Читать книгу White Waters and Black - Gordon MacCreagh - Страница 8

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Imagine, then, the tempers of our merry party in the cold gray dawn. The immediate argument which arose was whether we should go on at once or stay in that place and dry out. The arrieros said that the trail, being wet and slimy, would be bad in parts. Whereupon the Eminent Statistician came out flat and positively refused to travel till the sun had had a full day's time to dry the trail. The arrieros shrugged. To them it was all one, they said. Yet on the other hand the Señor Director should bear in mind the consideration that the day's march would bring us to the beginnings of timber country where fuel would be available for fires and all our mess of wet gear could be dried out.

The savants, with the exception of the Statistician, were unanimously in favor of fire and dry blankets. The arrieros shrugged again, with their usual genius for creating dilemmas. To them it was still all one. Let the Señor Director but give his orders and they would be swift to obey. But let it not be said that they had not given warning that the trail would be very bad indeed and that we should surely lose a mule or two.

Whereupon the Eminent Botanist promptly went over to the side of the Eminent Statistician.

I listened in for about half an hour, in silent enjoyment, to the debate over the question which was beginning to be tinged with a lot of good words out of the acid vocabulary of science. Doubtless it was my duty to stand by my director and to offer whatever suggestions I might have for the conduct of my mule-train. But I had already been snapped up more than once for offering suggestions when they ran counter to the ideas of the arrieros, the good Director being apt to be swayed by the voice which said, "Señor, we know; we have been here before," rather than by the meeker voice which suggested, "In my opinion, out of past experience in other places, I think such and such would be best." The effect of which policy had already been to make it not my mule-train but the arrieros' mule-train.

So I held my peace, care-free and callous. The more readily since I saw that while the argument waxed in heat, the arrieros were calmly going ahead, loading up their mules. Presently I saw the Eminent Entomologist making faces at me. I stepped aside and he muttered in my ear:

"Let's get started; they'll follow."

Any suggestion leading to warmth was welcome to me. So we two slunk from the argument and round the bend of the trail, where we found a batch of mules with their arrieros already under way. These we followed with light hearts till a scrambling gallop behind us caused us to turn guiltily. It was the Scribe, hot-footing after us. The Scribe holds the honored position of private secretary and bottle-washer to the Señor Director, so we prepared to be haled back in ignominy. The Scribe is no scientist of elaborate diction. A youth, rather, of singularly direct speech. He said:

"Those old geezers give me a pain in the belly. Let's beat it."

So the three of us proceeded without shame on the longest and slimiest march of my life.

Later we were accused of foul desertion of our leader, which we were by that time sufficiently hardened not to mind. We were sorry, however, to have missed the high-brow quarrel which ensued between the twin stay-at-homes and the Director. The latter very wisely decided that it was imperative to dry out wet gear before some of it was utterly ruined. Whereupon the nervous one told him in scientific language that if he should give the order to start, he, the Eminent Statistician, would consider him, the Eminent M.D., morally responsible for his life. From which premise the argument developed through various stages of acrid recrimination,—the one telling the other that the latter's life might well be of no particular use to the world, but that his was of a distinct value to science,—and ended in the Eminent Statistician's calling the Eminent M.D. a murderer and a blackguard, and the Eminent M.D.'s calling the Eminent Statistician an ill-tempered and feeble old fool—you will remember that they are about of an age—who had already nearly wrecked the morale of the expedition in its very inception, by his indiscriminate quarreling.

Then since all the rest of the arrieros had in the meanwhile started down the trail, the combatants followed perforce. The missing of that pedagogic discussion I regret: for I must confess to a certain wicked joy in the spectacle of two eminent men of science belaboring each other with ponderous words. And humorous relief is much needed in this hardest part of our going.

But perhaps the thing isn't so humorous. Another has been added to the list of those who are not on speaking terms with one another; and the condition does not easily mend itself; for all the world knows that men of science, when they do fall out, seem to have an infinite capacity for nursing a hate.

No, most distinctly I should not laugh. An expedition with dissension among its members is going to be no comfortable joy-ride. But I have already paid the penalty for my mirth. Look what nemesis fell upon me the very same day.

We sped away—the Entomologist, the Scribe, and I—and we made an awful day's march. It was true about the trails. They were bad. Steep, of course, and slippery wet clay for the greater part. Two mules were irretrievably lost with their loads and two or three others went over but were rescued. We, however, saw none of all this. We were amongst the very leaders, having slipped away as we did, and the accidents all happened somewhere in the line that straggled, half a dozen miles long, behind us. Before that day closed, the half-dozen had more than trebled itself. What with the original delay and with the accidents along the route and the consequent hold-ups, a good twenty miles separated the head from the tail of the cavalcade.

I don't know how far we traveled. I know only that we got away very soon after dawn and we arrived well after dark; and—for us three, at all events—there had been no halts on the road. We breakfasted and lunched au courant, on sardines and crackers from the saddlebags. One may imagine how tired were those few mules which finished up with us. Multiply by logarithmic tables and one may begin to imagine how tired was I, who walked. Had I been able to find my beautiful obstinate Mary at any time during the last few hours I would have shed her pack right on the road and would most thankfully have ridden with the pipes clutched in my lap.

The reason for all this desperate push of ours was our early desertion rebounding upon our heads. We with our little bunch of mules had got so far ahead of the rest of the pack-train—with tents and blanket rolls—that we wondered whether they would catch up. On turning the outer edges of the bare mountain scarps we could see the thin trail winding back, far above us, for miles. But never a glimpse of mules. For all we could guess, they might be hopelessly delayed, God alone knew how far back. We dared not retrace our heartbreaking steps and be overtaken, perhaps, by darkness on the trail before we found them. And darkness was not so very far off.

