Black White

 [A Loco León / Black White novelette.] Extracted from Adventure magazine, vol 42.5, September 20, 1923, pp. 3-40. Accompanying title illustration and mini maps may be omitted. A sequel, The Thirty Gang was published in the October 30th issue. And for those who may be interested, some background information is included in the Discussion page.

. . . out stepped a tall man whom I instantly recognized. He was White. He was not dressed in white now, but in a dark suit not so easily seen at night; and he wore no hat. Beyond him in the darkness, though, was something white; something like a robe or a frock. He turned, and for a minute he held this white figure very close. Then the door swung shut, and he started swiftly away down the walk.

Something flashed over the cobbles—a thing that flew like an arrow and glittered like a knife. It struck with a hard thud.

Black White

A complete Novelette
by Arthur O. Friel ⁠

Author of “Tiger River,” “Cat o’ Mountain,” etc.

I

IF YOU will pardon a stranger for intruding upon your talk, señores, I can settle that argument of yours. I mean that I can tell you the whole truth about the matter. Perhaps you will not believe when you have heard that truth, but truth it is.

Gracia’—thank you—I will sit. Tobalito, bring a bottle of ron anciado of Maracaibo from the cantina at the corner, and a paper of cigarrillos—the Emperadores. No, gentlemen; allow me to do the buying. You Americans are not long in Venezuela, and you might be overcharged, while I—the cantineros of this Ciudad Bolívar know better than to try to cheat Loco León. The last one who tried it was three weeks in recovering.

Ha! You smile. Have you already heard of Loco León—Mad Lion? No? My name is Lucio León. But because I roam in wild places where these townsmen dare not go and see things which they do not believe, they have changed Lucio to Loco. I do not care. The laughter of fools is harmless.

Ah, si, I am a Spaniard. You at first thought me an American like yourselves, perhaps, because I am blond? It is a compliment. True, it is odd to find a yellow-haired and blue-eyed Spaniard on this Rio Orinoco, where almost every man is very dark of skin, hair, and eye. I am the only blond Venezolano on all the long Orinoco. Yet that is not so strange as the thing I now shall tell you.

And before I tell it, señores, let me say this: that tomorrow you may go to any one here in Bolívar—to the Banco de Venezuela, to the Royal Bank of Canada, to any house of business—and ask the presidents of them whether Lucio León, called León Loco or Loco León, who once each year brings down his balata rubber from the Alto Orinoco, is a liar. And they will answer that never, in the largest or smallest matter, has León been known to speak false., Then they may smile and add:

“Except when he speaks of things in the unknown mountains of Guayana and the jungles of Rio Negro.”

You may judge for yourselves, señores, whether a man who never has lied to save himself or his money would tell false tales about matters that profit him nothing.

Now you were speaking of that tale which most men here have heard, but which is new to you strangers—that of El Blanco Negro, or Black White; the man of mystery who roams like a lost soul through the Guayana mountains south of here, and who never is seen by any man except the Indians who live there. You said, Mr. Davis, that it was “all bunk,” which, I think, means you do not believe a word of it. And you, Mr. Seabury, said that——

Pardon? Oh, yes, I know your names: I know all about you. You came in on the last Delta, you are going up the Rio Caroní—a bad river, too, señores—to hunt gold and diamonds, but your guns are held in customs and you must wait here until Presidente Gomez telegraphs from Caracas to release them. How do I know? Ha! Everybody knows. When a North American comes in here every one learns everything about him. All the world watches and listens and tells.

But you were saying, Mr. Seabury, that the story of Black White was not only possible but probable; that you have heard that a man named White did come into Venezuela years ago, and went up the Orinoco, and disappeared; and that perhaps he liked the wild life so well, or found some Indian girl so attractive, that he “went native,” as you call it. Now it happens that you have hit something near the truth, but yet not the truth. And I, who saw the beginning and the ending, will tell you all.

It was—let me see, what is the year? One forgets. Ah yes, nineteen twenty-two. It was, then, six years ago when I first saw White. I had brought down my balata from the Rio Padamo, and settled my last year’s trade account at Blum’s store here on the Calle Orinoco, and now, after traveling hundreds of leagues in boats, I wished to harden my legs again. So, while I was eating my cena here at this hotel, I decided that later I would walk up and down these steep Bolívar streets for the good of my muscles, as well as to see what I might see. I was just finishing my coffee and beginning to smoke another cigarrillo, when in came the man White.

I was sitting at that little table just there, señores, where I sat tonight and overheard your talk about him. At this table, where we now are, ate an Englishman whom I knew but did not speak to—a heavy man who drank too much and whose eyes were too close together; he was manager of an English trading-store which now is gone from Bolívar, and his name was Lord. I was thinking of matters up the river and looking out into this little patio beyond the rail, when the voice of the man Lord jarred on me like the sudden roar of an areguato—the big red howling monkey.

“Well, it’s about time!” he said. “What’s the delay about? Got a new one to kiss in the corner?”

Then I saw White. He was swinging along past the tables, dressed in white from soft collar to rubber-soled shoes, carrying his white helmet in one hand, and laughing at Lord’s bawl. My first thought was that he was the most handsome man I had ever seen. My second was that he was an Englishman like Lord—probably because he was coming to Lord’s table and because of the helmet. Only new-come Englishmen or Americans wear helmets here. We Venezolanos use our sombreros of straw or felt.

But when White slid into his chair and mocked the Englishman I decided he was not English. He made too much fun of the English way of speaking.

“Wot say, old nut?” he drawled. “Why all the bally rumpus? Cahn’t a chappy come a bit late to tea——”

Lord broke in with a snort.

“Bah! You —— Americans, with your stage-English twaddle!” he said.

White laughed loud and slapped the table. And he said:

“Got your goat again so soon? You ought to leave it in the store, you old rummy. And don’t roar out such embarrassing questions at a virtuous young man. It isn’t sportin’, y’know. My word!”

This time it was Lord that laughed. He leaned back and gurgled so that I thought he was choking. Then he got out:

“Virtuous! Haw-haw-haw! You virtuous? Hee-hee-hee—I’ll tell Felicia that one tonight—haw-haw! But jokin’ aside, White, you’re headin’ into trouble if you’re not careful. Mercedes and Rosita are jealous, and a jealous woman down here is likely to be the ——, y’know. Two of ’em are two ——. And——”

“Oh, they can both go jump in the river, for all I care,” White cut him off. “Now shut up and let me eat in peace.”

Lord did shut up, except to chuckle now and then, and went on with his own eating. White sat just where you are now, Mr. Davis, facing toward me; and while he was waiting for his soup I studied him, while pretending not to notice him at all.

He was a striking man; tall, and strongly shaped; with curly dark hair, big blue eyes with long lashes, and splendid white teeth which gleamed now and then as if he were thinking of a joke. The dark hair and blue eyes seemed odd together, but yet they made him all the better looking. His jaw was well set and his lips full and good-humored, making him look much more manly than the eyes. But the most handsome thing about him, I think, was his skin.

It was as clear and clean a skin as that of a baby—a girl baby. Never have I seen anything like it on living man, or woman either—it was such a soft, glowing skin as one sees only in the colored pictures sometimes given away on calendars by Blum’s store. It seemed too fine to be real. Somehow I felt that he must take very good care of it—almost too much care for a man to devote to himself. And as I glanced over his clothes this feeling grew.

His suit was almost too free from wrinkles, too perfect in fit. His bow tie seemed a little too exact, his shoes a trifle too snugly tied. I noticed, too, that he sat with legs forward and feet a little apart, so that he would neither cause his trousers to grow baggy nor soil his silk socks with shoe-sole or heel. And then, as I glanced at the helmet he had laid on an empty chair, I saw that it was very wide; it looked as if bought to give his skin all possible protection from sunburn.

My first admiration for him began to grow cool.

“He is a traveler for some large company in the United States,” I thought. “Probably he has had to come around from Caracas on some business and will leave by the next steamer. A —— among the women, without doubt. Soon he will return to his country and tell his friends about his adventures in the ‘wilds of the Orinoco,’ all of which happened in the electric-lighted, police-guarded city of Bolívar. Caramba! What would he do if he ever really found himself in the wilds?”

A moment later I decided that one of my guesses was good but others were bad. The señora, who runs the hotel, brought him several letters.

“Some mail for you, Mr. White,” she said. “The Delta came in today, you know.”

“Good!” he cried, glancing at the envelopes. “Thank you, señora. I didn’t expect anything just yet, but I’ll bet this is what I’ve been waiting for. Now let’s see.”

There were three long white envelopes, and two small square ones which were light gray. He scowled in a puzzled way at the last two, then threw them on the table and ripped open one of the big white ones. I saw that the gray envelopes were covered with lines and writing, where old addresses had been changed to later ones.

Lord fixed his eyes on those letters and grinned, but said nothing. White read rapidly through all the others, which seemed to be letters of business.

“Aha! Now we’re off!” he said, carefully folding them and slipping them into a pocket. “That’s the dope I needed. Now I can sail for the Caura, where the bean does the tango and the balata balls its tar.”

I nearly dropped my cigarrillo. This girl-skinned man going to the Caura? I knew the Caura, where both the tonca-bean and the balata grow, and I knew it was bad. It flows into the Orinoco, señores, from those same wild Guayana hills of which I have spoken—the land called by the Indians “Parima,” which' means “high falling waters,” or cataracts. Its mouth is not far from here—about forty leagues—and its lower part, running through the open sabana country, is not very difficult; but the balata and the serrapia—tonca bean—grow only in the upper part, and there the river becomes wicked with raudales—or, as you call them, rapids. And the mosquitoes—I looked at White’s wonderful skin and concluded that he must be joking, or else that he knew not what he did.

Lord said something which I do not remember, then pointed at the unopened mail.

“Those can wait,” White said carelessly, and went to eating.

But soon, as if tired of seeing the gray envelopes there, he ripped them with a fork and opened up the folded sheets inside. After reading a few words he scowled again and flipped over the pages to look at the name signed.

“Oh!” he said, as if remembering. And then: “Ho, ho!” as if something was funny.

Turning back to the beginning, he read straight through the letter. Then he went through the second one. Long before he had finished he was scowling again as if annoyed.

“Oh, rats!” he snapped when he was through. “No chance!”

“She loves him no more,” said Lord in a deep voice, trying to look solemn.

“No more? Huh! Too much! Here, look at ’em.”

White tossed the letters over. Lord hesitated, then said, “Oh, all right,” and began reading. Soon his mouth turned down.

“Hm. Yes. The old stuff,” he said soon. “Those who dance must pay the fiddler.”

White looked a little sober, but then he laughed in an impatient way.

“How can I help it now?” he complained. “Marrying won’t do any good. If a fellow had to marry all the girls that—well, you know. Anyway, I’m thousands of miles away from there. I should worry!”

“Of course,” Lord nodded. “Just as well for you, p’r’aps, that you’re here now, y’know. You can lie doggo while it blows over. How is the—ah—law in your country about that sort o’ thing?”

“Law? Humph! Nothing to worry about. She’d never take it to law. She’s the proud sort—go away and hide somewhere instead of raising a row. I’m sort of sorry, but—it’s all in a lifetime. Let’s forget it.”

And he resumed eating as if his appetite was all the better.

II

IDECIDED that I did not like White. I had long known that I did not like Lord. So I arose and went to my room, got my hat and walked out on the streets to see what amusement I could find.

I soon found some, for it was well known about town that I had brought down a good cargo of balata and had plenty of money; so it was not long before I was met by men who were very friendly and invited me to gamble. I did gamble, and spent a pleasant and profitable evening. When at last I tired of the game it was very late and the town very quiet. I said buen’ noche’ to my friends, who answered rather sourly—you see, I had kept all my own money and won from them six morrocotas, which in your money is one hundred twenty dollars of gold.

Then I went out into the bright moonlight and started for the hotel, walking in the middle of the street, as is wise when one has won in a gambling game and shadows are thick beside walls and under trees.

But the night was so cool and clear that I felt like walking on and on. And walk I did, leaving the Paseo and climbing up the Calle Libertad, and passing around by the cuartel to look at the soldiers sitting on guard all in a row, and so on down and around the hill. Then my legs said: “Enough!” So I swung back to Calle Libertad, still walking in the middle of the street.

The moon now was well over to the west, and half the street was very bright and half quite dark, except at the corners where the electric lights burned. The cobblestones began to hurt my feet. So, having seen no sign that I was being followed or waited for, I stepped to the smooth sidewalk on the shady side and swung on down it, walking on the curb, watching doorways, and making no sound with my well-worn alpargatas.

All at once I saw, in a doorway a little ahead, something move. I stopped short and loosened my poniard. The figure crouching there did not move again, but I saw its projecting head, watching. As I looked fixedly at it I saw also that it was watching, not me, but the house across the street. It came to me that the watcher did not know I was there.

Beside me was an empty doorway. In two steps I was within it. I know my way about this town, and I was quite sure that the house being watched was that of General—I will not speak the name here; but it is that of a man very high in power, who has—or had—the most beautiful daughter in Bolívar. Whether he himself was being awaited at this late hour by some assassin, or whether something else was afoot, I did not know. Neither did I care. But I was curious. So I waited.

I stood there hidden for perhaps half an hour. Nobody passed. Nothing happened. Then, slowly and silently, the door of the watched house moved open. A head came out, looked quickly up and down the street, the moonlight striking into its eyes. The door swung wider, and out stepped a tall man whom I instantly recognized. He was White.

He was not dressed in white now, but in a dark suit not so easily seen at night; and he wore no hat. Beyond him in the darkness, though, was something white; something like a robe or a frock. He turned, and for a minute he held this white figure very close. Then the door swung shut, and he started swiftly away down the walk.

