Читать книгу In the Beginning - Alan Sullivan - Страница 8

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They walked inland, delighting in the firm earth after the jumping deck of the "La Plata." Caxton and Burden followed the stream. The others turned northward through the scanty grass, Harrop tramping ahead, steadily scanning the horizon. Sylvester, finding English primroses in clumps, and wild liquorice roots on the slopes of the dunes, gave himself up to the joy of discovery. Jean felt, in an odd way, silenced, and wanted to be alone in this her first taste of what had always been a desert. They had walked for half an hour, and were well out of sound and sight of the others, when Harrop stopped abruptly, and pointed ahead. Where land met sky she saw a man's shoulders moving rapidly with a queer undulating motion.

"Gaucho," said Harrop. "Better let me go on alone, miss."

The Gaucho must have seen them in the same moment, for he turned toward them, cantering quickly, his long spear at the slant. He wore a sort of cloak and a basquette-shaped hat, below which dangled his thick, black hair. As he neared her, Jean made out a strong, copper-coloured face and bright, dark eyes. He rode loosely, and seemed a part of his horse. She noted that he had no bridle, only a cord round the animal's nose. A hundred feet from Harrop, he lowered his spear and waited.

Harrop raised both his hands, palms open, upward toward the stranger, and began to talk. Jean could not follow a word, so quick was it, and with so much of the sign language of the pampas, but it had evident effect. The point of the spear was lifted vertically, and the man made a sweeping gesture toward the north. Harrop nodded with a grunt of content.

"He says that he'll have the head of his family—they live in families here, not tribes—come to the river in two hours. Then Mr. Caxton can talk to him. Meantime, we'd better be getting back."

"Are they far from here?"

"About eight miles. He'll do it in the two hours."

He did, bringing with him an old man, a dried-up wisp of bone and sinew, with a wrinkled face and matted hair. The two did not dismount, but listened with quick mutual glances, while Caxton, aided by Harrop, stated his wants. Up to a point all went well: then the expression of both men changed suddenly.

"He says," explained Harrop, "that they can take us across the Chico and Chubut, and as far as the trail of the Perdidos Gauchos. That's all. Not a foot further. It isn't a matter of money, and they are satisfied with what you offer."

"Why not farther?"

Harrop grinned.

"You'll excuse me, sir, but it looks as if Lopez wasn't such a liar after all. They say they're not wanted in the Perdidos country."

Caxton was secretly pleased, but only looked vexed. He made a swift scrutiny of the two natives, bronze images on horseback, impassive, erect, and men very much to his liking. The old man's face was imprinted with innumerable deep-cut lines that sub-divided his skin into a human map. But there was no grey in his hair, and his eyes were still lustrous.

"Very well. We'll unload to-morrow, and they can decide how many horses we'll need. And I want to get away at once. Make them understand that."

They got back to the ship, and Lopez, who had listened without a word, shrugged his shoulders. It wasn't his affair if all the English were mad. He was free now to trade and pick up what business he could between Bahia and Santa Cruz. But no further afield than that. Caxton made this very clear. Once every fifteen days the "La Plata" was to lie off the so-called harbour of San Sebastian for not less than twenty-four hours, in case she was wanted.

Then Caxton wrote a letter for Moberley, a kind of obiter dictum that he prayed he might tear up himself later on. Moberley was to consult with Borthwick, and put before him Withers' letter, which was enclosed. It was against Withers' request, but Caxton felt that in the interests of science the thing should not be buried in case of his own death. It would then be for these two to take what action they saw fit. He sealed the envelope with a sense of finality.

"If by six months from to-day we are not on the 'La Plata,' and if you have not heard of our arrival elsewhere, you will hand this in at Buenos Aires and get your money. Understand?"

Lopez nodded, and put the letter under his mattress. It would never be disturbed there.

They got away on the second day, and Jean, who rode well, decided she had never dreamed of anything so fascinating. Five mounted Gauchos; ten pack-horses; her father, who seemed to cast away years with every mile; Burden, whose bulk was noticeable beside the spare frames of the natives; Sylvester, stopping now and then to slide to earth and gather a specimen; Harrop, rolling loosely in his saddle as though he were still on the "La Plata"—she scanned them all with a new and breathless interest.

The country was unlike anything she had ever seen, and it gave her an impression of illimitable space. There was no game for Burden, of which she was, somehow, glad, and as she rode her mind expanded to a novel and enfranchised consciousness. Here it seemed possible to grasp the significance of things. Every wall of civilisation had crumbled.

Hours in the saddle, with the endless caress of the sweet air embracing her body, the creak of leather, soft thudding of horses' feet in the desert trail, night a galaxy of stars unbelievably bright, the red eyes of a camp fire, figures moving indistinctly, guttural words of Gaucho talk, then silence and the infinite beyond. Such was Jean Caxton's introduction to Patagonia.

They were half-way on the first stage of their journey, when Caxton, who had been silent of late, asked Burden a sudden question.

"You know what we hope to find, but do you know the one thing that would make it possible?"

Burden shook his head.

