by B. TRAVEN
Without thinking, Dobbs broke out: “For tomorrow morning’s breakfast, mister.”
The man laughed, gave him the fifty centavos, and said: “This money is the last you’ll get from me. If you want to do me a favor, go occasionally to somebody else. To tell you the truth, it’s beginning to bore me.”
“Excuse me, mister,” Dobbs answered, “I really never realized that it was you all the time. I never looked at your face, only at your hands and at the coins you gave me. Now for the first time I’ve noticed your face. But I promise, sir, I won’t come to you again. Beg pardon.”
“That’s perfectly all right. Don’t shed tears. And to make sure you won’t forget your promise, have another fifty so that you’ll have your dinner tomorrow. But understand that from now on you are to try your best to make your living without my assistance. That’s all,” and the gentleman went his way.
“Seems,” said Dobbs when alone, “this well has run dry now, and for good. Luck with gents dressed in white is spilled. Let’s have a look in a different direction.”
So he came to the conclusion it might be better to leave the port and go out into the country to learn what things looked like there.
7
That night in the hotel he met another American who wished to go down to Tuxpam, but couldn’t find anybody to accompany him.
Hearing the magic word Tuxpam, Dobbs jumped at the idea of going with Moulton to visit the oil-fields, where there might be something doing.
It is not easy to go down to Tuxpam with no money. Half of the way down is a road on which occasionally you may meet a car; the other half of the way is a big lake, and the motor-boat is not accustomed to accommodating hitch-hikers. You have to pay or you stay behind.
Of course you may go ‘way round the lagoon. But there is hardly any road at all, and this route may take two weeks. You can visit a larger number of oil-fields, however, and it was this long overland route that was chosen by the two men.
First the river had to be crossed, at a charge of twenty-five centavos. They preferred to save that money for better use, so they waited for the Huasteca ferry, which takes people across the river without any charge. This ferry crosses the river only when it has enough freight to make the trip worth while. It is meant for the company’s working-men and their families exclusively.
Dobbs and Moulton started out in the morning right after they had had a cup of coffee and some dry bread. On reaching the ferry they asked the boatman when he thought the ferry might cross. He said he probably would not be ready until eleven, so there was nothing to do but wait.
This part of the river-bank was a lively spot. A few dozen motor-boats and half a hundred row-boats waited for customers to be taken to the other side of the river. Speed-boats carried the big oilmen and other business men who were willing to pay special fares. Working-men and small traders and peddlers had to wait until a taxi boat had enough passengers to take them for the regular taxi fare. The place looked like a fair, for people who had to wait were buying fruit, lunch, shirts, cigarettes, guns, ammunition, hardware, leather goods.
The boats and ferries ran day and night. On the other side of the river were the hands, on this side of the river was the brain. Here on this side were the banks, the headquarters of the oil companies, the rich stores, and the gambling-halls and cabarets. On the other side of the river was the hard work; here on this side, in the city, was the recreation from work. On the other side of the river the oil was practically without any value. All the value the oil finally had in the market was put into it on this side of the river. Oil, like gold, is worthless in its natural state. It obtains its value only by handling and being taken where it is needed.
Many millions of dollars were carried across the river; not in coins or in notes, not even in checks. These millions of dollars were carried often in short lines and figures scribbled in a notebook. A certain tract of land worth two thousand dollars yesterday is worth today five hundred thousand dollars. For this difference a geologist was responsible, one who maintained that this tract of land was a sure shot to bring in a dozen gushers. Next week the same tract may go begging for five hundred dollars, and its actual owner may not be able to buy himself a fifty-cent lunch in a Chinese café, because six other geologists have staked their reputations on finding that the tract is as dry as an old picture-frame. Two months later it may be impossible to buy the same lot for twenty-five thousand dollars in cash.
8
It was noon when Dobbs and Moulton reached the opposite bank of the river, which was crowded with tankers coming from or going to all parts of the world. Here the banks were lined with huge oil-tanks belonging to a dozen different oil companies.