Something flashed over the cobbles—a thing that flew like an arrow and glittered like a knife. It struck with a hard thud. White staggered, threw out his arms, and collapsed.

I came out. The lurking figure in the doorway down the hill also had sprung forth, and was starting toward the motionless man.

“Alto ahí!” I commanded, speaking low.

The other halted as if paralyzed. Even when I walked up to him he made no move to fight or run, but stood with face drawn and big brown eyes wide and glassy.

I recognized him—a young fellow of good family, hardly more than a boy, called Paquito; a lively young rogue, usually full of deviltry, but not at all bad. I was much astonished.

“Paquito? It is you?” I asked. “You have become a thrower of the knife? What means this thing?”

He swallowed, and his eyes became less large.

“Ah, Loco León!” he muttered. “I did not know you. It is—it is my sister.”

“Oh!” I said. “I did not know you had a sister. Her name?”

“Mercedes. This Norte Americano has——”

“Say no more,” I broke in. “But your sister does not live here, in the house of the general. Why have you come here?”

“I followed,” he whispered, staring at the still figure on the sidewalk and beginning to tremble. “I could not—I could not quite do it when he went in—my hand shook. So I have waited.”

I looked at him, and at the man he had struck down, and at the doorway through which White had just come—now shut and blank. I thought of what Lord had said, and of the words of White—that a girl named Mercedes could jump into the river for all he cared. And I thought also of the proud general and his beautiful daughter. And then White moved.

One of his arms began to twitch on the stones. He was not dead. I jumped to him, looked closely at him, and then pulled a keen-pointed knife from the left shoulder of his coat.

“Paquito,” I said, rising, “you are a poor knife-thrower, and you may be glad of it. Your knife flew high and turned, so that the haft hit him over the ear. Then it fell, and the point caught in his coat without cutting him. You are very lucky, for it is not well to kill a foreigner on the streets of this town. Now follow this knife, and never throw it again at a man—until you can throw like this.”

With that I swung my arm, and the poniard went chuck! into the middle of a telephone pole several varas away. Then I gave Paquito a shove. He fled to the pole, jerked the blade from it, and disappeared around the next corner.

I turned back to White just in time to find him rising with eyes full of rage. He swung a fierce blow at me. I dodged, and for a minute I was kept dodging, for he came after me with both fists flying. Then I became a little angry; I am not accustomed to being attacked without fighting back.

“Stop it, you fool!” I snapped. “Do you wish to wake the general with your noisy feet?”

It was the best thing I could have said. He stopped short, his eyes darting to the closed door.

“Now listen, hombre,” I went on. “I am not the man who knocked you down. I know who did, but I shall not tell you here. I go to the hotel, and I advise you to go there too, at once. From what I have seen, you should not linger here.”

He stood glaring at me, and his eyes were not girlish now; there was something infernal in them. But he did not strike at me again.

“Who are you?” he demanded, his voice low but hard. “Somebody’s spy?”

“No.”

I began walking away toward the hotel. He followed promptly, and closely. As soon as we turned the corner he spoke again. “Listen, you!” he ordered. “You’ve got some explaining to do, and you’d better do it quick. Right here and now!”

“Very well,” I said. “Perhaps it is better. The hotel has ears.”

And I told him just what I had seen and how I had happened to see it. But I mentioned no names—neither that of Paquito nor of Mercedes, nor that of the daughter of the general. The knife was thrown, I said, by a relative of a young woman who felt herself wronged.

“As for me,” I ended, “I am Lucio León of the Alto Orinoco, and I have no interest in you. Ask anyone here tomorrow whether Lucio León, called Loco, is a spy. Buen’ noche’.”

“Bah! Every one of you —— Venezuelans is a spy!” he growled. “Now who’s this woman you say is gunning for me?”

“If I were the spy you think, I might answer that question for a price,” I told him. “But you get no name from me. And if you do not like us —— Venezuelans, the sooner you leave our country the better for you. Again I bid you good night.”

He moved as if to stop me, but I looked him straight in the eye and he put no hand on me.

“Say, you talk straight,” he admitted grudgingly. “And you don’t look like a sneak, either. Well, I’m much obliged.”

I walked away and left him there.

A little later, as I was undressing in my room, I heard him go quietly past my door. When I ate breakfast the next morning he was still sleeping, and I saw him only once in the following days—being late at meals seemed to be his habit, and I was in the hotel only at meal-times or late at night. When I did see him he looked just as on that first night, except for a lump over the left ear; and he gave no sign of ever having seen me before.

I heard, though, as one hears many things here in town, that he really was going to the Caura, in order to investigate and report on the extent of the serrapia and balata forests there; that he was doing this for some big company which might lease a concession from the government if the prospects were rich enough, and that he himself was not an employe of that company, but an official of it, and was thought to be wealthy. He had chartered a launch and picked a good crew, and so should have a safe journey, people said.

I knew well enough that if he was to make a thorough survey of the Caura country he could not do it in any launch—he would have to forsake the gas-boat and rely on canoes and paddlers and guides of the Indians. But I said nothing. It was not my business, and I was not his friend. I was only a “—— Venezuelan.”

Then he was gone. I heard nothing of any trouble about women, or about any other thing. With his launch and his crew and his gun and maps and mosquito-nets and broad hat and beautiful skin, he was gone up the Orinoco.

My respect for him, which had been very small, increased a good deal when I learned that he had actually started for those wild lands. Whether I liked him or not, I had to admit that he was not afraid; and in a fearless man many other things can be overlooked. Yet I wondered whether he knew just how hard a task he had set for himself.

No word came back, except that brought by the master of a piragua bringing down rubber. He reported seeing a lancha rushing up the river, and was curious to know what party it carried. The next down-bound trader had no news of any gas-boat, so we knew it had turned into the Caura.

And that, señores, was the last time White or his crew, or even the launch that carried them, ever was seen on the Orinoco.

NOW, unless you gentlemen know how we make the balata rubber—and hardly any one does, except those who handle it—perhaps I should explain a little, so that you may understand more clearly what is to come. Everything about it is different from the work of collecting the more common rubber, which here is called caucho and in Brazil is named seringa. It comes from a different tree, grows in a different kind of country, is collected at a different time of year, is treated in a different way, and is used for a different purpose. Also, it sells for a different price, and that is why we collect it.

As you probably know, our Alto Orinoco is near Brazil, and the country there is much like Brazil—not open sabana, as here, but jungle; and there grows the caucho, along the river itself and in the bush round about. We used to work the caucho, but for several reasons we do so no more. First, the price fell. Second, the Orinoco is a man-killing river in its upper part, full of huge boulders and dangerous raudales which have smashed many a boat and swallowed many a man; so it is not worth while to bring out rubber for small money. Third, very few people now are left alive there, because of the killings by the murderer Tomás Funes and his army of cutthroats, from 1913 to 1921.

You can travel for many a long league in the Rio Negro country—that is what we call the Orinoco in the Territorio de Amazonas, because the only town in that territory, San Fernando de Atabapo, is on an ink-black river—you can paddle for many a day, I say, and see on the banks only empty palm huts and overgrown clearings. Ask what they are, and you will be told, “Old caucho camps.” Ask where the caucheros are now, and the answer is, “Killed by Funes.” The few of us who are left alive in that country do not bother with the caucho. We go after the balata.

The caucho grows in flooded lowlands, and its milk is collected in the dry season. The balata grows in the mountains, and can be worked only in the time of heavy rains. The gum of the caucho is rolled on a stick and smoked over a fire. That of the balata is boiled down in huge pans. The caucho rubber is used for many things with which you are familiar. The balata is tougher, and from it is made belting for machines, insulation for wires, and such things, for which the caucho is not so good. No, señor, the balata is not sent largely to your United States—almost all of it is bought in England.

Now, because the balata grows in the mountains only, and the only balata-growing mountains we have are those of the Parima region, we who would work it must leave our dangerous Orinoco and journey up the still more dangerous rivers flowing out of these mountains; more dangerous, because they are even more rocky and have fierce currents. There are very few of us, as I have said, who do this work in the Alto Orinoco country; and of those few all but I, Loco, the Madman, live in San Fernando de Atabapo and send out Indian scouts to hunt for new districts each year. I do my own scouting, because——

Pardon? Why do we not tap the same trees each year? Because, señor, we do not “tap” the trees at all—we cut them down. So when we have worked a district once we have killed it. Wasteful, you say? Suicidal? Perhaps. But, señor, we live only while we may and we take all we can get while we live. What do we care for the years to come? We shall be dead then. And in this business it is every man for himself.

As I said, I do my own scouting, because Indians will not always tell you about all they find. What I myself have seen, that I know. I can not see clearly through another man’s eyes. Furthermore, I will not live in San Fernando—I do not like it. Every foot of its ground is soaked with human blood. Its very air is poisonous. So when other balata men are spending the dry season there drinking up their money, I am out in the wilds cruising about for new finds. You gold-seekers would call it “prospecting,” and so it is—only I prospect for trees instead of gold.

Now in this year of which I am telling you, I had worked out my district on the Padamo and decided not to hunt for another on that river. One reason for this decision was that the Guaharibos, the fierce savages who hold the country in which the Orinoco rises, had been growing troublesome in the neighborhood of the Padamo, and I knew that the next year they would be worse. I have a way of getting along well with most Indians—else I could not work balata, for all my men are Indians—but with those Guaharibos no man can get along. They are killers.

Besides this, I had tired of the Padamo country and had decided to prospect up the Rio Ventuari, which enters the Orinoco not many days above San Fernando: a river little known even to us men of Amazonas, and, I am very sure, known not at all to any one else, except the Indians who live there. That upland country is the homeland of the Maquiritares, with whom I have long been friendly. They had told me that on the Ventuari was balata. So now I headed for the Ventuari.

It was not until some time after White had left Bolívar that I began my long return up the river. As I come down only once a year, when I do come I make my stay here a holiday. I purposely remain until I am so tired of the town that I hate the sight and sound and smell of it; then it is a pleasure to leave it, and it is long before I crave to come back. That was what I did now. And when at length I sickened of town life I had my next year’s supplies loaded into my piragua, spread her sails to the east wind, and left this place behind at the rate of twenty leagues a day.

I had almost forgotten about White. Nothing about him had come to my ears, or about any of the girls he knew. Young Paquito avoided me, perhaps fearing that I might tell something about him—though he need not have worried. By the way, I never saw him after that night when he threw the knife; he was drowned a few months later, being caught out here on the river by a chubasco—a fierce squall—which capsized his canoe in midstream. Some caimán got him, no doubt. He has never been found.

When I passed the Caura mouth, though, I thought of White long enough to ask if any of the crew had heard news or gossip about the Americano. None had. So I forgot him again. He who sails his piragua up the Orinoco when the floods are past and the water growing shallow, as it was then, has plenty of things to think about.

We had steady wind while going west, as usual, and after turning south we got strong gusts from the hills as far as the Raudal de San Borje, beyond the mouth of the Colombian river Meta. Then the breeze grew light and uncertain, as it always does there; and with the dying of the wind we were attacked in earnest by the swarming little mosquitoes which are the curse of the Orinoco above the first raudales, and which we call la plaga—the plague. From sunrise to sundown these little demons are torturing the skin and sucking the blood; and at nightfall out comes the larger black zancudo de noche, whose bite is poisonous.

Here we could travel only slowly. Yet, by taking advantage of every short burst of breeze or by putting out the anchor ahead and hauling on the rope, we worked safely through all the bad places to Atures. Through this raudal of Atures no boat can go, for it is muy maluco—very bad. As usual, I had my supplies carted around the raudal by the oxen kept there for the purpose; loaded it into another piragua above, and went on, my men poling along the banks, as there is no wind above Atures and the up-river piraguas have no masts. We got through the other bad places in the regular way—poling or hauling—to the Raudal de Maipures, where we had to use ox-carts again and board a third piragua at the upper end of the portage, as is customary.

I was now in the Rio Negro country, and as Funes had garrisons of his murder-army at both Atures and Maipures—places of about six houses each—I had to give all the Bolívar news to his gangs. In return I was assured that no order to kill me had yet gone out, although it was known I had money, and no man with money was safe in the territory of Funes. I have never known just why the man let me live so long, unless it was to allow me to make more money before my turn came, so that he would profit all the more by my death. He intended to have me murdered in time, for after he himself was shot my name was found on one of his lists of men to be executed. But in that year when I was going to the Ventuari no plan to end me was known.

So I went on, and reached San Fernando, and talked a while with Funes himself. He was in very good humor that day—he had shot two brothers with his own hand that morning—and all went well between us. The next day I transferred my supplies once more, changing from the piragua to the long curial—dugout canoe—which I always use above San Fernando. And three days later I was at the Raudal de Santa Barbara, which is also the mouth of the Ventuari.

Now this raudal of Santa Barbara is a great bay full of islands, and a very confusing place to get through. I knew the Orinoco part of it well enough, having passed through it time after time while journeying up or down. And now I had only to bear to the north until I had passed from the part which I knew into that which I did not know, and then keep working against the current, in order to reach the new river. Less than half a day of this brought me out of the maze of islands and into the boca del Ventuari.

The river surprized and delighted me. Rocks were there, of course, and we met small raudales, but had not much trouble in passing through them; and the river was wide and sunny, with cool breezes sweeping down from the mountains which we could not yet see, and a marvelous amount of fish and game in the greenish water or the tree-tangle along the banks.

