"Let the messenger tell me more of the people of the Blue Snake,” he demanded.
So I told him. And now I told him truth—that is, almost truth. As you may know, it is true that along the Javary live Indians who are cannibals, who use that talking wood, and who are much lighter of skin than savages usually are. They have not the fairness of you North American senhores, but they are no darker than some of us Portuguese whites, especially when we are well tanned. They are the Mayorunas, who live in malocas holding from one hundred to two hundred people, each maloca governed by its own chief and usually miles from the next tribal house; fierce fighters, jealous of their women, and eaters of their enemies killed in battle. How many of them there may be I do not know, but if all were brought together they probably would make as deadly a body of warriors as could be found anywhere along our frontier.
I had been among these people more than once. Each time, through luck not likely to come my way again, I had managed to keep myself alive and get away again unharmed. So I knew a good deal about them, and what I knew I now told to the Jararaca, though I twisted some parts to fit into my tale of Yacu and his people. Indeed, I did not tell him I spoke of the Mayorunas, calling them always the men of the Blue Snake. It was quite possible that he knew something of the white cannibals and their ways. And the truth that I told would go far to support the other things I said which were not true.
While I talked he looked repeatedly from me to the jug. And long before I finished he had taken the jug into his hammock and poured two more gourds of the liquor into him.
His skin flushed, and the veins on his temples began to stand out. The hammock, which had been as still as my chair, rocked a little under him at times. He had laid the revolver beside him and seemed to have forgotten it. His eyes were not so steady as they had been. Yet he was far from drunk.
"Si,” he said when I finished. “But how is it that though the men of Yacu live far west of here, the messenger of Yacu came from the east? And how is it that you, a Portuguese, are a man of Yacu, who hates believers in the cross?"
My real reason for coming from the east, of course, was so that I could appear ignorant of the assacu tree and everything else on that ygarapé. But I had an answer ready.
"I came from the east because I passed south of here, then found water which I could not cross, and followed the water north until I stumbled on a place of death where were bones and a hidden canoe. When I saw that no arms or legs were among those bones I felt sure that the men of the Jararaca had been there and that I was near the end of my long journey. So I took the canoe, came on down the water, and found the men of the Jararaca. And I am with Yacu because—"
I hesitated as if doubtful about telling him. Then I went on boldly:
"Because I have killed a priest. For that the slavish priest-worshipers hounded me into the jungle. A curse on them!"
I spat, looking as ugly as I could.
"Si?"
An evil grin flashed on his face, and he leaned forward.
"You killed a priest?"
"Si. I was drunk and sneered at him. He waved his cross and threatened me with damnation. So I sunk my machete in his fat belly and pulled upward."
I jerked my hand up as if doing that thing, and then made faces and clutching movements like a man disemboweled. And he laughed—a hideous hissing laugh that showed long yellow fang-teeth. The hammock swayed back and forth. The revolver slipped out and dropped. He did not notice its fall, or did not care.
"A killer of a priest!” he chuckled. “A ripper-up—so!"
And he jerked his hand as I had drawn mine.
"The messenger of Yacu and I are brothers! I too became a man of the jungle because I killed a priest. Si, a priest—and a woman. I slit both their throats—their throats wide open! Ha, ha, ha!
"Brother priest-killer, messenger of Yacu the cross-destroyer, you have done well to come to the Jararaca. I, the Son of the Snake, have destroyed all believers in the cross who have come into my hands. ‘Who lives by the cross dies by the snake!’ Such is the word of the men of the Jararaca.
"Our hunting has been to the east and south. Now it shall be to the west and north. Where the rubber gangs work, there shall the Jararaca strike. Where the rubber owners live, there shall the Son of the Snake leave only fire and death. I know their names, the numbers of their men, their locations. The nearest is one Nunes, two weeks’ march from here. He dies first!"
