Читать книгу In the Beginning - Alan Sullivan - Страница 10

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They left it at that, nor did the manner in which Manello settled his score become known to them till ten days later, when Harrop wormed it out of him after he had appeared in company with a large, evil-eyed Gaucho who answered to the name of Damos. Damos, it appeared, was the man who had done the stabbing, and, according to Harrop's version, he woke in the middle of the night not long afterwards with Manello's knife at his throat, and Manello swearing to slit his gullet unless certain things were sworn to forthwith. Having no immediate alternative, Damos swore, and was thus committed to accompanying his former victim to the forbidden Perdidos country. From the expression he now wore, it was evident that no more disturbing task could have been laid upon him.

Thus it happened that the travellers rode past the Gaucho camp, Manello in the lead, full of grim resolution to pay his debt. Jean got a glimpse of rawhide tents, unbelievably dirty, naked children playing in the sun, bronze women with hair to their waists, groups of lounging men, who eyed the strangers with sullen disapproval, and a half-eaten horse hanging, heels up, in a tree. Manello smacked his lips as they came level with that, and Harrop explained.

"They eat a horse every now and then, miss. It ain't so bad, either, when you're a bit peckish."

Two days' trek, and the land began to change. Timber was heavier, the horizon very flat, and the air seemed different. Sylvester, keenly alert, botanised constantly. Burden, who had been very silent of late, jogging for hours, his protruding eyes staring straight ahead with a sort of nameless anticipation, now sniffed at the breeze, and wondered if he smelled big game. Caxton, all his senses alive, felt that he was nearing the edge of something.

"Notice anything?" he asked Sylvester, as they made camp.

"A good many things in the flora, and"—he hesitated—"the air is warmer."

"Yes, by several degrees. But there's little game about. I've seen a guanaco and a couple of ostriches, that's all. Can you account for it?"

"Afraid I can't. We reach the lake to-morrow?"

"We should. Manello is going by what his brother told him years ago, and he's treading forbidden ground. You can see him fighting with superstition. The influence of a country like this can be a strange and powerful thing."

"Odd you should say that. I was just going to ask if you had noticed anything."

"About what?"

Sylvester jerked his chin in the direction of Burden, who was squatting, two hundred yards away, knees hunched up, staring westward.

"Something queer about him lately. He's beginning to talk in his sleep—strange talk, with a kind of cluck in it. I can't make anything of it. When we're riding together he's always peering, peering. Sometimes he doesn't seem to understand what I say."

"The hunter's natural instinct, that's all. The man is dying to kill something worth while."

"Well, I wish he'd kill it and have done with it. And if I were——"

He broke off a little awkwardly, and laughed.

"If you were what?"

"Nothing, sir. I seem to be wandering a bit myself now. I think I'll turn in."

He turned in, but not to sleep. Burden was very restless, and, about midnight, Sylvester saw the big man get up and stand in front of their tent, his body outlined against the stars, leaning a little forward as though he were listening acutely. Presently he disappeared. Sylvester smiled at his own foolishness, and slept.

When he woke it was daylight. Burden lay on his back in a profound slumber, and the other man saw that his hands and clothing were streaked with black mud. Now, there was no mud of any kind in the country they had traversed the previous day. Sylvester, wondering not a little, touched the massive arm.

"Get up, Burden! Breakfast is about ready. How did you get in this mess?"

Burden blinked at his hands and knees.

"I don't know," he said doubtfully. "We didn't go through it yesterday?"

"No; you got it last night."

"Where?"

"When you went out. I fell asleep then, and don't know how long you were away."

"I went out?" There was a mixture of doubt and defiance in the tone.

"Certainly. About midnight. You must have walked in your sleep. I know you can't help that, but it's rather dangerous here."

Burden looked at him strangely, then at his own soiled clothes. There was something mysteriously furtive in the look. He put a finger on the mudstain, pressing it gently, while the lids drooped over his protruding eyes. It made Sylvester wonder where the real man was at that moment. Burden sat down and pulled his shirt over his shoulders. The muscles on his back stood out like ropes.

"We may all be as dirty as this very soon," he said.