Tapirs swam along unafraid; peccaries came down in file to drink; monkeys of every kind, from the great red areguato howler to the pretty little mono tití, ran along the branches and watched us. Big black-and-white ducks—the pato real—floated along within stone’s throw; pavas, or wild peacocks, stood and stared at us; and by day and by night we heard along both banks the soft, mournful notes of the pauji, or wild turkey, which is always moaning, “Mi muert’ est aquí.”^[1] At sundown the edges of the sandy playas were alive with pabón and other big fish, splashing about in the shallows as they fed.

With all this fine food waiting to be taken, we lost little time in hunting or fishing. The water, too, had fallen so far that my men could pole most of the time instead of paddling, thus traveling faster and becoming less tired. So, though the current still was strong, we made good headway each day.

We journeyed several days before we met men. Every day we saw signs of men—a pole tripod where a tapir had been roasted, a tiny rancheria among the trees where Indians had camped while fishing, a few charred butt-ends of sticks, and such things—but nothing of the men themselves. This did not surprize me, for I knew that the Indians of this river were very wary by nature and had become much more so since the Funes gang had been in control at San Fernando; the Indians soon learn of such things, and when they know we Venezuelans are killing one another along the Orinoco they move still farther away from it and its tributaries.

From the freshness of some of the signs we found, I suspected that the men who made them had departed only a little while before we arrived, and that if I should beat the bush for them, or go up some of the small caños opening into the main river, I should find them. But I suspected also that if I acted as if hunting them they would decide my intentions were evil and fill us all with arrows or poisoned darts—for some of those Ventuari Indians are fighters, and all of them use the blowgun and that curare poison which kills surely and swiftly. I wished to meet some Indians, but not in that way. I wanted to make friends of them and then to get rid of my present crew.

These men were of San Fernando. They were good rivermen, and for my Orinoco traveling they were the best men to be had: for the Indians who work the balata for me will not go down the big river—when the gum is collected they take their payments of beads, machetes, knives, and such things, and then go back by their own ways to their homes in the unknown uplands. Also, the Orinoco between San Fernando and Bolívar is to be traveled only by rivermen who know every bad spot and how to go through or around it, and these things the men of the mountains do not know.

Now that I was in the Ventuari, however, my San Fernando mestizos were useful to me only as polers or paddlers, for they knew even less about this river than I. Worse yet, I knew that as soon as they returned to their town they would drink and tell everybody all they knew about my movements up here in the hills. That did not suit me at all.

So I watched for Indians and saw none. Dawn after dawn we awoke at the first paling of the sky, aroused by the hoarse rattling call of the hump-backed, needle-beaked black corocoro birds, which came flying through the morning mists to begin their daily boring for slugs in the clay of the river-banks. Day after day we wormed from side to side of the winding stream, following the right depths for poling and avoiding both the shallows over sandbanks and the deep holes which meant paddle-work. Night after night we hung our hammocks from the trees or lay under the stars on some dry playa, undisturbed by either tigre or caimán—for the big hunting-cats are few along the Ventuari, and the only crocodile is the little babicho, which is harmless to all but small creatures. And the men who lived in the Ventuari country we neither saw nor heard.

Then, on a hot forenoon when we had shot no game because we had more than enough cooked meat left over, we approached a noisy raudal. Below it opened a heavily forested, steep-walled caño. And out from this opening in the bank suddenly shot another canoe.

IV

THREE well-grown young Indians were in the dugout, paddling lustily and laughing at some joke among themselves. We had been working quietly along beside the bank, expecting no such meeting, and the abrupt appearance of that boat startled us.

They were more astounded than we. Their arms stopped in air as if paralyzed. My men stood like statues. The current took us both and carried us slowly down-stream together.

“Buen’ dia’,” I said then.

The three watched us a couple of minutes, saying no word. Then, seeing that none of us made a threatening move, they slowly grew more loose of muscle. After another minute one answered—

“Buen’ dia’.”

The others looked as if they did not understand. But since one of them could speak Spanish it made no difference to me whether his mates could or not. I asked where they went.

“To shoot fish,” the first told me.

Glancing back, I saw that we were nearing a playa which we had passed a few minutes before. So I drew out a paper of cigarrillos and suggested that we stop at the sand and smoke. They seemed doubtful, but when I lit a cigaret and they caught the smell of the tobacco they decided to accept. Keeping their distance, they grounded a little below us. But they would not land until I told them that if they would have their smokes they must come and get them. Then the one who spoke Spanish slowly got out and came forward. The other two stuck to their canoe, keeping their hands on their bows and fish-arrows.

I gave the brave one three cigarets, and a little box of matches, which are very precious to an Indian. Then I told my own men to take a bath at the other end of the playa. A fine breeze was blowing, so that the mosquitoes were not at all bad, and they jumped at the chance. As I expected, the Indians gained confidence in me when they saw my men leave their guns behind and go bathing at a distance. And when I walked unarmed to their canoe, they took their hands from their weapons and settled down to enjoy their smokes.

With one eye on my mestizos, I questioned them. The one who could talk to me did not know much Spanish, but I learned that they were Macos, lived at the head of the caño from which they had come, and were much afraid that we were men of Funes. I had heard something of the Macos; that they were a small tribe, living on a few caños of this river, who hardly ever came out to the Orinoco; that they were lazy and peaceable, and would much rather run than fight; but that they were one of the two poison-making tribes of Amazonas, the other being the Piaroas, who live in the rough country between the Ventuari and the Orinoco.

They were not very good men for my use, but if I could persuade them to work for me until I could come among the Maquiritares higher up the river, I should at least be free from my loose-mouthed mestizos.

So I told them who I was. My name meant nothing to them, though, and I knew that if they had not heard about me from the Maquiritares it would be worse than useless to say I was hunting for balata. That would only set them against me, for they would think I planned to come in with an armed gang and make slaves of them to work the gum, as has been done many a time along the upper Orinoco.

Saying nothing of rubber, therefore, I told them I went to visit my friends the Maquiritares, but that I did not trust my men, who might be spies of Funes. It would be much better for the Macos, for the Maquiritares, and for me, if these men were sent back here; but I must have men to take me on. Now if the Macos would go with me, I said, a danger would be removed from their country. Also, the Macos could trade some of their curare poison to the Maquiritares, who would be glad to get it. And I, on reaching the Maquiritares, would pay each Maco of my crew with a fine new machete, with its red paint, still on the blade.

They watched me like cats. Then they talked it over and shook their heads. The one who could speak to me said they worked for no man. They did not need to take curare to the Maquiritares, for the Maquiritares would come to them for it. I said no more. I walked to my canoe, picked up my machete—a new one, little used—and brought it back. I stuck it in the sand, squatted, and smoked a new cigarrillo.

My mestizos were in no hurry to come back—they were having too good a bath. So there was plenty of time. The Macos could not take their eyes off that machete. Presently they talked more among themselves. Then I added that to each man who went with me and served me well I would give also five boxes of matches.

That was enough. They said they must go and talk with their capitân—chief—about it. They would meet me at this same time and place tomorrow. I told them to bring with them one more man, as I wanted four. Without reply, they pushed out and returned to their caño.

When they had disappeared I called my crew, told them I had decided to take a holiday, and pointed out what seemed to be a good little port just below the raudal, across the river from the creek of the Macos. It proved to be as good as it looked; and there we stayed, napping in our hammocks, smoking, and listening to the musical whistle of the pajaro minero birds, which were many and kept calling to one another across the stream.

The next morning the Macos returned, bringing with them the fourth man—an older, heavier, and stronger-looking fellow than any of the first three—and I saw at once that they were ready to go with me; for they carried big-game arrows as well as those for fish, a lance, a couple of blowguns, and a large basket full of the little bottle-shaped gourds in which the curare poison is carried by hunters.

After some more talk I bought their curial from them, paying in knives. This canoe I loaned to my surprized mestizos—who had not suspected what I meant to do—and, after giving them an order on a San Fernando trader for their pay, I sent them away in it. When they were gone the Macos looked relieved, and I felt more relieved than they looked.

Now that they had decided to go, my Indians proved willing enough. They were not good polers, but with the paddle they seemed tireless. We crawled on up the river for several days more, passing through small raudales at times, but finding none which gave us much trouble. Then we met one which stopped us dead.

It was more than a rapid—it was a fall, fifty feet or more in height. Its name is Quencua, or Tencua, and it is the real beginning of the bad country of the Parimas. From shore to shore runs a wall of rock, and over the wall plunges the river in roaring white. Below the fall is a long sluice of jagged rocks and raving water. The only way to pass this place is to go around it, over steep ground and through dense forest.

Now my Macos told me that from this place upward they never had traveled by water, and that only one of them—the fourth one—had ever been beyond here by land. The Maquiritares, they said, sometimes came down in canoes, but not often, as they found it easier and safer to walk for days through the open sabana country which lay behind the tree-grown shores.

From what the Maquiritares had told them, they knew that the river above Quencua was very bad. It was divided up by many islands, among which were channels full of jagged rocks, any one of which would split a dugout like an ax; and the currents were swift and treacherous, snatching any man wrecked among them and dashing him to death on the stony fangs awaiting him.

If one should pass safely up through this place, he then would meet the cataract of Oso, higher and worse than that of Quencua; for this is three falls, one above another. Beyond this was raudal after raudal, with the greatest and worst one in all the river higher up—that of Monoblanco. And beyond that—they did not know.

Since that time, señores, I have passed all the way up and down the Ventuari by canoe, in flood time and in the season of low water. By that I do not mean that I have gone over those falls; nothing goes over them and lives. But I have traveled the river between fall and fall, from source to end. And it is even worse than the Macos told me. He who rides on the waters of the Ventuari rides with Death.

So it was no place for me to attempt forcing a heavily loaded curial onward just then, especially with a crew which did not know the river and feared it. I was just deciding to have my men build a house in which I could store my supplies, and then to go on by land, when the Spanish-speaking one let drop some words about balata near by. Pretending not to be interested, I laughed at him. No balata grew here, I said; this river was good for nothing but fish and game. In his mild manner he insisted that he spoke truth. And finally, when I bet him a long bright belt-knife that he could show me no balata worth looking at, he was eager to prove that he was no liar.

He won his knife. And in winning it he gave me the price of many knives. The place where the balata grew was on a little caño about three hours’ paddling down-stream, which we had passed without a word and with scarcely a look. It took us a full day’s traveling from Quencua to reach the trees, which were among rocky hills well back from the river. But when I had spent another day in scouting around among them, I knew that this was the place I had been seeking.

Not only was the balata very rich, but near it was the little caño, which in the time of heavy rains would become deep enough to float out the crop with ease. The river then would carry my boats swiftly to the Orinoco, and from its mouth to San Fernando would be only a short trip. I could make a fine little sitio, too, at the mouth of the caño, and, though the mosquitoes were rather troublesome, this would be a far better place to live than in the jungles of the Padamo region. And when this tract was worked out I could undoubtedly find more gum in the rougher country above the falls.

But all this depended on one thing—men. I must have men to work my new-found balata; and I did not want those men to be San Fernando mestizos, who surely would be spies and also might knife me some night while I slept. As always, I wished to work with Indians, and now the problem was to find the Indians. The Macos, I felt sure, would not make good steady workmen, even if they would consent to work at all. The Maquiritares were far up the river. I wondered whether any others could be found nearer at hand.

Of these things, though, I said nothing. Back at the mouth of the caño, I told my men to clear away a little space in the forest which grew thickly there, and to put up a stout hut well thatched with plataní.. When they had done so I had all my supplies moved into it. Then I told them that since the river above was muy maluco, I had decided not to use the canoe for the rest of the trip, and that when we went on we should travel by land. But, I said, my supplies were much too heavy for them to carry overland on their backs. They very quickly agreed that this was so. My friends the Maquiritares, I told them, would come and get these things for me after I reached their country, but I did not like to leave the boxes and bags here so long. Were there any other Indians nearer to us than the Maquiritares?

There were. They were on the Rio Manapiare, a day farther down-stream—a river entering the Ventuari from the north. I remembered it well, for it was the largest stream I had seen coming into this one. They said it was made up of three rivers farther back in the sabana—the Manapiare itself, the Paré, and the Guaviarito. And who lived there? I asked. Good people or bad? Both, I was told.

On the Guaviarito were men of the Piaroas and of the Curachicanos, who were good people. On the Paré lived the Yabaranos, who were peaceable if let alone but fierce fighters if bothered; and the Guayciaros, who were always bad. These Guayciaros lived nearest to a range of hills beyond which was the Caura. Between them and the Ventuari were the Yabaranos.

Thinking this over, I saw that only two of these four tribes could be relied on, if any of them could; the Yabaranos and the Curachicanos. The Piaroas there would be few, for the Piaroa country is farther west, nearer to the Orinoco; and they are not reliable people. The Guayciaros, who were bad and lived near the Caura——

Suddenly the name “Caura” brought to me the memory of White. I wondered where he was, and what fortune he had met.

Then I forgot him again as I thought about the two tribes who might be useful to me. I asked whether they would help the Macos carry my supplies to the Maquiritares—knowing that if they would do such work they probably would also work my balata. But the Macos said, “No.” None of them would do any work for any man—unless, perhaps, the Yabaranos happened to like me. In that case it was just possible that they might.

I decided to visit the Manapiare.

The Macos were slow in consenting to go there, for they did not like the idea of going into the country of people who were known to be fighters and who might be angry at our coming. But neither did they like the thought of burdening themselves with the heavy weights which I let them think they must carry otherwise. So I won them over. The next morning we started, riding light in my empty curial and leaving the boxes and bags in the hidden hut.

We traveled fast down to the mouth of the Manapiare, and at night we slept some distance up the new river. The water here was very shallow now, and we had to twist along among playas, with steep banks on either side. The day-flying mosquitoes were worse here than on the Ventuari, as the breezes went by over the trees; but nothing else troubled us. At dawn the next day we were up, and at sunrise we were off. And we paddled onward until nearly noon before anything happened.

