"Why would you kill us?” Pedro mused, looking down at her. “We have no money—we are ragged rovers of the bush; and you did not care enough about money even to hide twelve thousand milreis. We offered you no harm, gave you no insult. And those other men—what did you do with them? Are their bones out there below that black water where you dragged me under?"
After a moment of thought I said:
"Let us go outside and look around. We have not yet been down behind this tree. Perhaps something is there."
Something was there. A little way back towered a big moratinga tree beneath which stood no bush. And in this natural clearing the ground was studded with five crosses.
"Five of them!” my partner exclaimed. “So there have been more than three men."
"Perhaps not. Perhaps there were three men and three women, and all died but she."
"The same hand made all those crosses,” he pointed out. “Each leans a little to the left. Each cross-arm droops a little downward at the left. And"—he bent and examined the bush-cord holding the crosspieces—"each cord is knotted in the same way."
It was true. We studied them, pondered, wondered, and searched farther. And we found nothing.
AS WE returned to the house the sun smote into our eyes. We squinted at each other and nodded. The day was going, and we had no mind to spend the night there. Taking the rusty ax and our machetes, we returned to the moratinga tree. After working there a while we made another trip to the house and back to the little cemetery. And when we left the tree for the last time a sixth cross stood beneath it—a cross which neither leaned nor drooped, but stood straight.
Back at the empty massaranduba we looked at each other.
"Twelve thousand milreis do nobody any good here,” Pedro suggested.
"And there may be someone on the Branco who needs it,” I added.
"If we pass the Branco we can go up and see. Or better still, we can go straight to Remate de Males as we intended, and question some of the Branco men waiting there for the time to go back to work. Old Jorge Faria might know."
In the glare of the dying day we tramped along the bank of the enseada, down the zigzag path, past the moutá on which still lay a dead man's breeches and machete, and over the pole-wall beyond which our canoe floated. Out through the twisting, bushy inlet we wormed our way to the sullen river, whose dirty waters now looked like a golden path in the long sun-rays. Then, with a long breath of relief, we shoved our paddles in deep and jumped the dugout away toward the next bend, bound for Remate de Males. With us went the twelve thousand milreis.
DAYS LATER, gaunt and tattered, out of food and cartridges, we reached the town. When we had left it the street was several feet under water; now it was bare ground. When we had gone men had shaken their heads and said we went to death; now they stared as if we were ghosts. But at the store of our old friend Joaquim the trader we soon proved that we were not too dead to attack a jug of cachassa, and as the news spread that we had returned our fellow seringueiros came in from all around the town to help us drink and hear the tale of our wanderings.
Among them came Jorge Faria, a veteran rubber-worker of the Branco, always smoking and seldom speaking. We were watching for him, and as soon as he had had a drink we got him into a small room behind the store, where we could talk undisturbed. And to him we told the whole tale of the wordless woman who swam like a dolphin and was deadly as a jacaré.
His eyes widened as we talked, but he said no word. When we told of the leaning crosses he spat excitedly and put his pipe back in his mouth upside down. And when from under our waistbands we produced the money, which we had divided into two packets and fastened to our belts with strips torn from our shirts, he dropped the pipe.
"The Bouto!” he croaked.
"Oh, no,” Pedro said wearily. “She swam like a bouto, but she was no fish turned woman. She was—"
"The Bouto,” Jorge insisted. “Not the Bouto, of the Amazon story, but the mad daughter of Lino Cardozo—she who was called the Bouto because she had a madness for drowning. Have you not heard of her?"
We had not.
"She was mad from birth. Three months before she was born her father, Lino, a rubber-worker on the Branco seringal of Senhor Fontoura da Gama, stumbled and fell off the riverbank. Before he could get out of the water a jacaré rose and seized him. Lino grabbed a root in the bank and hung to it, screaming for help while the beast dragged at him. But before aid could reach him his hold broke and he was pulled down.
"Lino's wife saw it all, and the shock nearly turned her mind. And when the girl-child was born she had a twist in her brain. Yes, and a twist in her eye, for she never saw a thing exactly straight: anything which stood straight seemed to her to lean to the right, and if she stuck a stick in the ground she always slanted it a little to the left. This oddity soon became known, but of the kink in her mind nobody knew for years.
"It is true, she was not quite the same as the other children on the seringal, even when small. There was her habit of slanting things to the left, and besides that she was slow of speech—"
"She could talk, then?” I cut in.
"Yes, if she would. But once when she was about ten years old she said something that angered her mother, who beat her soundly. And from that day she held her tongue. Not one word did she ever speak after that. Queer, yes; but she was a queer girl. As I said, she was slow of speech before that day, and often she would stare in a vacant way as if her mind had flown for a moment. But she was a strong, plump child, and nobody suspected she was mad. ‘Only a little odd,’ was what the da Gama people thought of her.
"Perhaps her new habit of remaining dumb made her madness worse—I do not know. But before that time she had learned to swim, in a little ygarapé where the men built a wall of poles to keep out dangerous creatures, and had become a much better swimmer than any of the other children; and now the kink in her brain began to work. You might think her father's death and her mother's horror would make her fear the water, but it was not so. Instead, her twisted mind told her to drag things under the water, as the jacaré had dragged her father to death.
