll call the
police and establish my trade! Ray of God, but I'm an honest man!"
and he started for the door, beginning to peer around for a policeman
before he was nearly out. "Yes, we'll have a police investigation!" He
disappeared.
Strawbridge looked at Gumersindo, and then by a common impulse the
black editor and the white drummer started for the door, after the man
with the hair. The editor hailed him as he was walking rapidly down the
_calle_:
"Hold on, my friend; come back!"
Lubito whirled and started back as rapidly as he had departed. His
movements were extraordinarily supple and graceful even for Latin
America, where grace and suppleness are common.
"We have decided that we may be able to carry you along after all,
Señor Lubito. We may even be of some mutual service. What is your
profession?"
"I am, señor, a bull-fighter." He tipped up his handsome head and
struck a bull-ring attitude, perhaps unconsciously. The negro editor
stared at him, glanced at Strawbridge, and shrugged faintly but
hopelessly.
"Very good," he said in a dry tone. "We want you. No expedition would
care to set out across the llanos without a bull-fighter or two."
If he hoped by voice and manner to discourage Lubito's attendance, he
was disappointed. The fellow walked briskly back and was the first man
in the car.
The other two men followed, and as the motor clacked away down the
_calle_ Lubito resumed the rôle of cicerone, cheerfully pointing out to
Strawbridge the sights of Caracas. There was the palace of President
Cancio; there was an old church built by the Canary Islanders who made
a settlement in this part of Caracas long before the colonies revolted
against Spain.
"There is La Rotunda, señor, where they keep the political prisoners.
It is very easy to get in there." Whether this was mere tourist
information or a slight flourish of the whip-hand, which Lubito
undoubtedly held, Strawbridge did not know.
"Have they got many prisoners?" he asked casually.
"It's full," declared the bull-fighter, with gusto. "The overflow goes
to Los Castillos, another prison on the Orinoco near Ciudad Bolívar,
and also to San Carlos on Lake Maracaibo, in the western part of
Venezuela."
"What have so many men done, that all the prisons are jammed?" asked
the drummer, becoming interested.
It was Gumersindo who answered this question, and with passion:
"Señor Strawbridge, those prisons are full of men who are innocent and
guilty. Some have attempted to assassinate the President, some to stir
up revolution; some are merely suspected. A number of men are put in
prison simply to force through some business deal advantageous to the
governmental clique. I know one editor who has been confined in the
dungeons of La Rotunda for ten years. His offense was that in his paper
he proposed a man as a candidate for the presidency."
Strawbridge was shocked.
"Why, that's outrageous! What do the people stand for it for? Why don't
they raise hell and stop any such crooked deals? Why, in America, do
you know how long we would stand for that kind of stuff? Just one
minute--" he reached forward and tapped Gumersindo two angry taps on
the shoulder--"just one minute; that's all."
Lubito laughed gaily.
"Yes, La Rotunda to-day is full of men who stood that sort of thing for
one minute--and then raised hell."
Strawbridge looked around at the bull-fighter.
"But, my dear man, if everybody, everybody would go in, who could stop
them?"
Gumersindo made a gesture.
"Señor Strawbridge, there is no 'everybody' in Venezuela. When you
say 'everybody' you are speaking as an American, of your American
middle class. That is the controlling power in America because it is
sufficiently educated and compact to make its majority felt. We have
no such class in Venezuela. We have an aristocratic class struggling
for power, and a great peon population too ignorant for any political
action whatsoever. The only hope for Venezuela is a beneficent
dictator, and you, señor, on this journey, are about to instate such a
man and bring all these atrocities to a close."
A touch of the missionary spirit kindled in Strawbridge at the thought
that he might really bring a change in such leprous conditions, but
almost immediately his mind turned back to the order he was about to
receive, how large it would be, how many rifles, how much ammunition,
and he fell into a lovely day-dream as the tropical landscape slipped
past him.
At thirty- or forty-mile intervals the travelers found villages, and
at each one they were forced to report to the police department their
arrival and departure. Such is the law in Venezuela. It is an effort to
keep watch on any considerable movements among the population and so
forestall the chronic revolutions which harass the country. However,
the presence of Strawbridge prevented any suspicion on the part of
these rural police. Americans travel far and wide over Venezuela as
oil-prospectors, rubber-buyers, and commercial salesmen. The police
never interfere with their activities.
The villages through which the travelers passed were all just alike--a
main street, composed of adobe huts, which widened into a central
plaza where a few flamboyants and palms grew through holes in a hard
pavement. Always at the end of the plaza stood a charming old Spanish
church, looking centuries old, with its stuccoed front, its solid brick
campanile pierced by three apertures in which, silhouetted against the
sky, hung the bells. In each village the church was the focus of life.