Then, ahead of us, broke out rifle-shots.

V

THREE reports sounded, as fast as a man could work the action of a repeating gun. They came from some place near by, around a turn. After the last shot we heard a cry like that of a man badly hurt. Then came the chunk-chunk-chunk of hard-driven paddles thumping the gunwales of a curial.

My Macos sat frozen. For a moment, so did I. Gunfire up this wild river could mean only one thing—that a man from outside was here. And such fast shooting meant that he was in trouble.

Did I drive my Macos on to help the gunman? I did not. The chances were that he was some tool of Funes, who well deserved killing; and I was not rushing to aid any such man as that. Instead, I took one quick look around, saw what a bad place we were in—walled in by high banks—and, by words and signs, ordered my paddlers to turn and get out of there. They whirled that heavy curial around faster than I had ever before seen such work done, and a few seconds later they were driving like madmen for the Ventuari. Every one of us knew that the approaching canoe must be running from Indians, and that those Indians might be swarming along both the high shores. They would undoubtedly attack us on sight.

Around a bend we surged, and into a long straight stretch with few playas. The Macos stroked so fast that the paddle-beat was a steady drumming. I snatched my gun and bullet-bag from inside the little carroza^[1] and stood up, bracing my feet against the sides of the canoe and resting arms and gun on the cabin roof as I faced backward. The steersman made desperate signs to me not to shoot, as the bullets would pass within an inch or two of his head. I nodded and ordered him to keep working.

We were half-way down the straightaway when the other canoe plowed into sight. I saw that it had three naked brownish paddlers, no cabin, and, in the stern, a queer-looking head of bright red with white spots. That strange head swayed in time with the swift paddle-drive; then became still and looked back. Just before we reached the next turn more canoes came driving into view—several of them, crowding one another closely. From them rose a savage yell and a volley of arrows.

One of the paddlers in the fleeing boat slumped down. The red head drooped, hung steady—then out cracked more shots. The first Indian canoe swerved, slowed, and blocked the others. A couple of splashes told me men were falling overboard.

Why I stopped I do not know, unless it was because I hate to run from a fight. But stop I did. I made my paddlers hold the boat at the turn, and there I stood up straight, watching and waiting. The fighting canoe did not slow up at sight of me; the two remaining Indians in it saw my carroza, my straw sombrero, my blue shirt, and knew I was a traveling blanco. That strange red head, though, started to rise, staring at me with huge yellow eyes, and a gun swung toward me.

My Spanish-speaking man, seeing the inhuman-looking thing, gasped—

“El diablo!”

The others moved as if to jump overboard.

I sharply ordered them to remain where they were. At the same time one of the approaching paddlers hoarsely called back at the red thing—

“Amigos!”

The head sank back, and the arms beneath it began to swing in paddle-strokes.

Back at the turn, the dugouts of the savages were straightening out and again beginning to come on. Having more paddlers than the men they hunted, those pursuers certainly would run down their game in the end unless the first had many bullets. The fact that they came on in the teeth of gunfire showed that they were determined to get that red-headed man at any cost.

The red head came on fast. Now I saw that under it was a thin brown shirt, that the hands gripping the paddle were covered by watersoaked gloves, and that the paddle worked clumsily, splashing as if the man was not skilled in its use. The head was red because it was wrapped in bandanna handkerchiefs; the staring yellow eyes were amber goggles. Of the face I could see nothing at all—the bandannas covered it. But I knew this man was a foreigner. No Venezuelan would wear such things on head and hands.

The Indians looked to be Maquiritares; light-skinned, clean-limbed, intelligent-faced. One of them lay still, a long yellow shaft sticking from between his shoulder-blades.

“Quién es?” I called. “Who are you? Maquiritares?”

“Si!” gasped the bowman. “Y americano—and an American. Quién es uste'?"

“Loco León.”

“Bueno! Fire! Shoot!”

The pair were half-dead from fatigue, but on hearing my name their hard-drawn faces stretched a little in a smile.

That brave little smile went straight to my heart, for, as I have said, the Maquiritares are my friends. The American, I knew, must be White, though I could not imagine how he had come here. But the bullets I promptly began pumping at the following canoes were fired not so much for White as for those brown boys who were giving their lives to save him. I would have done the same thing if no white man had been in their boat.

So, though I knew I was killing forever all chance of making friends on this river, I fired fast but steadily, downing a man with every shot. Yells of rage and screams of death broke out as my heavy bullets knocked the pursuers back against their mates or over the side. Arrows chunked into the water around me. But the canoes slowed again.

As the Maquiritares labored past me and I paused to reload, White turned without a word and again opened fire. Now I saw that he was using a short rifle which looked small and light, but which made smashing reports, showing it had terrible power. Also, I saw that in firing six shots from that gun he hit only one man. Shooting backward from a heaving canoe is not easy; but unless I could handle a rifle better than he did I should have been dead years ago.

Then he was gone around the bend, and I was slamming more of my blunt slugs into the naked men behind. When my old repeater again was empty the canoes were stopped, and not an arrow was coming from them. The Indians were crouching behind their dead or lying prone in the bottoms of their dugouts for shelter. As soon as my last shot was out of the barrel I told my Macos to move the curial out of there. They moved it fast.

While they toiled along through the windings beyond the turn, where several sandbars made slow going of it, I watched back ward with gun ready. We had about cleared the sandy section and reached deeper water before the Indians behind us came into sight again. Then they came in a silent, dogged way, much more slowly than before. Seeing that this was the time to stop them for good, I motioned for my steersman to lie down and poured a stream of bullets into those following canoemen.

They could not stand any more of such fire. They worked back in sudden panic and hid beyond the bend.

We did not see them again. But I had no intention of stopping anywhere on this river, even though the fight was over. I had seen that the men behind us were not easy quitters, and knew they probably would not go back to their up-river homes until they had traveled, by water or by land, all the way to the Ventuari and failed to find us anywhere along their stream. By steady paddling we could reach the Ventuari before sundown and make camp in some place a mile or two up, on the far side. And that was what I meant to do.

My four Macos soon overhauled the exhausted Maquiritares. In fact, the red-swathed White told his men to rest as we approached. When we came alongside those yellow glasses were staring hard at me. Then a muffled chuckle came from under the sweat-soaked handkerchiefs.

“Well, say! You’re the blond chap I met in Bolívar!” said a hoarse voice. “Seems like a thousand years ago. What you doing away up here, hombre?”

“Still spying on you, señor,” I retorted.

Then I looked along his canoe, noting that it held only a battered leather case with some loose cartridges on top, a long canvas bag, and his big helmet. There was no sign of food. The canoe itself was an old thin-shelled dugout.

“Say, Mister Man, I wish you’d forget that remark of mine,” he said, as if angry with himself. “You’re a regular fellow. I was sore that night, but——”

“Let it be forgotten, then,” I broke in. “Is this curial yours?”

“Nope. Grabbed it from those savages. Had to get out quick, and this was the only chance.”

“Where is the rest of your party?”

“All dead.”

“Then leave that canoe and come into mine.” I reached and caught his gunwale.

But he sat still.

“Oh, I don’t know. Might as well keep it, now that I’ve got it. I need it.”

I wasted no more words on him. His Maquiritares were almost done, and the only way to get them and ourselves out of that river quickly was to put all men in one boat. I told the Indians to get aboard. Without a word or a look at him they staggered up, lifted their dead comrade into my curial, and crawled across the gunwales.

“Say, you!” he blazed. “What d’you think you’re doing? Those men are mine!”

“Not now,” I disagreed. “They are their own men, and their people are my friends. Again I ask you to ride in my boat.”

He growled something. Then he laughed shortly.

“Oh, all right. I’d be a jackass to refuse now.”

And he flung his bag, case, gun, hat, and paddle into my boat and stepped in himself. I shoved his boat away and ordered my men to push on. Then I faced back up-stream, on guard against any further attack, though I expected none.

“If you have hunger, there is food in the carroza,” I told him. “Cassava from San Fernando, cheese from Caicara, roasted danta (tapir), and papelón for sweets. Rough fare, but——”

“Rough? Say, hombre, it sounds like Broadway!” he declared. “I ate my last meal last night, and it was rotten.”

With that he crawled inside. The Maquiritares watched him hungrily, but I saw no food come out.

“Feed your men!” I growled.

He muttered something. In a minute or two he began to pass out cassava and meat-chunks to the Maquiritares, who grabbed the food like starved tigres.

It soured me a little, his failure to think of those exhausted men while he himself was eating. Selfish to the core, I thought him. Yet I had to remember that he had asked nothing from me; it had been the Maquiritares who called for my help. He had fought his own fight, hung to his captured canoe until I took his paddlers from him, said nothing of hunger until I invited him to eat. Yes, he was a man, though one who thought of himself first.

For half an hour or more I kept watch behind us. In that time he and his men finished eating, the Maquiritares gained new strength and took up the paddle-stroke of the Macos, and he smoked a cigaret from one of my packets in the cabin. With six paddles going and the current pushing us, we now were fairly rushing down the river and there was little chance of being overtaken. So I let myself down and squatted within the carroza. Then, as I saw what he was doing, I could not help laughing.

I had not expected him to stand and help me keep watch, for the curial was too narrow for more than one man to stand before the cabin, and I was using all the foot-room. But I thought to find him resting at full length on the palm-pole flooring, or inspecting his gun, or looking ahead. Instead, he was intensely interested in his face.

He had hung a little pocket mirror from one of the overhead poles, and, with his bandannas dangling alongside his cheeks and one gloved hand waving away the mosquitoes, he was soberly studying a sore on one cheekbone. It was red and as big as a bolívar—that is, as large as a quarter-dollar of your American money—and I recognized it at once as a bite of the zancudo de noche. The bite of this mosquito, as you señores will learn before you return from the Caroní, makes a very painful sore which later turns rotten, and which leaves a scar long after the flesh has healed. I myself was suffering from two of them at the time, so I knew how his felt.

“You can do nothing for that until it is ripe,” I said. “It is about three days old, yes? Then in three days more it will rot, and you can squeeze out all the matter through the big hole that will form.”

“Does it leave a scar?” he asked quickly.

“Si. Like these.” And I showed him several on my hands.

“The ——” he muttered. “I may be marked for life!”

I stared, wondering what to make of him. He had no thought for the desperate fight he had gone through—only anxiety for his looks. I did not know whether to feel admiration for his coolness or contempt for his self-love.

“Is that why you wrap yourself in those hot handkerchiefs?” I asked.

“Sure,” he nodded. “The helmet and net are cooler, but the net’s an infernal nuisance—can’t see so well through it. So I use the handkerchiefs. Can’t let myself get all bitten up by these —— bugs, of course.”

“Of course not,” I agreed, keeping my face straight. “But now tell me how you come to be on this river. I am much astonished at meeting you here.”

He scowled. For a couple of minutes longer he looked into the little glass, his fingers moving lightly across the hard sore spot as if he could not leave it alone. Yet it seemed to me that the sore was not the only thing in his mind. He looked as if considering how he should answer my question.

Dropping his eyes then to the packet of my cigarrillos which lay open beside him, he picked it up, extended it to me, and, when I had taken one, helped himself. After a few puffs of smoke had driven the mosquitoes from us he spoke out.

VI

“IT’S just a hard-luck story,” said White. “Things have been coming rather rough.

“We went up the Caura until we got smashed in a mess of rocks and white water—a raudal, as you fellows call ’em. Those Bolívar fellows insisted they could drive the launch through it, but they couldn’t. She went back and wrecked herself, and two of the five men went under and stayed under. The rest of us got her off and drifted down with her into smooth water, and we managed to save most of the stuff aboard. We never found the two chaps that drowned. Maybe the crocs down below got ’em.

“Well, then we got canoes and Indians at a place higher up—there’s quite an Indian settlement there, and I stayed there a few days getting dope about the balata and bean country. Then we went along, with Indian guides, until we hit a fierce place where the river does a big tumble; it drops about two hundred feet, I should say, and they call it Salta Para. Know where that is? All right.

“We packed our stuff up around this big fall, and were to go in canoes those Indians keep above it. Got everything packed fine and slept on the bank that night, ready for an early break the next morning. But in the night it rained cats and dogs, and in the morning the river was away up.

“I thought we’d better wait awhile, and so did the Indians. But that know-it-all Bolívar bunch swore we could go on right away, and I let ’em try to prove it. They and the Indians got into the canoes and cast off, while I walked along shore a bit to see how they made out. I was afraid of that river just then, and I’m not ashamed to say so.

“They began making headway all right, and I was just about deciding I’d chance it, when I noticed they were getting farther out all the time. I yelled at them, but they didn’t hear—the falls made a fearful noise down below. Then they woke up to the fact that a current had caught ’em, and they worked like mad, but it was no good. When they tried to head inshore that cur rent got ’em right. The whole shooting-match went over Salta Para.”

“Caramba!” I muttered. “There could have been nothing left of them.”

“Not a thing. I went down as fast as I could leg it, but there wasn’t even a hat.

“Well, I was up against it for awhile. Luckily for me, I hadn’t put my gun or my personal kit aboard, so I still had them. Had my hammock and such stuff in my bag, and matches and cartridges and some other truck in that leather case; but there wasn’t a bite of grub, or anything else.

“Seeing those chaps go over like that, fighting like mad and screeching like lost souls just as they went out of sight—it took all the nerve out of me. I just hung around that old camp a couple of days, moping like a sick owl. Shot some birds to live on, but had to eat ’em half-burned and without salt. Then, just as I was getting ready to start the long hike back down to the Indian quarters, some more Indians suddenly showed up. They came from up-stream.

