Before long there came two other shots. These were nearer than the first and sounded like the spiteful crack of the Luger. I got up and went to my quarters to get my rifle. Senhorita Flora who had heard the shots too, come out and called to me—
"Lourenço, what is it?"
But I made no answer and went on as fast as a lame man could.
I was just coming out with the gun when Flora's name was called from the edge of the forest. There stood the Spider.
"Come quickly, senhorita,” he said. “Affonso has met with an accident."
She started running toward him. I called—
"Do not go, senhorita! Wait!"
But she kept on, and I began to run, too. Then the Spider stopped us both. He fired at me.
The bullet missed me so narrowly that I felt it pass my face. I dodged, my clumsy stiff leg twisted, and I fell sprawling. When I looked up the girl had whirled and was running back to the house.
The Spider, who thought he had killed me, was running after her with all his spidery speed. My rifle had fallen from my hand, and while I was getting it he caught her. He dragged her back toward the jungle. She struggled to escape, and he struck her so hard that he dazed her. Then he picked her up and ran, but I had my rifle now.
I fired from where I lay, aiming low, trying to hit his crooked legs and so avoid injuring Flora. But I shot hurriedly and missed him. Still, my shooting stopped him, for when he saw I was alive he swung the girl toward me and, using her as a shield, fired at me again.
As you perhaps know, a man lying down is hard to hit, but his bullet ripped across my shoulders and tore the shirt from my back and burned my skin. I could not shoot again without striking the senhorita, so I did not try.
Then came a burst of fire from the house, where the coronel had seized weapons. Now he came bounding out like a jaguar, with a pistol in each hand spitting flame and lead as he ran. Somewhere behind me, too, a rifle barked, fired by some man about the place.
Of course, both the coronel and the workman shot high, lest they kill Flora. But the Spider, thinking only of himself, had no time to realize this. Finding himself under fire from two directions and hearing yells of rage as other men ran for their guns, he suddenly dropped the girl and ran, diving into the bush.
I shot at him again as he fled, but again I missed. Then we all hastened to Flora, whom the coronel had caught up in his arms. For the moment we forgot everything but her. Then, still stunned by the blow of the Spider, she moaned—
"Affonso!"
We all started and looked at one another, and I said—
"Yes, Senhor Affonso must have been shot—and Pedro, too."
I explained how I had sent Pedro to follow. The coronel snapped:
"Go, men, and find them! And find that—that Schwartz, too!"
We growled. The Spider would not come back alive if we found him. But we did not find him, for he had vanished. We pressed on to find our own people. I could not keep up with the others, but I was not far behind when they met Pedro. He came staggering down an old estrada, his face twisted with pain, and he bore the body of Senhor Affonso.
At first we believed that body to be dead, for it hung limp and there were two bullet holes in it, but while we were cutting down branches to make a litter Senhor Affonso stirred and moaned. Pedro cried out joyously:
"He lives! The senhor lives!"
Then he dropped, did Pedro, fainting from loss of blood, for he, too, had been shot by the Spider, and his wound was bad, near the shoulder. So now we had two men to carry home.
As I learned later, this was what had happened:
The Spider had told Senhor Affonso he had found a trapdoor spider's nest which was quite the most wonderful thing he had ever seen, and the senhor, greatly interested, went with him into a place where no men were working. There the Spider pointed to a hole at the base of a large tree, with thick spider-webbing across it, and said that was it.
If the city gentleman had been better acquainted with spiders he would have known that no trapdoor spider would ever make such a nest, but that it would be concealed so that it could not be seen at all. But he went up to it, and then the man Schwartz said—
"Look closely, Affonso, and see how a spider acts when he is cornered!"
Then he shot him in the back.
The only thing that saved the senhor was that, even as he bent to look, he sensed something treacherous in the Spider's words and turned to see his face. The bullet struck him before he had turned halfway, but he had twisted so far that, instead of going into his heart, it went through him sidewise and came out under his right arm. The shock threw him forward and his head struck hard against the tree, knocking him senseless.
The Spider, thinking him dead, swiftly robbed him of everything valuable—though he did not get so much as he probably expected, for the senhor had put most of his money in the coronel's safe soon after his arrival. Then he dashed back to carry off the handsome Senhorita Flora, but on the way he met Pedro.
Pedro, not wishing the pair to know he was there, had followed at some distance and, though he heard the shot, he did not see the shooting and could not be sure of what it meant. So, with his machete ready, he sought to stop the Spider and question him. Without a word the Spider shot him, too, firing twice. The first bullet knocked him down in the thick bush and the second missed. When he struggled up again the Spider was gone. Since the first thing to do was to find Senhor Affonso, he went and found him.
For some time it seemed that both Pedro and the senhor would die. But both were strong, and at last they recovered. While they lay there we hunted the Spider, but found nothing at all; he had disappeared as if he never had been there. It was during this time, too, that we learned what he meant by his double-tongued advice to Senhor Affonso to see what a cornered spider would do, for there came a boat, and with it two quiet, common-looking men who talked with the coronel and went out into the bush with our men. They finally left without telling their business to anyone except the coronel. When they had gone we learned with surprise that they were police. We also found that they sought the Spider, and that he was wanted in Para for murder, and at Manaos for—worse than murder.
