Читать книгу The Pathless Trail (Arthur O. Friel) (Literary Thoughts Edition) - Arthur O. Friel - Страница 8

Sleepy eyed and frowzy haired, with shirt unbuttoned and breeches and boots unlaced, Tim emerged from his iron-walled cell into the cool-shadowed main room, blinked at McKay and Knowlton lounging over their morning coffee and cigarettes, stretched his hairy arms, and advanced sluggishly to the table.

"Yow-oo-hum!" he yawned. "Ain't they cute! All dressed and shaved like they was goin' to visit the C. O. And here's pore Timmy Ryan lookin' like a 'drunk and dirty' jest throwed into the guardhouse, and feelin' worse. Top o' the mornin' to ye, gents!"

"Same to you, Tim," McKay nodded.

"Who hit you?" asked Knowlton, squinting at bumps and scratches on Tim's forehead.

"Nobody. Couple fellers tried to, but they was out o' luck. Oh, I see what ye mean! I done that meself while I was gittin' to bed."

"Waves must have been running high on the ocean last night. Better drink some coffee. Thomaz, another cup – big and black."

"Thanks, Looey. 'Twas kind of an active night, at that."

"I heard you come in," vouchsafed McKay. "Were you trying some high diving in your room?"

"Faith, I done some divin' without tryin', but 'twas ragged work – I pulled a belly smacker every time. I got to tame that hammick o' mine. It throwed me four times hand-running and the only way I could hold it down was to unhook it and lay it on the floor."

"Sleep well then?"

"I did not. Cap, I thought I knowed somethin' about cooties, but I take it back – I never knowed nothin' about them insecks till last night. Where they come from I dunno, but I'll tell the world they come, and if they wasn't half an inch long I'll eat 'em. They darn near dragged me off whole, and all the sleep I got ye could stick in a flea's eye. Lookit here."

He extended an arm dotted with swollen red spots.

"Ants!" said McKay, after one glance. "Ants, not cooties. They're everywhere. Especially under the floor. That's one reason why folks sleep in hammocks down here. Even then they're likely to come down the hammock cords and drive you out."

"Ants, hey? Never thought o' that. And I'd sooner spend another night fightin' all the man-eatin' jaggers in the jungle than them bugs. It's the little things that count, as the feller said when his wife give him his fourteenth baby."

He downed the thick coffee brought by Thomaz, demanded another cup, accepted cigarette and light from Knowlton, and sighed heavily.

"Who tried to hit you?" Knowlton persisted.

"Aw, I dunno. Two-three fellers took swipes at me with bottles and things. Me and Joey went to a place where they's card games and so on – only place in town where the village sports can git action. Joey offers to buy, and does. Stuff tastes kind o' moldy to me, so I asks have they got any American beer. They have. It's bottled and warm, but it's beer and tastes like home. It goes down so slick I buy another round, and then one more, lettin' in a thirsty-lookin' stranger on the third round. That makes seven bottles altogether. Then I think mebbe I better pay up now before I lose track. Looey, guess what them seven bottles o' suds come to in American money."

"M-m-m! Well, say about three and a half or four dollars."

"That's what I figgered," mourned Tim. "But them highbinders want thirty-two dollars and twenty cents, American gold."

"What!"

"Sad but true. Seems the stuff sells here for four bucks and sixty cents a bottle. Thinkin' I'm gittin' rooked because I'm a tenderfoot, I raise a row to oncet and start to climb the guy. Other folks mix in and things git lively right off. But after I've dropped a couple o' fellers Joey winds himself round me and begs me not to make him arrest me, and also tells me I'm all wrong – that's the regular price. So o'course that makes me out a cheap skate unless I come acrost, and I do the right thing."

"Lucky you had the money on you," said McKay, eying him a bit oddly.

