The Thirty Gang/Chapter 9

HETHER Black White and his band of killers went straight out into the sabana that night and traveled homeward by moonlight, or whether they returned to some camp farther up the Iurebe, I do not know. From the moment when they left me there in my hammock I neither heard nor saw a sign of them. The next morning, as I walked about in the open and looked to south and east, I could not observe anything to show they had even been there. And I made no journey up the stream, asked no questions of the Maquiritares. Nor did any men of Yaracuma leave their own camp, except for the usual hunting.

As before, I gave no outward attention to Nama. She loitered around near me whenever I was in camp, but I pretended not to see her. Yet I did more thinking about her than ever before; and, as I have said, I was particular about what I drank and ate. I knew White had been made Black White by the girl Juana; I knew Nama had talked about me to Juana; I knew nothing about what Juana might have advised this girl to do. And in my head kept echoing that last cry of the wild man:

"Two dead men now! El Blanco Negro and Loco León! Black! Black!"

Yet Nama did not try to bring me any drink or to cook my meat, and at times I saw her speaking to the same young fellow who had been with her before. All went on as it had been.

Then came the canoes. They reached us about mid-day, manned by the Cunucunuma messengers who had gone overland and by some of my own Maquiritares, who lived all the year at my sitio to do my work and care for my plantation. From these men of mine I learned that Bayona had not been seen at my place and that all was well there. They spent the rest of the day in loading my supplies, and the next morning, soon after dawn, we all were afloat.

Though every curial I own had been brought down—and I keep a little fleet of dugouts always at hand—they were too few to carry all the tribe. When every boat was packed so that the water rose almost to the gunwale, there were still seven men without a boat. So they had to take the land route to Quencua, just as the messengers had done. And they not only reached my sitio safely, but they were there two days before us. They carried no burdens, of course, while we were heavily loaded and held back by raudales and currents.

On that journey of ours, Yaracuma and his people had good proof that I had not lied to them about the richness of my river.

They watched tapirs swimming in the water or standing in their holes in the clay banks; peccaries coming down in file to drink; monkeys of every kind trooping in the trees, wild peacocks and turkeys suddenly appearing and vanishing in the bush, huge ducks floating on the green surface of the stream.

They heard the soft moan of the paují day and night, the trumpeting of the grulla when the sun was high, the rush and splash of pabón and other fish along every sandy playa at sundown.

They saw the assehi palm and the aceite palo trees, which give drink and oil, and the carraña, whose pitch makes torches and fires. And they were content.

They talked, too, with my Maquiritares, learning of the up-river caños and the paraguas of the Indians already there. Yaracuma did not intend either to stay at my place below Quencua or to join any other settlement; he planned to make his new home at the best place he could find, and to lose no time about it. This much I learned from my own men, and I was well satisfied to have it so. It was better for them and for me that they should go their own way after we reached Quencua.

By the time we landed at my sitio Yaracuma had learned all my men could tell him; and that was all he could learn from any man, for I kept those Maquiritares partly because they knew the country so well. He said nothing about where he intended to go, though, until after we had reached my place and I had kept my promise to pay well for the carrying of my supplies from the Cunucunuma. Then, when I had given out the machetes and other things his men had earned, he gave me a surprize.

"The men of the Ventuari tell me," he said, "that Loco León will work the balata at the Caño de Oso, above the parima—the high falling water."

"It is so," I agreed. "On the caño beyond the fall of Oso my friends shall work."

"And above the Caño de Oso is the Caño Uaychamo."

"It is so," I repeated.

"On the Caño Uaychamo shall be the paragua of Yaracuma," he announced.

Now this Caño Uaychamo is in the upper sabana country, and, though it is well wooded, I had not thought of his making a home there; for the Maquiritares like the thick forests beyond the open lands for their houses, and I had expected him to go there. So I was astonished. But I was well pleased, too, for by this I knew Yaracuma intended to help me bleed my trees in the next wet season.

You must understand, señores, that even I, for whom the Maquiritares will do far more than for any other man, am never sure of my workers from one season to another. They are free men and they do as they please; when they wish to work for me they come to me; when they would rather stay at home, or go on one of the long roving trips of which they are fond, or move their whole tribe to some other place, they give no thought to me and my balata. Why should they? Their lives are their own, not mine.

Yet, like any other man whose interests depend on labor, I like to know where that labor is to come from. And I saw that for the next season, at least, I should have willing workers near at hand in the Caño Uaychamo men.

"Es bueno," I told him. "I go soon to the Caño de Oso, and much farther up the Ventuari. I shall walk about and see what I may see, as I do in each dry time. Let Yaracuma make his paragua, and when the rains fall we shall meet again."

"It shall be so."

