and overgrown. She had journeyed to Micas often enough to be familiar
with the trail, and this, so wild and crooked, was not the right one.
“Augustine, have you missed the way?” she queried anxiously.
Briefly he replied that he was making a short cut. Muella did not
believe him. She walked on, and began again to look back. When she
caught Augustine doing likewise, she gave way to dread.
The morning wore on, the sun grew warm, and with the heat of day came
the jungle flies and mosquitoes. Augustine was inured to their attacks,
but Muella impatiently fought them, thus adding to her loss of energy.
When, at the crossing of a network of trails, Augustine chose one at
random, Muella was certain of the worst. She asked him about it, and
he admitted he was off the course, but as he was sure of his direction
there was no need of fear. He assured her that he would have her at her
sister’s home in Micas by noon.
Noon found them threading a matted jungle where they had to bend low
along the deer and peccary trails. The character of the vegetation had
changed. It was now dry, thorny, and almost impenetrable.
Suddenly Muella jerked her hand away from a swinging branch, which she
had intended to brush aside.
“Look, Augustine, on my hand. Garapatas! Ugh, how I loathe them!”
Her hand and wrist were dotted with great black jungle ticks. Augustine
removed them, and as he did so, Muella saw his fingers tremble. The
significance of his agitation did not dawn upon her until she was free
of the pests, and then she fancied that her touch had so moved him. It
was wonderful, it warmed her blood, and she stole a glance at him. But
Augustine was ashen pale; his thoughts were far from the softness and
beauty of a woman’s hand.
“Augustine! You have lost your way!” she cried.
Gloomily he dropped his head, and let his silence answer.
“Lost in the jungle! We’re lost! And Tigre is on our trail!” she
shrieked.
Panic overcame her. She tottered and fell against him. Her whole
slender length rippled in a violent trembling. Then she beat her hands
frantically on Augustine’s shoulders, and clutched him tight, and
besought him with inarticulate speech.
“Listen, _señora_, listen,” he kept saying. “If you give up now, I
can’t save you. We’re lost, but there’s a way out. Listen--don’t tear
at me so--there’s a way out. Do you hear? You go on alone--follow these
deer tracks till you come to water. Soon they’ll lead to water. That
water will be the Santa Rosa. Follow up the stream till you come to
Micas. It’ll be hard, but you can do it.”
“Go on alone! And you?” she said brokenly.
“I’ll turn on our back trail. I’ll meet Tigre and stop him.”
“Tigre will kill you!”
“He is blind and deaf. I shall be prepared. I’ve a chance, at least, to
cripple him.”
“At the end of a trail Tigre is a demon. He has been trained to kill
the thing he’s put to trail. You--with only a machete! Ah, _señor_,
I’ve heard that you are brave and strong, but you must not go back to
meet Tigre. Come! We’ll follow the deer tracks together. Then if Tigre
catches us--well, he can kill us both!”
“_Señora_, I can serve you best by going back.”
“You think that if you took me to Micas the old women would talk--that
my good name would be gone?” she asked searchingly.
“_Señora_, we waste time, and time is precious,” he protested.
Muella studied the haggard, set face. This man meant to sacrifice his
life for her. Deep through the fire of his eyes she saw unutterable
pain and passion. If she had doubted his love, she doubted no more.
He must be made to believe that she had followed him, not alone to
save him from Tigre, but because she loved him. Afterward he would be
grateful for her deceit. And if her avowal did not break his will, then
she would use a woman’s charm, a woman’s sweetness.
“_Señor_, you told Bernardo the truth--and I lied to him!” she said.
Stranger than all other sensations of that flight was the thrill in her
as she forced herself to speak.
“What do you mean?” demanded Augustine.
“He asked you if you loved me. You told the truth. He asked me if--if I
loved you. And--I lied!”
“_Santa Maria!_” the man cried, starting up impulsively. Then slowly he
fell back. “_Señora_, may the saints reward you for your brave words.