"I didn't," chuckled Tim. "All the dough I had was one pore lonesome ten-spot – the one I got from ye yesterday, Cap. But I don't tell 'em that. I jest wave my hand like thirty-two plunks wasn't nothin' in my young life, and start to work meself out o' the hole. After the two guys on the floor are brought back to their senses I order up drinks for all hands and git popular again. Then I git out the bones."

"Oh! I see!" McKay laughed silently.

"Sure. Remember they told us on the boat that these guys will gamble on anything? And that a feller without shoes on may be some rubber worker packin' a roll that would choke a horse? Wal, I make a few passes with them dice o' mine and their eyes light up like somebody had switched on the current. Then I scrabble me hand around in me pants pocket, like I was peelin' a bill off a roll so big I didn't want to flash the whole wad, and haul out that pore li'l' ten and ask would anybody like to play a man's game.

"They would. I'll say they would. And they got the coin to back up their play, too. Before I come home I was buyin' beer by the case instead o' the bottle. And it's all paid for, and I got more 'n a hundred dollars left, besides givin' Joey a fistful o' money jest for bein' a good feller. This ain't a bad town at all, gents. Outside o' that buckin'-broncho hammick and the man-eatin' ants I had a lovely evenin'."

"How about Joao's lady friend?" quizzed Knowlton.

"Huh? Oh, I didn't git to see her. When bones and beer are rollin' high and handsome I got no time for women. Besides, I found out she was mostly Injun and fat as a hog. Nothin' like that for li'l' Timmy Ryan. Oh, say, before I forgit it – I asked Joey about this Dutchman here, and he says – "

McKay scowled, shook his head, pointed toward the closed door of Schwandorf. Tim lifted his brows, winked understanding, and went on with a break: " – that this guy Sworn-off is a reg'lar feller and knows this river like a book. Says he's one fine guy and a man from hair to heels."

Following which he grimaced as if something smelled bad, adding in a barely audible whisper, "And that's the worst lie I ever told."

"We met Mr. Schwandorf last night after you went," Knowlton said, easily, drawing down one eyelid. "Very likable sort of chap. He's going to help us get started upriver."

"Uh-huh. When do we go? To-day?"

"If possible."

"Glad of it. This big-town sportin' life would be the ruination of a simple country kid like me. Yo-hum! Wonder how all our neighbors are this mornin' – the goat and the drunk and the two sick fellers. Kind o' quiet over that side o' the room."

Thomaz entered just then with more coffee. Knowlton turned to him.

"Are the sick men better to-day, Thomaz?"

"Much better, senhor," the lad said, carelessly. "They are dead."

"Huh?" Tim grunted, explosively.

"Dead," the youth repeated. "They were taken out at dawn. Do not be alarmed. It was the swamp fever, which is not – what you say? – catching."

"Humph! Sort of a reg'lar thing to die of fever here, hey?"

Thomaz shrugged as if hearing a foolish question.

"Si. Swamp fever, yellow fever, smallpox, beriberi – to-day we live, to-morrow we are dead."

"True for ye. They's allays somethin' hidin' round the corner waitin' to jump ye, no matter where ye are. If 'tain't one thing, it's another."

Despite his philosophical answer, however, Tim fell silent, his eyes going to the doors of the rooms where Death had stalked last night while he was gambling. Like most men in whose veins red blood runs bold and free, he had no fear of the sort of death befitting a fighter – sudden and violent – but a deep repugnance for those two assassins against which a victim could not fight back – disease and poison. The Brazilian youth's nonchalant fatalism aroused him to the fact that here both those forms of death were very near him; the one in the air, the other on the ground – fever and snakes.

For the moment he was depressed. Then curiosity awoke.

"If this here, now, Javary fever ain't catchin', how does a feller git it?"

"Mosquitoes," McKay enlightened him. "The anopheles. It bites a man who has fever, then bites a well man and leaves the fever in him. Inside of ten days he's sick, unless he takes a huge dose of quinine right away. Mosquito attacks perpendicular to the skin. That is, it stands on its head. If you ever notice one of them biting that way get busy with the quinine."

