by Jay Lake
Back across the river we took him and put him out on the bank, knowing the others would find him there when they came back for their dead. Then we continued up the stream.
Our prisoner had told the truth; perhaps he was too stupid to lie to us. At the head of the river we came into great dismal lagos. After crossing these dead waters we found a flowing current which took us down another small stream to the south. This widened into a good-sized river, and at length it carried us out into a big, slow, dark water which was wider than anything we had seen since leaving Remate de Males. We had reached the Jurua.
“The Jurua is long and more crooked than a snake, and on its banks live evil things,” said Pedro, gazing out across the dreary river. “So spoke the father of Joaquim. In truth, this looks to be an evil water. Now shall we go up or down? We do not know where Luis was held prisoner.”
“Up,” I judged. “We were told that these Uginas live higher up than the other tribes. And Luis, in escaping, would naturally go down the river so that the current would aid him. The place where he was held must be above here.”
So we turned to the right and journeyed up the dark water.
For two days we found nothing. By day we stole along through flooded swamps, keeping near shore, watching the bush and listening. By night we hid our canoe and slung our hammocks at the top of some hill, lighting no fire. We shot no game, made no noise we could avoid, and slept lightly with our guns beside us. But we neither saw nor heard anything except the usual animal life.
Then came a storm. The sky had been dull for days, and rain had fallen often, but not hard. Now, as we scouted along a steep bank rising several feet above us, Pedro stopped paddling and looked behind him. I too looked backward, finding that the sky was swiftly growing black. As we held our paddles there came to us a dull roar of wind.
At once we snapped into swift strokes, seeking an inlet. Before we found one the wind had struck us, and the storm-waves were slapping heavily against our boat. But as we sped onward the bank grew lower, and then a small cove opened. We swerved into it. As we tumbled out on shore the storm broke.
Blinding lightning, crashing thunder, and drowning rain came all at once. We dragged the canoe up as high as we could, then squatted beside a tree until the squall should pass. But it did not pass as soon as expected. The wind and the deluge of rain swept onward after a while, but the thunder and lightning continued. So we stayed where we were, our eyes nearly closed to lessen the glare of the light-flashes, and waited.
Suddenly I felt Pedro’s hand on my wrist. His lips moved, but a roar of thunder swallowed his words. He had come out of his squat and was sitting straight up on his heels, and his eyes were wide-open. Following his stare, I saw, peering at us from behind a tree, a face.
It did not move. It hung there as if it grew from the tree, and the swift lightning lighted it up time after time. It was the face of an animal, but yet the face of a man. Heavy black hair hung down over its low forehead. Little black eyes glimmered at us. The nose flared so that it seemed a snout. The thick lips were drawn back, and yellow teeth gleamed in a soundless snarl. The whole face was bestial—such a face as a man might see in a bad dream.
The rapid flicker of lightning suddenly stopped. With the end of that winking glare the jungle seemed black. Pedro pushed me, and I lost my balance and toppled sidewise. He shoved me again, and then I caught his idea—that we should move away from that spot. We crawled several feet, got behind a tree, and stood up with rifles cocked.
Another flash whitened the bush. We saw the beast-man again. He too had moved, though only a little. He had slipped out until his arms and shoulders were clear of the tree, and he held a bow with the arrow aimed at the spot where we had been.
Though that space now was empty, he loosed the arrow before he realized we were gone. In the same instant he fell with two bullets through his head.
The lightning vanished, but we jumped through the gloom to his tree. Beside it we found him huddled as he had fallen. While other flashes came and went we squatted there, peering around to learn whether this man had companions. Seeing none, we dragged him out to the canoe.
There we looked him over. We had dropped him face upward, and we saw that he was small, scrawny, filthy, and totally naked. Now Pedro took one arm and flopped the body over. We both recoiled.
“Deos meo!” cried my comrade. “It is true! Look! The tail!”
Yes, senhores, that dead man-animal had a tail. It was a long, naked, blackish tail like that of a great rat. It was not a thing fastened to him by rods or glue, either, but a real tail that grew from his body. And in spite of the dying screams of Luis Pitta, in spite of what the father of Joaquim had said of the Uginas, the sight of that bare, repulsive thing hanging from the dead man struck us dumb.
We stood staring at it until Pedro stooped, grasped it, and lifted. The body rose from the ground and dangled in air like that of a monkey. Dropping it, my partner rubbed his hands on his breeches as if to get rid of a snaky feeling.
The thunder died to a dull mutter before we spoke again. Then Pedro said:
“We have sent one of Luis’ demonios down the road to hell. But yet this thing is no demon. It is hardly more than a bicho do mato—a beast of the forest. Either of us could kill two of these creatures at once with our bare hands. I wonder that a strong man like Luis let such things overcome him.”
“They must have caught him asleep, or trapped him in some way,” I reasoned. “And any one man, no matter how strong, can be overpowered by many others. You know how it is when we meet a horde of ants—we can crush a score of them at one step, but the others will swarm upon us and bite us horribly. And an ant is a tiny thing compared to this brute.”