Somewhere ahead of us, said the arriero whose mules we followed, was a village. The first village of the Bolivian Yungas. Santa Ana was its name, and it was, of course, below timber-line, and it was not far off.

"How far?" we asked him. "Can we make it before dark? and is there a posada, an inn, where we may sleep?"

"Oh, lejito," said he. Lejito is a happily vague term, meaning "Not so very far." And it was a large and very important village. Surely there was a posada!

So we pulled in our belts, spurred our flagging spirits, and pushed on briskly for the village of Santa Ana. Those of you who have gone automobile touring have done the same thing. So you can understand.

It was true that there was a village. But it was a good four hours' hike distant, the last three after dark, when everybody got off and walked. And it consisted of fourteen adobe houses. And there was no posada. And its name wasn't Santa Ana.

It was a mere unsanctified Aldea. Though give it credit; it was below timber-line. There was wood to make a fire with. For which great mercy we were abundantly grateful. We staggered in and embraced that village—figuratively. And it came out with lanterns, all of it; and embraced us—literally. There was a jefe, of course, and he put both his arms about our necks and patted our shoulder-blades in the Bolivian manner. There was a schoolmaster, and he kissed our hands, and in the name of Learning he made us a speech of welcome.

They knew all about us. We were those intrepid explorers from the glorious sister republic of the North who were about to plunge into the uncharted jungles for the fame and advancement of their glorious patria. They had been expecting us for weeks, all on tiptoe for the most exciting event of their lives. So they shook hands again all round and introduced one another with all the formality of the sonorous Spanish; and each one of them considered it a personal honor that we should be resting in their village; and each one made his little complimentary speech about it and at the end of the speech embraced us with both arms round our necks, one hand holding a hot lantern against our spines.

Merciful Heaven! how they talked! They wanted to hear all the news of the outside world and all the details of the expedition and to give us all the news of their village. I was never nearer being talked to death. It was with difficulty that I contrived to inject a hint every now and then, between the breathing-spells of a dozen orators, to the effect that the rest of the expedition was lost somewhere back in their cheerless mountains; that it would surely not arrive that night; that all the bed-rolls were lost with the expedition; and that we were cold and wet and tired and hungry. The latter items with a diffidence that doubled the difficulty of getting the mere words in edgeways. How does one demand of strangers to give one food and a bed for the night?

But my diffidence was born of experience in camping in the Eastern States of our own glorious republic of the North. No sooner had the idea soaked through the excitement of those good people than they immediately proceeded to spend nearly as much time apologizing to us as they had spent in welcoming us. That they should so thoughtlessly have kept us standing and talking there when we must be dead with fatigue and hunger! It was a shame and a disgrace upon their village which we must be good enough to excuse on the ground of their extreme interest. Beds would be prepared for us immediately. And food. We must be famished. Would we honor the jefe by coming to his poor abode? All that he had would be ours.

All the traditional courtesy and hospitality—and grandiose speech—of old Spain was poured forth upon us in a flood. The jefe took us three unshaven, ravenous ruffians to his house,—two rooms of adobe and a veranda hanging over the brink of a gorge four miles deep, through the far bottom of which brawled a noisy torrent,—and there he roused his women-folk and bade them bring forth all the food in the house, and of the little he had, he gave us all; and was amply repaid by the privilege of smoking a cigar tête-à-tête with the three distinguished Americans. And the conversation that he brought up as fitting to the occasion was world politics.

In the meanwhile the village without was in consternation. What about the bedding down of the three distinguished Americans? The hospitable inclination of those good people was boundless, but they had their women and children; and their-adobe mansions did not run to guest-rooms. There seemed to be the makings of a most embarrassing impasse. Till a noble foreigner stepped into the breach.

Conceive of a resident alien in a village of fourteen huts in the most inaccessible mountain fastness of all Bolivia. And conceive of his nationality. A Syrian! And a rug-peddler at that! Actually. He traded in the heavy blankets, virtually rugs, which the Aymará Indians of La Paz made out of llama wool. How he imported them and where he peddled them I do not know. But out of them he made his living, he told us. Out of them and German enamel cooking-pots!

It was his great good fortune, he said, that he happened to be in town just now, recently returned with his mule from one of his peddling trips. And his greater good fortune that his woman had run away during his absence. For thereby it was made possible that the envied honor of sheltering us was to be his. So he took us to his house and swept the mud floor with a cloth and upon it he laid a thick pad of his wares. It seemed that he dealt largely in used, rather greasy-looking blankets; and he explained that when people died he naturally bought their blankets back and resold them at a second profit. You can't beat a Syrian for business instinct.

Two separate beds he made up, since the width of a single blanket would not very well accommodate three people. With an easy grace he waved the bug-hunter and the Scribe to one. Whereupon I grinned and made faces at them; for not one of us likes to sleep two in a bed. They made faces back at me without grinning. So I grinned the more. And then the Syrian hopped into the other bed and held back the covers most cordially for me to enter as soon as I should be ready.

It was then that, for the first and only time in my life, I groaned for the fact that I was an effete Easterner who found heavy blankets a necessity at timber-line in the tropics. Of course he was a very nice Syrian rug-peddler. But still, he was a Syrian rug-peddler—and I suppose there is excuse for an illiterate man to draw no distinction between an "r" and a "b." Me, I slept least of us three, because I was nearest to the base of operations. That was the penalty imposed upon me by a just Providence for regarding with levity the quarrel between two eminent men of science.