And the only sign of animation here was the ringing of the carillon for
the different offices. The bell-ringings occurred endlessly, and were
quite different from the tolling which Strawbridge was accustomed to
hear in North America. The priests rang their bells with the clangor
of a fire-alarm. They began softly but swiftly, increased in intensity
until the bells roared like the wrath of God over roof and _calle_, and
then came to a close with a few slow, solemn strokes.
As is the custom of traveling Americans, Strawbridge compared, for
the benefit of his companions, these dirty Latin villages with clean
American towns. He pointed out how American towns had an underground
sewage system instead of allowing their slops to trickle among the
cobblestones down the middle of the street; how American towns had
waterworks and electric lights and wide streets; and how if they had
a church at all it was certainly not in the public square, raising an
uproar on week-days. American churches were kept out of the way, up
back streets, and the business part of town was devoted to business.
Here the negro editor interjected the remark that perhaps each people
worshiped its own God.
"Sure we do, on Sundays," agreed Strawbridge; "or, at least, the women
do; but on week-days we are out for business."
When the motor left the mountains and entered the semi-arid level
of the Orinoco basin, the scenery changed to an endless stretch of
sand broken by sparse savannah grass and a scattering of dwarf gray
trees such as chaparro, alcornoque, manteco. The only industry here
was cattle-raising, and this was uncertain because the cattle died by
the thousands for lack of water during the dry season. Now and then
the motor would come in sight, or scent, of a dead cow, and this led
Strawbridge to compare such shiftless cattle-raising with the windmills
and irrigation ditches in the American West.
On the fifth day of their drive, the drummer was on this theme, and the
bull-fighter--who, after all, was in the car on sufferance--sat nodding
his head politely and agreeing with him, when Gumersindo interrupted to
point ahead over the llano.
"Speaking of irrigation ditches, señor, yonder is a Venezuelan canal
now."
The motor was on one of those long, almost imperceptible slopes which
break the level of the llanos. From this point of vantage the motorists
could see an enormous distance over the flat country. About half-way to
the horizon the drummer descried a great raw yellow gash cut through
the landscape from the south. He stared at it in the utmost amazement.
Such a cyclopean work in this lethargic country was unbelievable.
On the nearer section of the great cut Strawbridge could make out a
movement of what seemed to be little red flecks. The negro editor, who
was watching the American's face, gave one of his rare laughs.
"Ah, you are surprised, señor."
"Surprised! I'm knocked cold! I didn't know anything this big was being
done in Venezuela."
"Well, this isn't exactly in Venezuela, señor."
"No! How's that?"
"We are now in the free and independent territory of Rio Negro, señor.
We are now under the jurisdiction of General Adriano Fombombo. You
observe the difference at once."
By this time the motor was again below the level of the alcornoque
growth and the men began discussing what they had seen.
"What's the object of it?" asked Strawbridge.
"The general is going to canalize at least one half of this entire
Orinoco valley. This sandy stretch you see around you, señor, will be
as fat as the valley of the Nile."
The idea seized on the drummer's American imagination.
"Why!" he exclaimed, "this is amazing! it's splendid! Why haven't I
heard of this? Why haven't the American capitalists got wind of this?"
Gumersindo shrugged.
"The federal authorities are not advertising an insurgent general,
señor."
After a moment the drummer ejaculated:
"He will be one of the richest men in the world!"
Gumersindo loosed a hand from the steering-wheel a moment, to hold it
up in protest.
"Don't say that! General Fombombo is an idealist, señor. It is his
dream to create a super-civilization here in the Orinoco Valley. He
will be wealthy; the whole nation will be wealthy,--yes, enormously
wealthy,--but what lies beyond wealth? When a people become wealthy,
what lies beyond that?"
This was evidently a question which the drummer was to answer, so he
said:
"Why, ... they invest that and make still more money." The editor
smiled.
"A very American answer! That is the difference, señor, between the
middle-class mind and the aristocratic mind. The bourgeois cannot
conceive of anything beyond a mere extension of wealth. But wealth is
only an instrument. It must be used to some end. Mere brute riches
cannot avail a man or a people."
The car rattled ahead as Strawbridge considered the editor's
implications that wealth was not the end of existence. It was a mere
step, and something lay beyond. Well, what was it, outside of a good
time? He thought of some of the famous fortunes in America. Some of
their owners made art collections, some gave to charity, some bought
divorces. But even to the drummer's casual thinking, there became
apparent the rather trivial uses of these fortunes, compared with the
fundamental exertion it required to obtain them. Even to Strawbridge it
became clear that the use was a step down from the earning.