"Been thinking a lot about it, but I haven't an idea."

"It's climate, nothing else; climate that hasn't changed since—well, the Pleistocene age. That's why this is such a long shot. Animals change with climate."

"So it turns on our finding some spot where the climate is what it was hundreds of thousands of years ago?"

"Between now and then there isn't so much difference. But in the meantime climate has altered, and altered back again, many times. The thing is that in this spot we are trying to find there could not have been successive extreme changes of climate either to extinguish the then animal life, or materially change its nature, as has happened elsewhere. That's the big question in my mind. The giant sloth that Withers saw had survived. We know that much. But how—and where?"

"A volcanic valley, heated from the earth?" put in Burden.

"Animals with long thick hair do not inhabit hot countries. You'd get rather the giant reptiles, big hairless things, pterodactyls, icthyosaurus, and the like. What we're after is the hairy beggar who's forerunner of the present sloth, tiger, and wolf."

"Did man exist then?" said Jean, her eyes very round.

"He did, without question, in other parts of the world, but it has been neither proved nor disproved yet so far as concerns South America. He has left no traces except of a later age. I've been picking up arrowheads and things for days, got a sackful now, but"—he shook his head doubtfully—"they don't go back far enough. The Port of London Authority is dredging up in the Thames now the same flint weapons that natives are chipping out in Papua to-day. Withers must have travelled all this ground mentally many times before he wrote. And much more accurately than I can. He knew the difficulties—all of them—as few men do, and yet he did write. That was enough for me."

More days in the saddle, and then the last lap towards the Perdidos trail. They came to it one evening, an obscurely trampled track winding between scanty thorny shrubs, and the Gauchos drew rein.

"Water?" asked Harrop. "Where is water?"

They pointed south-east to a fold in the pampas where grass grew a little thicker. Followed a proposal from Caxton. Would they not come a day's march further west at double pay? But it was not a matter of pay. They sat, rigidly alert, casting quick, piercing glances along the trail as though fear had seized them already. The faces of the younger men had been painted into forbidding masks of black and red, out of which their dark eyes peered with increasing apprehension. Alarm was descending on them in the desert.

Caxton made a gesture.

"We'll go back as far as the water, and make camp. I'll buy the pack-horses. You tell them, Harrop. We'll hold council when they leave."

Never was camp made more quickly. What water remained was a little alkaline, but more precious than gold. Brown fingers tethered the horses, and tugged impatiently at tent ropes till the white walls rose like magic in the wilderness. But each of the five Gauchos felt, obviously, an intruder here, though there was nothing to be seen except half-obliterated hoof-marks in the sandy soil. The clink of silver, muttered farewells, then five figures that wheeled as one and tore southward, their long black hair streaming in the wind. Then silence, while five others looked at each other with unspoken questions. It was Harrop who first became his natural self.

"By your leave, sir, I'll look after them pack-horses and do a bit of cooking, if the gentlemen will get some firewood. And to-morrow——"

"I was thinking about to-morrow. We'll make our base here till you and I push on and do a little investigating."

Night closed in apace, such a night as Jean had never seen in England. Her tent was midway between the other two, which were shared by the men. She left the flap open, and stared for an hour into the moonlight. The whinny of a horse came to her, together with a myriad of those tiny voices that blend into what we call silence. Something in her responded to this, and she became aware that the wilderness was sending her an invitation, subtle and mysterious. An invitation to what?

She struggled with it for a while, but every moment its pressure became more insistent. It seemed that there was something for her to do, here and now, so, moved by an instinct she could not fathom, she went out and stood by the blackened embers of the fire. It was not cold, and the faintest of winds moved, whispering, in the grass. The moon struck, milk-white, on the tent walls, and lay silvered in the pool close by. Again the call, louder now, more penetrating, more insidious, till, knowing in her soul that she was doing a mad thing, but possessed of a swift hunger to be utterly alone, she returned to the tent, pocketed her revolver and a small flask, and went noiselessly out. Then, breathlessly, she saddled her horse, mounted with a gasp at her own temerity, and turned northward along the Perdidos trail. Half an hour at the very most, and she would be back, utterly satisfied and with her soul at peace. She had not any fear.

She walked her horse for the first few hundred yards, anticipating to be stopped by a shout, but the camp was dipped in sleep. Then it vanished behind a low ridge, and with a feeling of complete exaltation she was alone in Patagonia. No words for this! By her watch it was midnight, and she marked the magnificent procession of stars, while the Southern Cross looked very near the earth, hanging as though it was suspended midway to the zenith. The whole dim world seemed friendly. Something rose in her throat, and she cantered joyously on.

Abreast of a patch of stunted timber, her horse suddenly swerved, and she was nearly unseated. At the same moment a low, choking groan came out of the stillness. She had a great wave of fear, and was wheeling to dash homeward when the groan came again, and she knew that it was human. At that her breath came faster, and, drawing rein, she edged cautiously in the direction of the sound. The horse trembled violently, but, forcing him on, she halted fifty yards from the track. At her feet was the form of an old, old man, nearly naked, foam on his lips, and his side plastered with blood.