The Second Zane Grey MEGAPACK®

by Zane Grey

  Noon found them threading a matted jungle where they had to bend low along the deer and peccary trails. The character of the vegetation had changed. It was now dry, thorny, and almost impenetrable.

  Suddenly Muella jerked her hand away from a swinging branch, which she had intended to brush aside.

  “Look, Augustine, on my hand. Garapatas! Ugh, how I loathe them!”

  Her hand and wrist were dotted with great black jungle ticks. Augustine removed them, and as he did so, Muella saw his fingers tremble. The significance of his agitation did not dawn upon her until she was free of the pests, and then she fancied that her touch had so moved him. It was wonderful, it warmed her blood, and she stole a glance at him. But Augustine was ashen pale; his thoughts were far from the softness and beauty of a woman’s hand.

  “Augustine! You have lost your way!” she cried.

  Gloomily he dropped his head, and let his silence answer.

  “Lost in the jungle! We’re lost! And Tigre is on our trail!” she shrieked.

  Panic overcame her. She tottered and fell against him. Her whole slender length rippled in a violent trembling. Then she beat her hands frantically on Augustine’s shoulders, and clutched him tight, and besought him with inarticulate speech.

  “Listen, seqora, listen,” he kept saying. “If you give up now, I can’t save you. We’re lost, but there’s a way out. Listen—don’t tear at me so—there’s a way out. Do you hear? You go on alone—follow these deer tracks till you come to water. Soon they’ll lead to water. That water will be the Santa Rosa. Follow up the stream till you come to Micas. It’ll be hard, but you can do it.”

  “Go on alone! And you?” she said brokenly.

  “I’ll turn on our back trail. I’ll meet Tigre and stop him.”

  “Tigre will kill you!”

  “He is blind and deaf. I shall be prepared. I’ve a chance, at least, to cripple him.”

  “At the end of a trail Tigre is a demon. He has been trained to kill the thing he’s put to trail. You—with only a machete! Ah, seqor, I’ve heard that you are brave and strong, but you must not go back to meet Tigre. Come! We’ll follow the deer tracks together. Then if Tigre catches us—well, he can kill us both!”

  “Seqora, I can serve you best by going back.”

  “You think that if you took me to Micas the old women would talk—that my good name would be gone?” she asked searchingly.

  “Seqora, we waste time, and time is precious,” he protested.

  Muella studied the haggard, set face. This man meant to sacrifice his life for her. Deep through the fire of his eyes she saw unutterable pain and passion. If she had doubted his love, she doubted no more. He must be made to believe that she had followed him, not alone to save him from Tigre, but because she loved him. Afterward he would be grateful for her deceit. And if her avowal did not break his will, then she would use a woman’s charm, a woman’s sweetness.

  “Seqor, you told Bernardo the truth—and I lied to him!” she said.

  Stranger than all other sensations of that flight was the thrill in her as she forced herself to speak.

  “What do you mean?” demanded Augustine.

  “He asked you if you loved me. You told the truth. He asked me if—if I loved you. And—I lied!”

  “Santa Maria!” the man cried, starting up impulsively. Then slowly he fell back. “Seqora, may the saints reward you for your brave words. I know! You are trying to keep me from going back. We waste precious time—go now!”

  “Augustine, wait, wait!” she cried.

  Running blindly, she flung herself into his arms. She hid her face in his breast, and pressed all her slender, palpitating body close to his. As if he had been turned to stone, he stood motionless. She twined her arms about him, and her disheveled hair brushed his lips. She tried to raise her face—failed—tried again, and raised it all scarlet, with eyes close shut and tears wet on her cheeks. Blindly she sought his mouth with her lips—kissed him timidly—tremulously—and then passionately.

  With that, uttering a little gasp, she swayed away and turned from him, her head bowed in shame, one beseeching hand held backward to him.

  “Don’t go! Don’t leave me!”

  “Dios!” whispered Augustine.

  Presently he took the proffered hand, and, leading her, once more plunged into the narrow trail.

  V

  For hours Muella walked with lowered eyes. She plodded on, bending her head under the branches, and constantly using her free hand to fight the pests.