* * * *
XVIII
THE RUM had loosened his tongue. He drank another gourdful, and the tongue grew still more loose. He was fired as much by my talk as by the strong liquor. Either of these alone might not have overcome his snaky cunning, but the two together swept him off his balance. Besides playing my part as well as I could in word and manner, I had worked on his three passions—pride, ambition, cruel hate. He wanted to believe all I said. The powerful rum both inflamed that desire and dulled his suspicions. For the time, at least, he believed in me. And, believing, he talked.
He told me the things I most desired to know. Of his past—whence he had come, how long he had been a jungle outcast, and other things of that sort—he said nothing further, and I asked no questions on those points. But of his men and his handling of them he told more than I had dared hope for.
He now had sixty-eight men. They fought with bows, spears, clubs, blowguns, but not with rifles. Some rifles were here, but bullets were too few and hard to get to make the guns useful as regular equipment, and the wild men were not trained in their use.
Yet, though armed only with savage weapons, they were organized along military lines. Each eight-man canoe had its regular crew, and each crew was headed by a cabo, or squad-leader. On land marches there was a sargento in charge of each twenty-four men. When a raid was made the attack was led by a fighting captain, who was responsible only to the Jararaca himself.
"Look on them, man of Yacu, and see what fierce fighting men are mine!” he boasted, rising and stepping a little unsteadily to the door. “Not Yacu himself with his thousand has better fighters, man for man, than these!"
As he lifted the bar and opened the door I walked over to it, and together we looked out on that brutal gang of his. Loudly he bragged of their savagery, pointing at one after another, while the barbaros watched us wooden-faced. And while he talked he did a thing which later was to become most valuable to me: he curled an arm around my shoulders to steady himself.
At the moment I had to fight down an impulse to pull away from his snaky clutch and fall on him with my machete. Once before—when he told me my old coronel would be first to die—I had almost dropped my hand to my bush-knife; and now his touch nearly made me show my hatred for him.
But I remained quiet, realizing that to his followers he would seem to be hugging me in brotherly fashion. I even praised those evil-faced eaters of human flesh, saying the things he wanted to hear. And he stood there hanging to me and grinning with pride, flattery—and rum.
"Anta! Here!” he called.
A solid, small-eyed man with an ugly scar across his nose and another down his chest strode forward.
"My capitán,” the Jararaca explained, nodding toward him. “The best fighter of all my men—so good that I let him lead all attacks. He has not the brain to plan—only I, the Son of the Snake, can prepare the plans for an assault that can not fail—but when the order is issued he always carries it through without mistake. Would he not make an illustrious field general for Yacu—and for the Jararaca when Yacu is gone?"
To me the man Anta seemed hardly more than a merciless animal, but naturally I did not say so. Anta's stolid face did not change when I congratulated his master on having so mighty a warrior, and what thoughts passed in his bullet head I could not guess. But I could see that he noticed the slight lurching of the Jararaca and his hold on me. And this too was to help me later.
Suddenly tiring of looking at his men—or perhaps growing thirsty again—the chief stepped back, shut the door in Anta's face, barred it as before, and return
ed to his hammock. There, from boasting about his men, he went to telling of the strength of this hill of his.
The rear of his forte, I learned, was protected by wide swamps across which no man could pass—soft mud which would swallow anything stepping into it. The slippery front could not be climbed, the paths at the sides were guarded—there he broke off and took more liquor, after which he loudly declared that no men ever would dare attack this place, even if it had no guards at all. All the world feared the Jararaca. And he told why he was feared.
One tale after another of torture and butchery he related until I ached to kill him. But I made no move, for I was here to learn all I could, and I should be a fool to stop his talk now. Whatever thought came into his head came out of his mouth. And among those thoughts were the attack he planned on Coronel Nunes, the man whom we had found dead at the assacu, and the gold cross which had hung on that man's neck.
His intention of destroying the rubber-workers and rubber-owners to the north and west of him had not sprung into his brain as the result of my tale of Yacu. He had been planning it ever since capturing a stray bush-tramp who now had been sent to find out whether crosses were of any use on the other side of death.