“There were six of them, and a couple of them could talk Spanish—better Spanish than I can, which isn’t saying much. They acted a bit wild at first, but after they looked me over awhile they decided I was all right, and we got along pretty well. They were from the upper Ventuari—away up, only four or five days’ travel from the Caura—and were going down to visit their friends below Salta Para, where I’d been; it seems they visit back and forth by some short-cut of theirs. Well, after a lot of talk they let out that there was some fine balata country over west a bit, and by promising them a lot of presents I got them to take me over there—thought I’d look it over and then go on down-river with them.”

“Where were you to get those presents for them?” I wondered.

“Oh, there are one or two little settlements out near the Orinoco where I could probably buy such stuff as they’d want, if they’d come out that far; and I still have a few Banco de Venezuela notes on me.

“So we went on up into the balata country—it’s there, all right, and it’s big. Well, then I kept poking along over She hills, keeping these boys with me, and we got into this country on the other side of the divide. I’d made up my mind that as long as I was in here I’d see all I could, though I don’t mind telling you I’ll never come back to Venezuela after I once get out of it. I’ll report my findings to my company and then let some other poor fool develop what I’ve found. These cursed bugs of yours—well, it’s not my kind of a country.

“Anyway, my Indians thought they’d gone far enough, and they wanted to get back to the Caura. But I told them that if they quit they’d get no presents, and if they stayed a little longer I’d give them more, and they stuck. 'Then we met up with those —— Yabaranos, and—here we are.”

I thought a minute. So the men behind were the Yabaranos. And my Macos had said they were peaceable unless aroused.

“Did the Yabaranos attack you on sight?” I asked.

“Well, no. We stayed about three days at their place, getting rested and so on. But this morning they got sore about something or other and started to kill us off. Maybe some of my Indians did something they didn’t like. Anyway, we had to rush a canoe and get out. They killed two of my men before we could, get away, and two more on the way down the river. Maybe they’d have gotten the rest of us if you hadn’t shown up. It was mighty decent of you, old chap, to pitch in and help. How on earth did you get here? You were in Bolívar when I left.”

I told him I was roving around and looking for balata. Then I picked up my gun and got outside as if to watch behind us again. I wanted to do a little thinking without being talked to. And, leaning on the cabin roof as before, I thought.

I liked his off-hand way of telling his tale, and I admired his pluck in sticking to his work in spite of everything. Truly, one can not always judge a man by his face or his clothes. But the last part of his story—about the Yabaranos—did not ring true in my mind.

He had not looked me in the eye when he half-blamed the Maquiritares for the trouble. And I know the Maquiritares. Some trouble-makers can be found among them, as among any other people; all of them can fight wickedly if their wrath is aroused; but as a race they are good-humored, laughing much among themselves, and not at all the sort of people to stir up a fight. Besides, there had been only six of them, visiting a whole tribe of Yabaranos. For them to cause any trouble where they were so badly outnumbered would be the act of fools. And the Maquiritares are very far from being fools.

Thinking of all this, I decided that later on I would ask the Maquiritares for their side of the story. And that night I did so.

We thumped steadily on down the stream, and for a long time I stood where I was. White remained in the cabin—there was nothing else for him to do—and after awhile I looked in to find him asleep.

We reached the Ventuari even sooner than I expected, and at dark we were camping in a snug little port three miles up on the south side. Not once had I seen or heard anything more of the Yabaranos. Except myself, every man was very tired. Yet, after a bath and a cold meal, the Indians silently dug with paddles and machete a good grave for the dead man whom we had brought with us. And White did something that rather surprized me. He stood looking down at the grave a minute and then said farewell.

“Adios, amigo,” he said soberly. “I’m sorry. You stuck from start to finish with never a whine. No matter how rough it came, you always carried on. You were clear grit. And that goes for the other three boys we had to leave behind us.”

Then he turned and walked away. And not another word did he speak that night.

The Indians looked after him, then at me. I told them what he had said. They nodded slowly. Then I quietly told them to come with me. The shore of the little port was a sandy slope, and we walked away along it, squatted, and talked low.

I asked first what they knew of me, Loco León. They said my name was known among them, from the Padamo to the Caura, as that of a buen hombre. That was well, I told them. And what did they know of the Yabaranos? Were they friends of the Maquiritares?

They had been friends, they said. The Yabaranos never came up into the Maquiritare hills, but the Maquiritares sometimes passed through the Yabarano country while roving about, and there had been no enmity. Then why did the Yabaranos now attack the Maquiritares?

The pair did not answer at once. Then one said—

“Because of the white man.”

“Tell me how it came about,” I requested.

“It was thus, Loco:

“We rested three days at their tribe-house on the Guaviarito. They were kind. But the women liked the face of the blanco. A tall young woman often came near him. He talked with her. Her man was away on a hunt.

“We Maquiritares slept in the big house, with the unmarried men. The blanco slept outside, in a little house made for him. Last night the moon was bright. It was late. The dogs barked loud. Men went to look. They saw the tall woman leave the house of the blanco and run to her little window. She crept in. It became quiet.

“The Yabaranos do not like such things. The men talked. When day came we told the blanco we all must go. We made ready. Men came and told us we must stay. The blanco must stay until the man of the tall woman came in. Then the two should settle about whose woman she was.

“The blanco was angry. He did not want the woman. He would go when he liked. He would go now. The father of the woman ran at him with a tigre spear. The blanco knocked it away and struck the father with his gun. The man fell. He looked dead.

“The rest rushed at us with clubs and spears. We threw the bags of the blanco into a curial. Two of us were killed. He shot four Yabaranos. He and the rest of us got away. They followed.”

So that was it! I shut my mouth hard to keep my thoughts inside my head. After a minute or two I asked:

“Did he tell the woman to come to him? Or did she go unasked?”

“We did not hear him tell her to come. He talked to pass the time. He said she was handsome, and he would like to have a girl like her. But he laughed while he said it, and he left her to go and watch a dog-fight. He cared nothing about her. She was loco.”

“Did he know she had a man?”

They thought a little, and looked doubtful. One said:

“Perhaps not. He asked no questions about anyone.”

“I see. Now what will become of the woman? Will she be killed?”

“We do not know. She went to the blanco—he did not go to her. So she will be punished. Perhaps she will be killed.”

“That is, it depends on what kind of man she has.”

“It is so.”

Then we arose and went back to the little fire. White was squatting there, and he glanced up, but said nothing. After looking at him a minute I walked away and left him.

Was he still grieving over the four faithful men who had died for him that day? Was he worrying about the fate of the woman who had come to him under the night moon? He was not. He had forgotten such small matters for something much more important.

His little mirror was in his hand, and by the firelight he was studying again that zancudo bite which might mar his face.

VII

ALL the next day my Maco-Maquiritare combination toiled back up the Ventuari. And in all that day very little was said.

I told White that I had a little ranchería above here, and that I now was returning to it. When we reached that place, I said, we could decide on our future moves. No Yabaranos were in sight, nor was any other thing moving on the water; and there was nothing for us two to do but lie idle. He spent most of the day drowsing in the cabin. I, too, dozed and thought by turns.

The coming of the Maquiritares had made my plans more simple in a way. I knew well enough, without asking them, that they now would go back to their up-river home, whether White wished to go there or not. Even if they had to leave him without receiving any of the promised presents, they had finished their work for him. And if I, Loco León, known to them as a man of good heart, wished to go up the river also, they would gladly guide me to their people, with no thought of pay.

As I now could make no friends on the Manapiare, I must do what I had let the Macos think I meant to do—I must visit the Maquiritares. Since I had no intention of carrying my supplies farther onward as the Macos thought, I now had no real need of those Macos. But I decided to keep them with me. Then I should know where they were and what they did, and no man down the river would learn that a whole year’s pay for balata work lay unguarded on a little caño. I did not trust the Macos over-much.

But I was a little puzzled about what to do with White. His work in Venezuela was over, unless he purposed now to explore the balata resources of the Ventuari as well as those of the Caura, which I much doubted. If he did intend anything of the sort, I had a few strong sentiments of my own on that subject—I was here not to enrich any North American company, or any other company, but to look out for the interests of Loco León. But I believed he now desired only to leave Venezuela forever. The question was, how?

There were only two ways; to go to San Fernando and then down the Orinoco, or to come with me up-stream and return to the Caura. The latter plan was by far the better, both for him and for me. The Caura route was much shorter than the roundabout Orinoco way, and, though perhaps more rough, it should be less dangerous; he could make the trip with a Maquiritare guide or two and travel by a course which he already knew—at least from Salta Para down—while of the Ventuari he knew nothing, and at San Fernando he would have hard work in getting men who would not cut his throat. As for myself, I could not send him down the Ventuari unless I gave him my own curial, which probably would never come back to me if I let it go; and I did not care to have any news of my movements reach the San Fernando murder-brigade just then.

On the other hand, I was not anxious to take with me among the Maquiritares a man who seemed always to be creating trouble about women. All the Maquiritare girls are very light of skin, some are slender and graceful, and a few have pretty faces. And the Maquiritare men, good-tempered though they usually are, have been known to kill outsiders who meddled with their women. I could see that these two Maquiritares of ours, though they had not blamed the blanco in their talk with me, really did not blame the Yabaranos either for the attack on them. And I knew that as soon as they reached their people the tale of that affair would be told.

That night, as White and I hung in our hammocks in my hut, I asked him what he planned to do now.

“To get out,” he answered. “What’s the best way?”

“Up the Ventuari and down the Caura,” I told him. “That is the shortest.”

He shook his head.

“Don’t like it. What other ways have you got?”

“None, except to go down this Ventuari and then down the Orinoco.”

“Then I’ll do that. It’s bad up above here, they tell me. Going down it’ll be all smooth water, and——”

“Smooth water!” I interrupted. “You have seen the Orinoco only up to the Caura, and know nothing of what is higher up. You have not seen this Ventuari at all, except today. Let me tell you of the ‘smooth water.’” And I described the raudales of the Orinoco.

“Oh, well, I can probably get a good boat and men at that town the maps show—San Fernando de Something-or-other,” he said. “It’s like Bolívar, I suppose.”

“As much like Bolívar as a caribe is like an arindajo,” I contradicted.^[1] And I told of the Funes gang.

“Uh-huh,” he drawled. “But I’ll make out all right. If you’ll sell me a little of this trade-stuff of yours to pay off my boys here with, and scare up a canoe somewhere for me to get to San Fernando in, I’ll fix the rest of it.”

“You will need all your handkerchiefs, then,” I retorted, a little vexed. “If you think you have suffered from mosquitoes here, wait until you meet those between San Fernando and Atures.”

At that he stiffened.

“Say, d’you mean that?”

“Mean it? It is the worst place on the whole river,” I declared.

And I told him about that too. I did not stretch the truth at all. When one speaks of the mosquito swarms of that part of the river, the simple truth is bad enough.

“Hm!” he muttered, lifting a hand to his zancudo sore. “How about the bugs up this river—the Ventuari? Are they any worse than here?”

“They are not even so bad. Up among the hills it is cooler, and only a few days from here there are no bugs at all—except garrapatas and such things, and not many of them. So the Maquiritares tell me; and they know.”

After a minute he said:

“Well, maybe we’d better go that way after all. As you say, it’s shorter.”

I stared, and then I turned away to hide a grin. The man-killing bad waters and bad men of the Orinoco were nothing to him, but mosquitoes which might scar his skin like mine—those were more than he wanted to face.

Then, thinking ahead, I lost my grin and became very serious. And I said:

“Very well, señor. You have chosen the best way. I shall be glad to be of assistance. You may have any of these trade goods at the same price I paid in Bolívar, and I have no doubt that my Maquiritare friends above here will carry you safely and comfortably down the Caura, if I ask them to do so. But before we go among them I must speak frankly to you about one thing.

“These Maquiritares, as you must know by now, are a fine race of men—the finest Indians in Venezuela. They are intelligent, friendly when well treated, good-tempered, and brave. In many ways they are almost white men, and in some ways they are better than many men I have known who called themselves white. But still, they are Indians, and not only Indians, but sons of the most resolute fighters known among the Indians of South America—the Caribs.”

“The —— you say! I never knew that,” he broke in.

“It is so,” I nodded. “They are of Carib stock; another name for them is Uayungomo. The Uayungomos of the Caura are the same people who, three hundred years ago, were called ‘Ewaipanomo,’ and fought so fiercely that other Indians spread terrible tales of them, saying that they had no heads and that their eyes were in their chests. And these Maquiritares of the Ventuari headwaters, next to the Caura, also are ‘Ewaipanomo.’ They are not afraid to meet death. Neither are they afraid to give death to men who deserve it. And one thing which makes them feel that a man deserves death is—using their women as playthings.”

I paused a minute. He said nothing. So I went on.

“Now it happens,” I said, “that you are a very handsome man, and that women come easily to you. You will remember that I was in Bolívar when you were there, and I heard and saw certain things which I need not mention, except to say that you were near death because of those things. If you had been killed there, and the killer had been caught, there would have been punishment for him. But if for the same reason you should be killed up here, there would be no punishment. In these hills the only law is Indian law—Maquiritare law—Carib law.”

There I stopped. He was silent several minutes. Then he yawned.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “I understand perfectly. Don’t worry. They’re nothing to me—any of ’em. A Spanish señorita of more-or-less high degree is mighty interesting for awhile, I’ll admit, even if she lives in a one-horse town like Bolívar; but these Indian girls who wear nothing but a little bead apron and never heard of a toothbrush—they’re not even interesting. Just show me the quickest way out of here, and you can have this country and everything that goes with it. I’m through.”

“That is very good,” I told him. “We shall start onward tomorrow.”