  Her consciousness, for the while, was almost wholly absorbed with a feeling of an indefinable difference in herself. She seemed to be in a condition of trembling change, as if the fibers of her soul were being unknit and rewoven. Something illusive and strange and sweet wavered before her—a promise of joy that held vague portent of pain. This inexplicable feeling reminded her of fancies, longings, dreams of her girlhood.

  At length sensations from without claimed full share of Muella’s attention. The heat had grown intense. She was becoming exhausted. Her body burned, and about her ankles were bands of red-hot fire. Still she toiled on, because she believed that Micas was close at hand.

  The sun went down, and night approached. There was no sign of water. Augustine failed to hide his distress. He was hopelessly lost in the jungle. All the trails appeared to lead into the same place—a changeless yellow and gray jungle.

  The flies pursued in humming wheel, and clouds of whining mosquitoes rose from the ground. The under side of every leaf, when brushed upward, showed a red spot which instantly disintegrated, and spilled itself like a bursting splotch of quicksilver upon the travelers. And every infinitesimal red pin point was a crawling jungle pest. The dead wood and dry branches were black with innumerable garapatas.

  Muella had been born a hill native, and she was not bred to withstand the savage attack of the jungle vermin. The time came when she fell, and implored Augustine to put her out of her misery with his machete. For answer he lifted her gently and moved on, carrying her in his arms.

  Night came. Augustine traveled by the stars, and tried to find trails that led him in a general direction northward. By and by Muella’s head rolled heavily, and she slept.

  At length the blackness and impenetrable thicket hindered his progress. He laid Muella down, covered her with his blanket, and stood over her with drawn machete till the moon rose.

  The light aiding him, he found a trail, and, taking up his burden, he went on. And that night dragged to dawn.

  Muella walked little the next day. She could hardly stand. She had scarcely strength to free her hair from the brush as it caught in passing. The burning pain of her skin had given place to a dull ache. She felt fever stealing into her blood.

  Augustine wandered on, over bare rocks and through dense jungles, with Muella in his arms. He was tireless, dauntless, wonderful in his grim determination to save her. Worn as she was, sick and feverish, she yet had moments when she thought of him; and at each succeeding thought he seemed to grow in her impression of strength and courage.

  But most of her thoughts centered on the trailing Tigre. The serpents and panthers and peccaries no longer caused Muella concern; she feared only the surely gaining jaguar.

  VI

  Night closed down on them among tangled mats and labyrinthine webs of heavy underbrush.

  “Listen!” whispered Muella suddenly, with great black eyes staring out of her white face.

  From far off in the jungle came a sound that was like a cough and growl in one.

  “Ah! Augustine, did you hear?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it a tigre?”

  “Yes.”

  “A trailing tigre?”

  “Yes, but surely that could not have been Bernardo’s. His tigre would not give cry on a trail.”

  “Oh, yes. Tigre is deaf and blind, and he has been trained, but he has all the jungle nature. He has Bernardo’s cruelty, too!”

  Again the sound broke on the
still night air. Muella slipped to the ground with a little gasp. She heard Augustine cursing against the fate that had driven them for days under trees, trees, trees, and had finally brought them to bay in a corner where there was no tree to climb. She saw him face about to the trail by which they had come; and stand there with his naked blade upraised. He blocked the dim, narrow passageway.

  An interminable moment passed. Muella stopped breathing, tried to still the beating of her heart so that she could listen. There was no sound save the low, sad hum of insects and the rustle of wind in leaves. She seemed to feel Tigre’s presence out there in the blackness. Dark as it was, she imagined she saw him stealing closer, his massive head low, his blind eyes flaring, his huge paws reaching out.

  A slight rustling checked all motion of her blood. Tigre was there, ready to spring upon Augustine. Muella tried to warn him, but her lips were dry and dumb. Had he lost his own sense of hearing?

  Her head reeled and her sight darkened; but she could not swoon. She could only wait, wait, while the slow moments wore on.

  Augustine loomed over the trail, a dark, menacing figure. Again there came a rustling and a stealthy step, this time in another direction; and Augustine turned toward it.

