Читать книгу Tiger River - Arthur Olney Friel - Страница 7

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Ready rifles slid out from the cabin. From four of them sounded the quiet snicks of safeties being thrown off. The hammer of José's big-bulleted repeater clicked dully and poised at full cock.

"The shot is mine, amigos," he reminded them. So, of the five guns, his was the only one to take aim.

The telltale grass stood still. For a breathless minute no sign of movement was visible. Slowly then it swayed again above the creeping thing, marking another few inches of advance.

Crash!

José's muzzle jumped. Blue smoke drifted along the water. The grass shook. From it burst a screech of appalling fury.

The dense growth of green split. At the water's edge a great black cat creature poised, eyes glaring, fangs gleaming, tail thrashing the grass like a maddened snake. On one ebony shoulder a streak of red flowed and widened.

"Hah-yah!" mocked José, his own teeth bared in a tigerish snarl. "Here am I, you devil! Come to me!"

The devil came.

In one leap it shot ten feet from the bank. Its big paws, with long claws unsheathed, commenced swimming almost before its powerful body splashed. Eyes fixed in malevolent hate on the man who had wounded and mocked it, teeth still bared in a soundless snarl, the brute lunged straight for the boat.

From the Indians broke guttural gasps of fear. From the white men sounded short growls. From four high-power rifles cracked whip-like reports. From the Peruvian's black-powder gun another blunt roar thumped out.

The black tiger, suddenly motionless, sank in a red welter.

"Guess it was just as well that we did our talking out here," Knowlton observed. "Sorry to horn into your party, José, but I just had to slam a bullet into that fellow."

"It is nothing, señor. I had first blood—and last." Then, grinning, he added: "I have made a good beginning on the Tigre Yacu. I have shot a black tiger and a curaca."

"Curaca? A chief? How come?"

"Ha, ha, ha! That is my little joke. 'Curaca' means an Indian chief. But the male cotomono monkey, with his long beard, also is called 'curaca.' You have just eaten some of my chief-monkey."

"Umph! Feller's got to be eddicated to git these here South American jokes," muttered Tim. "So I been chewin' a chief's leg, hey? 'Twas tough stuff, anyways."

"If you go up this stream with me, Señor Tim, you may have to eat worse things before you come out," was the ominous reply. "But our coffee cools. Let us finish it."

Back in the shade of the cabin the five chewed and sipped in the silence of thought. When nothing but bare bones and empty gourds remained and tobacco was burning, Knowlton reached to a peg at one side, took down a roll of rubberized fabric, extracted a number of maps, and spread one on the bark floor. After a moment of study he nodded.

"Your cordillera starts from the Llanganati, all right," he said. "And it splits into spurs, with the Tigre starting between them. Guess this country has been explored."

"I think not, señor," José differed.

"Then how would the map makers know what was in there?"

"How do I know what is in there?" the jungle rover countered. "Because I have talked with Indians who know. Canoemen of the Napo, they were, whom I met on the Amazon. Is it not quite likely that the maps were made by men who never have been here, but who have taken the word of others who in turn had asked Indians?"

The blond Northerner was momentarily silenced. But presently he added: "Well, see here. The map agrees with you as to the mountains, but it gives this country east of the Cordillera del Pastassa to the Zaparos, not the Jiveros. The Jiveros are west of the Rio Pastassa."

A faint smile twitched the Spanish mouth.

"Sí? That is a great relief, señor. Now we can go on without caution. If we meet Jiveros and they seek to cut off our heads, behold! we shall show them that map and tell them they have no right here, and they will go speeding back to the Pastassa."

Tim snickered. McKay and Rand smiled broadly. Knowlton flushed, laughed in a vexed way, and shoved the map back among the others.

"Faith, bein' an army officer gits a feller into lots o' bad habits," remarked Tim. "These two guys, Hozy, was officers in the big war, ye see; Cap was a real cap'n and li'l ol' Blondy Knowlton was me looey—lieutenant. Course, they had to use maps a lot, and them maps o' Europe are right: everything's jest like the map says, except mebbe the enemy. So looey got so used to believin' the map he ain't quite got out o' the habit yet. But say, what kind o' guys are them there—uh—whaddye call 'em, looey?"

"Zaparos."

José waved a contemptuous hand.