“Suits me.” He yawned again. “By the way, thanks for the polite bunk about my looks. You’re a mighty good-looking chap yourself, if you only knew it.”

“Then I am glad I do not know it,” I answered. “I have noticed that the men who do know it are often in trouble.”

Leaving him to think that over, I went to sleep.

VIII

FOR several days after that we tramped the rolling hills of the Ventuari sabana, heading east, and gradually climbing. I had left my curial tied high by a long chiquechique rope, safe from any sudden rise of water following a storm, and my supplies well wrapped in plataní leaves inside the hut.

The Macos, delighted to find that I was leaving my heavy goods behind, were more than willing to pack the few things I wished to carry—hammock, cartridges, matches, tobacco, and a few machetes and looking-glasses intended for gifts or pay. The pair of Maquiritares divided between them White’s case and bag, and led the way. We had only to follow with our guns.

The guiding pair wound along at the bases of the sun-roasted hills, following animal paths at times, then abandoning them as they curved off in wrong directions. For about half of each day we would be tramping in the full glare of the sun, unprotected by the crooked little trees that grew thinly along the slopes. Then we would be in thick belts of forest through which usually flowed some small stream, and where we had to swing in half-circles to find rocky passes across the water, of which the Maquiritares knew.

Sometimes we climbed a small hill and stopped to breathe and look about, seeing mountains to east and west and south—rolling green ridges or sharp-cut precipices. Then we would go down and be hemmed in again by the hummocks until we met a narrow caño or, perhaps, a dead water in which lived the horrible culebra de agua—that huge snake which swallows men.

It would have been hot work, that tramping, if the northeast wind had not blown. But it did blow, fresh and steady, cooling the air and filling us with strength. And, except in the damp woods or at places where we met the winding river, there were no longer any mosquitoes. The air was too dry and the wind too cool to be to their liking. White put away his bandannas, and wore his helmet without a veil.

“Man, what a country!” he marveled one day as we stood on a hill-top, looking out over wide reaches of brown sabana and green forest, with a sweeping curve of the river shining blue among trees.

Near us a line of moriche palms stretched away like a long file of slim plume-hatted soldiers. Beyond rose the mountains, and above in a brilliant blue sky drifted great clouds white as foam. Miles upon miles of the Guayana upland lay around us, and nowhere in it could we see anything move.

“What a country!” he repeated. “I haven’t seen anything like it before. Been cooped up by woods or river-banks. This is royal! No bugs—a wind like wine—and what a view! It’s so beautiful it hurts!”

It was just that. To any man with an eye for beauty those wide reaches would have been wonderlands at any time; and to men who for endless weeks had been confined within walls of bush they seemed a paradise. I had been in the high Guayana sabana before, though not in this part of it; yet its changing masses of form and color, as I looked at them from different hills, stirred me as music does.

“Wonderful country,” I agreed. “Beautiful to the eye, comfortable to the body, rich in game, yet inhabited only by the tigre and the danta and such things. No man lives here. The Maquiritares are men of the forest, and live in the rain-swept mountains to the east.”

“The poor fools! They haven’t brains enough to appreciate this,” he said. “I’d like to live forever in a place like this.”

Studying him a minute, I smiled and said nothing.

“But yet I don’t know,” he added presently. “I’d get tired of it, I suppose. It’s like a beautiful woman—hits you hard at first, but after you’ve seen her awhile she gets to be the same old stuff all the time, and you’ve got to ramble on and find something new. Probably after I stayed here awhile and had all the fun I could I’d never want to see the place again. Well, let’s go.”

So we moved on.

Late that day we made camp, as usual, at the edge of a belt of woods, where we could hang our hammocks from trees and find plenty of wood for cooking. The Maquiritares and two of the Macos went into the forest to kill birds or beasts for the night meal, as they did each day. The other two Macos gathered wood and made all ready for the night, and we blancos bathed at a little stream where the water was clear and cool and no mosquitoes bit. Then we lay in our hammocks, smoked, and talked of whatever came to mind. It was in this talk that I learned something which made me understand him a little better.

He spoke in a careless way of his father, saying that unless he returned soon to Bolívar and sent a cable message to the States the “old man” would begin to worry about him. Talking on in a lazy manner, he let me know that his father was president of the company which had sent him down here; that he himself had traveled much while growing to manhood—in fact, he had toured around the world, and had seen so much of Europe that he was “sick of it;” and that he had taken_this trip to Venezuela more because it was something that “everybody hasn’t done” than because of any great interest in business. He also said his grandfather had made a fortune in gold-mines in the West of your United States, starting as a poor man and dying very rich.

“He was a husky old boy, grandpop was,” he laughed. “Right up to the day he died he could swear a blue hole through a stone wall, pack a load of whisky that would floor two ordinary chaps, and knock a man cockeyed with either fist. If he hadn’t been killed by a motor truck hitting his roadster he’d have lived to be a hundred, I’ll bet.

“They say he was a terror when he was a prospector out West, and from what I hear he must have been. For instance, right after he made his first strike some bad-men tried jumping his claim, and he got shot half to pieces; but the jumpers left that claim feet first. Folks didn’t bother him much after that.

“He kept my grandmother shocked all the time—she was one of our Eastern aristocrats, who married him after he’d made his pile. It just tickled him silly to have her give a swell dinner and dance, and then to knock her guests speechless with some fierce break that he made on purpose. People talk yet about the things he used to do.”

I laughed, but I thought too. And I saw several things. I saw that this man’s carelessness of real danger, and probably his strong build, came to him from that fighting grandfather; and that his wonderful skin and his anxiety over his looks probably came from the “aristocratic” side of his family. I saw, too, that he was an official of the company only because he was the president’s son; and that though he had stuck manfully to the work for which he had come to Venezuela, his only real object in life was to please himself. In all, I saw he was a mixture of “red blood’ and “blue blood,” as you Americans express it—and that the blue spoiled the red.

“Is your father like your grandfather?” I asked.

I got the answer I expected.

“Oh, no. He takes after my grandmother’s side of the family. Very much of a city man, you know, and fond of society. He thinks I’m terribly wild, and he’s all the time afraid I’ll do something to disgrace him. Poor dad!”

He laughed again. Then he sat up suddenly.

“What’s this?” he demanded..

I looked, and I too sat up.

Our hunters had returned, bring a pauji and a couple of pavas. But where four Indians had gone out, seven had come back.

One of the Maquiritares, smiling, came up and explained. Farther in the forest, he said, the hunters had come on a caño, and there they had found a little camp with three men in it. These men were Maquiritares from the Caño Cerbatana, farther up and on the other side of the Ventuari, who had paddled down here to hunt baquidos—wild hogs. Now they had come with our men in order to see Loco León, of whom they had heard.

I was glad to meet new friends from the Caño Cerbatana, I said, and they should come forward. The three, who had been standing back and looking me over, did come forward when told. Did they speak Venezolano? They made no answer; only smiled and looked at one another. I saw that they spoke no tongue but their own, which I never have learned—it is a very hard language, and few men know it.

So I gave them a little tobacco and motioned for them to squat while the food was made ready, intending then to ask a few questions through the Maquiritares who spoke Spanish. They leaned their weapons against trees, took little rolls of cocomono bark from their ear-lobes—all Maquiritares pierce their ears—and, with my tobacco, made cigarros. Then they squatted in silence, looking at me and White.

Now, I never had seen Maquiritares like them—that is, with such skins. Instead of the clean light-brown skins usually seen among those people, they had hides of dirty black. No, not like the skins of negroes— not an even, shiny black. These men looked as if they had been thickly powdered with chimney-soot and then thrown into water, leaving a washed-out black all over them. As they wore only the usual tiny clout of the Maquiritares, I could see that they were entirely covered with that color, from thick hair to wide-spread toes.

“Good Lord, what a rotten dirty bunch!” said White. “Look like a gang of coal-heavers. How do they get that way?”

“I do not know,” I confessed. “The Maquiritares are a clean people. I will ask later on.”

When we had eaten and the Indians were hanging around us in their hammocks—the newcomers had brought their nets with them—I talked through the mouths of the Spanish-speaking Maquiritares. First, knowing that cerbatana means “blow-gun,” I asked why the caño of the black men was so named. They said it was because there grew both the chusti cane used for the bore of the blow-guns and the maui wood used for the outer case, so it was a fine place to make cerbatanas. Did many people live there? No, they said; only one very small house of them. Was the hunting good there? Not so good. It was in the sabana, and the hunting was better in the thick hills beyond. Were the people of Caño Cerbatana sick? No, they were very well.

“Then why do they have black skins?” I demanded. “If they have no sickness, why are their skins not clean like those of other Maquiritares?”

There was a long pause. The Indians looked at one another, but said nothing. Then I thought perhaps these men had painted themselves dark in order to hunt better, just as they all paint their legs with wavy red stripes of onorte to keep snakes from biting them. I asked if that was it.

“No,” one answered slowly. “It is not paint.”

“Then is it dirt?”

“No!” He seemed a little offended.

“It is not dirt—it is not paint—it is not sickness? Then what?”

There was another pause.

“I, Loco León, your friend, ask you,” I reminded them.

After a little more time the answer came.

“It is in the skin itself.”

“Oh.” I studied the black men again. “They were born with such skins? They are all of one mother?”

“No. They were born as we were. They are not brothers. Their skins were made black when they became men.”

“But why? How?” I persisted.

Once more there was a silence. I began to feel that I was asking about some secret of the Uayungomos which should not be told to whites. But at length came this reply:

“Their blood was changed. There was put into a gourd of cold yucuta—manioc and water—the blood of two black creatures not the same—a black dog and a wild turkey, or a mono viudita—widow monkey—and a pato real. Then the men drank it. In one day they had fever. In three days they turned black. They can never turn light again.”

I stared at the man, and he looked steadily back at me. Then he spoke in his own language to the blackened ones. They nodded together, and all looked at me, as if to say this thing was true.

“Well, I’m stumped!” muttered White, who had followed the Spanish talk. “Can this be possible?”

“Many things are possible to the Indians, señor, of which we whites know nothing,” I told him. Then I asked the man:

“But why was this done?”

This time I got no answer at all. They quietly curled up in their hammocks and closed their eyes. Without telling me that this was not my business, they left me to realize it for myself. And, knowing that when they did not choose to answer they never would, I asked nothing further.

White suddenly turned his back to them.

“Savages!” he said. “Absolute savages. Imagine these men deliberately making themselves hideous for life like that! All for some fool Carib idea, of course. Think they’re making themselves invisible to enemies, maybe, or something of the sort. I’d rather die by slow torture than do such a thing to myself. I don’t want to look at ’em any more. Br-r-r! Good night!”

“Buen’ noche’,” I answered. And no more was said.

For a time I lay wondering about those blackened skins, and I thought of a number of things which later were to come back to me. But presently I forgot all about them while listening to the coughing snarl of a tigre somewhere out in the dark forest. After the beast grew silent I shut my eyes and thought no more about anything.

IX

THE next day we left the black men at their caño and tramped on. The day after that we left the sabana and entered the jungled sierra in which the Ventuari is born. And on the third day we reached the first round house of the Maquiritares.

With a canoe, we could have done in two days what we did in three; for as soon as the open lands ended we had to move slowly. We worked along the bank of the river, following its windings to keep from losing it and also to stay on fairly level ground; and we had to cut much of our way, for there was no path. It was tiring work. But the Maquiritares told us that on the other side of the river, not far above, opened a caño on which was a house of their people. And about noon on that third day we found that opening.

At the mouth of the caño stood a little ranchería used as a port by the Indians when on fishing trips, but no canoe was there, nor were any men about. So, in order to cross, we had to go some distance farther up and make little balsas, or rafts, and cut rough paddles from thin tree-roots. Each balsa held four of us; and with paddles going fast and the current shoving us down, we swung into the mouth of the caño handsomely.

From the pole hut at the port a well-marked path led inland. And when we had eaten our noon meal I sent the Maquiritares and two of the Macos to tell the people of this caño that Loco León and another blanco were coming. It is always well to do something of this sort when first approaching a Maquiritare settlement, so that no bad mistakes will result from their suddenly seeing a stranger with a gun walking among them.

We waited about half an hour before following them, White spending most of the time fussing with his zancudo sore, which now had passed the worst stage and was beginning to improve, but which had left the usual raw red hole. He wanted to shave, too, but I would not wait for that; and when the rest of us started he was wise enough to go with us.

For the next three hours we walked steadily along the winding trail, seeing no where any sign of men except the path itself and the footprints of our own Indians. Then we came out on the bank of the caño again, and on the farther side we saw a canoe with a couple of Maquiritare lads in it. Their faces were new to me, but I knew they had been sent there to wait for us. So I called, and they brought the curial across.

On the other side the path climbed a stiff slope, and among the trees at the top I looked for the usual round house with wattle-and-mud walls and conical palm roof. But it was not there. Only a small open shelter stood there, and we had to walk nearly half an hour longer through the green-barked forest before we came into the clearing.

“These chaps certainly live far enough in,” grumbled White. “Apparently they don’t care for visitors.”

“They do not,” I agreed. “Two or three hundred years ago all the Caribs suffered cruelly from the Conquistadores seeking El Dorado, and they have never forgotten.”

When we reached the house, however, there was no sign of the long memory I spoke of—except that no women were in sight. A number of light-skinned men, carrying no arms, came forward from the door, smiling and giving us silent welcome. Among them I saw two faces which looked familiar, and presently I recalled them as those of young fellows who had worked balata for me on the Padamo. This was good luck. I foresaw at once that I should have little difficulty in getting men here to gather gum in my new district down the river.