"Huh! Fat chance a feller's got o' seein' just how all these bugs bite him. And one muskeeter standin' on its head does all that, hey?"

"So they say. Also they say it's only the female that bites."

"Yeah. I believe it. I been stung more 'n once by females before now. How about the yeller fever? Git that the same way?"

"Same way, only a different mosquito – the stegomyia. When you begin to vomit black you're gone. And if you get beriberi you're gone, too. First symptoms of that are numbness of the fingers and toes. Muscular paralysis goes on until your heart stops."

"Uh-huh. Nice cheerful place to die in, this Ammyzon jungle. Aw well, what's the odds?"

Wherewith he inhaled more coffee, flipped his cigarette butt at a small lizard on the floor not far away, yawned once more, and swaggered out to the piazza, bawling:

"And when I die

Don't bury me a-tall,

But pickle me bones

In alky-hawl – "

When his roar had subsided and the two former officers had sat silent a moment, smiling over his nocturnal adventures, the door of Schwandorf's room opened abruptly and the German stepped out.

"Morgen," he grunted, striding to the table. "Thomaz!"

"Si, Senhor Sssondoff." The youth faded away into the kitchen quarters.

"Always feel grumpy until I eat," grumbled the blackbeard. "None of this coffee-cigarette breakfast for me. A real meal, coffee with gin in it, a cigar – then I feel human. Sleep well?"

His bold gaze never flickered as it encountered Knowlton's.

"Fine. If you snored I didn't know it. Didn't hear the bodies taken out this morning, either."

"Bodies! Oh! Those fellows dead?" He tilted his head toward the doors behind which the sick men had lain. "Glad of it. Best for them and everybody else. Hate to have sick people in the place."

The Americans said nothing. They lit new cigarettes and waited for the other to become "human." And when his substantial breakfast was down, his gin-flavored coffee had disappeared, and his big cigar was aglow, he did.

"Well, gentlemen, have you decided to take good advice and let your Raposa alone?" he asked, affably.

"Who ever follows good advice?" Knowlton countered. Schwandorf chuckled.

"Niemand. Nobody. So you will go." He shook his head solemnly. "I have said all I can without offense. But if you persist I can only help you to start. If possible I should like to go with you up the river to the place where you will take to the bush; but I must go to Iquitos, in Peru, on the monthly launch which is due in a day or two, so all my business is in the other direction. If now I can aid in the matter of a crew – "

"That is what we were about to ask of you."

"So. Then let us be about it. I have been thinking, since you showed your determination last night, and have made inquiries about men. There are now in Nazareth, the little Peruvian town across the river, several men from whom you can pick an excellent crew. Men of the river and the bush, not worthless loafers like these townsmen here. Men who are not afraid of hell or high water, as the saying is. Not remarkable for either beauty or brains, but good men for your work – by far the best you can obtain. I would suggest a large canoe and six or eight of those men as crew."

The others smoked thoughtfully. Then McKay said, "We should prefer Brazilians."

"Not if you knew the people hereabouts as well as I. It, of course, makes no personal difference to me what sort of crew you get, but I tell you that these men are best. What does it matter which side of the river they come from? Men are men."

"True," McKay conceded.

"Can't be too fussy here," Knowlton added. "Let's see the men."

All rose. But then Schwandorf suggested:

"No need of your going to Nazareth. Better stay here, unless you want to go through a great deal of ceremonious foolishness over there. It's Peruvian ground and the barefooted ignoramuses of officials may insist on showing their importance by demanding your papers and all that. I can go across, get the men, and be back here before you'd be half through the preliminaries. Saves time."

"All right, if it's not too much trouble."

"A good deal less trouble than if you went, to be frank. I'm known, and I can go straight about the business. So sit down and wait. Thomaz! My hat!"

