When we reached the place where we had seen the woman, we held the canoe, and Pedro gave an odd cry like a bird. I recognized the call as one he had been practicing since he began talking with the Peruvian outlaw. We listened, but neither heard nor saw anything, so we went on. At intervals he called again, and at last there floated back the same call from the jungle. We stopped the canoe where it was. Pedro called again, and again came the reply. Soon a figure appeared among the trees, and we saw the savage woman.
"Hold your rifle ready, Lourenço,” he whispered.
I seized the gun and cocked it, watching the shore. He began to talk to the woman, using strange words which meant nothing to me, but which she evidently understood, for she responded at once. Now I saw why he had spent so much time with the man from the west who knew Indian languages. He had been learning how to speak the savage dialect himself.
She laughed, that woman, and chattered eagerly to Pedro and waved to us to come to her. But that we did not do. Pedro shook his head, and once he pointed upstream and said more things.
After a time he began to paddle again and went on down the river and left her behind. We passed around a bend and then another, and when we were well out of sight, he turned the canoe toward the shore—across the river from the bank where the woman had stood. At a good place we landed, and there he arranged our cargo again to suit himself. He laughed at all my questions and made no answer, but his eyes sparkled, and his face was alive with his thoughts, though at times he looked a little puzzled and doubtful, too.
When he was ready we went back upstream. This time he gave no call, and we paddled steadily until we reached that place where first we had seen the woman. There he turned toward the little creek, and as we neared it I saw her again. Pedro had made tryst with her and now he stepped out on land and went boldly to her. I stayed in the canoe.
"I think there is no danger here, Lourenço,” he said, “but be alert."
He talked more with her while I watched them and everything around them. As before, she chattered and laughed with him, and I could see that she admired him much, which was not strange, for men admired him, too—he was so tall and straight and strong.
I saw also that he was questioning her, and that she was not answering all his questions. Once she wanted to look at the stuff in our boat, but I warned her off, and Pedro himself held her arm and stopped her.
Finally he stepped back into the canoe, and we went on upriver until we were out of sight. There we picked a place to camp and stayed there that night, lighting no fire.
Before we slept, he told me that the woman was living in the jungle with a man, but what sort of a man he was or where he lived she would not tell him. This man, she said, was away somewhere that day, and what he was doing she did not know. When Pedro asked her if she would lead us to the man's camp she refused. Then she asked what we had in our boat, and he told her they were supplies for a new camp. It was then that she tried to look at them and we prevented her. After that she asked where this new camp was, and he told her at a certain place well up the river, where there really was no camp and where none was intended. In leaving her, he told her he would not work the next day because it was his birthday, and he would come to meet her again at the same place.
"I ask you again, Pedro,” I said, “what is the meaning of all this? And why are you so interested in this savage woman?"
"Lourenço,” he answered, “we are now not very far from headquarters. All of our five friends whom the Death has struck have disappeared not far from headquarters—or so I believe. The place where we first saw that woman is not far from headquarters. The place where she answered my call today is still nearer to headquarters. More than that, she answered from a spot very near where Antonio Maciel vanished. Now there is a riddle for you to puzzle over. I am going to sleep."
IN THE morning we took out all our bait and put it into the bush. Pedro sat awhile and watched the creeping shadows, and, when it was time, we went down the river again. As we paddled along I said:
"Pedro, if this woman has anything to do with the Death, as you believe, then we are fools to meet her again where you agreed, for we are likely to go into a trap and never come out."
He laughed and replied—
"If the Death is what I think it is, it is now up the river seeking that new camp of which I told her, and so it can do us no harm."
He seemed to be right, for the woman awaited us, and they talked again for some time, and nothing at all happened. I could see that she was very much taken with my handsome companion, but, as before, he could not make her answer all his questions. After we left her he said:
"She is no fool, Lourenço, for all that she seems so simple. Still, I think that in the end we shall learn what we want to know."
When I suggested that we hasten matters by going straight to the place where she had answered his bird cry and searching the jungle there, he snorted and replied:
"Oh, yes, surely. That was just what Antonio was doing—searching the bush at that place. And there were more men in his party than in ours. Have patience, comrade, and do not jump in the dark."
This silenced me.
We hid for the rest of that day and that night, and then we went to meet her again—for the last time, as it turned out. She seemed sulky, and when he tried to put her in better humor she answered crossly, and we saw that something had happened since we left her. Yet Pedro finally coaxed her into a cheery mood and she began to smile and give him soft looks.
Later I learned that she had blurted out that he was lying to her because there was no camp where he had said. Of course, that instantly showed him that his shrewd guess had been right, and that she or her man had sought that camp. He was not foolish enough to let her see his thought, however, and he told her that the plans had been changed and the new camp was being made at another place. After that they talked on for some time, and he told her how handsome she was and so on.
