Those who were clubmen and spearmen stayed with me—six of them, each powerful enough to crush the life out of two ordinary men. The spearmen stripped the grass sheaths from the points of their weapons, and I saw that each of the terrible barbs was dark with poison. To them I gave one command: that they walk last, with the spearheads turned backward. And then we slipped up to the clearing and waited.
The Peccary lair was on a hillside, and our path ran along that hill, so that we now were lurking at a point about opposite the center of the town, with houses above us and below us. We could see into the middle of the place, where stood the barracão of the Peccary chief; and we saw that the men of the bandit gang were gathered at that house.
Then, in the darkness of the doorway I spied the sickly yellow face of the man who had nailed me to the tree and who now, no doubt, was putting some fresh deviltry into the heads of his followers. And for the first time since my comrades and I had smelled those peccaries in the bush, senhores, I laughed as I thought that even while that merciless band plotted more murder and torment, death was creeping silently around them, and the fate they planned for others soon would burst upon themselves. And the savages, understanding, grinned back at me a sharp-toothed grin of death and hate.
The time dragged. We knew that in the forest around the clearing our men were slipping into their places, that the guards on the other trails were dying or dead, that we should soon spring out on our enemies. But it seemed that night would come before we moved. I could feel my heart pounding as if it would break my ribs, and hear the wild men grind their teeth with the lust for battle, though they made no other sound or movement.
And then the waiting ended. From the north rose a deep, roaring yell—the war-cry of the chief.
Instantly a rain of arrows whizzed into the Peccaries grouped at the barracão. And as they yelped and jumped under the shock, and some fell dead, out from the northern forest burst the fighting-chief and his spearmen, and up from the southwestern trail rose the shrill yell of the sub-chief's men breaking cover.
My own six savages surged forward; but I sharply ordered them back and opened fire with my rifle. I shot fast, but I shot straight, and at each explosion a Peccary staggered and fell.
And then, dropping the rifle, I drew my two revolvers. And with a frightful roar my men dashed forward with me.
As we ran a burst of arrows and poisoned darts whirred around us and over us into the bandits. And as we ran we saw that most of the Peccaries were running also—running for their rifles—though some stood and shot with their revolvers. Already the ground was littered with dead, and more than one of those who ran for guns never lived to use them, because of the poisoned blow-gun darts that had struck them.
And now behind us and all around us rang the screeches of the bowmen, who came charging to closer quarters, lest they hit their own men closing in. The air was full of yells of hate, cries of fear, screams of dying men, the snarl of arrows ripping into bare flesh and the smashing reports of guns.
Shooting with both hands, I ran straight for the barracão of the Yellow One, who had suddenly disappeared. A few men who still stood in our path and answered my fire went down quickly. Others, terrified by the ferocious charge of my clubmen and the long spears, fled from our path.
So fast did we run that we reached that barracão just as the Yellow One came bounding out of it with a rifle. He shot instantly, and one of my wild men coughed and fell dying. Then I leaped at him, dropping my revolvers, and caught him by the throat so savagely that he went down, losing his rifle in the fall.
As we struck the ground I clamped my legs around his hips so that he could not draw his revolver or knife, and then I sank my fingers deep in his throat. Surprise and fear flashed across his face as he recognized me.
Then he squirmed like a snake and fought like a jungle-cat, so that I had all I could do to keep my grip. But I kept it, and as I crushed the breath from him I forgot the chief's orders and my own resolve not to kill this man. I throttled him, senhores, until his face was black and his struggles grew weak. And then I remembered, and let go, and started to rise.
His right hand went to his revolver. But I grabbed one of my own revolvers from the ground and struck him on the head with it. He fell back senseless.
Swiftly I disarmed him, and looked about for something to tie him with. Finding nothing, I bounded into his barracão, where his three women were huddled in a corner in fright; and there I found ropes, and ran out again, and bound him so that he could not move when he should get his senses back, and dragged him to the side of the house and threw him down there. And then, with his revolver and my own, reloaded, I turned back to the fight.
By this time the battle was raging all over the village. Near me stood the war-chief, roaring his war-cry to his men; and around him a little knot of clubbers, spearmen, and blow-gun men were rushing back and forth, killing Peccaries as the chance came, but never going far from their leader.
But now a solid group of Peccaries came charging straight toward me, probably intending to free the Yellow One. The chief and his men sprang into their path. Shots cracked out in a ripping volley, and several of the wild men fell. Then the Peccaries closed in on them with swinging machetes.
The spearmen drove their weapons into the bellies of some and tore them out again. The clubmen attacked with terrible blows, their tooth-studded bludgeons smashing men's heads and tearing out their brains. The chief himself swung one of those clubs, and I saw him crush the skulls of four men. The blow-gun men seized machetes from fallen foes and slashed throats open with them. And I stood where I was, snapping a bullet into any Peccary I could hit without shooting one of my Indian friends. It was a bitter fight, and a fast one. Soon the charging Peccaries were only mangled corpses.
