The Thirty Gang/Chapter 15

LOOKED around, seeking any living man of Jaime or of Paco who might still be dangerous. I saw none. There were two or three who moved a little, but it was plain that they would not move long. Then I suddenly felt very old and tired; and I sank down beside dead Jaime, caring little for what might happen next.

The bushes across the caño rustled loudly. Bold splashes and sounds of swimming followed. Beside the canoes arose wet Indians. They came up the sloping shore, carrying tigre spears, and walked swiftly around among the bodies. Into every man's heart they slipped their spearheads, making sure that none should escape by pretending death. Then they gathered before me.

"Como 'stá usté, Loco?" asked one. He was Frasco, one of my own Maquiritares. And another of them, I now saw, was Gil.

"I am not very well," I grumbled. "How come you here? I told you to stay with Yaracuma."

"El Blanco Negro told us to come," answered Gil. "Yaracuma too is here. We shall bring the fighters."

With no more words, they turned back to the caño. Across it they shoved the canoes. There was much bush-rustling, crossing and recrossing of boats, landing of men. Then the place was full of Maquiritares and of Maquiritares alone. Black White, their leader, did not cross. He remained in the masking bush, seeing all, and himself unseen.

Among those Indians were at least a score with guns: long repeating rifles with box magazines, which looked very powerful. Across the chests of those men hung stout shoulder-belts of woven fibre, studded with cartridges held in loops.

Each man wore two of those bandoleros; and each had also a hip-belt from which hung one of those straight narrow-bladed machetes called casanareno—a knife like a sword, made for stabbing as well as for slashing. The men themselves looked more hard and stern than Maquiritares usually do, and every one of them had the build of a fierce fighter.

These men walked about among the bodies as the ones with spears had done, but not for the same purpose. They took from every dead man his weapons, which they laid on the ground: rifles, revolvers, machetes, knives, cartridges, each kind in its own little pile, each pile close to the others.

Then they drew together and stood there, leaning on their own guns. One of them gave brief orders to the Uaychamo Indians. These picked up the bodies and, with torches taken from the fires, walked out along the path to the river. Soon they came back empty-handed.

In less than fifteen minutes from the time when Jaime stood up and drew his machete, he and all his gang had disappeared forever from the eyes of men. So had the treacherous mestizo who had led them there. So had the last of the Butcher's killers. They never would reach the Orinoco—the caribes would see to that. And only we men of the Ventuari knew what had become of them.

I looked up at Yaracuma, who stood quietly near me, armed with a stout bow and a full quiver of arrows. I glanced around at his men, carrying the weapons of their race, who now were soberly watching me. I let my eyes drift again over the gunfighting force which I never had seen before, but which I was to know thereafter as the Thirty Gang of El Blanco Negro. I looked long at the silent bush beyond the water, where Black White himself was watching me. And in my heart I thanked God for such friends as these.

Then I gave thanks also to the man across the caño.

"Gracias, Blanco," I called. "Perhaps some day I can repay this. You came at a good time. But why?"

"What?" answered the rough voice. "No thanks to me! Go thank your woman! Has she fed you the yucut' 'sehi yet? Ha-ha-ha!"

"My woman? You mean Nama?"

"Who else?" he jeered. "Have you other women too? That's bad business, Loco! I played that game before I died. I fooled with 'em all—and they got me in the end. Black! Black! Black as the soot of ! Yah! God!"

"But what do you mean?" I persisted. "What had Nama to do with this?"

"She sent her brother to me, you fool! You saw him at the Tamara. She and my woman Juana got thick as thieves that day on the Iurebe. Juana told me how things were between you. When I was alive I'd do anything to accommodate the ladies—except marry 'em—ya-ha-ha! Now that I'm dead I still listen to 'em. So when my woman and yours both wanted you helped and there was more killing in sight to make it interesting

"Well, here we are. I'm tired of talking. Shut up!"

I did shut up. I sat there marveling. So that young fellow with whom Nama had walked was her brother? And I owed my life to two women? And the wild man over there had done this because of them? It all seemed impossible. But I was feeling more and more tired and sick. I stopped thinking, and lay back on the ground, and let myself slip off into nowhere.

I stayed in that Land of Nowhere for some time. I do not remember anything more that night, or in several days and nights after that. Then I was lying in a hammock, and over me was a new leaf-roof, and in other hammocks near me lay Yaracuma and the thin Indian who had made the terrible black poison.

It was late in the day, and cloudy and cool. The chief and his medicine man were dozing, and I looked around to see where I was. The house was one of those quickly-made Maquiritare shelters of pole and plataní, and two others stood near. The trees beyond were those of my own clearing.

The thin man opened one eye and looked at me. Then he opened both and arose. He studied me very sharply and grunted something to Yaracuma, who had joined him. Both looked well satisfied.

"You are better," said Yaracuma. "It is good."

"Fever?" I asked.

"It is so. The fever was bad. The leg was bad. But you soon will walk."