I was crouched in the canoe, as usual, watching everything like a cat, and listening. All at once my ear caught a tiny sound in the bush—a soft rustle as if something had brushed stealthily against some leaves. Pedro and the woman were talking low, and I put all my attention on that little sound. It might be only a wandering breeze, a crawling snake or some other natural thing, but I had to be sure. Soon I heard it again, very soft, and I knew something was creeping nearer to us. Then, at a place where the tangle was very thick, I saw a slight movement caused by something about the height of a man.
"Take care, Pedro!” I shouted.
Like a flash he dodged and leaped forward, landing several feet away. Like a flash an arrow sped through the place where he had been. I threw up my rifle and fired straight at the spot where I had seen the movement; but even as my finger pressed the trigger I knew the bullet had missed, for a violent shaking of leaves showed that the man there had thrown himself sidewise. Then, while I was throwing another cartridge into the barrel, the killing of that man was taken out of my hands.
The woman sprang at the bush. In one hand she held Pedro's machete, which she had snatched from his belt. With that weapon she hacked and stabbed in a fury that was terrible to see. I caught glimpses of a body writhing under her and heard a snarl, a broken scream and a groan. Then the body lay still and we heard no sound but the slash of the long knife through the leaves as the woman struck and struck and struck.
For a moment Pedro and I were paralyzed. Then Pedro seized her and twisted the dripping machete from her hand. I jumped ashore, and while she stood shaking and sobbing with rage we dragged the body out and looked at it.
"Por Deus!" muttered Pedro. “The Spider!"
Yes, senhores, it was the Spider. He was a frightful thing to look at, but he was the Spider—the man whom we had thought dead and who now truly was so. Even in death he looked the Spider, for his arms and legs were crumpled up as if something had smashed him. From his belt hung a narrow bag made from a skin, and in it were several arrows. Stepping into the place where his
woman had killed him, we found his bow—a short, clumsy but powerful weapon that could drive an arrow clear through a man at close range.
While we were looking at this we heard a dragging sound and stepped out in time to see the last of the Spider. With one hand the woman was hauling him to the river. There she picked him up as if he were only a monkey, swung him and threw him out into the water.
He struck and sank with a soggy splash. A moment later the water began to seethe and boil. We knew the piranhas, those ravenous cannibal fish, were swarming upon him and chopping him into fragments. So thick were they that some of them were crowded up into the air, snapping their jaws like traps. A red stain grew on the surface and slowly drifted down the current with that hellish boiling going on under it. Before long, though, the water grew quiet again, and the red stain floated out of sight.
Then the woman looked at Pedro. The hatred faded out of her face, her fierce eyes softened and she took his hand and led us away into the jungle. We traveled for some distance and stopped at length in a place where Pedro looked about and said—
"This is where Antonio disappeared."
We could not see anything strange, though at one spot the tangle of vines and bush was very thick and matted together, as it may be anywhere in those forests. The woman saw we were puzzled and she walked up to that tangle—and suddenly she was gone. But she called, and we followed her. And as we reached the matted vines a part of them moved outward like a door, and there she was, laughing like a little girl playing a game.
Senhores, that was the Spider's nest—a lair made from the growing bushes and vines so cunningly twisted and woven among themselves that a man could stand within ten feet of it and never suspect that it was a shelter and hiding place. If ever there was a great trapdoor spider's nest, that was it.
The man Schwartz had followed the trapdoor spider's example inside his den, as well as outside.
That spider, as you probably know, not only makes a door which swings shut behind him, and covers that door with things that grow around it, but he also makes a secret pocket at the side of his nest, where he can hide if any enemy discovers his lair. And the Spider had done this also.
At one side of his den the ground rose, and there he had dug a hole and covered it over with the growing things so that nobody would ever know it was there. It was not meant to hide in, though, but to conceal the things he took from murdered men. In that hole, when the woman showed it to us, we found all the property of Custodio, Gumercindo, Saldanha and the brothers Maciel. There was Gumercindo's money, the supplies taken from the others and their weapons and even their clothes. But of the men themselves there was no sign anywhere.
When Pedro asked the woman what had become of the men, she said that after the Spider killed them and stripped them of all they had, he did with them just what she had finally done to him—threw them to the piranhas, which quickly destroyed them.
Their canoes, she said, he hid until night, when he took them far up the quiet little creek where we had first seen her, and there, where neither flame nor smoke would be seen by anyone, he burned them—all except the light, fast canoe of Custodio, which he concealed very cunningly and used himself. In this he made his spying trips, going at night and staying away for a day or two. No doubt he had been almost beside us more than once, lying low, watching and listening with that spidery patience of his and learning whom he might kill with profit.
In all these murders, the woman said, he used the bow and arrow which was silent and easy enough to handle at close range. In all the killings except that of Antonio Maciel he made her lure the men ashore at some place where he lurked, ready to strike them down. To Custodio, Lucas and Saldanha she had called and showed herself, just as she did to us, and they came to her and so to their death. Gumercindo was caught in another way, for he was a shrewd man and was hastening home and thus was not so likely to tarry for any savage woman. The Spider had had her stay out of sight, though near the water, and scream as if in great danger. Gumercindo, like a brave fellow he was, sped to shore and dashed into the bush to save the one who was in such distress. He was shot in the back for his pains.