From this man, who had been kept as a slave for a time—and, no doubt, treated with all the cruelty this white devil could think of—had been gained information concerning all the rubber estates of the Javary region. And now, since it was unlucky to start an important expedition on a waning moon, he awaited only the coming of the next new moon before marching out against the coronel and others like him.
When I asked how he had put that slave to death, he boasted of his infernal idea of lashing men to the assacu, where they would hang in torment until killed by snakes which always were near that spot. He told of throwing assacu poison into the face of that man when angered by his refusal to tell something he knew. And he pointed to a covered gourd in a corner, which, he said, held more of that poison, ready for the next man who dared try to thwart his wishes.
The hanging of the cross on that man's neck, and on others before him, was a grisly joke. Whence the cross itself had come he did not say, but as he had told me he was a priest-killer it was not hard to guess that he had robbed some church. He laughed in a blood-chilling way as he told of the screams and curses of men on whose necks that cross had hung when the snakes crawled up and struck death into them; and I did not doubt that more than once he must have gone himself to that tree and, from the safety of a canoe tying out on the ygarapé, watched the deaths of such victims.
But while he gloated he suddenly scowled and cursed. He had thought of a thing that spoiled his pride in the tree of thorns.
Some demon, he said, had come to the ygarapé where the assacu stood. The demon had swallowed a whole ubá and its men, changed the last victim of the tree into a foul alligator, turned the gold cross into wood, and put around the place snakes which had no bodies and struck down his men. Out of three boatloads of men who had gone by night to see why the others did not return, eight had come back dying from snake-bite in the feet, although not one snake had been seen. And when other men had gone by day, they too had come back with the same tale and with four more victims of those unseen snakes.
This was the first I knew of a daylight visit to that tree by the barbaros. They must have gone there while I was away on a spying journey. I nearly grinned as I figured that by our fight to save Senhor Mack and by Pedro's trail of death we had killed nineteen of these cannibals. But I pretended to be much amazed and asked whether he himself had visited that spot to see what sort of demon might be there.
At that he suddenly grew silent. By his expression I knew he had not gone there, and that he was afraid to go. He scowled at me so hard that I wished I had left that question unasked.
Perhaps he suddenly realized that this was no tale for me to carry back to the mighty Yacu—that the Jararaca's power was being wrecked by a demon and his men destroyed by devil-snakes. Perhaps that is why he began glowering at my basket holding Matador, as if he realized also that the blue snake always is death to the jararaca. And perhaps those were the reasons why he did what he did.
At the time, of course, I did not follow his thoughts. I took things as they came. And soon they came fast.
His glance went to the barred door beyond which his men lurked. Then he looked at me, and from me to the rear wall of the room. His scowl faded, and a cunning look crossed his face. He poured another drink—a small one—swallowed it, and began talking fast, as if the rum had started his tongue again.
"But the Jararaca cares nothing for demons,” he declared. “A few men more or less—what matters it? The Jararaca is still the Jararaca, whom neither men nor gods nor devils can overcome. Si! And the tree of the snakes has grown stale. The Son of the Snake has a better idea for the next cross-kissers who fall in his way. Messenger of Yacu, look upon a sight that shall delight the hearts of the Blue Snake people when you tell of it!"
Across the room he went to that rear wall. Looking at it more closely, I now noticed that in it was the shape of a door, across which a bar lay in place. Still talking, he lifted this bar.
"When the Jararaca and his men go out on the war-trail, with them shall go the thing which you now shall see. And all slaves of the cross who live through the fighting shall kiss the living sign of the Jararaca's power. Si, it shall be put against their lips! And the lips—how they will swell! Ha! Look!"
I was standing beside him now. Swiftly he swung the door open. Beyond was a small room, not more than six feet square, lighted by a small hole above. Expecting to see some infernal image, I looked across the place and found nothing. My glance dropped to the floor, and then I saw the thing.