So you see that though he could not know the law was so close behind him, he did know he could not go back down the river on the next boat. He had reached the last place where he could live among men, and now there was no place left for him but the jungle.
My leg was well long before the senhor and Pedro were, and I went back to work. I heard, though, that Senhor Affonso vowed he would stay there until he had hunted down the man who had shot him and assailed the lady Flora, if it took the rest of his life.
The senhorita was even more bitter against that man than Affonso himself—not so much because he had attacked her as because he had nearly killed her sweetheart. That is the way of women. Yet she pleaded with him not to seek the Spider, as he might be killed in doing so. The coronel, too, pointed out that he was city-bred and not fitted for man-hunting in such terrible country as ours, that the Spider must have perished in the jungle, and that even the police had abandoned the idea of looking for him. Pedro, for whom the senhor now had much affection, also urged him to change his mind, and said:
"Leave him to me, senhor. He is mine as well as yours, and I know the forest far better than you. If ever I find him, he dies."
And so he was dissuaded, and finally he and Flora went back to Rio.
WE HAD long given up the Spider as dead, for he had not much ammunition and no way of getting more. Thus his weapons would soon become useless, and then he could kill no game to eat. We had decided he was dead, I say, when strange things began to occur. The first of these was the disappearance of Custodio Barros.
We were working far out from headquarters at the time, in new rubber land, and we needed more supplies. Custodio was sent down the river in his canoe to get them. A long time went by, and he did not return.
Then we sent another man. Before he had gone far he met tw
o boats coming up from headquarters, and when he asked what ailed Custodio, the men in the boats were astonished, for they thought he had returned to us. They said he had come, got his supplies and started back; since then nothing had been seen or heard of him. Their own action in bringing more supplies had nothing to do with him, but was the usual arrangement. They said they would keep a sharp lookout on the way back to see if any trace of him could be found, but they discovered no trace at all.
This, of course, caused much talk and argument among us. Custodio was an honest fellow and even if he had not been he would hardly have run away with a few supplies. He might have gone ashore and been killed by a snake or a jaguar, or he might have been drowned, or devoured by alligators or piranhas. None of those things, however, would have destroyed his canoe, and the empty canoe would have been seen by someone. It might be that Indians had killed him and taken all he had, but this did not seem likely. Each of us had his own idea of what might have happened, but none of us knew anything more than the fact that he was lost.
Gumercindo Penna was the next. He was a steady, thrifty man who had worked among us for a long time and had never gambled. He had accumulated a large account with the coronel. He had a little family at a place well down the river, and now the longing for home had grown too strong in him, and he was going out.
The coronel, who is always very kind to those who serve him well, not only paid him his due but gave him a handsome present besides, so that he was quite rich for a man of this region. Yet, partly because he was so thrifty and partly because the home fever was burning strong in him, he would not wait for a regular boat and go home as a paying passenger, but started at once in his own canoe.
Since he was going downriver, the coronel asked him to bear a message to some of our men working some distance below headquarters, telling them to come in, as he had decided to send them into another place. Gumercindo gladly promised to do so.
The men did not come in, and, after waiting awhile, the coronel sent another man with the same message. This time the men came promptly. They said, senhores, that Gumercindo not only had given them no message, but he had never passed their camp!
At this the coronel was much perplexed, and after turning things over in his mind he sent two men all the way to Gumercindo's home to see if he had arrived there. He had not. Nobody knew anything at all about him. Nowhere between the headquarters and his home was there any sign of him. He, too, had disappeared.
This alarmed and angered all of us. Searching parties went out with orders to find the lost man or some trace of him, and they hunted all along both banks and sent word far down the river to seek him. But nothing was found; neither Gumercindo himself, nor his canoe, nor even his hat.
After that no man traveled alone. We felt that some terrible thing was on the river, though what it might be we could not guess. We made note of one thing, though—that both of these men had disappeared with something of value. Custodio had vanished with some supplies; Gumercindo with money. Men who had nothing were not molested. Still, the fact that both of those lost men had been alone when they were destroyed made us want to travel in pairs, whether we had anything or not. For a time this worked well. Nothing happened to any of us, except the usual accidents and hazards of our work.
Then came something that struck dread deeper into our hearts. Two men disappeared together, and with them a whole boatload of valuable supplies. One of them, Lucas Maciel, was a rather simple fellow and slow of thought, but the other, Saldanha Saraiva, was a man of quick wit and much experience on the river, whose only weakness was a fondness for women. They were bound upstream when they were last seen, and somewhere between that point and our workings the mysterious Death which haunted the river reached out and seized them, their boat and all they had. As before, no trace was left behind.
While we were searching along the banks and back in the jungle for any sign of what had happened to these mates of ours, a fifth man was swallowed up. Antonio Maciel, he was—a brother of Lucas. This time the Death struck not on the water, but in the jungle.