"What's Fombombo going to do with his?" he asked out of his reverie.
"His what?"
"Fortune--when he makes it?"
"_Pues_, he will found a government where men can forget material care
and devote their lives to the arts, the sciences, and pure philosophy.
Great cities will gem these llanos, in which poverty is banished; and
a brotherhood of intellectuals will be formed--a mental aristocracy,
based not on force but on kindliness and good-will."
"I see-e-e," dragged out the drummer. "That's when everybody gets
enough wealth--"
"When all devote themselves to altruistic ends," finished the editor.
The drummer was trying to imagine such a system, when Gumersindo
clamped on the brakes and brought the car to a sudden standstill.
Strawbridge looked up and saw a stocky soldier in the middle of their
road, with a carbine leveled at the travelers.
Strawbridge gasped and sat upright. The soldier in the sunshine, with
his carbine making a little circle under his right eye, focused the
drummer's attention so rigidly that for several moments he could not
see anything else. Then he became aware that they had come out upon
the canal construction, and that a most extraordinary army of shocking
red figures were trailing up and down the sides of the big cut in the
sand, like an army of ants. Every worker bore a basket on his head, and
his legs were chained together so he could take a step of only medium
length.
The guard, a smiling, well-equipped soldier, began an apology for
having stopped the car. He had been taking his siesta, he said; the
popping of the engine had awakened him, and he had thought some one was
trying to rescue some of the workers. He had been half asleep, and he
was very sorry.
The cadaverous, unshaven faces of the hobbled men, their ragged red
clothes gave Strawbridge a nightmarish impression. They might have been
fantasms produced by the heat of the sun.
"What have these fellows done?" asked the American, looking at them in
amazement.
The guard paused in his conversation with Gumersindo to look at the
American. He shrugged.
"How do I know, señor? I am the guard, not the judge."
Out of the rim of the ditch crept one of the creatures, with scabs
about his legs where the chains worked. He advanced toward the
automobile.
"Señors," he said in a ghastly whisper, "a little bread! a little piece
of meat!"
The guard turned and was about to drive the wretch back into the
ditch, when Strawbridge cried out, "Don't! Let him alone!" and began
groping hurriedly under the seat for a box where they carried their
provisions. When the other prisoners learned that the motorists were
about to give away food, a score of living cadavers came dragging their
chains out of the pit, holding out hands that were claws and babbling
in all keys, flattened, hoarsened, edged by starvation. "A little here,
señor!" "A bit for Christ's sake, señor!" "Give me a bit of bread
and take a dying man's blessing, señor!" They stunk, their red rags
crawled. Such odors, such lazar faces tickled Strawbridge's throat with
nausea. Saliva pooled under his tongue. He spat, gripped his nerves,
and asked one of the creatures:
"For God's sake, what brought you here?"
The prisoners were mumbling their _gracias_ for each bit of food. One
poor devil even refrained, for a moment, from chewing, to answer,
"Señor, I had a cow, and the _jefe civil_ took my cow and sent me to
the 'reds.'" "Señor," shivered another voice, "I ... I fished in the
Orinoco. I was never very fortunate. When the _jefe civil_ was forced
to make up his tally to the 'reds,' he chose me. I was never very
fortunate."
An old man whose face was all eyes and long gray hair had got around
on the side of the car opposite to the guard. He leaned toward
Strawbridge, wafting a revolting odor.
"Señor," he whispered, "I had a pretty daughter. I meant to give her to
a strong lad called Esteban, for a wife, but the _jefe civil_ suddenly
broke up my home and sent me to the 'reds.' She was a pretty girl, my
little Madruja. Señor, can it be, by chance, that you are traveling
toward Canalejos?"
The American nodded slightly into the sunken eyes.
"Then, for our Lady's sake, señor, if she is not already lost, be kind
to my little Madruja! Give her a word from me, señor. Tell her ...
tell her--" he looked about him with his ghastly hollow eyes--"tell her
that her old father is ... well, and kindly treated on ... on account
of his age."
Just then the bull-fighter leaned past the American.
"You say this girl is in Canalejos, señor?" he broke in.
"_Sí_, señor."
"Then the Holy Virgin has directed you to the right person, señor. I
am Lubito, the bull-fighter, a man of heart." He touched his athletic
chest. "I will find your little Madruja, señor, and care for her as if
she were my own."
The convict reached out a shaking claw.
"_Gracias á Madre in cielo! Gracias á San Pedro! Gracias á la Vírgen
Inmaculada!_" Somehow a tear had managed to form in the wretch's dried
and sunken eye.
"You give her to me, señor?"
"_O sí, sí! un millón gracias!_"
"You hear that, Señor Strawbridge: the poor little bride Madruja, in
Canalejos, is now under my protection."