If the people here had already heard from our messengers the tale of the Yabarano fight—and I felt quite sure that they had—they gave no hint of it in their faces. They looked at White in the frank, steady way of their nation, and when they had seen him from hat to boot-soles they turned their eyes back to me with no change of expression. Soon we were led into the big central room which forms the men’s quarters in every Maquiritare house, and there we were shown hammocks and invited to rest.

Looking at the faces round about, I asked who was capitân here. One of the men who formerly had worked for me said the chief was not here; he had left that morning on a hunting trip, and would not return for four days. This was a little disappointing, as I had meant to talk with the leader about the balata work. But there would be time enough for that later. So, swinging slowly in a hammock and resting, I told them I had thirst and asked whether the assehi palm grew here. At once I was told that it did. I said that I should like some yucuta assehi. Two lads picked up gourds and went out.

This assehi palm, señores, bears at the top of its straight stem a great cluster of round red fruits about as wide as my thumbnail, with a large stone inside. When these are peeled and pulped in a gourd of water a drink is formed which is very refreshing and is the color of pale blood. By putting into it a handful of loose manioc one has drink and food together. And, since yucuta is manioc and water, the same thing with those red fruits added is yucuta assehi—or, as we call it commonly, yucut’ ’sehi.

Perhaps if I should offer you some of it now, in this hotel, you would not care for its flavor. But when you have been for months in the wilderness, living on very rough food and drinking warm dirty river-water, it tastes very good indeed.

While I waited for this drink to be made I talked lazily to all the men around me, giving them such news of matters outside the hills as would interest them. Knowing that they wished also to hear something from me about White, although they asked no questions, I said he was a Norte Americano who had traveled on the Caura and now was returning to that river, and that we were going together to the Maquiritare settlement highest up on the Ventuari, from which the two Maquiritares now with us had come. From there, I said, he would cross to the Caura, then go down to the Orinoco, and return to his own country.

At this I saw several of them glance at one another; and I thought they looked a little relieved, as if they felt it would be well for all if this man left their country. There was no doubt in my mind now that they had heard of the trouble on the Manapiare.

Then one of my former Padamo men asked whether I too intended going down the Caura. I told him no, I planned to remain on the Ventuari, and to remain there a long time. Faces brightened at this. Men smiled, and one said—

“Bueno!”

This pleased me much; for I doubt if there is another blanco in all Venezuela whom the Maquiritares would be glad to have on their river. But I kept my pleasure to myself. Talking on, I let them know that I wished the Norte Americano to journey unharmed out to the Orinoco, and that I wanted a curial and men to carry us both to the top of this stream.

When I was ready, I said, I would come down again, and then I would speak to their capitân about a matter of business. Those who understood Spanish nodded, as if knowing already that my business would be that of the balata. And one said that whenever I wished to go on up the river the canoe and men would be ready.

Then came the red drink. There were two gourds of it. One was given to me, the other to White, who had said not a word. I drank half of mine at once, for my throat was dry. Then I asked White:

“What is the matter?”

He was looking down with narrowed eyes at the blood-colored mixture. He had not tasted it.

“What is this stuff?” he demanded. “Don’t like its looks.”

“Yucut’ ’sehi, and very good,” I said. And I told him how it was made. “Try it,” I urged him, “and you will find it most refreshing.”

“Hm! It’s a new one to me. This yucut’ stuff, now—remember what those black fellows said a few nights ago? Blood in yucut’—remember? This looks bloody enough. I’m not drinking it.”

I stared. Then I laughed loud.

“Valgame Dios! Of what have you fear?” I scoffed. “That this harmless drink will make you a negro? I have drunk it many a time, and I am even more white than you. Have you traveled so long with these faithful Maquiritares only to fear them now?”

He reddened angrily.

“I’m not afraid of anything!” he growled. “I simply don’t like the looks of this stuff and I don’t want it. That’s all.”

I stopped laughing and answered him very coolly.

“Very well, señor. But you might at least taste it for the sake of courtesy, unless you think it unnecessary to be courteous to those who are trying to be courteous to you. It has taken some work for these people to make the drink for you, and they hoped you would be pleased with it. But do as you like.”

And I drank more of my own with great relish.

The Indians watched him. One said something, and several others snickered in a way that made White’s eyes glitter. Then one of my Padamo boys, grinning, said—

“No es sangre.”

“You see, señor,” I said. “He says ‘It is not blood.’ The others think you are afraid of anything that looks like blood.”

“Oh, they do! Well, just to show ’em——”

He lifted the gourd and drank off all the liquid.

“And if they still think so,” he added in a hard tone, “I’ll take on any three of ’em right now, bare-handed, and show ’em how much I’m afraid of blood.”

I laughed again, as if the whole thing were a joke. The Indians, not understanding his words and seeing me laugh, smiled also.

“Es bueno?” asked one.

“Hm! It doesn’t taste so bad, at that,” White admitted. “Si—muy bueno—very good. Gracias.”

And before handing back the gourd he scooped up the manioc remaining in the bottom and chewed it.

I ate mine also, and then for a little while longer we lay in the hammocks and smoked. Some of the Maquiritares lounged near us in friendly silence. Others drifted away to talk with the Macos and begin the slow bargaining for the basket of curare poison they had brought to trade. One of the small boys who had been standing about and watching everything decided to leave us, and did so by disappearing through the bark wall. White, who seemed to have recovered his temper, saw him go and spoke.

“Just how do these people arrange the family quarters?” he asked. “I’ve been in these houses of theirs before, down on the Caura, but only in the men’s room, like this. I know the married folks live between the walls—there’s no other place for them—but how do they arrange things?”

“I will show you,” I promised.

Speaking to one of the older Maquiritares, I told him I would like to show my friend the whole house, and that if there was no good reason why we should not do so we would soon walk into the other part of it. He looked a little doubtful, but went to the bark and slipped through it as the boy had done. While we waited for him to return I described the plan of the place.

Since you have not seen these houses, señores, perhaps I had best describe them to you also. They are, as I have said, perfectly round, the outer wall being of poles and woven sticks plastered with mud. This wall makes a big circle. Inside it is a smaller circle made of great slabs of bark, which are attached to one another and to upright poles. This is the inner wall, which forms a partition between the central room occupied by the bachelors and the part used by the married ones. These married ones, with their children, live side by side in the ring between the walls, their little homes being divided from one another only by a few poles, a half-made hammock, or some such marker.

In the outer wall are four small doors. Two lead through passages into the men’s room; the other two open into the married quarters. There are also tiny windows, through which the children, and sometimes the women, squeeze in and out when it is more convenient than using the doors. In the bark wall are slabs having one side unattached, which can be used as entrances to the central room; these snap back into place by their own stiffness, making the wall seem solid. The married men can come and go by any entrance they like, either inside or outside; but the unmarried men must use only their own doors, and the girls must keep out of the men’s room.

Over all is the circular palm-thatch roof, coming to a point, with a large smoke-hole protected by a sort of hood which throws off rain. Because of this great sloping roof, we call the Maquiritare houses paraguas—umbrellas.

In such a house as this may live forty or more people. In a smaller paragua, housing only a few, there may be no inner wall, all living together in one room. A man roving as I do about the Parimas often finds little houses of this kind, but they are usually old and empty.

All this I told White. Then the Maquiritare came through the bark again and stood waiting. When we arose he held the rough slab aside for us, and as we passed through the opening he followed us. The bark snapped shut like the jaws of a trap.

We stepped along slowly, finding hammocks slung across the way, fringes of cotton strings hanging from rafters, and now and then a low pole barring us until we straddled over it. There were very few women in the place: too few. Those who were there were nursing very young babies or cooking food in clay vessels over tiny fires. They paid no attention to us, at least while we were looking their way; and we gave very little attention to them. In fact, we looked less at the women than at the dogs we found lying here and there—the usual small black-haired, cruel-eyed hunting-dogs of the Maquiritares—and the setting hens crouching against the walls. In one little “apartment,” as White called it, we found also a tame pauji which, our guide said, had been caught when a very young bird, and which followed us a few steps.

When we found ourselves back at the place where we had started White yawned.

“Let’s get some air,” he said.

We went outside through the nearest doorway. And there we saw the rest of the women.

They had left the house while we talked within, and now they were busy at their usual task—making cassava bread. Some were pulping the roots on the graters which they make for the purpose, others pressing the poisonous juice from the pulp in the long baskets, and some sifting the pressed grains in their open-work guapas, or trays.

As usual, they wore only the square bead aprons, hanging from low on the hips almost to the knees. They looked at us, but only for a moment; then went on with their work. I knew they had been told by their men that all was well. Otherwise not one of them would have been in sight.

From the corner of my eye I watched White. He glanced at the women, but seemed more interested in their work than in them. Soon he turned his back on them and looked at the round house.

“He is learning sense,” I thought.

“It’s a regular circus,” he said. “You know, I’ve noticed before that these houses were shaped just like the round circus-tents up home. But now that I’ve seen the rest of the works it’s all the more so. Two rings, and dogs and hens and a peacock and women and kids—a two-ring circus with its animals. Lord, what a way for human beings to live! Interesting to look at, of course, when you know you’re going out. But to live this way year in and year out—I’d go clean off my nut if I knew I had to do it!”

In later years I was to think often of that careless remark.

X

FIVE days later we reached the last and largest paragua on the Ventuari—the place which the Maquiritares call Uaunana: the round house from which, weeks ago, six young fellows had gone to visit friends on the Caura, and to which now only two of the six returned.

Yet, in returning, those two brought with them more men than had gone away; for with them traveled four of their own race from the caño down below, and we two blancos. So where six had left, eight came in.

Before leaving the house where White drank his first yucuta assehi, I had given my Macos their presents and told them to go home whenever they liked. But I had also talked secretly with the oldest Maquiritare, who seemed to be in authority there while the capitán was away, and received his promise that when the Macos went down-stream four well-armed Maquiritares should go with them; and that these four should stop at my caño and remain there guarding my supplies until I came down again. I had his word that the guards would stay at my place even if I did not reappear before the falling of the heavy rains. So now I knew that all was well behind me.

It had been a hard journey, these last five days. We had made no stops to visit other paraguas which might be up various caños, but had worked steadily toward Uaunana; and stiff work it had been. Here in the high sierra the river seemed to hold even more raudales than below; and the last of these was so bad that the Indians would not even approach it.

This was the terrible raudal of Monoblanco. To avoid it the Maquiritares worked the curial up a winding little stream at the left and took to the land; and for a long, hard day after that we were fighting our way over steep, densely jungled hills—four of them in all—following a trail so faint that even my wilderness-trained eyes often could not see it.

That day we ate nothing between dawn and dark; we made no halts, for the traverse had to be made in one day if we were to find shelter from drenching rain which poured down on us all day long. When at last we again reached the Ventuari, well above the raudal, and found there a little plataní hut where we could swing our hammocks in a half-dry place, we were a starving, exhausted crew.

At this upper port we were lucky enough to find a canoe—or, rather, an old, abandoned thing that had been a canoe. It was so battered and cracked that the Indians had to spend half a day in tightening it up. When all eight of us were in it the gunwales were only an inch above the water, and in spite of its pitching and patching it still leaked so badly that two men had to keep bailing all the time.

Whenever we met a raudalito, as we did several times, everybody had to go overboard and lift the crazy boat up through the bad water. At one such place the current threw my legs from under me, and I was carried down for some distance before I could swim to shore. I was glad that in those swift upland waters lived neither caimán nor caribe.

Such little accidents as this, however, are nothing to the river rovers of the Parimas; so long as a man lives through them he laughs and goes on, knowing that the next time he may split his head on a rock and laugh no more. Soon after this swim of mine we turned from the river into a narrow caño—the river itself now had become so small that it was hardly more than a rocky creek—and, a short distance in, found several dugouts at an opening in the bank, from which rose a well-trodden path. This, the Maquiritares said, was the Caño Uaunana.

I told the two who lived here to go ahead and inform their capitán that Loco León would soon come up the hill. Showing no more excitement than if they had been merely on a day’s fishing trip, the pair climbed the steep slope and were gone among the trees. The rest of us squatted in the shade and waited a little while. Then we went upward.

The Maquiritares had told me that this settlement of Uaunana was big, with mucha gente—many people. Knowing that they live usually in small groups, I expected to find here a paragua only a little larger than the one we had visited farther down. But when we came into the clearing near the top of the hill I saw that this place really was big. The round house was very wide; around it stood a ring of smaller shelters, open-sided, square-cornered, and ridge-roofed, where the cassava-making and other work could be carried on unhampered by rain; and at one of the doors stood a crowd of men, looking our way.

Though I learned later that nearly half of the men of Uaunana at that moment were away hunting or making dugouts or doing other things in the woods, those in sight numbered more than all the people of the settlement down-stream. That was why this place was so near the river; the tribe was large enough to defend itself against anything but a large body of riflemen, which was very unlikely ever to come here.

Straight to that door I went, and there I asked for the capitán. Since the tribe evidently was strong, I rather expected to meet a big, stern-faced leader. But the man who came to meet me, and whose quiet air of authority showed him to be the chief, was not at all of that type. He was shorter than I, with a kind, gentle face and big brown eyes that seemed to smile. Yet he was strongly built, and the calm eyes showed much intelligence. I judged him to be a man who loved peace, but who, if he must fight, could fight coolly and wisely.

Like the other Indians, he looked at me, then at White, then back at me, with no change of expression. When I told him who we were and why we were there together, he nodded slightly, but seemed not to understand all I said. So I asked whether he spoke Spanish.

“Pocito,” he answered. “Only a little.”