Lying on the dirt, about to coil, was an immense jararaca.
"Say to your master, Yacu,” hissed the Son of the Snake, “that the jararaca is more powerful than the accursed mussurana!"
With the words he moved like lightning. One hand darted at the machete in my belt. The other struck me hard in the back, shoving me straight at that deadly snake.
* * * *
XIX
MY OWN quickness was what saved me. That, and my unconscious recoil from the snake. If I had been standing flat-footed, or leaning the least bit forward, that violent push would have knocked me beyond the doorway, and a swift barring of the door would then have left me weaponless in a death-pen.
But the instant my eyes fell on that snake I drew back, and the blow of the Jararaca failed to throw me off balance. And the second his hands touched me my own hands flew out. One shot back and seized his wrist, stopping his attempt to disarm me. The other clutched the edge of the doorway, giving me a rigid support by which I could heave myself back. With all the power in that arm I forced myself away from the snake's den, and in the same movement I whirled and swung that arm around his neck.
So, at the moment when he expected me to be a helpless prisoner at the mercy of a reptile that knows no mercy, he found me crushing him in a death-grapple.
With all my weight I forced his wrist down until the machete had sunk back into its sheath and his grasp on it was broken. Still holding that wrist, I loosed my arm-hold on his neck and got a throat-grip.
Those two holds I meant to keep, especially that on the throat; for by it I could choke off any outcry as well as his breath. Just beyond the farther wall his whole cannibal army waited, and if once they heard their master yell it would not take them long to batter down that barred door and make an end of me. And whatever might come to me, I wanted no help to come to the Jararaca until he was past help.
But getting that throat-hold and keeping it were two different matters. I was fully as heavy as he, and more muscular; but he was wiry and as quick and wriggly as the snake he seemed to be, and he showed the strength of sudden murderous fury and of a man crazed by rum.
I had looked before into the eyes of men trying to kill me, but never into such eyes as his. They glared like infernal fires. Whether or not he was wholly sa
ne at ordinary times, he now was a maniac. And he fought like one.
Time and again he twisted out of my clutch. But each time I was on him again before he could reach a weapon or even cry out. And each time I got that grip on the throat and clamped my fingers deep into his flesh.
He got a hand to my own throat more than once, but I always managed to break his hold. He bit at me, and so snaky was his look that I felt if his teeth ever sank into me I should die of poison. But his yellow fangs never quite reached me. Neither did the long nails of his free hand ever reach my eyes, though he slashed viciously at them.
Writhing, wrestling, wrenching, we threw each other around the room, falling to the floor, heaving each other over, plunging up again to fight the harder on our feet. His face grew dark, his mouth gaped for air, but he fought on furiously. My breath came in gasps; I began to feel my hold on him weakening; and still I could not down him.
At length we stumbled and fell across the table. It upset, throwing us headlong on the floor. The shock broke our holds. Perhaps it dazed us a little too, or perhaps we were fought out. At any rate, we lay there a few seconds, both exhausted, neither moving, watching each other's eyes. I knew I ought to attack again at once, but somehow I felt numb. With the tabletop at my back and the Jararaca in front of me I lay like a log, waiting for new strength.
Suddenly he started as if thorns had struck him. His slant eyes widened. Terror flashed across his face. A hoarse sound came from his mouth. Before it could grow into a howl I nipped his throat again and choked it off. I started to force him down, determined now to jam him to the floor and throttle him with both hands until he died.
But as my head rose I glimpsed something beyond him; a thing that disappeared into a blur for a second, then took shape again. At the same instant my enemy twitched once more. And the terror in his face became awful fear.
I dropped back, holding him now not as a foe but as a shield. Only his body was between me and death. And death already had struck him twice.
The big jararaca had crawled through the open doorway of its pen. It had coiled and struck. Its fangs had sunk into the back of that other Jararaca, its captor. It had coiled again and struck again. And it would keep on striking.
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