Sylvester nodded uncomfortably.

"I suppose we will. By George, but you're looking fit."

Burden seemed pleased at that, as a schoolboy would be pleased, but again came something queer that the other man could not explain.

"My imagination," Sylvester said to himself; "nothing but imagination."

Yet here was his rival for Jean! Why should the thought fill him with such revolt?

Next day they reached water, a dead, dark inlet, thirty feet wide, that wound through low timber lying to the westward. It was the nearest point of Lake Perdidos. Manello motioned still further west. Fear lay heavy on both the Gauchos now.

"Any boats here?" said Caxton.

There were no boats, and he stood at the edge of waters never navigated by modern man. The surrounding woods gave forth no sounds. Came an occasional splash in the distance, and overhead Sylvester made out a flock of wild swans, flying very high. Harrop jerked his thumb at Manello.

"He don't want to go any farther, sir."

Caxton had an inspiration.

"You try him, Jean. He's too useful to part with now."

She put a hand on the sinewy arm, pointed westward, nodded, and smiled at him. Strange, she thought, to be doing this to a half-naked savage in the wilderness. Manello stared at her, and, meeting the appeal in her eyes, weakened visibly. He turned to Damos, and spat out something that sounded full of contempt and provocation. With it went many gestures. Finally, the younger man squared his shoulders.

"It's all right, sir," put in Harrop. "They'll both come as far as the other side of the lake, if we can get there, but no farther. Manello asked if t'other chap was a blinking coward. That got him. Hadn't we better make camp on the driest spot? And I'll look up some timber for a raft."

They built two rafts, using long, light, heavily barked poplar trunks that floated high. Then the pack horses were turned loose, each dangling a short rope halter. Manello reckoned that he could catch one, if he came back.

So along the dark and winding water they went till the inlet mouth broadened before them and Lake Perdidos was fully revealed. There was no wind. The almost circular shores were ringed with a belt of timber, and in many of the trees which were dead Sylvester made out great clumps of the parasitic mistletoe. On the south shore was what might have been a river coming in. Here and there a condor perched motionless, sunning his ebony plumage, or, hurling himself into the air, swept over their heads and climbed to invisible heights on wide, curving pinions. The water was an impenetrable black, and had a faint odour of half-sweet rottenness. To the west, where the shore seemed very distant, there lay what looked like a grey-green band that, north and south, ran abruptly into the semi-circle of moribund timber. It was perfectly level. Further west stretched a rolling purple line much higher up, and, above that, a series of saw-toothed peaks, the loftiest of which were stark white. At one point these seemed to have been cut off. It was all utterly silent, utterly deserted, and gave the impression of an abandoned world.

Caxton, on whose raft were Jean, Harrop, and Manello, pointed to that far-flung skyline.

"Jean! The Andes!"

Her breath came faster as she surveyed this mighty range, the backbone of a continent for many thousands of miles.

"Do we cross them?"

"No. What there is will be on this side—if anywhere." Then, in a half-whisper, "Look at good old Manello."

The Gaucho was quite rigid, his eyes screwed up tight, while the rough-hewn paddle lay stiff in his hands. Suddenly he made a gesture and began to talk rapidly, and Harrop was all attention in an instant. In five minutes the flood of words ceased, and the little man went on with his work, digging his blade into the black water with a kind of recklessness.

"He says, sir, that a man can only die once and he's had a good bit out of life, and ain't particular about much more. He reckons that Damos will die, too, which is all to the good, and thinks you was, begging your pardon, sir, a darned fool, sir, to bring Miss Jean in here. That green band ahead is the cactus wall, and he's glad to know before he dies that his brother wasn't such a liar as his friends made him out to be. And the rest of it ain't fit—ain't of any great interest to no one but himself. That's about all, sir."

They worked indomitably all day, the rafts moving but sluggishly. Behind the encircling timber belt, Manello understood there to be a quagmire of great depth, so that it would have been impossible to approach the cactus wall except by water. Towards the distant Andes stretched a vast extent of level country, and only the birds could look down on the territory ahead. One might possibly reach it from the west, and Caxton vowed that if this attempt failed he would launch the next attack from the Chilean border. They were now nearing the corner of that great triangle which Withers had written of as lying between the headwaters of the Chubut and the Rio Negro. The cactus wall slowly grew more distinct till, at six in the afternoon, they were within a hundred yards of it.

