Читать книгу Tiger River - Arthur Olney Friel - Страница 13

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Between two hundred-foot walls of vivid verdure, starred softly by delicately tinted orchids and tipped by yellowish bud-flowers of palms, the Tigre Yacu shone like polished silver, unruffled by the faintest breath of air. On its placid bosom were mirrored great flowering ferns, fifty feet tall; curving stems and drooping fronds of the giant of grasses, the bamboo; the high-reaching branches of the jagua, the enormous plumes of the jupati, the feather-bunch crown of the ubussu, the white trunk and flat top of the lordly silk-cotton, and the looping, twining, dangling network of aërial vines.

Even the emerald gleam of the huge green tree-beetles, shining like jewels in the glare of the westering sun, was reflected from the flawless surface of the river of the evil name. Over it wheeled and floated clouds of gorgeous blue and yellow butterflies. Across it winged flocks of green parrots, and along it hopped and yelped huge-beaked toucans gaudy in feather dresses of flaring yellow, orange, and red.

A captivating, alluring river it seemed, beckoning the wanderer on into an Elysium where no evil could wait and where stingless bees would pour their honey into his bowl. But to those wanderers who even now were stroking up into its luxuriance and furrowing its smooth surface into uneasy ripples it was not the Eden it looked. Every man of the five was tormented by scores of red-hot needles.

Though their distance from shore might protect them from savage man or beast, it only made them easier prey to the tiny torturers whose ferocity has for centuries aided the head-hunting barbarians to keep the tributaries of the Marañon almost uninhabited by white men: the blood-thirsty zancudos, the almost invisible piums, the big black montuca flies whose lancets bore so big a hole in the flesh that blood drips long after the bite. Out on the broad Marañon itself, where the east winds swept strong and steady across all floating craft, the North Americans had suffered little from such pests. But now, well up the Tiger River, they had long since lost that wind; and the exposed skin of every man was blackened with the minute scars of the piums and scabbed with the wounds of the montucas. And, with merciless persistence, fresh hordes kept swarming to the attack.

Yet, in days of dogged journeying, they had suffered nothing except this constant bloodletting. Not once had human foes appeared. Not once had any animal or snake assailed them—though each night the roar of more than one tigre had sounded too close to camp for comfortable rest, and from time to time during the day as well there came from the maze of shore growth the menacing note of some jungle king voicing his resentment at the invasion of his domain. They received no response to their challenge, those fierce animals: for Captain McKay had issued strict orders to ignore them.

"Let them alone unless they attack," he commanded. "We're here for something more important than cat shooting, and the less noise we make the better. No firing unless necessary."

So, except for the volley which had blown the head off the big black cat at the Marañon, neither the high-powered bolt-action rifles of the Americans nor the big-bored repeater of José had spoken since the five-cornered partnership had been formed. Hunting was done at the end of each day's traverse, but only with a light .22-caliber table gun, which made little more noise than a breaking stick, and with bow and arrow, which killed in silence.

The archer of the company was the taciturn, green-eyed Rand. For five years, before being found and rehabilitated by the three former soldiers who now were his comrades, he had been a wild creature of the jungle; and grim necessity had made him as expert in the construction and use of bow and arrows as any of the savages among whom he lived. Moreover, it had given him the keen hunting instinct and the instantaneous perception of the presence of animal life to which no civilized white man can attain without living long amid primeval surroundings. And now, though no longer a "wild dog," he had not lost either his hunting-animal sensitiveness or his deadly skill with the weapon of primitive man.

In fact, his markmanship with the bow was much better than with the rifle. Though he had equipped himself in the States with the same type of rifle and pistol favored by the ex-army men, and had made himself thoroughly familiar with their use, he still was only a fair shot. In comparison with the shooting of his companions, his was not even fair. To both McKay and Knowlton belonged the little silver medal with crossed rifles which the United States Army bestows only on its crack shots. Tim, ex-sergeant, had won the sharpshooter's cross—and, in his open-handed way, given it to the girl who later married the shipyard worker. José, veteran jungle ranger, was deadly with either rifle or machete. In such company Rand was low gun.