"Tell me what has been done," I requested.

"We have cleaned this place. We piled wood and burned that house of death and what was in it. We made these new houses. This man has made drinks for you. He has killed your fever. He is making your leg whole.

"El Blanco Negro is gone. He went when the next sun came. My men stayed one day. Some are here now. I sent the others home. There is much work for them. The women and children must be protected."

I nodded, and let my mind go back to the last night I remembered. Then I asked—

"The brother of Nama went to Black White?"

"It is so."

"Why?"

"To tell of the bad blancos."

"I know that. But did Nama ask that it be done?"

"She asked it. And I ordered it."

"Oh. It was by the command of Yaracuma?"

"I ordered it," he repeated. "I did it because you ought to know what was done here. El Blanco Negro too should know."

"Then it was your work and not hers?"

"She asked it. But it was done because it was sense."

"I see." But I did not quite see, either. I wondered that she had dared to tell the chief what he ought to do. Then a possible reason came to me.

"Is she of your blood?" I asked.

"She is the child of my sister."

"I see," I said again. That was a different matter.

There was a little silence. Yaracuma watched me, and after a time his eyes smiled.

"Nama soon will mate," he told me.

"Is it so?" Perhaps I looked relieved, for the capitán now smiled with mouth as well as eyes.

"It is so," he replied. "For a time she dreamed she might mate with Loco León. The young sometimes dream foolishly. But the dream has passed."

I said nothing. Soon he went on.

"Before Loco León came to us Nama looked kindly on one of my young men. Then came Ramón Rodriguez like a spirit of evil, and Loco León like a spirit of good. In her dark hour her heart turned to Loco León. The young man of her tribe was forgotten.

"In those days she had good counsel and bad. Her brother spoke to her the truth that it is bad for Maquiritare and blanco to mate; that it is worse for Maquiritare woman to think of a blanco who does not think of her; that Loco León wants no woman, and she must think no more of him. But on the Iurebe the woman Juana of Uaunana spoke other words. She told Nama that Loco León could be made black like El Blanco Negro; that then he would not go out among other men for shame; that no other woman would want him. So he should be hers alone.

"Nama thought upon these things. But in the end she saw that Loco León did not want her. She saw that even if made black he would not want her; he would hate her with a bitter hate. She does not want Loco León ever to hate her. So the good counsel of her brother became strong in her mind. Her eyes were opened again, and she saw once more the young man she had forgotten, and she found him good. So there will be no more dreaming, and all is as it should be."

"Si," I agreed. "She has judged wisely and rightly. I shall be ever a friend to Nama, and to all the people of Yaracuma. But my heart does not turn to her, and where the heart does not turn the body should not be given—or taken."

"It is so," Yaracuma said solemnly. And we said no more.

In a little while I slept again.

Before many days I was again on my legs, and then Yaracuma and his medicine-man and the others of his tribe returned to their Caño Uaychamo, leaving me with Frasco and Gil. And one of the first things I did was to visit that hut where my two gourds of poison lay, and to have a deep hole dug and the gourds dropped into the bottom. Then Frasco and Gil filled the hole with stones, crushing the gourds to nothing.

I was through with fighting like a savage. If my own pride in being a white man had not been strong enough to make me abandon such weapons, the fact that Black White's men used guns would have shamed me. For when Indians fight like white men, a white who uses poisoned arrows is far lower than Indians—he is no better than a snake.

Now that I had seen those gun-men of Black White, I tried to learn, by questioning my own Maquiritares and others, how they armed themselves. But, as always when asked about El Blanco Negro, they were dumb. It was not until later, when I met in the wild hills a little band of Macusi Indians from Guayana Inglesa and talked with them, that I was told of that mysterious trade in bullets and gold at the Cuyuni which caused the name "The Thirty Gang."

But I can tell you, señores, that that small force would be a terrible machine to fight against in its own hills; and any expedition that ever tries to force its way to the lair of Black White had best make its peace with God before it starts.

So now I know what the Thirty Gang is. But there is another thing which I do not know, and probably never shall learn. What was it, in the mind of that half-mad Black White, that drove him down the Ventuari again to help me fight my foes?

It was not because Yaracuma asked it. The wishes of an Indian capitán are nothing to him. I do not believe it was friendship to me; for I am the man who led him to his doom, though it was through no fault of mine that he met it. Neither can I feel that it was because I had fought for him in the past; he was always ungrateful.

Can it be that he told me truth on that last night in his mocking talk, and that he really acted for the sake of the girl who wanted me? Is it possible that memory tortures him now with the tears and heartaches and despair of girls whose trust he betrayed in other days, and that now he would atone for his wrongs by aiding an Indian maid to win happiness in love? Or was it only the blood-call of a fierce animal, driving him to a killing, that brought him down to my caño?

I do not know. It might be either, or both, or neither one. Such a mind as his is in the hands of God—or of the devil. It is one more of those puzzles which the great hills of the Land of Falling Waters hold, and for which there is no answer.