Out he tramped to the piazza, where he paused a moment to run a swift eye over the disheveled figure of Tim, who had fallen sound asleep in a chair. Then, without a further word or glance, he descended the ladder and swung away down the street. The Americans, watching him from the doorway, observed that children in his path hastened to get out of it, and that he spoke to nobody.

"Prussian," rasped McKay.

"M-hm! Done time in the Kaiser's army, too, even if he has been here since before the war. But he's treating us pretty white."

The captain made no answer. Their eyes followed the big figure until they saw it go sliding away toward Peru in a canoe propelled by two languid townsmen. Then McKay dropped a hand on Tim's shoulder. The red-lashed eyes flew open instantly.

Briefly, quietly, Knowlton told of what had passed while he napped, then asked what information he had gleaned from Joao.

"He says," answered Tim, "this guy is a queer duck. Been around here quite a while, but Joey don't know what's his game. He goes off on trips upriver, stays quite a while, comes back unexpected, and nobody knows where he's been or why. He don't use Brazilian boatmen – gits his men on the other side. And the Peru boys themselves dunno where he goes, or, anyways, they say they don't.

"Two of 'em come over here awhile back and got drunk, and Joey tried to pump 'em, but all the dope he got was that this here Fritz goes away upstream to a li'l' camp, and from there he goes off into the bush alone, and the Peru guys jest hang around the camp till he gits back. Sounds kind o' fishy to me, and Joey says it does to him, too, but he couldn't work nothin' more out o' the drunks because about that time Sworn-off himself comes buttin' in and asks these guys what they think they're doin' on this side the river, and they beat it back to Peru toot sweet. He's got their goat, all right, and I wouldn't wonder if he's got Joey's, too. Anyways, Joey tells me he's off this geezer and advises me to lay off him, too, though he can't name a thing against him."

"Queer," said Knowlton, looking again at the canoe out on the water.

"Gun running?" suggested McKay.

"Nope," Tim contradicted. "I thought o' that, but Joey says they's nothin' to it; they watched this sourkrout close, and he don't never git no guns from nowheres. Besides, they's nobody up there to run guns to but Injuns, and them Injuns are so wild they don't want no guns; they stick to the bow and arrer and such stuff, which they sure know how to use. Whatever his game is, he plays a lone hand as far's this town knows. Got no pals here, and nobody wants to walk on his corns."

"May be perfectly all right, too," mused Knowlton. "A little gold cache or something – though he said there was none in this region. Oh, well, what do we care? We have our hands full with our own business, and all assistance is appreciated."

An hour drifted past. Men of the town lounged by, looking curiously at the strangers, some nodding and voicing a friendly, "Boa dia." Women, too, watched them from windows and doors, and children slyly peeped around corners until something more important – such as a cat, a goat, or a gorgeous butterfly – came their way. Tim went inside and slicked up a bit by buttoning and lacing his clothes and combing his rebellious hair. At length a long boat put out from the farther shore and came surging across the sun-gleaming river.

"Handle themselves well," McKay approved, noting the easy grace of the crew. In the bow a tall, slender fellow stood with arms folded, balancing himself to the sway of the rather clumsy craft and watching the water ahead. In the stern, on a little platform whence he could look over the heads of the others and catch any signal from the lookout, a squat, dark-faced steersman lounged against his crude rudder. Between these two the paddlers stood, each with one foot on the bottom of the long dugout and the other on the gunwale, swinging in nonchalant unison as their blades moved fore and aft. Under the curving roof of a rough-and-ready cabin, open at the sides to allow free play of air, Schwandorf lolled like some old-time barbarian king.