Then I knew the fight was won. For the crash of gunfire died out, and only a few scattered shots cracked out here and there as some cornered wretch fired his last bullet and went down under club or arrow.
Then from all around rose the exulting yells of the savages. And suddenly the sun dropped behind the mountains, and darkness swept around us.
Somewhere a man set fire to a barracão and quickly the others burst into flame. By the red light the wild men dragged the bodies of the dead bandits into a heap, and attended to their own hurts, and brought all the women before the chief. And there we found that one of the Yellow One's three women was a girl of this same Indian tribe—a girl who once might have been handsome, but who now looked thin and old from the abuse he had given her. In her own language, which I did not understand very well because she spoke fast, she told the chief her story; and the Indians growled and hissed as they heard her and glared at the Yellow One, who now had his senses back and lay with his yellow face a very pale yellow indeed. But the chief ordered that no man touch him, and set me and a clubman over him as a guard through the night. And you may be sure, senhores, that we gave him no chance to escape.
Once in the night El Amarillo asked me in a whining tone what would be done with him. This I did not know, but I did not tell him so. I told him to remember what he had done to me and to others, and that he would be well repaid for all his kindness to helpless prisoners.
At the thought of enduring himself what he had done to those in his power he groaned and squirmed and struggled to break the ropes. When he tired of that he offered me much gold if I would free him. I ordered him to be quiet, or I would make him so. And he said no more, though he tried again and again to loosen his bonds as the night wore away.
At sunrise the ropes were taken from him, and he stood up in a circle of Indians, and the chief sat and looked at him with eyes hard with hatred. And whether he was desperate with fear and hoped to anger the chief so that he would be killed at once, I do not know; but he began to sneer and boast. The woman who had been his and who was of this tribe repeated what he said, so that all the wild men understood.
He boasted of his evil deeds, of robbery and murder and worse, and called himself King of
the Peccaries, who feared no man. If he sought quick death he came near getting it, for the savages, hating him bitterly already, were maddened by this. But the chief spoke sharply, and nobody touched him. And then the chief answered him.
"So you are King of Peccaries!” he said. “We shall see whether peccaries know you for their king."
He laughed then with all his pointed teeth, and we wondered. Not even his own men knew what he meant. But he said no more to the Peccary, but turned to me and asked me what I would like to do with that man.
And thinking of Paulo and his broken arm and of my own toil under a burden, I replied that I should like first to drive him many miles under a heavy load and make him “sweat blood.” He grinned again, did the chief, and said it should be so.
When he understood that he was to be made a beast of burden the Yellow One snarled and tried to fight. He only got himself a terrible thrashing. The barbaros beat him with the flat sides of machetes until he could hardly stand. Then they looked about for something to load him with.
The Indian girl came forward again and told us that under his burned barracão was buried gold which his gangs had brought in from raids. And since gold is very heavy, and also because it pleased them to load him with the yellow dirt for which he had committed so many crimes, the wild men forced him to dig up his treasure, and made rough bags from the scanty clothing of the dead Peccaries, and lashed these bags on him with ropes and vines.
And they got large balls of rubber which had been scorched in the burning of the town, and fastened these on him too, until he was bent far over by the weight—as Paulo and I once had been. Then they drove him eastward toward their own land.
Before we departed, though, the chief proved himself a wise young man as well as a good fighter. For instead of forcing all the women to come with us he told them they might go wherever they wished, and make their way back to their own people if they could. I saw he understood a thing which some men never learn—that a woman taken and kept against her will is not worth taking, because she will surely make trouble when she can.
And so the women did as they pleased. Some came with us, but more took weapons from the dead men who had been their masters and went away in a band, seeking their own homes.
And then, with two wild men yanking the Yellow One along by a rope around his neck and others jabbing him from time to time with machetes, we men from Brazil took the trail by which we had come.
In the next few days El Amarillo learned what it meant to be a pack-animal. He carried that load at all times; he slept with it on him at night, and was never free from it for an instant.
And he carried more than that—the weight of the death and misery and agonized curses of the men he had tortured and killed for that rubber and gold, and the knowledge that for him there was no escape, and the terror of the unknown death that finally should come to him. And that, senhores, was all of my own revenge on him—driving him like a beast. In what came to him later from the wild men I had no hand.
As we went down the hills to the river, and up the river in the boats, and on through our own jungle, all of us remembered the chief's puzzling words about the peccaries knowing the Yellow One for their king; but none of us knew what he meant by them, and he did not tell us. The only time he spoke of peccaries was soon after we started, when he ordered his men to watch for the wild pigs on their hunts—for of course we had to hunt as we went, and kill game to eat.
Twice there came hunters who told him they had found peccaries in the bush, and then he asked what they were; and when the men said they were few and white-collared he shook his head. So most of us saw none of the pigs until we were nearing the maloca and the long march was nearly done.