The fair on this bank was even more lively than on the other side, and it was more varied, for the small merchants doing business here catered not only to the natives, but also to the officers and sailors of the ships lying at anchor. Not only parrots and monkeys were for sale, but lion- and tiger-skins, lion and tiger cubs, snakes of all sizes, young alligators, and huge lizards. Sailors could take these animals home and tell the girls how they fought and killed the tiger to catch the tiger kitten as a present for the girl back home.
The air bit into your lungs because it was filled with poisonous gas escaping from the refineries. That sting in the air which made breathing so hard and unpleasant and choked your throat constantly meant that people were making money—much money. Unskilled labor was getting fifteen pesos a day, and Americans and Mexicans alike were spending five thousand dollars a night without giving a thought to where it went. Tomorrow there will be heaps more money. No doubt this will go on for a couple of hundred years. So why worry? Let’s spend it all while the spending is easy and pleasant.
Farther down the river were the saloons, the cabarets, and long rows of shacks where girls, gayly dressed and more gayly painted, were waiting for their sailor friends, officers and crew. All was love, song, and oceans of liquor wherever you cast a look. Mother cannot always go with the sailor boy to watch out for him. Certain trips are better made alone.
Seeing so many jolly sailors hanging around because their ships had hoisted the red flag which indicated that they were taking in oil, Moulton had an idea. He said: “It’s noon in this part of the world. What say? Let’s hop on this tanker here. Maybe there’s some dinner coming. I could take it, buddy.”
There were two men with no shirts or caps on standing before a fruit-seller and trying to make him understand that they wanted bananas and asking the price.
Moulton was right at them: “Hi, you mugs, what’s doing? What can are you on?”
“Norman Bridge,” came the answer, “and what of it?”
“That’s good. How about some eats?” Moulton asked. “We have a damn long way to walk, and in this tropical heat, too. So you guys’d better come across with a good man-sized meal, or, hell, I’ll sure tell your grandmothers back home that you meant to let two Ams starve out here, and in foreign country, too.”
“Aw, gosh,” said one of the sailors, “don’t talk so much squabash. It makes me sick hearing you. Come up, you two beachers, and we’ll stuff your bellies until they bust. We throw it away anyhow. Who the funking devil can eat a bite in this blistering heat? Gee, I wish I was back in that ol’ Los An, damn it.”
When they left the tanker, they couldn’t walk very far. They lay down under the first tree they reached.
“That was what I call a square meal, geecries,” Dobbs said. “I wouldn’t walk a mile even for an elephant tooth. I’m out for the next two hours. And we better get a rest.”
“Okay by me, sweety.”
They snored so loudly that people passing by and not seeing them under the tree got frightened and hurried away thinking a lion had overeaten and was taking a nap.
Moulton woke up first. He pushed Dobbs in the shoulders and hollered: “Hi, you, get up! And what about us going to Tuxpam? Let’s hustle before it gets dark.”
With much whining and moaning over the sorrows
of human life they got going.
They went up the river on the right shore. The whole road, an ugly dirt road at that, was covered with crude oil. It seemed to break through cracks and holes in the ground. There were even pools and ponds of oil. It came mostly through leaks in the pipes and from overflowing tanks which were lined up on the hills along the shore. Brooks of crude oil ran down like water into the river. Nobody seemed to care about the loss of these thousands and thousands of barrels of oil, which soaked the soil and polluted the river. So rich in oil was this part of the world then that the company managers and directors seemed not to mind when a well which brought in twenty thousand barrels a day caught fire and burned down to its last drop. Who would care about three or four hundred thousand barrels of oil running away every week and being lost owing to busted pipe lines, to filling tanks carelessly, or to not notifying the pumpman that while he has been pumping for days, sections of the pipe lines have been taken out, to be replaced by new ones. The more oil is lost, the higher the price. Three cheers, then, for broken pipes and drunken pumpmen and tank-attendants!