"Animals. Wandering beasts of the forest, nothing more. They are short, flat of nose, with little eyes set slanting in their heads. They cannot count above ten, and for any number above three they must use their fingers. They have no towns, make only flimsy huts, live apart from each other in any place they like, then move on elsewhere. The only thing they make is the hammock: they are the hammock makers of the Provincia del Oriente. Oh, I was forgetting—they make also a drink called ayahuasca; but it is the stupid drink of a stupid people, which only makes one sleep. They are not even interesting. There is no danger from them."

"Uh-huh. Wal, what about the head-shrinkin' fellers? They sure oughter be interestin'."

The outlaw smiled grimly.

"You have said it, Señor Tim. There, amigos, is a race of men! Never have they been conquered. Neither my people of Spain nor the old Incas before us could make them bend their necks. They are fighters—fighters like my own ancestors, who, por Dios, were no such sleek pot-bellied politicians as the men of Peru now have become! And though I do not intend to lose my head to any man, and will fight like ten devils to keep it, if it must be lost I would rather give it to the warriors of the Jiveros than to the sneaking, foot-lapping police of my own race. Sí!"

His swarthy face, tanned deep by years of jungle sun, twisted in sudden savage bitterness. Abruptly he shot up to his full height, took a pantherish step, whirled, gazed slit-eyed at the four who had made him their partner.

"Listen to me!" he rasped. "I, José Martinez, am of the Conquistadores! In me runs the blood of a man who dared the seas—dared the Andes—dared the jungle—and made this a land of Spain! But for him and his comrades, what would this Peru—that Ecuador—Colombia, Venezuela, the accursed Chile, Argentina—what would they be to-day? Indian lands. The strong hand, the cold steel, the fire and blood of my fathers, won all this great country.

"And what are their sons to-day? Perros amarillos! Yellow dogs! Dogs who yelp out from among them like a wild beast a man who still has the strength of his ancestors—dogs who hide behind their police—dogs who fight only with cunning and treachery and law, law, law!

"The Conquistadores were heroes, because they fought and killed. I am an outlaw, because I have fought and killed. Yet never have I killed a man who would not kill me. Not that I have always waited to be attacked—else I should be dead, long since. I have seen the death in a man's eye and I have acted. So I live. But I live with a price on my head. Why? Because I first killed a greasy politician, beyond the mountains, who had sent hired tools to murder me because he wanted my woman——"

He broke off short and struggled for control. But the flood of his fury burst forth again.

"The slime! The crawling scum! I killed him—sí!—and his paid assassins too I killed. Hah! But he was a politician—a maker of laws. His brother makers of laws lashed the police—the army—all of Peru—on my trail. So am I an outlaw.

"Bueno! So be it. I am a man. I am among men. If I lose my head to those Jiveros I lose it to men. And my bones will rest quiet, and my shrunken head hanging in a Jivero hut will grin at men—fighting men!"

His chin lifted sharply, and his eyes blazed at the farther shore. As if he saw Jiveros there, he did grin—a hard, deadly grin. And the four North Americans silently watched him level-eyed and knew he spoke truth. Piratical, flamboyant, fiery and fearless, he needed only a coat of mail and a sword to become the reincarnation of the long-dead conquerors whose iron will and bloody deeds had crushed a continent. He was a man born too late to live in the Peru beyond the mountains; but here in El Oriente, where the quick hand and the ready steel still ruled, he was at home. In him blazed the same flame that had burned in the veins of Pizarro, Orellana, Aguirre, and their bold and violent followers; and it would drive him up this Tigre Yacu, to gold or to death, as it had driven them into the dread jungles of the Napo and the Huallaga.

Slowly the fire in his face died out. At length, with a shrug, he turned back to them.

"But you would hear of those Jiveros, not of José," he deprecated. "Something of them and their habits you must have learned before now, but I will speak what comes to my mind.

"They too are wanderers, like the Zaparos; but in no other way are they like those sluggish ones, and even in their wanderings they differ. Instead of miserable palm-leaf shelters separated one from another, they build at chosen places two or three strong houses of logs standing on end, each house holding fifty or more people, and a tower for use in fighting enemies who attack them. When they move to another place all go together; and they move every few months, no matter how good the place where they are. It is in their blood, señores: they can no more live years in one spot than a tigre can make himself a house cat.

"Often they move back to some other place where they have been before and where their old houses wait, but it is not always so. Many times they go on and build new fortresses and plant new crops. And when the drive to go becomes too strong to be satisfied by this moving about, they strike out in fierce raids far from their old homes, killing all men who block their way.