A barricade of pale grey-green, it was nearer thirty than twenty feet high. It marched to the water's edge, an interminable parapet of formidable, impassable growth. The stalks, bunching from the ground like a pineapple plant, were at their base as thick as a man's thigh, tapering gradually to the dimensions of a paddleblade, their sharp, serrated edges sown close with a myriad of needle-pointed spines. The white men had all seen the Spanish Bayonet in Mexico, but never anything as massive and deadly as this. It could not burn, being internally too pulpy. It could not be cut in quantity by any human agency. Nor could one imagine any animal other than a snake worming its way through that fearful palisade.

Caxton, his eyes ranging its unbroken length, felt at once helpless and desperate. Had he travelled eight thousand miles to be stopped thus?

"We can't land," he said, "so we must stay as we are for to-night. I think it would be wise to take watch about till morning. Explain, will you, Harrop?"

Manello agreed at once, having no desire to tread this forbidden ground. Caxton closed off a section of his raft with a wall of boxes for Jean, and made her comfortable. Then, as darkness came on, he lit a cigar, and, perching on the highest part of his jumbled cargo, gave himself up to thoughts and observation.

In the darkest portion of the night he caught Burden's voice speaking quietly close by. Burden himself was invisible save for a shadowy outline.

"Are you asleep, sir?"

"No. What is it?"

"We'll find a way through to-morrow. Don't worry about that."

Caxton was amused, and, it being quite safe, he smiled.

"Thanks for the encouragement. Don't quite see it myself."

"Well, where an animal can get through a man generally can."

"What animal?"

"I don't know, but there's one here now."

Caxton lowered his voice.

"Where?"

"Can't tell you that, and I can't see it, but it's close by. I"—he hesitated—"I feel it. Can't explain that either, but it's never fooled me yet."

Caxton did not smile this time, being aware that some individuals have an instinct developed to an extent that seems almost supernatural to others. It is the ability to catch certain vibrations, distinguish them from the rest, and interpret them with remarkable accuracy.

"Can you guess at any type?" he asked in a whisper.

"No, except that it's a predatory type, and not far off at this minute. Somewhere between you and me, I think."

He said this so naturally, and with such a hungry eagerness, that Caxton felt his hair prickle. A predatory animal close by? He reached for his rifle, while the thought of a certain animal flashed into his mind. But he could not accept that without absolute proof.

"We're safe enough where we are, and we'll keep the rafts exactly in this position till morning, then look."

"I don't mind going ashore now, if you say so."

Caxton shivered at that.

"For heaven's sake, don't. We'd better not talk. We shall wake Jean."

But Jean was awake, and lay trembling.

Burden got ashore at daybreak, and, not finding space enough to stand upright, got on hands and knees, working a slow progress a few inches from the water's edge. Half-way to Caxton's raft he stopped, and put his head gingerly between two prickly growths, looking himself like a prowling animal.

"Got it! Will someone pitch me an axe?"

He chopped savagely for a half-hour, and cleared away five great arms that toppled into the black water. Beyond, Caxton had a glimpse of a narrow, winding, brown ribbon of path.

"There was something here," murmured the big man contentedly, "and if someone else can find room to lend me a hand—you, Harrop—we'll make a start."

They spent the day thus, hacking with the axes, and relieving each other every half-hour. At sunset a space had been cleared large enough to hold the supplies and camp equipment, but no more. Burden was for pushing along the path, which was only fifteen inches wide, but the others dissuaded him, and Manello and Damos refused to move. This was not their show. They all slept again on the rafts, but this night Burden, who sat on watch till sunrise, could distinguish nothing that moved.

That cactus wall was miles wide. Clearing the winding path foot by foot—it being out of the question to attempt to go straight—the hideous barricade thinned on the fourth day. Then, because water was available, with enough dry scrub for fuel, Caxton decided to move camp. The great bristling growths were now far enough apart to enable them to proceed without axe-work. He would have preferred to camp in the open, if open it was further ahead; but who could tell? And all were exhausted with chopping.

