THE VIRGIN FOREST.
On leaving the estancia of San Julian, Don Torribio Carvajal was a
prey to one of those cold, concentrated passions, which slowly collect
in the mind, and at length burst out with terrible force. His spurs
lacerated the sides of his horse, which snorted with pain, and doubled
its furious speed.
Where was Don Torribio Carvajal going in this way? He did not know
himself. He saw nothing, heard nothing. He revolved sinister plans in
his brain, and leaped torrents and ravines without troubling himself
about his horse. The feeling of hatred was alone at work within him.
Nothing refreshed his burning forehead, his temples beat as if about
to burst, and a nervous tremor agitated his whole body. This state of
over-excitement lasted some hours, during which his horse devoured
space. At length the noble steed, utterly exhausted, stopped on its
trembling knees, and fell on the sand.
Don Torribio rose and looked wildly around him. He had required this
rude shock to restore a little order to his ideas, and recall him to
reality. An hour more of such agony and he would have become a raving
lunatic, or have died of an apoplectic fit.
Night had set in, thick darkness covered the landscape, and a mournful
silence prevailed in the desert where chance had carried him.
"Where am I?" he said, as he tried to discover his whereabouts.
But the moon, concealed by clouds, shed no light; the wind blew
violently; the branches of the trees clashed together, and in the
depths of the desert the howling of the wild beasts began to mingle the
deep notes of their voices with the hoarse mewlings of the wild cats.
Don Torribio's eyes sought in vain to pierce the obscurity. He went
up to his horse, which was lying on the ground and panting heavily;
moved with pity for the companion of his adventurous journeys, he
bent over it, placed in his waist belt the pistols that were in the
holsters, and unfastening a gourd of rum hanging from his saddlebow,
began washing the eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth of the poor beast,
whose sides quivered, and which this seemed to restore to life. Half an
hour passed in this way; the horse, somewhat refreshed, had got on its
legs, and with the instinct that distinguishes the race had discovered
a spring close by where it quenched its thirst.
"All is not lost yet," Don Torribio muttered, "and perhaps I shall soon
succeed in getting out of this place, for my friends are waiting for
me, and I must join them."
But a deep roar broke forth a short distance away, repeated almost
immediately from four different quarters. The horse's hair stood on end
with terror. Even Don Torribio trembled.
"Malediction!" he exclaimed, "I am at a watering place of the cougars."
At this moment he saw, about ten paces from him, two eyes that shone
like live coals, and looked at him with strange fixedness.
Don Torribio was a man of tried courage, audacious, and even rash on
occasions; but alone in the gloomy solitude in the midst of the black
night, surrounded by ferocious beasts, he felt fear assail himself
against his will; he breathed with difficulty; his teeth were clenched,
an icy perspiration poured down his whole person, and he was on the
point of abandoning himself to his fate. This sudden discouragement
disappeared before a powerful will, and Don Torribio, sustained by the
instinct of self-preservation, and that hope which springs eternal in
the human breast, prepared for an unequal struggle.
The horse burst into a snort of terror, and ran off.
"All the better," its rider thought, "perhaps it will escape."
A frightful concert of howls and roars broke out on all sides at the
sound of the horse's flight and huge shadows bounded along past Don
Torribio. A violent blast swept the sky, and the moon lit up the desert
with its mournful, sickly rays.
Not far off the Rio Negro ran between two scarped banks, and Don
Torribio saw all round him the compact masses of a virgin forest, an
inextricable chaos of rocks piled up pell-mell, and of fissures out of
which clumps of trees grew. Here and there creepers were intertwined
describing the wildest curves, and only stopped their ramifications at
the river. The soil, composed of sand and that detritus which abounds
in American forests, gave way beneath the foot.
Don Torribio now discovered where he was He was more than fifteen
leagues from any habitation, on the outskirts of an immense forest,
the only one in Patagonia which no ranger had as yet been bold enough
to explore, such horror and mystery did its gloomy depths appear to
reveal. Near the forest a limpid stream burst through the rocks, whose
banks were trampled by numerous traces of the claws of wild beasts.
This stream served them, in fact, as a watering place, when they left
their dens after sunset, and went in search of food and drink. As a
living testimony of this supposition, two magnificent cougars, male and
female, were standing on the bank, and watching with anxious eyes the
sporting of their cubs.
"Hum," said Don Torribio, "these are dangerous neighbours."
And he mechanically turned his eyes away. A panther, stretched out on
a rock in the position of a watchful cat, fixed its inflamed eyes upon
him. Torribio, who was well armed according to the American fashion,
had a rifle of wondrous accuracy, which he had leant against a rock
close to him.