  Long silence followed; even the humming of insects and the moaning of the wind seemed to grow fainter. Then came more tickings of the brush and a padded footfall. Tigre had found them—was stalking them!

  Muella lay there, helplessly waiting. In the poignancy of her fear far Augustine, expecting momentarily to see the huge jaguar leap upon him, she forgot herself. There was more in her agony of dread than the sheer primitive shrinking of the flesh, the woman’s horror of seeing death inflicted. Through that terrible age-long flight through the jungle, Augustine had come to mean more than a protector to her.

  She watched him guardedly facing in the direction of every soft rustle in the brush. He was a man at the end of his resources, ready to fight and die for a woman.

  The insects hummed on, the wind moaned in the leaves, the rustlings came from one point and another in the brush, but Tigre did not appear. The black night lightened and the moon rose. Muella now distinctly saw Augustine—disheveled and ragged, white and stern and wild, with his curved blade bright in the moonlight.

  Then the gray mist crept up to obscure the white stars and the moon, and at last the blue vault. The rustlings ceased to sound in the brush. From far off rasped the cough of a tigre. It appeared to come from the same place as when first heard. Hope had new birth in Muella’s heart.

  Moments like hours passed; the insects ceased to hum and the wind to moan. The gray shadows fled before a rosy dawn.

  Augustine hewed a lane through the dense thicket that had stopped him, and presently he came upon a trail. He hurried back to Muella with words of cheer. Strength born of hope returned to her, and she essayed to get up.

  Helping her to her feet, he half led and half carried her into the trail. They went on for a hundred paces, to find that the path suddenly opened into a wide clearing. To Muella it had a familiar look, and Augustine’s exclamation assured her that he had seen the place before. Then she recognized a ruined corral, some old palm-thatched huts, and a water hole as belonging to the clearing through which they had long before passed.

  “We’ve traveled back in a circle!” exclaimed Augustine. “We’re near the hacienda—your home!”

  Muella leaned against him and wept. First of all was the joy of deliverance.

  “Muella, you are saved,” Augustine went on. “The distance is short—I can carry you. Bernardo will forgive—you know how he flies into a passion, and then how he repents.”

  “Yes, yes. I’ll go back to him—tell him the truth—ask his mercy!”

  From the center of the clearing came a rustling of dry leaves, then a loud purr, almost a cough. Augustine stiffened, and Muella clutched frantically at him.

  For a long moment they stood, dark eyes staring into dark eyes, waiting, listening. Then Augustine, releasing his hold on the trembling girl, cautiously stepped upon a log and peered over the low palms. Almost instantly he plunged down with arms uplifted.

  “Santa Maria! Tigre! He’s there!” he whispered. “He’s there, beside the body of something he’s killed. He’s been there all night. He was there when we first heard him. We thought he was trailing. Muella, I must see closer. Stay back—you must not follow!”

  But as he crept under the low palms she followed him. They came to the open clearing. Tigre lay across the trail, his beautiful yellow and black body stretched in lax grace, his terrible sightless eyes riveted on a dead man beside him.

  “Muella—stay back—I fear—I fear!” said Augustine.

  He crept yet a little farther, and returned with pale face and quivering jaw.

  “Muella, it’s Bernardo! He’s dead—has been dead for days. When you started off that day to warn me, Bernardo must have run round by the old wagon road to head off Tigre. The blind brute killed him!”

  “Bernardo repented!” moaned Muella. “He repented!”

  THE RUBBER HUNTER

  First published in The Popular Magazine, June 15, 1911.

  Iquitos was a magnet for wanderers and a safe hiding-place for men who must turn their faces from civilization. Rubber drew adventurers and criminals to this Peruvian frontier town as gold lured them to the Klondike.

  Among the motley crowd of rubber hunters boarding the Amazonas for the up-river trip was a Spaniard, upon whom all eyes were trained. At the end of the gangplank, Captain Valdez stopped him and tried to send him back. The rubber hunter, however, appeared to be a man whom it would be impossible to turn aside.

  “There’s my passage,” he shouted. “I’m going aboard.”