I know! You are trying to keep me from going back. We waste precious
time--go now!”
“Augustine, wait, wait!” she cried.
Running blindly, she flung herself into his arms. She hid her face in
his breast, and pressed all her slender, palpitating body close to his.
As if he had been turned to stone, he stood motionless. She twined her
arms about him, and her disheveled hair brushed his lips. She tried
to raise her face--failed--tried again, and raised it all scarlet,
with eyes close shut and tears wet on her cheeks. Blindly she sought
his mouth with her lips--kissed him timidly--tremulously--and then
passionately.
With that, uttering a little gasp, she swayed away and turned from him,
her head bowed in shame, one beseeching hand held backward to him.
“Don’t go! Don’t leave me!”
“_Dios!_” whispered Augustine.
Presently he took the proffered hand, and, leading her, once more
plunged into the narrow trail.
V
For hours Muella walked with lowered eyes. She plodded on, bending her
head under the branches, and constantly using her free hand to fight
the pests.
Her consciousness, for the while, was almost wholly absorbed with a
feeling of an indefinable difference in herself. She seemed to be in a
condition of trembling change, as if the fibers of her soul were being
unknit and rewoven. Something illusive and strange and sweet wavered
before her--a promise of joy that held vague portent of pain. This
inexplicable feeling reminded her of fancies, longings, dreams of her
girlhood.
At length sensations from without claimed full share of Muella’s
attention. The heat had grown intense. She was becoming exhausted. Her
body burned, and about her ankles were bands of red-hot fire. Still she
toiled on, because she believed that Micas was close at hand.
The sun went down, and night approached. There was no sign of water.
Augustine failed to hide his distress. He was hopelessly lost in
the jungle. All the trails appeared to lead into the same place--a
changeless yellow and gray jungle.
The flies pursued in humming wheel, and clouds of whining mosquitoes
rose from the ground. The under side of every leaf, when brushed
upward, showed a red spot which instantly disintegrated, and spilled
itself like a bursting splotch of quicksilver upon the travelers. And
every infinitesimal red pin point was a crawling jungle pest. The dead
wood and dry branches were black with innumerable garapatas.
Muella had been born a hill native, and she was not bred to withstand
the savage attack of the jungle vermin. The time came when she fell,
and implored Augustine to put her out of her misery with his machete.
For answer he lifted her gently and moved on, carrying her in his arms.
Night came. Augustine traveled by the stars, and tried to find trails
that led him in a general direction northward. By and by Muella’s head
rolled heavily, and she slept.
At length the blackness and impenetrable thicket hindered his progress.
He laid Muella down, covered her with his blanket, and stood over her
with drawn machete till the moon rose.
The light aiding him, he found a trail, and, taking up his burden, he
went on. And that night dragged to dawn.
Muella walked little the next day. She could hardly stand. She had
scarcely strength to free her hair from the brush as it caught in
passing. The burning pain of her skin had given place to a dull ache.
She felt fever stealing into her blood.
Augustine wandered on, over bare rocks and through dense jungles, with
Muella in his arms. He was tireless, dauntless, wonderful in his grim
determination to save her. Worn as she was, sick and feverish, she yet
had moments when she thought of him; and at each succeeding thought he
seemed to grow in her impression of strength and courage.
But most of her thoughts centered on the trailing Tigre. The serpents
and panthers and peccaries no longer caused Muella concern; she feared
only the surely gaining jaguar.
VI
Night closed down on them among tangled mats and labyrinthine webs of
heavy underbrush.
“Listen!” whispered Muella suddenly, with great black eyes staring out
of her white face.
From far off in the jungle came a sound that was like a cough and growl
in one.
“Ah! Augustine, did you hear?”
“Yes.”
“Was it a _tigre_?”
“Yes.”
“A trailing _tigre_?”
“Yes, but surely that could not have been Bernardo’s. His _tigre_ would
not give cry on a trail.”