"Good," he said, "it will be a tough fight at any rate."
He raised his gun, but at the moment when he was about to fire, a
plaintive mewling made him raise his head. A dozen _pajiros_ and
_subaracayas_ (wild cats of great size), perched on branches of trees,
were looking down at him, while several red wolves were crouching in
front of him.
A number of vultures, urubús, and caracaras, with half-closed eyes,
were seated on the surrounding rocks, and apparently awaiting the hour
for their meal.
Don Torribio jumped up on a rock, and then, by the help of his hands
and knees, gained, after extraordinary difficulties, a sort of natural
terrace situated about twenty feet above the ground. The frightful
concert formed by the denizens of the forest, whom the subtlety of
their scent attracted one after the other, increased more and more,
and overpowered the very sound of the wind which raged in the ravines
and forest clearings. The moon was once more hidden behind clouds,
and Don Torribio found himself again in darkness; but if he could not
distinguish the wild beasts near him, he guessed and almost smelt their
presence; he saw their eyeballs flashing in the gloom, and heard their
roars constantly coming nearer.
He set his feet firmly on the ground, and cocked his revolver. Four
shots were followed by four howls of pain, and the noise produced by
branch after branch in the fall of the wounded wild cats. This attack
aroused a sinister uproar. The red wolves rushed with yells on the
victims, for which they contended with the urubús and vultures. A
rustling in the leaves reached the ear of the brave hunter, and a mass
it was impossible clearly to distinguish cleft the space, and lodged
with a roar on the platform. With the butt of his rifle he struck
out in the darkness, and the panther, with a broken skull, rolled to
the base of the rock. He heard a monstrous battle, which the cougars
and wild cats waged with the wounded panther, and intoxicated by his
triumph, and even by his danger, he fired two shots into the crowd
of obstinate enemies snarling below him. Suddenly all these animals,
ceasing their contest as if by common consent, united against the man,
their common foe, and their rage was turned against the rock, from the
top of which Don Torribio appeared to defy them all. They climbed up
the projections. The wild cats were the first to arrive, and fast as
Torribio felled them others leaped upon him. He felt his strength and
energy gradually diminishing.
This struggle of a single man against a multitude of ferocious brutes
had something grand and poignant about it. Don Torribio, as if
suffering from a nightmare, struggled in vain against the swarms of
assailants that were constantly reinforced. He felt on his face the
warm, fetid breath of the wild cats and red wolves, while the roars
of the cougars and the mocking miauling of the panthers filled his
ears with a frightful melody that gave him a vertigo. Hundreds of eyes
sparkled in the shade, and at times the heavy wings of the vultures
and urubús lashed his forehead, which was bathed in a cold perspiration.
In him every feeling of self had died out: he no longer thought;
his life, so to speak, had become entirely physical; his movements
were mechanical, and his arms rose and fell to strike with the rigid
regularity of a pendulum.
Already several claws had been buried deep in his flesh. Wild cats had
seized him by the throat, and he had been compelled to struggle with
them to make them loose their hold; his blood was flowing from twenty
wounds, not mortal it is true, but the hour was approaching beyond
which human strength cannot go; Don Torribio would have fallen from his
rock and perished under the teeth of the wild beasts.
At this solemn moment, when all seemed to desert him, a loud cry burst
from his bosom--a cry of agony and despair of undefinable expression,
which was echoed far and wide by the rocks. It was the last protest
of the strong man who confesses himself vanquished, and who, before
falling, calls his fellow man to his aid, or implores the help of
Heaven.
He cried, and a cry responded to his!
Don Torribio amazed, and not daring to count on a miracle in a desert
which no human being had ever yet penetrated, believed himself under
the impression of a dream or an hallucination; still, collecting all
his strength, and feeling hope rekindled in his soul, he uttered a
second cry, louder and more ear-piercing than the first.
"Courage!"
This time it was not echo that answered him. Courage! That one word
reached him on the wings of the wind, though faint as a sigh. Like the
giant Antaeus, Don Torribio, drawing himself up, seemed to regain his
strength and recover that life which was already slipping from him. He
redoubled his blows at his innumerable enemies.
Several horses were galloping in the distance; shots lit up the
darkness with their transient gleams, and men, or rather demons, dashed
suddenly into the thick of the wild beasts, and produced a fearful
carnage.
Suddenly Don Torribio, attacked by two tiger cats, rolled on the
platform, struggling with them.