"At first she pulled down only sticks and pieces of log which she threw into the ygarapé. Then she began swimming below the other children and catching them by the feet or around the body, scaring them and often making them choke. And one day she pulled down a boy and almost drowned him before he could fight free.
"That made the rest fear her. They named her ‘Bouto,’ and they would not swim with her more. They drove her from the ygarapé when they swam there, and she had to do her swimming when they were not at the place. But every day she was there, seizing her logs and fighting to keep them under the surface. And I have heard—for I was not on the Branco in those days—that when a log escaped her she would pursue it with a glare in her eyes that chilled those who watched.
"Yet it was only in the water that she was dangerous. On land she was only a harmless, slow-smiling girl who slanted sticks to the left."
Jorge stopped, found his pipe, filled and lit it. When he went on his eyes were on Pedro.
"She was fifteen when I first went to the Branco. And in that year a tall, slim young fellow who had newly come to work on the da Gama estate made love to her. She had become quite handsome, and he—well, he did not intend to marry her. But she thought he did, and she liked him well until a batelão arrived from down the Javary, bringing a police officer who arrested the man for murdering his wife at Fonte Boa.
"The killer had a revolver, and so did the policeman. After the smoke cleared away the da Gama men had to bury them both.
"From that time on she hated men who were tall and slender—like you, Pedro. But men like Lourenço, shorter and more broad—she still liked them well enough."
I nodded, feeling that now her preference for me and her dislike for Pedro were explained.
"It was two years more,” Jorge continued, “before another man really interested her. He was Bento Batalha, a heavy-muscled, cold-eyed
man who was almost as silent and nearly as good a swimmer as she. Where he came from, and why, he never told, and we never asked. One does not ask too many questions on the Branco.
"Whether Bento and the Bouto ever talked to each other I do not know; nobody ever heard them. But whenever Bento went to headquarters he and she swam together in the walled ygarapé. There her madness broke out as before, and several times she tried to drown him. But he was too strong for her and always broke away. And instead of fearing these life-and-death struggles in the water he seemed to enjoy them, for he always had a grim smile when he came out. A queer man. A queer couple.
"Now the girl, being well-grown, helped her mother work around the house of Senhor da Gama, who, after the death of Lino, had taken the mother as his cook. She knew the house as well as Senhor da Gama himself—perhaps better. And when she and Bento disappeared together, as they did before long, something else disappeared also. Ten thousand milreis."
"Aha!” we cried, glancing at the money.
"Ten thousand milreis,” Jorge repeated. “That and a canoe, Bento Batalha, the Bouto of the Branco—all gone between dark and dawn. And none has ever been found.” We rolled cigarettes. Then I said:
"There were five crosses under the tree. There are twelve thousand milreis here—two thousand more than da Gama lost."
"Yes. And it is six years since the Bouto vanished. In that time quite a number of men have left the Branco and have not returned. Most of them have gone out to the Solimoes, but some were not seen after leaving the Branco. One of the crosses under that mandiroba may be that of Bento. The other four—who knows?"
"Four men could easily have had two thousand milreis among them,” Pedro agreed. “Batalha, the thief, probably had more than one reason not to hurry out to the big river. He made that house, built those pole-walls, and perhaps lured a few seringueiros in there to visit him—and to go swimming with his woman. Then he himself swam with her once too often."
"Who knows?” Jorge said again.
We smoked on, looking at the money. We knew Jorge was honest and would soon return to the Branco. And I said—
"The mother of the Bouto—does she still live?"
"She lives,” Jorge answered, reading my thought. “And the two thousand milreis which do not belong to Senhor da Gama would be a fortune to her. She grows old, and she has nothing."
We passed the packets to him.
"See that she gets it,” I said. “Nobody knows of this but us three, and nobody shall know of it until you have returned to the Branco. And now I am thirsty again."
And when Jorge had tied the money under his waistband we went back to the outer room, where the crowd waited to buy us more cachassa and hear more about us.
So ends the tale, senhores, of the Bouto—the killer who was born in madness, mated in turn with a murderer and a robber, and died at last under the heel of a man fighting to save his comrade. Tonight this big moon, which showed us that dolphin back yonder in the river, shines down also on the ruins of the tambo where she first came to me, the huge massaranduba in whose butt yawns a black and empty home, and the tall mandiroba beneath which stand six crosses—five leaning and one straight.
Under that straight cross lies a tale that is told. But under the slanting sticks rest five more stories which none of us shall ever hear. They are locked for all time in the jungle—which is forever dumb.
THE ANT-EATER
DID YOU know, senhores, that the ant-eater can kill the jaguar? It is true. Those long knife-claws with which he tears open rotten stumps in his search for food can also stab the king of the jungle.
I myself have seen it. I have cut my way through the bush to a place where I heard sounds of fighting, and there I found a dead ant-bear with his great claws hooked into the body of a dying jaguar. The big gray destroyer of ants had taken his slayer with him to death in a terrible grapple that could not be broken.