“True,” he agreed. “I should not have spoken so of Luis. Let us see how bad the bite of this misbegotten creature would be.”
We went over to the arrow sticking in the ground, pulled it up, and examined it. It was poorly made and had no barb, seeming to be only a straight stick with one end badly notched and the other fire-hardened and scraped to a point. Looking closely at that point, we could find no sign of poison.
“They are so ignorant that they do not know how to make poison,” said my partner. “Yet we must not make the mistake of holding them too lightly. This arrow was shot hard enough to kill one of us. And no doubt they are cunning, like an alligator or any other low beast. Ah, the sun shines again. Let us see where this man came from.”
As he said, the sun had blazed out. By the new light we went back to the tree where the man-beast had lurked, and there we found a few more arrows and his bow. The bow was as poorly made as the arrow we had inspected, but was strong enough to kill. Working away from the tree, we sought a path, but found none. In the mud, however, we spied the tracks of the dead man’s feet. This trail we followed back through the bush.
It was not easy to track his course, for the footmarks were few and scattered, and he seemed to have rambled in a winding, purposeless way. But when we lost it we always managed to find it again, and gradually it led us back some distance from the river.
We judged that he had been hunting, for we found spots where he had stopped and stood, making several marks in one place as he shifted his feet. On and on we crept, watching everything, saying nothing, until we came into what seemed a very faint path. There the wet earth was pressed down more firmly, and by looking along its edges we found a few marks of human toes.
Along this vague track we went with our heads up, glancing at the trail only now and then to make sure we did not lose it. All at once I stopped and threw up my rifle. Ahead of us a dark shape was swinging down along vine hanging from high branches.
But I did not shoot. The moving thing was only a big monkey. It showed no fear of us, but came down until it could get a good view of us. There it stopped, gripping the vine with all four of its paws and swinging slowly, watched us. We stood still, staring back. After a time it climbed deliberately up again until it reached the tangle of limbs. Th
en we saw it go jumping and swinging away through the trees.
“He goes toward the place where this path leads,” whispered Pedro.
“A pet monkey, perhaps,” I guessed.
“Perhaps.”
He smiled oddly, then motioned for me to go on.
We advanced for some distance before we saw or heard anything more. Often we stopped to listen; and it was at one of these still moments that we caught a sound ahead—a low mutter like a man’s voice. At once we slipped aside into some thick bush and squatted.
Soon we heard a slight rustle of leaves. Then a man came stealing past. Another followed, and another—four in all. They might have been brothers of the one we had killed on the riverbank, for each had the same low, brutal sort of face. I thought I saw tails too, but could not be sure, for their bodies were partly hidden by the undergrowth. All were armed with bows and arrows, and all were peering ahead as if hunting something.
When the last man had passed I started to creep forward, intending both to look after them and to see whether more were coming. But I stopped where I was. High up over us broke out a noise.
Glancing upward, I saw the big black monkey which had watched us and gone away. He was hanging from a branch, looking down at us and chattering loudly. Low grunts came from the path where the savages had disappeared.
“Do not shoot!” whispered Pedro. “Use your machete!”
Silently we drew our bush-knives. With our legs tensed under us, ready for a spring, we waited. In the path a man reappeared, scowling into the tangle on both sides of the trail. On his heels crept another. Before we saw the other two, the first man spied us.
The instant his eyes met ours we leaped up and at him. My machete chopped him across the neck, and as he reeled I heard the cutting crunch of Pedro’s heavy knife killing the savage next to him. Clutching my man about the body, I swung him around as a shield as I faced the two left alive. It was lucky that I did this, for one of those barbaros had drawn an arrow to its head, and now he shot. The arrow plunged into the body I held. Throwing the dead man from me, I jumped at my enemy and, before he could put another arrow to the bow, struck him down. Then I turned toward the fourth man.
He was stabbing at Pedro. My comrade jumped back like a cat, and his red machete whirled up sidewise against the other’s wrist. A snarling grunt sounded in the throat of the Ugina. His knife flew aside. An instant later his whole body rose from the ground as Pedro drove his machete into his stomach and lifted.
A short, gasping wail burst from him. After Pedro threw him to the ground he writhed a moment, then lay still. We looked all around us, but saw no other man. Except ourselves, the black monkey overhead was the only living thing in that place.
We kicked the dead men over on their faces. Each had a tail.
“Four more gone to whine to Luis for forgiveness,” said Pedro grimly, as he wiped his machete on a leaf. Then he stood scowling thoughtfully at the one he had just killed.
“He had a knife,” he went on. “I chopped his bow, and then he drew—See! He wears a belt! A black leather belt and a knife-sheath! Where could such an animal get a knife, belt, and sheath? Where is that knife?”
Searching the undergrowth, we found it. It was long, with a sharp point and an odd handle—a handle of white bone, carved to fit the hand, with a knob at the upper end.
“It is as I thought,” said Pedro, nodding. “This is Luis’ own knife. I remember it well. It is a North American knife, and was given him by a man from Nova York who stayed for a time at Santarem collecting birds and insects for a great museo. He was very proud of it, for there was not another like it on the Amazon. Poor Luis!”