The drummer felt a qualm, but said nothing, because, after all, nothing
was likely to come from so shadowy a trust. The red-garbed skeleton
tried to give more thanks.
"Come, come, don't oppress me with your gratitude, _viejo_. It is
nothing for me. I am all heart. Step away from in front of the car so
we may start at once. _Vamose_, señors! Let us fly to Canalejos!"
Gumersindo let in his clutch, there was a shriek of cogs, and the motor
plowed through the sand. The bull-fighter turned and waved good-by to
the guard and smiled gaily at the ancient prisoner. The motor crossed
the head of the dry canal, and the party looked down into its cavernous
depths. As the great work dropped into the distance behind them, the
dull-red convicts and their awful faces followed Strawbridge with the
persistence of a bad dream. At last he broke out:
"Gumersindo, is it possible that those men back there have committed no
crime?"
The negro looked around at him.
"Some have and some have not, señor."
"Was the fisherman innocent? Was the old man with the daughter
innocent?"
"It is like this, Señor Strawbridge," said Gumersindo, watching his
course ahead. "The _jefes civiles_ of the different districts must make
up their quota of men to work on the canal. They select all the idlers
and bad characters they can, but they need more. Then they select for
different reasons. All the _jefes civiles_ are not angels. Sometimes
they send a man to the 'reds' because they want his cow, or his wife or
his daughter--"
"Is this the beginning of Fombombo's brotherhood devoted to altruistic
ends!" cried Strawbridge.
"_Mi caro amigo_," argued the editor, with the amiability of a man
explaining a well-thought-out premise, "why not? There must be a
beginning made. The peons will not work except under compulsion. Shall
the whole progress of Rio Negro be stopped while some one tries to
convince a stupid peon population of the advisability of laboring? They
would never be convinced."
"But that is such an outrageous thing--to take an innocent man from his
work, take a father from his daughter!"
The editor made a suave gesture.
"Certainly, that is simply applying a military measure to civil life,
drafted labor. The sacrifice of a part for the whole. That has always
been the Spanish idea, señor. The first conquistadors drafted labor
among the Indians. The Spanish Inquisition drafted saints from a world
of sinners. If one is striving for an ultimate good, señor, one cannot
haggle about the price."
"But that isn't doing those fellows right!" cried Strawbridge, pointing
vehemently toward the canal they had left behind. "It isn't doing those
particular individuals right!"
"A great many Americans did not want to join the army during the war.
Was it right to draft them?" Gumersindo paused a moment, and then
added: "No, Señor Strawbridge; back of every aristocracy stands a
group of workers represented by the 'reds.' It is the price of leisure
for the superior man, and without leisure there is no superiority.
Where one man thinks and feels and flowers into genius, señor, ten
must slave. Weeds must die that fruit may grow. And that is the whole
content of humanity, señor, its fruit."
Two hours later the negro pointed out a distant town purpling the
horizon. It was Canalejos.
Strawbridge rode forward, looking at General Fombombo's capital city.
The houses were built so closely together that they resembled a walled
town. As the buildings were constructed of sun-dried brick, the
metropolis was a warm yellow in common with the savannahs. It was as if
the city were a part of the soil, as if the winds and sunshine somehow
had fashioned these architectural shapes as they had the mesas of New
Mexico and Arizona.
The whole scene was suffused with the saffron light of deep afternoon.
It reminded the drummer of a play he had seen just before leaving New
York. He could not recall the name of the play, but it opened with a
desert scene, and a beggar sitting in front of a temple. There was just
such a solemn yellow sunset as this.
As the drummer thought of these things the motor had drawn close enough
to Canalejos for him to make out some of the details of the picture.
Now he could see a procession of people moving along the yellow walls
of the city. Presently, above the putter of the automobile, he heard
snatches of a melancholy singing. The bull-fighter leaned forward in
his seat and watched and listened. Presently he said with a certain
note of concern in his voice:
"Gumersindo, that's a wedding!"
"I believe it is," agreed the editor.
Lubito hesitated, then said:
"Would you mind putting on a little more speed, señor? It ... it would
be interesting to find out whose wedding it is."
Without comment the negro fed more gasolene. As the motor whirled
cityward, the bull-fighter sat with both hands gripping the front seat,
staring intently as the wedding music of the peons came to them, with
its long-drawn, melancholy burden.
Strawbridge leaned back, listening and looking. He was still thinking
about the play in New York and regretting the fact that in real
life one never saw any such dramatic openings. In real life it was
always just work, work, work--going after an order, or collecting
a bill--never any drama or romance, just dull, prosy, commonplace
business ... such as this.