  No one in Iquitos knew him by any other name than Manuel. He headed the list of outlaw rubber hunters, and was suspected of being a slave hunter as well. Beyond the Andes was a government which, if it knew aught of the slave traffic, had no power on that remote frontier. Valdez and the other boat owners, however, had leagued themselves together and taken the law into their own hands, for the outlaws destroyed the rubber trees instead of tapping them, which was the legitimate work, and thus threatened to ruin the rubber industry. Moreover, the slave dealers alienated the Indians, and so made them hostile.

  Captain Valdez now looked doubtfully at Manuel. The Spaniard was of unusual stature; his cavernous eyes glowed from under shaggy brows; his thin beard, never shaven, showed the hard lines of his set jaw. In that crowd of desperate men he stood out conspicuously. He had made and squandered more money than any six rubber hunters on the river; he drank chicha and had a passion for games of chance; he had fought and killed his men.

  “I’m going aboard,” he repeated, pushing past Valdez.

  “One more trip, then, Manuel,” said the captain slowly. We’re going to shut down on you outlaws.”

  “They’re all outlaws. Every man who has nerve enough to go as far as the Pachitier is an outlaw. Valdez, do you think I’m a slaver?”

  “You’re suspected—among others,” replied the captain warily.

  “I never hunted slaves,” bellowed Manuel, waving his brawny arms. “I never needed to sell slaves. I always found cowcha more than any man on the river.”

  “Manuel, I’ll take you on your word. But listen—if you are ever caught with Indians, you’ll get the chain gang or be sent adrift down the Amazon.”

  “Valdez, I’ll take my last trip on those terms,” returned Manuel. “I’m going far—I’ll come in rich.”

  Soon after that the Amazonas cast off. She was a stern wheeler with two decks—an old craft as rough-looking as her cargo of human freight. On the upper deck were the pilot house, the captain’s quarters, and a small, first-class cabin, which was unoccupied. The twenty-four passengers on board traveled second-class, down on the lower deck. Forward it was open, and here the crew and passengers slept, some in hammocks and the rest sprawled on the floor. Then came the machinery. Wood was the fuel used, and stops we
re made along the river when a fresh supply was needed.

  Aft was the dining saloon, a gloomy hole, narrow and about twelve feet long, with benches running on two sides. At meal times, the table was lowered from the ceiling by a crude device of ropes and pulleys.

  The night of the departure this saloon was a spectacle. The little room, with its dim, smelly lamp and blue haze of smoke, seemed weirdly set between the vast reaches of the black river. The passengers crowded there, smoking, drinking, gambling. These hunters, when they got together, spoke in very loud tones, for in the primeval silence and solitude of the Amazonian wilderness they grew unaccustomed to the sound of their own voices. Many languages were spoken, but Spanish was the one that gave them general intercourse.

  It was a muggy night, and the stuffy saloon reeked with the odors of tobacco and perspiration and the fumes of chicha. The unkempt passengers sat coatless, many of them shirtless, each one adding to the din around the gambling board.

  Presently the door of the saloon was filled by the form of a powerful man. From his white face and blond hair he might have been taken for an Englishman. The several gambling groups boisterously invited him to play. He had a weary, hunted look that did not change when he began to gamble. He played indifferently, spoke seldom, and lost at every turn of the cards. There appeared to be no limit to his ill luck or to his supply of money.

  Players were attracted from other groups. The game, the stakes, the din, the flow of chicha—all increased as the night wore on.

  Like the turn of the tide, the silent man’s luck changed. After nearly every play he raked in the stakes. Darker grew those dark faces about the board, and meaning glances glittered. A knife gleamed low behind the winner’s back, clutched in a lean hand of one of the gamesters. Murder might have been done then, but a big arm swept the gamester off his feet and flung him out of the door, where he disappeared in the blackness.

  “Fair play!” roared Manuel, his eyes glowing like phosphorus in the dark. The sudden silence let in the chug of machinery, the splashing of the paddle wheel, the swishing of water. Every eye watched the giant Spaniard. Then the game recommenced, and, under Manuel’s burning eyes, continued on into the night.