“Oh, yes. Tigre is deaf and blind, and he has been trained, but he has
all the jungle nature. He has Bernardo’s cruelty, too!”
Again the sound broke on the still night air. Muella slipped to the
ground with a little gasp. She heard Augustine cursing against the
fate that had driven them for days under trees, trees, trees, and had
finally brought them to bay in a corner where there was no tree to
climb. She saw him face about to the trail by which they had come; and
stand there with his naked blade upraised. He blocked the dim, narrow
passageway.
An interminable moment passed. Muella stopped breathing, tried to still
the beating of her heart so that she could listen. There was no sound
save the low, sad hum of insects and the rustle of wind in leaves. She
seemed to feel Tigre’s presence out there in the blackness. Dark as it
was, she imagined she saw him stealing closer, his massive head low,
his blind eyes flaring, his huge paws reaching out.
A slight rustling checked all motion of her blood. Tigre was there,
ready to spring upon Augustine. Muella tried to warn him, but her lips
were dry and dumb. Had he lost his own sense of hearing?
Her head reeled and her sight darkened; but she could not swoon. She
could only wait, wait, while the slow moments wore on.
Augustine loomed over the trail, a dark, menacing figure. Again there
came a rustling and a stealthy step, this time in another direction;
and Augustine turned toward it.
Long silence followed; even the humming of insects and the moaning of
the wind seemed to grow fainter. Then came more tickings of the brush
and a padded footfall. Tigre had found them--was stalking them!
Muella lay there, helplessly waiting. In the poignancy of her fear for
Augustine, expecting momentarily to see the huge jaguar leap upon him,
she forgot herself. There was more in her agony of dread than the sheer
primitive shrinking of the flesh, the woman’s horror of seeing death
inflicted. Through that terrible age-long flight through the jungle,
Augustine had come to mean more than a protector to her.
She watched him guardedly facing in the direction of every soft rustle
in the brush. He was a man at the end of his resources, ready to fight
and die for a woman.
The insects hummed on, the wind moaned in the leaves, the rustlings
came from one point and another in the brush, but Tigre did not appear.
The black night lightened and the moon rose. Muella now distinctly saw
Augustine--disheveled and ragged, white and stern and wild, with his
curved blade bright in the moonlight.
Then the gray mist crept up to obscure the white stars and the moon,
and at last the blue vault. The rustlings ceased to sound in the brush.
From far off rasped the cough of a _tigre_. It appeared to come from
the same place as when first heard. Hope had new birth in Muella’s
heart.
Moments like hours passed; the insects ceased to hum and the wind to
moan. The gray shadows fled before a rosy dawn.
Augustine hewed a lane through the dense thicket that had stopped him,
and presently he came upon a trail. He hurried back to Muella with
words of cheer. Strength born of hope returned to her, and she essayed
to get up.
Helping her to her feet, he half led and half carried her into the
trail. They went on for a hundred paces, to find that the path suddenly
opened into a wide clearing. To Muella it had a familiar look, and
Augustine’s exclamation assured her that he had seen the place before.
Then she recognized a ruined corral, some old palm-thatched huts, and
a water hole as belonging to the clearing through which they had long
before passed.
“We’ve traveled back in a circle!” exclaimed Augustine. “We’re near the
hacienda--your home!”
Muella leaned against him and wept. First of all was the joy of
deliverance.
“Muella, you are saved,” Augustine went on. “The distance is short--I
can carry you. Bernardo will forgive--you know how he flies into a
passion, and then how he repents.”
“Yes, yes. I’ll go back to him--tell him the truth--ask his mercy!”
From the center of the clearing came a rustling of dry leaves, then a
loud purr, almost a cough. Augustine stiffened, and Muella clutched
frantically at him.
For a long moment they stood, dark eyes staring into dark eyes,
waiting, listening. Then Augustine, releasing his hold on the trembling
girl, cautiously stepped upon a log and peered over the low palms.
Almost instantly he plunged down with arms uplifted.
“_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!”
THE RUBBER HUNTER
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.