Antonio Maciel was killed because he was coming straight at the Spider's nest with his machete ready to cut through what he took for a natural tangle. Through a small opening in the side of his den the Spider shot him and dragged him swiftly inside, so that when the other men arrived they found nothing but the last place where he had cut his way. That was some distance back from where he died.
We learned, too, that Pedro and I were to have been the next victims, if we had come near enough. The Spider had a place downstream where he could watch what went on at headquarters across the river, and he saw Pedro load up the canoe with what looked like many supplies, and so hastened back and made the woman run to that place at the creek and play her part when we passed on our return. While she tried to bring us ashore he lurked ready to kill us, but when we refused to come he was too wise to attack us at a distance, so he let us go.
So Pedro's foolish bait caught something after all, though even he did not suspect that the Spider still lived. He carried that bait to see what might come of it and later he believed that the Death was some Indian.
When we came back and Pedro had given the bird call of her people, she was alone, for the Spider was away somewhere spying, and she wanted us to come ashore only because she was hungry to talk with the man who could speak her own tongue.
After she left us at the creek she told the Spider, on his return, of our new camp and all our new supplies. He went seeking it, came back angry and beat her. From that time on she told him nothing more of us but met Pedro secretly. She did not know that the Spider had followed her on that last day until Pedro jumped, and the arrow flashed by him. Then her hatred of the Spider, which had long been growing in her, flamed out in the fury that destroyed him.
She had no love for him, but had been sold to him by her people, whom he had met by chance in the jungle before he came back to the river and made his lair. He gave the headman his rifle for her, she said, and, though he had used up all his cartridges so that the gun was useless, the headman made the trade because women were plentiful in his tribe but guns were very scarce, and he might be able to get cartridges.
She told us also that her people knew where there was gold, and that the Spider had planned to get much of this gold in trade for the supplies he took from our men. Thus, in time, he hoped to become very rich, and then, perhaps, would make his way into Peru, where he was not known, and where he could enjoy the wealth gained through the deaths of honest men.
So you see, senhores, it was as I told you at the beginning—this man lived like a spider and he died like one. If you know spiders, you know that the female is larger and stronger than the male, and that often she turns on him and destroys him. The thing that destroyed this Spider was the fact that he did not know this big, handsome woman's heart.
Though I do not claim to know much of women, yet I have observed a few and I have noticed that when a man treats a woman as something bought and paid for, the time may come when he had best beware of her. I have noticed, too, that when women meet men for whom they care, it makes little difference whether they are fine ladies from Rio, or humble maidens of the village, or savage women of the jungle—at heart they are all the same.
THE PECCARIES
PARDON ME, senhor, but I think you are mistaken. Those peccaries which attacked you while you and your companions were exploring the headwaters of the Javary must have been those with the white lips and jaws, not those with the white band across their chests.
You say there was a big drove of them, and that they were large, black, and ugly. Yes, those surely must have been the white-lipped peccaries; for the white-collared pigs do not travel in such big bands, and they are not so large or so dark, nor so likely to attack a man if they are let alone. Those with the white chest-band, though, are dangerous and bad.
For that matter, all peccaries are wicked
fighters if they are aroused, and it is best to avoid them if you can. But, bad as they are, they are not so bad as the cruel band of human Peccaries who, not long ago, ravaged the rubber-lands where I and other men employed by old Colonel Nunes were working. Perhaps you have heard of them. No?
Then I will tell you about them, while we sit safely here on the deck and the mighty Amazon bears us on toward our homes; and when you senhores arrive at last in your North America you will have one more tale to tell to the pale-faced folk who dwell in the cities, and use our rubber, and know nothing of the hardship and torment and death that go into the gathering of it.
It is an old saying among us Brazilians that “each ton of rubber costs a human life,” and it is true—too true; for there is many a ton that means not only one death, but several. And the rubber which the Peccaries took from us was measured not by tons but by pounds, and it was stained red with our blood, and with theirs too.
These men were not the wild people of our own Brazilian jungle. They were wild and savage enough, it is true; but they came upon us from across the Javary, which, as you know, is the boundary between Brazil and Peru; and they were not merely barbaros who killed for the joy of fighting or because they ate human flesh, but an organized band of desperate men who hunted plunder in the form of rubber, or gold, or women, or whatever else they valued.
They were merciless, and were led by a yellow devil more pitiless than they. And nothing could stand before them until they met another band of human Peccaries, brought upon them by a man who escaped them after torment. I was that man.
We first heard of them from our fellow workmen down the river, who had the news of them from other men who brought supplies. We ourselves were toiling in a rubber district which was very rich, but very far out from headquarters, so that we had to go a long distance through the jungle at intervals in order to renew our food, which was brought up in boats to a large tambo where another of the coronel's gangs was working a number of good estradas.
Amazon Nights: Classic Adventure Tales from the Pulps Page 3