Down to the landing place trudged the three Americans, and there the employers and the prospective employees looked one another over with interest. Eight men had come with Schwandorf, and a hard gang they were. The bowman, hawk nosed, slant eyed, black mustached, with hairy chest showing under his unbuttoned cotton shirt, had the face and bearing of a buccaneer chieftain; and the effect was intensified by a flaring red handkerchief around his head and the haft of a knife protruding from his waistband. The rowers behind him, though of varying degrees of swarthiness and height, all had the same sinewy build, the same bold stare, the same devil-may-care insolence of manner; and though none but the lookout wore the piratical red around his brow, more than one knife hilt showed at their waists. The steersman, whose copper-brown skin and flat face betokened a heavy strain of Indian blood, gazed stolidly at the Americans with the unwinking, expressionless eyes of a snake. Back into the minds of McKay and Knowlton came Schwandorf's words, "Men not afraid of hell or high water." They looked it.

"Here they are," announced the German, stepping ashore deliberately. "José, the puntero" – his hand indicated the lookout – "Francisco, the popero" – pointing to the steersman – "and six bogas. Good men."

McKay ran a cold eye along the line of faces, his gaze plumbing each. Under that chill scrutiny the third man's stare wavered and dropped. That of the next also veered aside. The rest fronted him eye to eye.

"Two of them will not do," he asserted, in the brusque tone of a captain inspecting his company. "Numbers Three and Four – fall out!"

Literal obedience would have put Three and Four into the river, wherefore they stood fast. But, though they did not quite understand the meaning of the words, they grasped the fact that they were not wanted. One laughed impudently, the other slid a poisonous glance at the bleak-faced officer. The squat Francisco scowled. So did Schwandorf.

"No man who cannot look me in the eye is needed on this trip," McKay declared. "Also, six men are enough. If necessary we will bear a hand at the paddles ourselves. José, you have been told by Senhor Schwandorf what we want?"

"Si."

"You can start at once?"

"Si."

"What pay?"

"We leave that to you."

"Um! A dollar a day for each man?"

"Money or goods?"

"American gold."

"Si. Bueno."

"Very well. Take those two men back to Nazareth, get what belongings you need, return here, and report to me at the hotel. I am captain. Understand?"

"Si – Capitan."

"All right. On your way!"

As the boat drew out the two rejected men bade the Americans an ironical "adios," and one spat in the stream. In the faces of the others, however, showed something like respect for the crisp-spoken captain, and José snarled something at the ill-mannered Three and Four.

"You might need those men," mumbled Schwandorf.

"Guess not," McKay answered, serenely, turning toward the hotel. "Come on, boys. Let's get our stuff ready to ride."

Less than two hours later their rooms were vacant, their duffle was stowed in the long dugout, the Peruvian crew stood arrogantly eying the Brazilians who had gathered to witness the departure, and the Americans were bidding good-by to Remate de Males in general and its German resident in particular.

"Mr. Schwandorf, we thank you for your efficient aid," said Knowlton, extending a hearty hand. "You have helped us to get going with all dispatch, and we trust that we can repay the favor soon."

"You owe me no thanks," was the curt reply. "I would expect you to do as much for me if our positions were reversed. I wish you luck."

"Get aboard, Tim!" McKay ordered, setting the example himself. Tim obeyed, first giving the important Joao d'Almeida Magalhaes Nabuco Pestana da Fonseca a real American handgrip and getting in return a double embrace from that worthy official. Whereafter he winked and grinned expansively at several women garbed in violent hues of red, yellow, and green, frowned slightly at Schwandorf, lit the last cigar he was to smoke for many a long day, and, as the dugout began to move, erupted into a more or less musical farewell to the females of the species:

"The Yanks are goin' away,

Pa-a-arley-voo!

They're movin' on to-day,

Pa-a-arley-voo!

The Yanks are goin' away, they say,

Leavin' the girls in a heartless way,

Rinkydinky-parley-voo!"

With one final wave of his cigar to the gesticulating Joao and the grinning women he turned his back on the town and faced the little-known river and the inscrutable jungle. But neither his eyes nor his thoughts traveled beyond the bow of the boat. Through narrowed lids he studied the swaying paddlers and the piratical José. And in his mind echoed the whispered warning of Joao, delivered during the effusive embrace at parting:

"Comrade, watch those bastardos Peruanos."