Cactus Camp, he called it, and had enough stuff for the night brought over. Jean, regarding her companions, thought that never were men more scarred and torn. Caxton made light of it, feeling happy and a little excited. Sylvester was too tired to talk, but Burden seemed perfectly at home. Not knowing why she did so, she found herself watching him closely, watching his big fingers filling his pipe, his big shoulders working under his tattered coat, his large, protruding eyes now very much alive and reflecting little points of life from the fire, over which he presided in a manner that was almost proprietary. In this hour that bounded night and day, in this strange country—the hinterland of the unknown—he reminded her distantly but constantly of something. But what that something was she could not determine.

No conversation after supper, and she went at once to her tent, the only one that as yet had been brought on. It was close to the fire, and Caxton had another small blaze lighted directly behind it as an added protection, so that she lay watching uncouth shadows of men distort themselves on her sloping walls. The white men were in front; Manello and Damos behind. When she said good-night, she saw that her father and Sylvester were rolled in their ponchos and already asleep. Harrop, on one side of the fire, was smoking in apparent peacefulness, while on the other Burden sat motionless, a rifle across his knees. He resembled a great Burmese god. The shadows on the tent wall danced at each feeding of the fires, back and front. That was the last thing she remembered.

Manello and Damos were also smoking, and a good deal less frightened than in the past. So far there had been nothing alarming or untoward. Also, on the east side of Lake Perdidos they had found excellent pasture, which to a Gaucho family means much. So they crouched over the fire, mumbling about the possibilities of the thing if the others at home would be sensible. Their hearts had been warmed by the rum Caxton served out, and there was nothing here to fear. Manello's old eyes fixed on his enemy, and he felt almost forgiving. Perhaps he had been rather bad-tempered himself. So quiet it was now, just like the pampas, except that one couldn't walk in the dark without getting stabbed in a thousand places by the tree spikes.

The moon slid behind a cloud, and to Burden's tense brain came a message from the invisible that something moved hard by. He threw a wisp of brush on the fire, and in the sudden spear-point of flame the walls of Jean's tent glimmered white, while round him the cacti were revealed in slanting battalions, tall, rigid, and ghostly. There was no sound on the earth or in the air, but a tingling instinct warned him that death was abroad to-night. It was the consciousness of motion, very close, and perhaps the faintest possible odour. His nostrils expanded. He could not prove it, but he knew, and it wakened the blood-lust in his secretly savage soul.

Something did move. It had been drawing nearer, inch by inch, for the last half-hour, flattening its belly against the earth; triangular ears laid back; great pads put softly out, their prehensile claws sinking into the soft earth; great muscles rippling silkily under the russet hide, the long tufted tail stiff as an iron bar. Blending with the shadows of the sentinel cacti, it came; merging at times almost with the ground itself—soundless, malignant, a thing of horror, with heavy flanks, massive shoulders, and deadly sabre-like tusks. Their polished ivory shone in the struggling moonbeams as it drew nearer. Strange smells assailed the moist black nostrils, and the beast lifted a ridge of yellow hair along its sinuous spine, while its eyes glowed like agate lamps with malevolent hatred of all things living.

"Manello!" whispered Burden, his finger curving over the trigger.

He could see nothing yet, but knew that it was very close.

Only a whisper, but it broke the spell. Out of the darkness a great body hurled itself, not through the air like the striped tiger of Bengal, but in a loose, scuffling gallop that carried it over the ground like wind. Manello started up, and Damos, but too late. The shape had launched itself at the latter, and between it and Burden was Jean's tent.

Splitting the air rose the horrid scream of one in mortal agony. Burden dashed round the tent, and saw the writhing mass of two men and the terror of the night. For one second he dared not fire, and in that second the thing did its work and fled. Came the double report of a rifle, a yelp, the rapid thud of flying pads along the widened trail, a cry from Jean, and the startled shouts of the others. Burden stood stock still, his lips lifted into a strange snarl. At his feet lay Damos, already choking in death, his side torn away by the slashing stroke of long ivory tusks.