Whether because of a natural dislike to feeling himself inferior to his comrades, or because of an atavistic urge to return to the barbaric implement of death after returning to the primordial land east of the Andes, on his way down the big river he had quietly built for himself a new bow, with a quiver and a goodly supply of arrows—five-foot shafts made from straight cane and tipped with barbed tail-bones of the swamp sting-ray. Equipped with these and minus his boots—which, despite the ever-present danger of snake bite, he refused to wear while hunting—he now would slip away into the bush late each day, silent and deadly as any prowling beast of the forest. With him, carrying the little .22 rifle, went—not José, the other bush-trained hunter of the party, but Knowlton. While they were out José and the other two would make camp for the night. And before the sun slid down behind the distant Andes and night whelmed the forest the absent pair always returned with ample meat.

José, who, under normal conditions, should have been one of the hunters, remained at the river bank from choice; the choice being due to the fact that he was not allowed to shoot his own heavy gun. On trying to snap the light, short, low-power rifle to his shoulder and catch the sights quickly he found himself, as he said, "all thumbs." After a few vain efforts to accustom himself to it he handed it back with a rueful grin.

"With a man's gun, amigos, with that old iron bar of mine, I can shoot," he said. "But with this toy rifle—this little boy's plaything—no. And these tiny bullets—por Dios, they feel like fleas in my hand! If I shot a monkey with one of them I should feel that I had insulted him."

So it was Knowlton, who had amused himself many a time by popping the little gun at crocodiles' eyes during the long days of drifting, who followed Rand on the stealthy pot-hunting trips. Despite his comparative inexperience at jungle travel afoot, he could step quietly and spy game quickly, and he could shoot like a flash. With Rand as his guide he had no difficulty in getting about, and now and then he knocked over some bird or small animal in places where his partner's long bow was at a disadvantage. Thus the pair formed a very efficient team.

Now another day was nearing its end. A sweltering day, it had been; a breathless, cloudless day on which the vindictive assaults of the insect hordes seemed to have been redoubled. Ceaselessly they hunted skin spots not already hardened and scabbed by the bites of their predecessors; they burrowed into beards and shaggy hair, they crawled into noses and ears, they sneaked inside shirts and strove to dig under the sweatbands of the hats. The paddlers, smeared with clay which they had applied in the vain hope of defending their tortured skins, grinned and bore it; grinned not with mirth or contempt, but with the fixed facial contraction of acute discomfort which must be endured. Tight-mouthed, slit-eyed, their faces were masks of unbreakable determination. Their shoulders swung with regular unbroken sway, and the paddles rose and fell as if moved by machines driven by inexorable will. Bugs might come and bugs might go, but it seemed that the three boats would surge on with never a halt to the journey's end.

But the eyes under those slits were scanning the shores, which now were closer together than back at the Marañon, and from time to time the heads turned in a brief look at some possible camp-site. It was nearing the hour when the voyagers must land, hunt, throw up pole-and-palm shelters, sling hammocks, eat, and seek badly needed refuge from their tormentors inside the drab insect bars. And in his stubborn heart every man was glad of it.

With a wordless grunt José veered out of line toward the left shore. The twin dugouts followed. Into a shadowy creek between small bluffs they went. Within the entrance thick brush flanked them like impenetrable walls. But a few rods farther upstream José drew up to shore and paused. There the tangle was thinner, and the Peruvian pointed to an arm-thick sindicaspi tree.

"Will do," granted McKay, speaking through lips swollen by bites. The pair of San Regis dugouts drew up, and their paddlers rose stiffly and stepped ashore.

A moment of wary looking around—then José slashed his machete with whirling deftness through the nearest bush stalks, clearing a small space. The travelers pulled from their canoes dry clothing and large gourds, and, with such speed as their tired muscles allowed, they stripped. Insects swooped exultantly at the bared skins. But the pests had hardly alighted when they were swept away by the gourdfuls of water with which their victims deluged themselves from hair to heels. A copious drenching, a swift rubdown, a hurried donning of dry garments, and the five stood reinvigorated. With one accord they produced tobacco and papers and rolled cigarettes.

"Got firewood, anyways," remarked Tim, eying the sindicaspi tree and luxuriously blowing smoke into the cloud of bugs around him. "Better git busy and make camp. Bet ye we have another crackin' thunderstorm soon. We didn't git no shower to-day. Same way our first day up—there wasn't no rain that noon, but we sure caught it that night."

The others nodded. The regular noon rain, usually arriving from the east as punctually as if turned on by prearranged schedule, had failed to arrive that day. The air now was oppressively heavy, though nowhere near so hot as out on the river; in fact, the change in temperature was so marked in the damp forest shadows that if the travelers had not shed their sweat-soaked clothing promptly on landing they would have speedily become chilled.