Even the sky appeared to be covered with oil. Thick clouds darkened the bright tropical sun. Poisonous clouds coming from the refineries wrapped the whole landscape in a mist that stung your lungs like thin needles.
After a walk of a mile the view to the left became friendlier. Set against the slopes of the high river-bank were the bungalows in which engineers and other officials of the oil companies were living with their families. They had tried to make their residences as near as possible like those they had been used to in Texas. Yet everything had been in vain. The nearness of oil prevented people from living as they wished. The outcome was exactly what it is when a Negress with the help of powder and paint tries to look like a Swedish gentlewoman.
Soon the two men reached Villa Cuauhtemoc. This little town, situated on the shores of a large lagoon, and connected with the river and the port by a picturesque channel, on which a lively traffic of boats and launches is carried on, is in fact the ancient Indian principal town of this region. The Spaniards, after they had conquered this region, preferred to build their town on the other side of the river, as more convenient for shipping. The new town, the port, became more and more important and left the old town so far behind that the inhabitants of the port forgot its existence entirely; when they heard of it, they thought it located in the depths of the jungle and peopled by primitive Indians.
On reaching the last huts of the town opposite the lagoon, Dobbs and Moulton saw an Indian squatted by the road on the top of the hill. The Indian wore rather good cotton pants, and he had on, furthermore, a clean blue shirt, a high pointed palm hat, and on his feet huaraches—that is, sandals. On the ground before him was a bast bag filled with a few things which perhaps were all he owned in this world.
The two, being in a hurry, passed by the Indian without taking any special notice of him.
After a while Dobbs turned his head and said: “What the devil does that Indian want of us? He’s been trailing us for the last half-hour.”
“Now he’s stopping,” Moulton said. “Seems to be looking for something in the bush there. Wonder what he is after.”
They went on their way. Then, turning their heads, they noticed once more that the Indian was still on their heels.
“Did he carry a gun?” Moulton asked.
“Not that I saw. I don’t think he’s a bandit. He looks rather decent to me,” Dobbs said. “Anyway you can never be sure about that.”
“Looks a bit screwy to me.”
They marched on. Yet whenever they looked back, they saw the Indian following them, always keeping at a distance of about fifty feet. Whenever they stopped to catch their breath, the Indian stopped too. They began to get nervous.
There seemed no reason for being afraid of a poor Indian, but they began to feel sure that this single native was only the spy for a whole horde of bandits who were eager to rob the two strangers of the little they possessed.
“If I only had a gun,” Dobbs said, “I’d shoot him down. I’m cracking up. I can’t bear it any longer to have that brown devil on our heels waiting for his chance. I wonder if we could catch him and tie him to a tree and leave him there.”
“I don’t quite agree.” Moulton looked back at the man, trying to guess his intent. “Perhaps he’s a harmless guy after all. But I admit if we could get rid of him some way, it might be safer.”
“Let’s go on and then stop suddenly,” Dobbs suggested. “We’ll let him come up and ask him straight out what he wants.”
They stopped under a tree and looked up as if they saw something very interesting in its branches—a strange bird or fruit.
The Indian, however, the moment he noticed that the two Americans had halted, stopped also, watching them from a safe distance.
Dobbs played a trick to get the Indian to come near. He showed a growing excitement about what he pretended to see in the branches of the tree. He and Moulton pointed into the dense foliage and gesticulated like madmen. The Indian, as they expected, fell for it. His inborn curiosity got the better of him. Step by step he came nearer, his eyes fixed on the upper branches of the tree. When he finally stood beside the two, Dobbs made an exaggerated gesture and, pointing into the dense bush, yelled: “There, there he is, running away now.” He drew Moulton close to him as if he wanted to show him clearly the spot where some strange animal had disappeared. At the same moment he turned round and held the Indian by his arm so tightly that he could not escape.