Then came men hurrying through the forest and told their chief they had sighted a herd of the white-lipped peccaries. At once he gave orders to a number of others, and they went into the bush with the hunters who had seen the pigs. He also called two more savages, and I saw they were the same ones who had found me hanging in torment; and after a word from him they went into the bush by themselves.
With a knife he then cut the ropes around the Yellow One, and the gold and rubber fell from him. He had been bent under that crushing weight so long, senhores, that when it dropped he dropped also, falling forward, unable to keep his balance. But he was up again soon, rubbing himself and scowling at the savages. Fear showed in his eyes, though, as he glanced around him.
And when the two wild men came back and gave something to the chief the Peccary glanced at it, and his face turned sickly white. I looked too, and my recently healed wounds seemed to burn again as I saw what the chief held—a handful of those terrible long sharp thorns.
With a yell of terror the bandit sprang away and tried to dash into the jungle. But men caught him, threw him down hard, and dragged him to a tree. And there, faced at last by the fate he had made more than one victim suffer, he screeched and whined and sniveled for mercy—the mercy he had never shown to his prisoners.
It did him no good. The wild men only growled in disgust, while their chief stood before him holding the thorns for him to look at. I shivered, senhores, but I could do nothing for him even if I tried; they might seize me and nail me up again too, for those people are easily angered, and their anger is deadly.
Then the chief ordered all but those who held the yellow man to climb trees. And while we climbed he fastened the Yellow One's hands to the tree—yes, only his hands; he did not use the thorns elsewhere on him. Then the chief himself and the other men followed us into the branches, so that nobody except the evil Peccary remained on the ground. Shouts came to us, and the sound of bodies crushing through the tangled forest, and the grunts of pigs. Soon a huge white-lipped peccary trotted out, followed by others. From his perch in the tree over El Amarillo the chief bellowed at the animals, and the first ones stopped, looking around them, while the rest of the herd came running in from the bush until more than forty of them were crowded under us.
The chief roared again, and answering calls came from the hunters he had sent out to drive the beasts here. We heard sounds of climbing, and knew they too were taking to the trees. And then the chief spoke to the man below him, at whom the pigs were staring wickedly.
"Here are peccaries. Show them you are king. Make them take out the thorns!"
The Yellow One broke into horrible cursing. He howled the vilest words I ever listened to, raving until froth was on his mouth. And he kicked out at the stinking pigs.
His voice and his movements maddened them. Suddenly they surged at him.
They took out the thorns, senhores.
The weight of their charging bodies tore him from the tree. He fell, screaming. But so thick were the beasts about him that he fell not on the ground but on their backs, and fought to his feet again. Yet when he had risen he could not escape; he was wedged among them and knocked back and forth.
Squealing with rage, the devil-pigs seemed to boil up around him, climbing on one another's backs and leaping upward to strike. With their knife-edged teeth they chopped and slashed his body and arms and legs into ribbons.
Then he went down again, and rose no more. His body was thrown on the heaving mass as it was struck again and again by the furious animals. Then it rolled down among them, and his ghastly yellow face disappeared.
Long after he was dead the peccaries tore him and trampled him into the dirt. And other pigs dashed at the gold-bags made from Peccary clothing, and ripped those also into tatters, and scattered the gold all about.
Some leaped up against the trees where we perched, their vindictive black eyes fixed on us and their teeth clashing together. But as we made no move, but only stayed beyond their reach, they soon abandoned us.
And at length, grunting among themselves, they all moved slowly away, their white lips now stained deep red, and leaving behind them only a torn thing that had been a man, fragments of cloth that had held gold and their own disgusting smell.
We came down again. The savages f
ell into line and started away as if nothing had happened. But I felt sick, and I wanted to see no more of these men. So I told the chief that now I would leave him and go back to my own people and tell them how he and his brave fighters had destroyed the foul pig-men of the hills.
He nodded, pointed the way I should go and strode away. And without a farewell word or a backward look the whole band of wild men passed on into the forest, and I was left alone.
So, senhores, that is the tale of the Peccaries. Up in the hills of Peru the vines are creeping across the place where once stood their village, and where now remain only sodden ashes and scattered skulls. Out in the pathless land beyond the farthest rubber-workings, where only wild men and wild animals prowl, lie the bones of their leader and the blood-stained gold he gathered.
And soon the great green jungle, which has swallowed many better men, will blot out every trace of them, and only their evil name will live on for a little time at the headwaters of the Amazon, to die out at last and be forgotten. For that is the way of the jungle.
THE FIREFLY
BEAUTIFUL BUT false, senhores, is the firefly. Beautiful as a flashing jewel floating in the darkness of the jungle night; false as flame without heat, which will neither comfort your body nor cheer your mind.
When the cold southwest winds blow and the tempo da friagem sweeps across this upper Amazon, you may cover yourself with those brilliant insects until you blaze with light, but does the chill leave your bones? No. And if the gleam of the firefly in the gloom moves you to follow after and reach for it—beware! You may sink suddenly in sucking mud whence there is no escape. False fires they are, senhores—false and cold.
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