“These are the fiends who tortured him. This one must be the very man who cut him with his own knife—the one of whom he screamed as he died. I am sorry I did not know it sooner, for then this beast would have died more slowly.”
He glowered down at the dead Ugina. Then he plucked big leaves from the bush, wrapped up the knife, and tied the bundle with bush-cord.
“I do not want the belt and sheath, now that this vile creature has worn them,” he said. “But the knife Luis loved so well shall stay with me. Now let us throw these brutes out of the way.”
We did so. After that Pedro turned back toward the river.
“Come,” he said, “I have a plan which is better than going straight ahead now. And we had best get more cartridges.”
It was not until then that I realized we carried no cartridges except those in the magazines of our rifles. So, picking our guns from the undergrowth where we had hidden them, we returned as we had come. We took no care to conceal our trail, for our feet were bare and made no strange marks in the path.
In the riverbank Pedro stopped short, staring at the ground.
“Lourenço!” he muttered. “We killed that demonio, did we not?”
I looked for the dead man. He was gone.
Our canoe was there, and nothing in it had been touched. There was no sign that other men had come while we were away. The bush around us was silent and empty. Yet that tailed thing with the top of its head blown off had disappeared.
The sun had gone under clouds again, and the light was dim. Stooping, we scanned the ground where the Ugina had lain. Then we saw signs that something had been dragged from the spot. The signs led toward the water. In the mud at the edge of the water was the trail of a big alligator.
“Ah, that is more natural,” Pedro said in a relieved tone. “I was almost ready to believe that the man-devil had stuffed his brains back into his head and walked off. I think I am losing my own brains. Let us go somewhere else for the night. It is too late to do anything more today.”
So we left the inlet, paddled back downstream, crossed to the other side of the river, and camped there.
As you may suppose, we argued that night about the tailed men. We agreed that they were not much more than animals, but the question was how they got tails. They might be monkeys turning into men, or they might be men becoming monkeys; but still they did not seem monkey-like, except that they were hairy and had the tails and faces of brutes. Their feet were the big flat feet of men, not monkey paws; and their tails seemed useless. Finally Pedro said:
“The things of which we are sure are that they have tails and that they are vile and cruel. They have no human hearts. And my idea about them is that they are men, but so low that they breed with monkeys.
“You remember the barbaros who attacked us before we passed through the swamps, and what a stupid fellow that one was whom we caught. He was not much higher than these Uginas, though he had no tail. You know how some of these small tribes who live in one place breed among themselves until their brains become hardly better than those of animals. They sink lower and lower until they are beasts, living only to eat and sleep and do vicious things. And you remember that black monkey we met, which looked at us and then brought those four men to seek us. He was a coaita, the tallest and most knowing monkey in our jungles—you have seen coaitas kept as pets along the Solimoes. Why, then, should a tribe so low as these Uginas not breed with coaitas? And why should not that breeding give them tails?
“Who knows where men came from in the first place? Who knows whether the first men on earth did not have tails? If they did, would it be strange that such people as these, by mixing with monkeys, should grow them again? Lourenço, I think this is the true reason why these tailed men exist.
“I believe that coaita who spied on us was not only a pet, but a blood-brother—or perhaps a father—to some of those creatures who came to hunt us! And I believe that when we enter their town—if they have a town—we shall find other coaitas there.”
“You may have it right,” I admitted. “Now that I think of it, I remember something I once heard said by a college professor from North America—Senhor Grayson, who stayed at the coronel’s place for a time to study jungle creatures, and whom we named the Jabiru because he looked so much like that bird.
“He said there had been a
time, far back in the early days, when men lived in trees like monkeys. He did not say they had tails, or even that men and monkeys ever were the same. But if they lived like monkeys perhaps they were like monkeys in other ways—I do not know any reason why they should not be.
“But the question now is not so much where these men got their tails as what we shall do to them tomorrow. What is your plan?”
“My plan now is to sleep,” he said. And sleep he did, so that I could do nothing but wonder a while and then sleep also.
In the morning Pedro made the first fire we had lighted since reaching the Jurua. The place where we had slept was up a narrow creek concealed by thick bush, and we could find no sign of human life near it. My partner set water to heat in a cooking-vessel, broke up the massaranduba bark he had cut in the Red Jungle, and put that also into the pot. Then, leaving me to watch the fire, he went away.
He was gone for some time. When he returned he brought an armful of light-colored strips of thin bark and a number of small springy withes. While I kept the water boiling he untied the knife of Luis, which was more thin of blade than his machete, and with this he shredded the light bark into fibers hardly bigger than hairs.
At this work he spent most of the forenoon. When it was done we pulled the boiled chunks of massaranduba bark from the pot. The water in that vessel now had become a red dye. Into this we stuffed the hairy fibers, leaving them in until they became red, then taking them out and putting in others, until at last all were dyed.
All this time I had asked no questions, for Pedro had plagued me many times in the past when I sought reasons for what he did, and had always found that behind his actions was an idea. But now I could no longer keep still.
“If it is not a great secret,” I said, “may I ask what you are making?”