“Listen, you,” he addressed him, “what do you want from us? Why are you trailing us?”
“I want to go there,” the Indian answered, pointing in the direction in which Dobbs and Moulton were going.
“Where to?” Moulton asked.
“Same place where you are going, señores.”
“How do you know where we are going?”
“I know where you are going,” the native said quietly. “You are going out to the oil-fields to look for work. That’s the same place I am going. Perhaps I can find some work there too. I have worked in the oil-camps before.”
Dobbs and Moulton smiled at each other, each silently accusing the other of being the bigger jackass and coward. No doubt what the native said was true. He looked like a camp worker and might well be after honest work exactly as they two were. Looked at closely, there was not a trace in his face or anywhere about him to remind one of a bandit.
To make absolutely sure, Dobbs asked: “Why don’t you go alone? Why do you follow us all the time?”
“To tell you the truth, caballeros,” the Indian explained, “I had been sitting by this road already three days, from sunrise to sunset, waiting there for some white men passing by with whom I might go to the camps.”
“Can’t you find your way alone?” Moulton asked.
“Yes, I could. Maybe. But the trouble with me is soy un gran cobarde, I am a big coward. I am afraid of going alone through the jungle. There are huge tigers, and snakes huger still.”
“We aren’t afraid of anything in the world, we aren’t,” Dobbs said with great conviction.
“I know you aren’t. That’s the reason why I was waiting for whites going the same way.”
“But whites may be eaten by tigers, too,” Moulton said.
“No, señor, there you are mistaken. Tigers and lions of our country don’t attack Americans; they attack only us, because we belong to the same country, we are sort of compatriots, and that’s why our tigers and lions prefer us and never bother an American. What is more, along the road to the camps there are also sometimes a lot of bandits sitting and waiting for someone to come along to rob. The shores of the Tamihua Lagoon is infested with these murderers.”
“It looks very promising,” Moulton said to Dobbs.
Dobbs replied: “What’s biting you now? What’s the joke?”
“I was just thinking how afraid we were of this pobre hombre here, this little piece of human being, and he was a hundred t
imes more afraid of us.”
“Aw, shut up, you make me sick.” Dobbs wanted to forget.
“Besides,” Moulton continued, “sometimes it’s a good thing not to have a gun on your hip, or this poor devil would no longer be alive and we might find ourselves in a hell of a mess, for no one on earth would believe we acted in self-defense.”
From now on the Indian went along with them, hardly speaking a word, walking by their side or behind them, just as the road would permit.
Shortly before sunset they reached a little Indian village which consisted of only a few huts. The inhabitants, hospitable as they are at heart, were afraid of the strangers, owing to the many tales about bandits in the neighborhood. So with kind words and many excuses they persuaded the three men to go on and try to reach the next village, which, they stated, was bigger and had better accommodations—even a fonda, a little inn—and since the sun had not completely disappeared yet, they might reach that big village still with the last rays of daylight.
There was nothing else to do but go on. One mile they covered and there was no sign of a village. They marched another mile and there was still no village in sight.
By now it had become pitch-dark and they could no longer see the road. If they went on, they might easily get lost in the jungle.
“Those people in the village must have lied to us about that big place we were supposed to come across soon.” Moulton was angry. “We shouldn’t have left the village, but stayed there with or without their consent, even if we had to sleep in the open but still near the huts.”
Dobbs, not being in any better mood than his partner, said: “The Indians usually don’t act this way. They let you stay with them for the night and even give you part of the little food they have. It seems to me they were too much afraid of us. There are three of us, and they may have figured we might easily overpower them if they offered us hospitality. They must have had bad experiences of this sort, and I can easily imagine a good many bums in port, whites and natives, who wouldn’t mind robbing or even killing a couple of villagers if they couldn’t get what they wanted otherwise. Anyway, there’s no use arguing this point. Here we are now in the open road surrounded by jungle and we have to make the best of it.”
