THE PASSING OF SCHWANDORF
The three soldiers flung down their hot, empty guns.
"Nothin' left but the gats and the steel," rumbled Tim. "Me, I'm goin'
out and git some fresh air."
With which he drew pistol and machete, leaped down, and lunged through
the door. McKay bounded at his heels.
"Merry! Rand! Stay here!" he commanded. Then he was outside, his pistol
roaring in unison with Tim's.
Knowlton and Rand looked at each other. The lieutenant fumbled his
pistol from its holster, got it firmly in his left hand, slid down the
embankment, and staggered out. Rand coolly walked over to Tim's
discarded gun, picked it up, and followed.
Over at the other doorway the bushmen threw aside their useless guns and
drew their machetes. José, grinning like a death's-head, whirled the
bush knife aloft and mockingly dared the Red Bones still fronting him to
come and take it from him. Pedro and Lourenço indulged in no such
bravado, but leaped like jaguars at their foes. Whereupon José,
muttering a curse on them for getting the jump on him, dashed forward
with furious abandon.
Their pistols emptied, the Americans also drew machetes--all except
Rand, who had no weapon but the bulletless rifle--and waited. Few
unwounded Red Bones now were left; but among those few Schwandorf still
lived.
"Schwandorf!" bellowed McKay. "You yellow cur--you _Schweinhund_! Come
and fight!"
"Yeah!" taunted Tim. "The women and kids are inside. Come and git 'em!"
Schwandorf came. He came not because he wanted to, however, for his
guns, too, were empty. He came because the Red Bones, sensing the
challenge and loathing the Blackbeard who had shielded himself so long
among them, threw him out bodily. They had no time to stand and watch
what might happen to him, but they took time to cast him out where he
must stand on his own legs. Then, snarling, they resumed their now
hopeless battle against their encompassing executioners.
For a moment the German stood glowering at McKay. Then, with a dramatic
gesture, he threw aside his useless revolvers and advanced empty handed.
"Man to man?" he growled.
"Man to man!" echoed McKay, passing his pistol to Tim and sheathing his
machete. Fists clenched, he sprang forward.
Schwandorf halted. His hands remained empty--until the captain was
within eight feet of him. Then he leaped back, his machete jumped into
his fist, and its point stabbed for his antagonist's abdomen.
An instantaneous side-step and twist of the body saved the captain from
evisceration. The blade ripped through breeches and shirt and scraped
the skin. As Schwandorf yanked it back for another thrust McKay struck
it away with one hand and, without drawing his own steel, jumped again
at his assailant. An instant later the two blackbeards were clenched in
a death grapple.
Schwandorf found his long knife useless and dropped it. He strove for a
back-breaking hold, but found it blocked. McKay, though an indifferent
swordsman, was a formidable wrestler and fist fighter, and the German's
advantage in weight was more than offset by the American's quickness and
wiry strength. Science was thrown to the winds. A heaving, choking,
wrenching man-fight it was, stumbling over bodies, each straining every
muscle, trying every hold to twist and break the other and batter him
down to death.
Smashing fist blows brought blood dripping from their faces.
Bone-wringing grips forced gasps from their lungs and superhuman spasms
of resistance from their outraged nerve centers. They fell across a
corpse, rolled on the ground, throttled, kicked, struck, and tore.
Finally, in a furious outburst of energy, the American fought his enemy
down under him, clamped his body with iron knees, and crashed a terrific
punch squarely between the German's glaring eyes. Schwandorf went limp.
At that instant a backward eddy of the battle surged over the pair. The
maniacal Red Bones, fighting to the last bitter drop of doom, found two
white men under their feet. Screeching, snarling, they fell on them like
wild beasts, tearing with tooth and nail. Their arrows were gone, their
darts exhausted, and no spearman was among them; they fought with
nature's weapons, while above them one lone clubman struggled to swing
down his lethal bludgeon without killing his fellows.
McKay, wrenching his machete loose and gripping it with both hands, got
its point upward and jabbed blindly at the weight of flesh bearing him
down. Faintly to his ears came yells of rage and the impact of
blows--the battle roars of Tim and Knowlton, who with their machetes
were cleaving a way to their captain. But the beastly demons over him
still crushed him down on Schwandorf, smothering him under the burden of
bodies dead and alive. His stabs grew weak. Exhaustion and lack of air
were killing him more surely than the savages.
Pedro, Lourenço, José and the inexplicable Rand came slashing and
clubbing a path of their own to the beleaguered Scot--the Brazilians
cutting straight ahead with deadly surety, the painted Peruvian chopping
and thrusting with a fixed grin, Rand swinging the gun butt down on head
after head. From still another direction Yuara and his satellite came
boring in with spears snatched from dead hands. The three rescue parties
reached the squirming heap at almost the same moment. But Yuara was the
one whose arrival counted most.