The wild beasts had fled before the newcomers, who hastened to light
fires to keep them at bay during the rest of the night. Two of these
men, holding lighted torches, began seeking the hunter, whose cries
of distress had besought their help. He was lying senseless on the
platform, surrounded by ten or a dozen dead wild cats, and holding in
his stiffened fingers the neck of a strangled pajiro.
"Well, Pepe," a voice said, "have you found him?"
"Yes," was the reply; "but he appears to be dead."
"Caray! That would be a pity," Pedrito continued, "for he is a fine
fellow. Where is he?
"On this rock."
"Can you bring him down with the help of Lopez?"
"Nothing easier."
"Make haste, in Heaven's name!" Pedrito said. "Each minute's delay is,
perhaps, a year's life slipping from him."
Lopez and Pepe raised Don Torribio by the head and feet, and with
infinite precautions transported him from the improvised fortress where
he had so long fought, and laid him on a bed of leaves Juan had got
ready near one of the fires.
"Canario!" Pedrito exclaimed, on seeing the gory man's miserable
appearance; "Poor devil! How they have served him out! It was high time
to help him."
"Do you think he will recover?" Lopez asked eagerly.
"There is always hope," Pedrito answered sententiously, "where life is
not extinct. Let us have a look at him."
He bent over Don Torribio's body, drew his glistening knife, and placed
the blade between his lips.
"Not the slightest breath," Pedrito said, shaking his head.
"Are his wounds serious?" Lopez asked.
"I do not think so. He has been worn out by fatigue and emotion, but he
will soon open his eyes again, and in a quarter of an hour, if he think
proper, he can get into the saddle again. It is surely he," Pedrito
added, in a low voice.
"Whence comes your thoughtful air, brother?"
"It is because this man, in spite of his European dress and thorough
appearance of a white, resembles--"
"Whom?"
"The Indian chief, with whom we fought at the tree of Gualichu, and to
whom we owe Mercedes' safety."
"You must be mistaken."
"Not the least in the world, brothers," the eldest replied
authoritatively. "When hidden in the trunk of the sacred tree, I had
leisure to study his features, which have remained graven on my mind.
Besides, I recognize him by this gash which I made on his face with my
sabre."
"That is true," the others said in surprise.
"What is to be done?"
"What is the meaning of this disguise?"
"Heaven alone knows," Pedrito answered, "but he must be saved."
The bomberos, like all wood rangers living far from the colony, are
obliged to cure their own wounds, and hence acquire a certain practical
knowledge of medicine through employing the remedies and simples in use
among the Indians.
Pedrito, assisted by Pepe and Juan, washed Don Torribio's wounds with
rum and water, moistened his temples, and puffed tobacco smoke up
his nostrils. The young man gave an almost insensible sigh, stirred
slightly, and opened his eyes, which wandered round vacantly.
"He is saved!" said Pedrito; "Now leave Nature to act, for she is the
best physician I know."
Don Torribio raised himself on an elbow, passed his hand over his
forehead, as if to regain his memory and thought, and said, in a weak
voice--
"Who are you?"
"Friends, sir--fear nothing."
"I feel as if every bone in my body were broken."
"There is no danger, sir; with the exception of the fatigue, you are
well as we are."
"I hope so, my worthy friends; but by what miracle did you arrive in
time to save me?"
"Your horse performed this miracle; had it not, you were lost."
"How so?" Torribio asked, his voice growing gradually stronger, and
already able to rise.
"This is how it was--we are bomberos--" The young man gave a sort of
nervous start, which he suddenly checked.
"We are bomberos, and watch the Indians, especially at night. Accident
brought us to these parts. Your horse was flying with a pack of red
wolves at its heels; we freed it from these brutes; then, as it seemed
to us probable that a ready saddled horse could not be without an owner
in this forest, where no one ventures, we set out in search of the
rider. Your cry guided us."
"How can I pay my debt to you?" Torribio asked, offering his hand to
Pedrito.
"You owe us nothing, sir."
"Why?"
"Here is your horse, caballero."
"But I should like to see you again," he said, before starting.
"It is unnecessary; you owe us nothing, I tell you," said Pedrito, who
held the horse by the bridle.
"What do you mean?" Don Torribio insisted.
"The bombero," Pedrito replied, "has paid today the debt contracted
yesterday with Nocobotha the Ulmen of the Aucas."
Don Torribio's face was covered with a deadly pallor.
"We are quits, chief," Pedrito continued, as he let go the bridle.
When the rider had disappeared in the darkness, Pedrito turned to his
brothers--
"I know not why it is," he said, with a sigh of relief, "but I feel
happy at owing nothing to that man."