"The rain must come," José agreed. "The path of the sun is the path of the storm, as the Indians say. The sun has nearly passed, and the storm is not far behind."

With which he drew his machete again and renewed his destruction of the small growth. Tim pulled a half-ax from his canoe and advanced on the sindicaspi tree—one of the few dependable fuel woods in the humid forests of the upper Amazon. McKay, with a similar ax, looked about for material for the corner-posts and ridge-pole of the night refuge. Rand, who had remained unshod after his bath, got out his big bow, and Knowlton picked up the scorned but useful little rifle. Every man was at his job.

With no word of parting, the pair of hunters slipped away into the woods, working upstream. Oddly mated they seemed, and incongruously armed: the one stolid-faced as an Indian, black-bearded, hatless, barefoot, carrying the most archaic missile-throwing weapon known; the other light of eye and hair, sensitive-mouthed, appearing more like a dreamer than a man of action, bearing a puny weapon which indeed looked to be the boy's toy José had called it. Yet they were brothers at heart—brothers of the long trails and the lawless lands—and each was equipped to fight the most ferocious beast or man; for strapped to each right thigh swung a heavy automatic, and down each left leg hung a keen machete.

For a short distance they stole along in file, eyes searching the branches, feet subconsciously picking clear going. All at once Rand stiffened and paused, but only for a moment. Then he moved on. Up from the creek-side rose a brown bird resembling a pheasant, which whirred away aloft and vanished among the dense foliage. Knowlton's rifle, instinctively lifted, sank again. Both men had recognized the gamy-looking flier as a chansu, whose flesh is so musky that even Indians refuse to eat it.

Onward they crept, threading the pathless tangle like somber shadows for perhaps another hundred yards. Then the light increased. Just ahead the tree-tops thinned, and after a few more stealthy steps the hunters halted behind trees at the edge of a small lagoon. At once each threw up his weapon. A few feet beyond, at the edge of the water, were feeding a splendid pair of huananas—big ducks, armed with small horns on the wings.

Rand, extending his bow horizontally, loosed point-blank. At the low twang of the cord both birds jumped and shot out broad wings in the first beat of flight. But neither rose. With the thrum of the bow blended the snap of the little rifle. The extended wings fell asprawl, the reaching necks collapsed, and both birds floated dead on the water.

Exultantly the men started forward to retrieve their game. In that same moment two things happened. A couple of rods farther on, a bush swayed. As Rand's quick eye caught the movement, the light suddenly dimmed and behind them sounded a rising roar like the onrush of a mighty tidal wave.

For an instant Rand watched the bush. Then, deciding that the movement was caused by some animal, he glanced up. Overhead loomed black clouds, hurtling westward at terrific speed. Behind, the roar of the onsweeping wind culminated in a crash of thunder. Storm was upon them.

Dropping his rifle, Knowlton plunged thigh-deep into the muddy pool and seized the birds. Rand swept a searching gaze along the shore, seeking shelter—and found it. Just beyond the spot where the bush had wagged stood a patriarchal old tree in whose base opened a black hole. Shouting, the green-eyed man pointed to it, grabbed up the rifle, and ran. Knowlton, floundering ashore with a duck dangling by the neck from each fist, raced in his wake.

Another crash—a searing flash of lightning—a smashing deluge of rain—then Rand reached the hollow tree and plunged into it. In the same instant Knowlton heard a startled yell and glimpsed something darting out of the hole: a thing that seemed only a thin, vanishing streak elbow high from the ground. In mid-stride he dropped both ducks and snatched his pistol from the holster. Then he hurled himself into the dim tree-trunk.

Struggling bodies plunged against him and spun him outside again. A sheet of rain lashed into his face, blinding and choking him. Lightning flared anew, casting a ghastly greenish glare through the sudden darkness. By its weird flicker he saw two fighting men reel about in the blur of falling water, then pitch headlong back into the hole.

Into that hole he leaped again. The light of storm winked out. Dimly he made out a man tangle at his feet. As he strove to see which was his partner they heaved over violently, knocking his legs from under him. His pistol flew from his hand. Falling, he grabbed fiercely at the man on top.

Then, before he knew whom he had seized, above them sounded a straining, creaking groan of wood. The ground rose under them. A rending crack—a rushing sound—a tremendous blow. Then darkness and silence.