And the next morning at sunrise Yaracuma and all his people left me. With one of my own Maquiritares to keep them company and show them the shortest route over the sabana, they crossed the river in my canoes and were gone in the trees fining the bank. The last one to fade from sight was Nama, who, after all the rest had disappeared, stood a minute looking over the water at me. I gave no sign that I saw her. As my men shoved away and came paddling my dugouts back to our own creek, the girl turned slowly and followed her people.

"Vaya con Dios, Nama," I said softly. "Go with God—and forget that you ever saw me."

And I walked back to my house, feeling as if a load had been lifted from me. Until then, I had not realized just how heavily Black White's warning had lain on my mind.

Now I turned my attention to preparing for my usual rambling in the highlands. Though I had already decided to gather balata on the Caño de Oso, there were other creeks much farther up where I wished to look about—for it is my custom to work as many grounds in one season as I can, and I am always seeking new, good districts for use in future years.

So, not being in the habit of leaving all my supplies in one house while away, I now had them placed in a number of secret spots known only to me and my trusted men. Then, with two young Maquiritares who usually travel with me in the wilderness, I journeyed up the river to my next sitio, just above the cataract of Oso.

All was well there, and I moved on. The mouth of the Uaychamo showed no sign of life as I passed it, but I knew well enough that somewhere back from the Ventuari—perhaps a mile inland, perhaps much farther—the machetes which the Cunucunuma men had earned from me were swinging steadily, clearing ground and chopping poles for the framework of their new paragua.

Thinking of that, I recalled their old tribe-house on the Cunucunuma, and the stuffed monkey hung in its doorway, and the insulting note to the Butcher. And as we left the caño behind us I chuckled long, picturing Paco frothing with curses and hacking that monkey-skin to ribbons—in a killing rage, and with nothing to kill.

For weeks after that, too, I amused myself with visions of the fury of that baffled murderer. Then I stopped laughing very suddenly.

I had gone about among the nearest paraguas, visiting the Maquiritares and telling them all was well on the Ventuari now that Bayona was dead—though they seemed to know all about that affair before I met them—and I had done some scouting for new balata, when the word came that made me a madman.

It reached me in a camp which I had made on the little Rio Tamara, south of the Ventuari, which was full of rocks but possibly also rich in balata. For days I had seen no Maquiritares except my own two men; and, though there are Maquiritares on the Tamara, they are very wild and live far back, so I expected to see none. Then suddenly five Indians were where only two had been.

A surprized grunt from my own men, who were cleaning a couple of pavas I had shot, gave me my first warning of their coming. The three stood just at the backs of the squatting pair, and their faces were so hard that for an instant I thought them some of those wild Tamara men, angry at finding us there. But then I saw that one of them was that young fellow who had walked and talked with Nama.

"Hola!" I called. "What do you here? Is not all well on the Uaychamo?"

"All is bad on all the Ventuari," one answered shortly.

"Como?" I demanded.

"Bad blancos are here again."

"Diablo!" I swore. "Who? Why?"

"We do not know who. But they are here because Ramón Rodriguez died on the Cunucunuma."

"How do you know that?" I wondered. "Tell me what you know."

They looked hungrily at the two birds in the hands of my men. But those pavas were not yet ready for cooking, nor was a fire built. So they talked.

"We had worked making our paragua," the speaker told me. "One day we saw smoke in the sky. It rose from Quencua. With us was Pepe, who had come to Uaychamo with us from your sitio. He knew you had gone up the Ventuari. There should be no smoke at Quencua.

"Pepe went to see. He did not come back. Then we saw smoke at Oso. We went to see. We saw men with guns. They burned your casa."

I bounced out of my hamomck.

"Burned my house at Oso?"

"It is so. They looked very bad. The one who seemed to be capitán had great black whiskers. He seemed to have no nose. He had very long arms but short legs.

"We kept out of sight. We went back. We told our people to lie quiet. Our capitán told us to go to Quencua. We went over the sabana. At Quencua were no men. But there were zamuros—vultures.

"We swam across. We found your sitio burned. We found Pepe dead. We found the other Maquiritares dead. The zamuros had scattered them. But we saw fire marks on trees. We saw dry blood. The Maquiritares had been tied to the trees and burned. What else was done to them we do not know. But they died slowly.

"We found a stick standing in the ground. On the stick was a stuffed monkey. It was the areguato we left on the Cunucunuma. On the monkey was tabarí. This is the tabarí."

From one ear-lobe he took a little roll of the tabarí bark used in our up-Orinoco country for making cigarets. As I took it I felt sick. The man he had described—long arms, short legs, and almost no nose—was El Carnicero. And as I unrolled the bark I felt more sick.

On it was scrawled in the blood of my good Maquiritares—

Con los obsequies de Ramón Rodriguez y de Paco Peldóm.