"They fight with the poisoned arrow, the spear, the club, and sometimes with ax and knife and gun. In time of peace they trade rubber and gold for steel weapons—at Macás and Canélos and Loja—but they are so often at war that they cannot keep themselves in ammunition; so they do not depend much on their guns. And one of the big tribes of the Jiveros—the Huambisas of the Santiago—will seldom trade with the whites, so they have no guns, except those taken from white men killed while hunting gold in their region. But they need none. Their own weapons are more than enough."

"Yeah," nodded Tim. "Specially that there poison that kills ye if the arrer only scratches ye, but leaves ye fit to eat. I s'pose these guys barbecue the rest of ye after they git yer head off, hey?"

"No," José smiled. "They are not cannibals. All they do to you after you are dead is to shrink your head, and perhaps braid your hair into a belt made from the hair of other slain men. The Jivero who kills you, amigo, will surely put your red hair into his girdle. It will shine brightly among the black strands."

"Yeah? Well, feller, unless he gits me from behind he'll sure have a two-handed job givin' me that hair cut. What kind o' lookin' guys are they? Reg'lar tough mugs, prob'ly, that smell out loud."

"But no, amigo. They are most clean, and take much care of themselves. They bathe often, and whatever thing they get from a white man they wash at once. The one thing of which they have fear is disease, for many of their people have died of smallpox and measles and other ills caught while trading at towns; so they are suspicious of all things belonging to strangers until washed.

"Many of them are light of skin and have beards, with faces like those of Spaniards burned by sun. It may even be that some Spanish blood is in the veins of such men. I have heard that long ago—three hundred years or more—the Jiveros and the Spaniards fought a bitter war in which the white men were swept out of this land, and the wives of those Spaniards had to become the women of the Indian conquerors. If that be true, the Spanish children born to those women after capture would grow up as Jiveros. It may be so—I know not. But I do know this: that up this very Tigre Yacu are white Indians!

"The Yámeos, they are. White Indians who are restless rovers; they even cross the great Marañon and journey hundreds of miles southward up the Ucayali. Little is known of them. But it is known that they are white."

"Maybe more will be known about them when we come out," commented Rand.

"Sí—when we come out. Many things may be known about this river—when we come out. But before coming out we must go in. Yes? No?"

There was a short pause. Captain McKay's keen gray gaze plumbed each face. Then he perfunctorily suggested: "Contrary-minded, vote no."

Instead, his three mates nodded. José smiled.

"It seems that I am to have company," he observed.

"Seems like this game has swapped ends," Tim grinned. "Li'l while ago we thought we was electin' ye: now ye're adoptin' us. Wal, let's go."

"Not so fast," José demurred. "There must be a new boat. And fewer men."

"Correct," approved McKay. "Boat's too big. Indians won't go up here. Got to shake them and paddle our own canoe. But can we get a smaller craft?"

"I think so, capitán. Just below here is a small settlement, San Regis. It is not much—a few huts on the bank, that is all—but canoes are there. No doubt you can make a trade. But—no word of where we go, comrades."

"Sure," agreed Knowlton. "This little cruise is strictly private. All aboard for San Regis, then. Popero!"

In answer to the summons, the steersman arose from the group of Indians still clustered around the cooking pot. His mates, facing aft, watched and listened. Sullen dread lest they be commanded to go farther up the Tigre Yacu was stamped plain on their faces.

"Abajo. Downstream," McKay ordered.

The face of the popero lit up. The sulky expressions of the paddlers vanished. With monkeylike agility the steersman swung himself atop the cabin roof. Eagerly the others turned to haul up the crude anchor. When its wet bulk glistened again in the bow they scrambled to their places in haste to be gone.

"I think, amigos, I will await you here," said José, as the big craft began to surge around. "If you will land me——"

"Hitch your canoe astern," Knowlton interposed. "We'll all get plenty of paddling soon. Take it easy while you can."

"Ah, yes. But it may be as well for you if I am not seen with you. I am not well known up here, more than three hundred miles above the Javary, but a bad name travels far."

"Rot!" snapped McKay. "You're our partner. That's enough. Unless, of course, you'd rather not run the risk——"

"Ho! Risk? José Martinez skulks from no town, capitán! Who would imprison me must first take me."

His fierce mustache bristled, and his right hand tapped the hilt of a knife under his waistband. McKay nodded shortly.

"Then you ride here," was his curt answer.

A word to the steersman, and the garretea swung shoreward. Tim, grabbing a length of fiber cord, clambered to the extreme stern. While every Indian eye anxiously searched the grass and the trees, the big boat halted at the bank long enough to allow the taking in tow of the Peruvian's canoe. Then it sheered off and slid away toward the yellow water below.