In one last convulsive struggle McKay heaved himself up until he was
once more on his knees. His head came out of the welter, his mouth wide
and gulping for breath. The lone clubman grunted, swung his weapon high,
and with all the power of his muscular body drove it down at that
upturned, unprotected face.
With a mighty plunge Yuara threw himself over the captain. His spear
sank into the stomach of the clubman. But the heavy wooden war hammer
fell with crushing force. As the Red Bone collapsed with the spear head
buried in his middle, his slayer also dropped under that terrible stroke
with head mangled beyond recognition.
Yuara, son of Rana, warrior of Suba, who owed his life to McKay's rough
surgery, had paid his debt.
Under the impact of his body McKay also slumped forward, senseless.
Over them now burst the bloodiest berserk battle of that bloody day. The
soldiers, the bushmen, and the reclaimed Raposa, already smeared from
head to foot with red stains from their own veins and those of foemen,
went stark mad. Before their united ferocity the men of Umanuh dropped
as if rolled under by an inexorable machine of war. Backward they
reeled, striving now to escape the red wall of cold steel surging at
them--only to fall under a fresh attack of ravening Mayorunas who came
pouring in upon them from the sides. The last of the group lurched
headless to the ground under a decapitating side-swing from the awful
club of Monitaya himself.
Then Knowlton, his lifeblood still draining slowly but surely away
through his wounded shoulder, pitched on his face and was still.
"Back!" gasped Tim. "Git looey and cap out o' this! Here, you Raposy!
Lend a hand!"
The Raposa, his green eyes ablaze and his obdurate calmness totally
gone, glared around as if seeking one more Red Bone to kill. Then, as
Tim heaved the lieutenant across his shoulders and went lunging across
contorted bodies toward the _malocas_, he ran back to the heap where
McKay lay and dug him clear. Lourenço aided him in lifting the captain,
and they bore him off after Knowlton.
Pedro and José shoved the other bodies aside until they uncovered the
prone figure of Schwandorf--a ghastly form dyed from hair to heels with
the blood of the cannibals whom he had led there. To all appearances he
was dead. Yet the Brazilian and the Peruvian looked keenly at him, then
at each other.
"There is a saying, is there not, that the devil takes care of his own?"
grinned José. "It would be sad if this man should yet live and escape.
See! What is that tall Red Bone doing over yonder?"
Pedro followed his pointing finger. He saw no such Red Bone as José had
mentioned. But when he looked back at Schwandorf he noticed something
that made him glance quickly at José once more.
"Ah yes, Señor Schwandorf is truly dead," the Peruvian added, wiping his
machete carelessly on one bare leg. "Whether or not the devil takes care
of his own, as I was saying, there is no doubt that _el Aleman_ now is
with the devil. So, since we can do nothing for him, let us look after
the two North American señores."
Pedro, with a grim smile, turned with him toward the tribal houses.
There was nothing else for them to do, for the Mayorunas now were
dispatching the last survivors of the attacking force. Before the pair
entered the low doorway a long, triumphant yell burst from the hoarse
throats of the men of Monitaya. Of all the Red Bones who had swept in
such ghoulish glee into that clearing not one now remained alive.
At that shout of victory and the entrance of the men to whose
precautions and prowess they owed so much, the women flocked again into
the center of the _maloca_ and the children dived out through the
tunnels to behold the battlefield. Though bullets and arrows had come
through the doorway, those inside had escaped all injury by hugging the
protective earth embankment or taking refuge in the vacant shafts under
the walls. Now the older women, experienced in treatment of wounds,
busied themselves with the white warriors, while the younger ones
fetched water and pieces of isca--a natural styptic made by ants--or
made up pads of poultices of healing herbs.
Tim, who had expected to play surgeon with his crude knowledge of first
aid, found himself not only relieved of his job, but being bathed and
plastered with the others. He, José, Pedro, Lourenço, and even Rand were
gashed by thrusts from broken spear hafts, bleeding from open bites,
ripped by glancing sweeps of tooth-set clubs, bruised by fierce
blows--minor injuries all, but such as might easily have resulted in
blood poisoning unless given prompt attention. Later on they were to be
thankful for those ministrations, but now they tolerated them only
because they could do nothing for the captain and the lieutenant.
McKay and Knowlton were under the direct and capable treatment of the
wives of the great chief. Of the two McKay looked by far the worse, but
actually was in much better condition. From the waist up he was clawed,
bitten, and bruised so badly that he was a fearsome spectacle; his left
arm was dislocated, three fingers of his right hand were broken, and his
muscles were so wrenched that for a week afterward he moved like a
cripple; but his present unconsciousness was largely due to exhaustion
and partial asphyxiation. Knowlton, whose skin was comparatively
unmarked, but whose veins had continued to pour vital fluid from his
gaping bullet wound during his stubborn fight, now was badly weakened.