Yet the ant-bear never seeks trouble. He goes shambling along attending to his business in life, licking up ants with that long sticky tongue of his, and bothering no other animal if he is let alone.
He is a queer-looking thing, not at all handsome, but he is very useful. If you two Americans have ever been bitten by the accursed fire-ant while you were exploring the Javary jungles, or have seen a house fall to pieces because it had been eaten to a shell by termites, you will agree with me when I say that there is use for millions of ant-eaters here in Brazil.
I never kill one, for I feel that he is a friend. But if I should kill one I should do it from a distance, and not allow myself to be deceived by his clumsy appearance and his peaceful nature. For it is with animals as it is with men, senhores—often those that are usually harmless become dangerous when attacked.
There are other ways, too, in which animals and men sometimes resemble one another. Perhaps in your own United States you have met men who had the appearance and the nature of some beast or bird or reptile. But you would never suppose, would you, that any man could be like the ant-bear—even to his habit of eating ants?
Laugh if you will—it is droll, I admit. But perhaps you do not know that among the many kinds of ants crawling in our jungle there is one which is eatable by men—the tanajura, which is an inch long and can be fried in lard and eaten.
And once I met a man who ate these ants, and who was like a great gray ant-bear in more ways than that. So now, to pass the time while the steamer carries us on down the Amazon, I will tell you the tale of this man.
I came upon him while I was on an adventuring cruise in the flood season, when the low-lying rubber forests of old Coronel Nunes, my employer, were drowned by the rising waters and we seringueiros could work there no more. With a mate of mine, a tall young fellow named Pedro, I had paddled southward through the watery bush until we came into hill country higher than the flood level.
There we had followed a rain-swollen creek which now was a river, and we went on up the river, seeking anything that might be new and strange. To left and right of us rose the hills. Those to the left were low, but from the other bank they went up and up and up until, miles away, they became mountains—the mountains of Peru.
So far we had found easy paddling, for the flooded creek was smooth and deep. But as we went onward the hills grew more steep and the stream more narrow and swift, with white water now and then that gave us stiff work.
And at length the banks swung toward each other, holding between them a roaring rapid up which no canoe could go. So there we stopped.
Hanging to a drooping branch, we held the dugout steady and studied that leaping, lashing water and the steep banks beside it. And Pedro said:
"This far we go, and no farther. That cachoeira is more than we or any other men could mount, and no doubt it is even worse higher up.
"So, Lourenço, either we go ashore and tramp a while or go back downstream. Which shall it be?"
"Both,” I answered. “I am going to land and stretch my legs, for I have the canoe-cramp. And after I have tramped along beside the cachoeira and tired of looking down into it, we may as well drift back down the current."
We swung the canoe over to the right bank, drew it well up on the shore and stretched ourselves. Then, taking our rifles, we worked up along the rapid, finding the bush not very thick, so that we could travel without much trouble over the rough ground and stop now and then to gaze at the tumbling waters below us. After a time we sat down and smoked.
"I have hunger,” said Pedro, “and I want fresh meat. I am tired of came secca and farinha and dried fish. If a monkey comes along, shoot him."
Before our cigarettes were burned down a monkey did come along. I spied him peering at us from a tall matamata tree.
He was only a little fellow, not large enough to make a meal for two men; but still he was fresh meat, and I swung up my rifle. But he sprang behind the trunk where I could not see him.
We waited for him to leap for the branches of other trees, hoping to get a shot as he moved. He stayed where he was, h
owever, and so we got up to work around the tree, Pedro on one side and I on the other. But before we found our prey something happened.
Somewhere off in the bush rose a long-drawn yell:
"Chico-o-o! Chico-o-o-o-o!"
We stood astonished, for we had thought no man but ourselves was in this place. The shout came again, a little nearer now. Up in the tree the little monkey made a chattering sound, and as we did not move he hopped up on to a branch, looking toward that call. We could easily have killed him, but we did not. The three of us, monkey and men, waited for that approaching man to come to us.
"Chico-o-o-o! Where are you, rascal?” called the voice, and we heard someone rustling through the bush.
The monkey fussed again, but did not jump. Then out from the trees came the man, who stopped short as he saw us.
He looked queer. That was my first thought as I looked at him—"queer."
At first, though, I did not see just why he seemed so. He wore almost nothing—only a tattered pair of breeches with belt and machete; but there was nothing strange about that, for we ourselves were not much better off except that our breeches were whole and we wore boots.
He was very hairy, and the hair was gray, though his face was not old; but that was not very odd either, for age is not a matter of hair. And though he was gray he looked stronger than either of us, for he was a big fellow and heavily muscled.
But then as I studied him I saw what was odd about him.
Above that powerful body were a long neck and a narrow head with small eyes and ears—a head that looked as if it had not much room for brains. And as he stood staring at us he ran out a long tongue and licked his lips in a way that made him look foolish.
And I thought, this is a big good-natured fellow who is not a fool but is not very wise either—a simple-minded man whose heart is bigger than his head. And soon I found that this was so.
Amazon Nights: Classic Adventure Tales from the Pulps Page 24