Antonio was one of several men who were beating through the bush, strung out in a long line with wide spaces between them, and he was at the end of the line nearest the stream. After a time the man next to him found that Antonio was not answering his calls. He cut his way toward where Antonio should have been. He was not there, nor had he reached that place. There was no trace of him. He was gone, as if the ground had opened under him and closed again. The last sign of him was a place where he had slashed some vines with his machete.
This was too much. Men now feared to work—to go in canoes—to do anything. They were not cowards, these comrades of mine, but the mystery and silence of this awful Death that left no trace was more than they could stand. Some crossed themselves and said it was no mortal thing, but a demon. No man knew when or where it would strike him down, for it had seized Antonio, who was on land and had nothing but his weapons, just as it had devoured the men on the water who had money or supplies. Though our work went on, we toiled always with a cold feeling on our backs, and went always by twos or threes. There was not one of us who did not shudder at the mention of this mysterious Death.
NOW PEDRO had recovered from his bullet wound and was back at work with me, we had many talks about this thing which we called the Death, but none of them got us anywhere. Yet, through these talks, we got into the habit of being together, and where one of us went the other went, too. So when I was told to go to headquarters and fetch back some things that were needed in our work, Pedro came with me. At the headquarters I got what we had been sent for and, as the things were few, I gave them over to Pedro to put into the canoe while I told the coronel how all was going at our tambo up the river. When I came out and saw our canoe I was astonished. It seemed to be full of supplies.
"What is this, Pedro?” I asked.
He smiled his odd smile, and answered:
"It is bait. The boxes and bags are filled with trash.” And as I stared at him he added: “The Death strikes at men with full canoes, Lourenço. I would see what this Death looks like."
"Are you mad?” I cried angrily. “Is there not danger enough without inviting more?"
"Perhaps so,” he said, his brown eyes dancing. “If you are afraid, we will leave this bait behind."
Of course that silenced me, as he knew it would. We pushed off and paddled away with our worthless cargo. After we swung into our longdistance stroke some of his recklessness crept into me, too, and I began to look forward to meeting the Death and fighting it.
The only thing we did meet, however, was far from what we half expected. At a place where a slow, quiet creek flowed into the river, a soft call came to us, and as we looked we saw standing there an Indian woman. We held the canoe steady and stared at her.
She was a magnificent woman, for she was tall and shapely, deep-bosomed and full-hipped, and she looked as strong as a man; her face, too, was really handsome. She laughed and beckoned to us. Pedro laughed back, waved his hand and asked her what she would have of us; she made some answer, but we could not understand it, for we did not know her tongue. Then she waved to us again to come ashore.
Pedro, who was in the bow, drove his paddle into the river to do so, but I backed water and held the canoe where it was, for, though the things we had been sent for were few, they were badly needed at our tambo and we were under orders to waste no time. When Pedro scowled at me I reminded him of this and told him I had had enough of his foolishness and that we would go on at once. Still, we stayed there a few minutes, out on the water, while he and the woman talked back and forth without understanding each other at all. Then we went on, paddling fast to make up for lost time.
The sight of this woman had surprised us much, for we knew of no Indians along that stream—their country was farther west and south. Had she been a man it would not have seemed so strange, for the savages are rovers and hunt for long distances away from their homes; but a woman, all alone on the bank, was somet
hing to be wondered at. We puzzled about her as we went on and concluded that a band of the Indians must be living near the stream for a time, as she certainly would never be there unless some men were about. As I have said, she was the only person we saw on all our trip. The mysterious Death never molested us. So, when we neared our journey's end, I said:
"Let us now throw this bait overboard. It has caught no fish."
"Very well,” said Pedro, and we drew up to the bank to do so.
But suddenly, as he reached for the first bag, a strange look dawned in his face, as if a great thought had struck him.
"Lourenço!” he said hoarsely. “That woman—I wonder if she too was bait!"
I frowned at him, wondering what he meant, but he did not explain. Instead, he said:
"We will not throw away our bait. We will hide it and use it again. Say nothing of the woman, Lourenço. I have an idea, and later you shall know what it is."
So we hid all the trash beside the water, and marked a tree so that we could find it again, and went on to the tambo.
Now in this gang of ours there was a silent, surly man who had been a lone rubber-picker in very wild parts of Peru and Bolivia, and who knew Indian tongues. He was said to be a refugee from both countries because he had killed men there, and most of us left him alone as much as possible.
Now I observed, however, that Pedro was with him a good deal. Pedro was the sort of man who can make friends with anyone, and even this sour, suspicious killer liked him. What they talked about Pedro did not tell me, and I asked no questions. This went on for a time, and then one night Pedro took the gang-boss aside and talked with him. After that he came and told me to clean my rifle and prepare to go downriver, and in the morning we went.
At the place where the marked tree stood we got our bait again, and arranged it so that it looked much different than before. Then we went on downstream, ready for anything that might come, but nothing came.
Amazon Nights: Classic Adventure Tales from the Pulps Page 2