But whatever could be done for him was being done, and the others could
only stand by.
The women not engaged in caring for the fighting visitors soon found
themselves busy with their own male relatives, who came stumbling in by
themselves or were carried by others. The Red Bones, though finally
annihilated, had made their mark in the Mayoruna tribe. At that moment
thirty-six of Monitaya's warriors lay dead among the bodies of their
enemies, and before the next sunrise several more passed on to join the
spirits of their comrades in arms. Yet all who survived, though some
were crippled for life, thought only of the victory and gloated on their
scars of combat. As for those who had fallen, they were dead, had died
as Mayorunas should, and so needed no sympathy or regret. Even now their
bodies were being collected for immediate transportation into the
forest, where, in accordance with the tribal custom, they would be
burned.
Some of the men who brought in the wounded men continued on to the
bushmen and, in significant sign manual, requested a loan of their
machetes. Having received them, they hastened out to join those who,
equipped with hardwood knives, were gathering the sinister trophies of
triumph before heaving the dead Red Bones out to the waiting vultures.
"Urrrgh!" growled Tim. "'Twas a lovely scrap, but I wisht I was
somewheres else, now it's over. While ye was away they brought in the
fists and feet o' some guy they caught in a trap--"
"We know," nodded Pedro.
"Yeah. Wal, I s'pose we got to look pleasant. Dog eat dog, as the feller
says. Long as somebody has to git et, I'm glad it ain't us." Wherewith
he turned to the Raposa and changed the subject. "Raposy, old sport, ye
sure done some good work, for a crazy guy. I'll tell the world ye
cracked heads like a Bowery cop full o' bootleg booze."
The Raposa's green eyes glimmered. In fact, they almost twinkled. And
for the second time the wild man spoke.
"I am not crazy."
"Huh? My gosh! Ye spoke four whole words! That makes six in a week. Be
careful, feller, or ye'll strain yerself. And as far's bein' crazy's
concerned, don't let it worry ye none. We're all crazy, too, or we
wouldn't be here."
Under cover of his banter the veteran eyed the other sharply. As he
turned his gaze aside to the moving figures about him he thought:
"Begorry! he don't look like a nut, at that. Mebbe somethin's
unscrambled his brains again. Here's hopin', anyways."
The big tribe house now was full of life. Small groups of warriors,
their hurts dressed with primitive poultices, gathered around the
hammocks of those more seriously injured and discussed the battle.
Others came in bearing armfuls of severed Red Bone hands and feet, which
were distributed among the family triangles. The women, their remedial
work done, now turned to the clay cooking vessels, freshened the fires,
stripped the flesh of their enemies from the bones, and set it to boil.
Among the hammocks moved the subchiefs, their eyes still shining with
the light of battle, examining the wounded men and glancing at the
preparations for the dire feast to come.
Over all drifted a steadily thickening smoke which rolled up and out
through the vent in the peak of the roof, where the setting sun smote it
with rays of gleaming red. Around the _maloca_ gleamed the red light of
the cooking fires among whose burning fagots bubbled the red pots and
pans. Red men and women passing about in a crimson setting--the scene
formed a fitting end to the reddest day in the unwritten records of the
tribe, who since noon had proved themselves worthy champions of the
ancient god whose name they never had heard, but who nevertheless ruled
their lives--the red god Mars.
Monitaya himself, head high and chest swelling with pride, now came
striding lithely in, followed by a young warrior carrying something. He
stopped between the hammocks of McKay and Knowlton, studied their faces
gravely, listened as his wives told of what had been done. At almost the
same moment the eyes of the pair slowly opened and stared up at him.
The face of the great chief melted in one of its transforming smiles.
The captain and the lieutenant grinned pluckily back. With a nod of
silent comradeship the big savage turned to his own hammock and sat
down. Two of his women built up the royal fire and fell to work on the
things handed over by the young warrior. Tim and his mates took one
squint at what they were doing. Then they moved between the fire and the
two officers, blocking the view.
"'Bout time ye woke up and listened to the birdies," Tim chaffed.
"Fight's over, and we been hangin' round waitin' for ye to quit snorin'
so's we could hear ourselves think. Lay still, now! Ye're all plastered
up nice and comfy--and don't preach to me no more about the girls. Ye
had every dang one o' the big chief's wives hangin' over ye and kissin'
ye so hard it sounded like a machine gun. Ain't that right, fellers? Me,
I'm so jealous I could bite the both of ye."
"Schwandorf dead?" hoarsely queried McKay.
"Huh? Oh, him? Sure. Ye fixed him right, Cap. The pretty li'l'
blackbirds has flew away with him by now. Say, ye mind that feller
Yuarry? Know what he done? Wal--"
And while he talked, behind his back the wives of Monitaya completed
their task and dropped into the great chief's stewpot the flesh of the
black-bearded slaver and slayer who would menace them no more.