Then he moved his head toward the door. We went into the central room and sat in hammocks, and I looked around at faces. Among those new to me I saw four or five from the Padamo. Calling one of these men to me, I asked if the Rio Padamo had moved since I left it—I was finding many Padamo faces on the Ventuari. He smiled and answered that the Padamo was where it had been, but that very few Maquiritares were there, and soon there might be none.

For some time past, he said, the Maquiritares of that river had been talking of moving elsewhere. All the Maquiritares do this at times, for they are—how do you say it? Semi-nomadic—yes, that is it. They live for a time in one place, and then they abandon that place for a new one, perhaps many miles away. And now, since I had left the Alto Orinoco on my journey to Bolívar, the savage Guaharibos east of the Padamo had become very bad, as I had foreseen. They had repeatedly attacked the Maquiritares, for no particular reason, and in the fighting both sides had lost men. So, since the Maquiritares had no desire to remain there longer, they had journeyed up into the higher hills and gone to whatever places pleased them best. Most of them now were on the upper Caura, not many days from this settlement.

At this I was all the more glad that I had left the Padamo for the Ventuari, and thanked the luck of Loco León for leading me here. As this was the place where White’s way and mine were to part, I felt that I had best be about my own business of getting men. But I said nothing of it just then. I only asked how many men here spoke Spanish.

Very few, I was told. These people of Uaunana seldom went near enough to Spanish-speaking people to need the language. They were not so wild as the Maquiritares of the little Rio Gueseta and some other small branches of the Ventuari, who would have nothing whatever to do with any blancos, but they were well satisfied to stay here and see nobody but their own people. Then the man telling me these things grinned and added, as if it were a great wonder, that one of the Uaunanans who could speak Spanish was a woman.

She was the oldest daughter of the capitán, he said; and whenever a Maquiritare who knew anything of the Spanish tongue came here she made him give her new words and tell of all he had seen in other places. It seemed a great joke to him, so I laughed. Then I asked more about my Padamo people—where they were, and how to reach them from here, and so on. The wordy daughter of the capitán was quickly forgotten.

After a time White broke into our talk.

“Say, can we get more of that yucut’ ’sehi here?” he asked. “I feel as if it would just hit the right spot,”

“Aha! So you are beginning to like it,” I said. “I think it can be had. I too would like some.”

So I asked, and before long we each had a gourd of it. When it was gone he arose and yawned.

“Go on with your palaver,” he said. “I’m going to walk around and inspect the works.”

And he strolled to the door, stopping once to look at a drum hanging on the bark wall. The two Maquiritares who had been with him on the Manapiare drifted out with him.

For some time after that I talked with those who could understand me well, and, at times, with the calm little capitán. I was not yet ready to speak of balata—that would come later—but I learned all I could about the new paraguas on the upper Caura; for if I could get the same Indians to do my work on the Ventuari who had done it on the Padamo, it would be much more simple than dealing with new ones. Also, it would be far easier to gather new ones when I had the others to talk for me. That is always the best way to bring our Indians to you, señores—to talk to them through their own people, who can tell the doubters that you are a buen hombre.

By the time I had learned what I wished to know and had decided to make a journey southward to the Caura—for that was what I did decide upon—it was quite late in the day. White had not come back. Now an Indian came in and said a few words to the capitán. The ruler’s eyes hardened a little; but then he looked as calm as ever, and made neither move nor answer. Whatever he had been told, it seemed not to disturb him. But I had noticed that slight narrowing of the eyes. And, for the first time since he had gone out, I thought of White.

Waiting a minute or two, I then stood up, stretched myself, and slowly walked out. The capitán silently came after me. Outside the door I saw nothing unusual. Neither did I see White. As if only exercising my legs, I lounged along the curving wall until I had gone nearly one-third of the distance around the paragua. Then I saw White—and women.

He was leaning against a corner-post of a shed where men seemed to be slowly working at something, and, with his wide helmet tilted over one eye, he was smilingly talking to several young women just outside. Rather, he was talking to only one of those girls; the others were standing and watching. The one girl seemed to be talking more than he.

As we came near he drew from a pocket a small leather pouch and shook into his palm a few silver coins. These he gave to the young woman, who took them eagerly.

“Doce reales,” he said. “No tengo mas.”

And he shook the empty pouch to prove that those twelve reales really were all he had.

“What is this, señor?” I asked sharply. “You had best be careful.”

“Hullo, old Calamity,” he laughed. “Stand and deliver. This young lady is taking up a collection for herself. Says she wants plata to make herself a silver necklace. I’m cleaned—gave her a dollar and twenty cents. Now you come across.”

And, pointing at me, he told her:

“Él tiene mucha plata. He has much silver.”

She turned and looked steadily at me. I grinned, but not at her—it was at the joke he had put on me. But, seeing me smile, she smiled back and asked—

“Plata?”

I had no silver money with me, nor any other except a few gold pieces which I did not intend to give away. So I had to shake my head. She was disappointed, and her face showed it, but she did not ask again. She looked me all over, and I did the same by her.

Remembering what the Maquiritare had told me about the one woman here who spoke Spanish, it was easy for me to guess that she was the daughter of the capitán. Indeed, I might have known it without first hearing of her; for she looked like the chief, and an ordinary girl would not have dared to be so forward with a blanco.

She was pretty. Her brown eyes were larger than her father’s and filled with a warm glow; her face was more round, her features more softly marked, than his; and, though she had the strong frame of the chief, her figure was very shapely. From thick black hair, cut straight around in the Maquiritare fashion, to her well-formed feet, she was more nearly perfect than any Indian girl I ever saw elsewhere.

Like the other women, she wore only the bead guayuco, or apron, and bead armlets near the shoulders. And the bright sun lit up a skin hardly darker than my own bronzed face, and as clean and clear, though not so fine, as White’s.

Having seen what Loco León looked like, she turned her eyes to her father; and, laughing like a child, she shook the coins jingling in her hands and then held them for him to see. He glanced at them with a little smile, took one and scanned it on both sides, and handed it back. In his usual quiet tone he spoke a few words. Without replying or looking at either of us, she ran to the house, calling to some one within—perhaps her mother. The other girls followed her, probably to see the reales more closely and to envy her.

We men laughed a little, and White swung toward the Indians inside the hut, who had stopped working and were closely watching their capitán. Now their grave faces relaxed and they resumed work—they were hollowing out a log trough.

“And that’s the way it goes,” said White. “A chap stops on the corner—a shed-corner, this time—to watch some fellows work, and along comes the female of the species and tells him it’s tag-day. And what can the poor boob do? Dig down, as usual.”

I said nothing. There seemed nothing to say. But I thought he must have talked some time with the chief’s daughter before she felt well enough acquainted to ask for a present.

“Funny little cuss, isn’t she?” he added. “Got her nerve right with her. Says her name’s Juana, and her father’s is Juancito. How do all these Indians get Spanish names? Every one I’ve known had one.”

“They never tell their real names,” I told him. “Every Maquiritare gives himself a Spanish name when talking with a blanco. Why they do it I do not know. When do you leave for the Caura, señor?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he yawned. “Pretty soon. Guess I’ll rest a day or so. Does this air up here make you sleepy? I’ve been yawning my head off all the afternoon.”

“It is because you have reached a resting-place,” I said. “I often feel so when I have finished a hard trip. But I do not feel that I have finished this one, so I am not yet sleepy. Tomorrow, or the next day, I turn south to the Caura.”

“So soon? I’m going to that same river, but north instead of south, and in a few days instead of tomorrow.”

“I should like to see you safely started homeward before I leave,” I said.

He swung and looked me in the eye; and probably he saw in my face what I did not say.

“See here, old chap,” he said in an annoyed tone, “you’ve pulled me out of a couple of holes, and I’m awfully obliged, and all that sort of thing. If I had a chance I’d do as much for you, and I’d back you to the last shot in the locker. At the same time, I’m free, white, and more than twenty-one, and mighty well able to stand on my own two legs. So far as my little personal comings and goings and talkings and doings are concerned, do you mind attending to your own —— business?”

“Not at all, señor,” I said coldly.

And I turned and left him.

XI

IT WAS the morning of the third day after that when I started for the Caura—or, as it is called in its upper part, the Merevari. And when I left Uaunana, White had not prepared to go.

He had paid his two men, and paid them handsomely, with the trade goods bought from me at my caño. He had asked, too, about the route used in passing over the sierra and reaching the Caura, and had promised high pay to any four men who would go with him to the first settlement near the Orinoco. But he had not yet obtained the men, and seemed to be in no hurry about getting them. It would be a tough trip, he said, and he was well satisfied to rest a few days before starting it.

After what he had said to me about minding my own business, it certainly was nothing to me whether he started soon or late, or not at all. But, without letting him know it, I spoke quietly to Capitán Juancito urging him to see that good men were ready to go with the blanco whenever he felt like leaving.

Juancito coolly said any of his men who went would be good men; that he himself would not pick any crew for the traverse, but would let the men decide the matter for themselves. He reminded me that this blanco had caused the deaths of four out of six Uaunanans who had been with him, and said he would have no hand in sending out more of his people with such a man. Neither would he stop them from going if they wished to do so.

With that the matter was dropped. As I say, White did not know of this talk; for I said nothing to him about it, or about any other thing that was not strictly my own affair. I was taking him at his word and letting him “stand on his own two legs.” Whenever he wished to talk about anything I met him half-way. At other times I kept my mouth shut.

This did not mean, though, that I also shut my eyes and ears. I keep them open wherever I go. And I noticed that the wilful little Juana was giving a good deal of attention to the handsome blanco.

He was doing just what he said he would do—resting; and he spent a good half of each day lolling in his hammock, which hung beside mine in one of the open-sided but thick-roofed sheds, where we had plenty of air but were protected from the night rains which break suddenly in those hills. To this house Juana and other girls came now and then, standing near his hammock for half an hour at a time while Juana asked for the Spanish names of things he had which were new to her—clothing and mosquito-net and watch and cartridges and so on—or showed him how many words she already knew.

Yet I thought it was not so much her interest in new things as in the man himself that drew her there; and I was quite sure of it because she never asked me the same questions, though I knew Spanish much better than he. Indeed, she did not talk to me at all.

The capitán knew all this, of course, but he seemed not to mind. And, though it was a little unusual, there was nothing about it to worry him or any one else. Other girls always were with her, men were close at hand, every one who cared to look or listen could see and hear all, and after sundown she was within the walls of the tribe-house. If Juancito, knowing what he knew, had no objections to these talks it surely was not the place of Loco León to disapprove.

One thing which amused me was White’s fondness for the drink he had once refused to touch—yucuta assehi. As I have said, it is a very satisfying refreshment when one happens to like it; and now he liked it. He even made a joke of his first aversion to it. Whenever he wanted some of it he would say——

“Well, Loco, will you join me in drinking another bucket of blood?”

The Maquiritares, too, always seemed to find it amusing to see him put away a gourdful of the stuff; and after he had asked for it two or three times they made a big potful of it at once, so that it should be ready whenever he wanted more. Every one seemed to like him well enough, and there was no good reason why they should not. He had not abused his men, and the only bad memory of him that they had was the affair of the Yabarano woman, for which he was not so much to blame.

So, knowing these people would treat him as a friend unless he gave them good reason to do otherwise, I left him there. With a couple of my former Padamo men and a light, new curial, I went away at sunrise. White and I shook hands and wished each other luck, and he tried to thank me for what I had done, but I cut him short.

“Es nada. Say no more about it. Vaya con Dios,” I said. And I went down the hill and out of the caño of Uaunana.

After about an hour of hard paddling against the current we swung into a small stream at the right, coming in from the south. When we had gone as far as we could among its rocks we tied the curial and took to our legs. And for several days after that we worked over and through the sierra dividing the Ventuari and Merevari countries. Then we reached a new paragua of the Maquiritares. There I found more men of the Padamo, and with them I visited for some days.

From there I went on to other new houses made by the people who had left the region where the Guaharibos now were, and in all I found welcome from men who had bled the balata for me during the last season. When at length I turned north again to the Ventuari I did not much care whether the people of my new river would work for me or not; for I had the promise of the Merevari Maquiritares that the coming of the heavy rains in May would find them on their way to my caño below the roaring falls of Quencua. The luck of Loco León, which has always been with me in matters of importance, still held good.

With the same two men who had gone out of the Caño Uaunana with me, I came back into it late on a day of showers. It had been more than a month since I left it. Idly I wondered how far from Bolívar the North American was now. If he had left this place within a week after my going—and it seemed hardly likely that he had stayed longer—he should be near the Orinoco, if not on it; for the journey from here to the Caura was a-matter of only a few days for the Maquiritares, and with the current behind him he should travel fast.

As on my first visit here, I found no other men on the caño or at the port. And, as then, I let the two Maquiritares go up the hill path first, though I did not wait this time for them to announce my coming—I followed close behind. We had almost reached the paragua when one of my men saw something which I had not noticed. Pointing, he spoke to me.

“El blanco est’ aquí,” he said. “The white is here.”

He was pointing at the open shelter where White and I had slept. There, true enough, still hung a hammock. It was not a Maquiritare hammock—theirs is always made of white cotton, while this was a yellow network of cumari palm-fiber, such as I myself use; a hammock made by the Guahibos of Colombia and sold here in Bolívar by traders, and the strongest and coolest bed one can buy. And the straight lines of tight-drawn cords and the big bulge in the middle showed some one was in it.

As I have said, it was late, and the sky was dark with more rain; so the light was dim. Noticing that the hammock showed no movement, I concluded that White was asleep, and passed on to the doorway where a few men stood watching us. Nobody else was in sight, and my stomach told me it was meal-time. Inside the house I found most of the bachelors eating, though some had finished and were in their hammocks. One slid through the bark wall, returning in a minute with Juancito. He promptly saw to it that I was given cassava and roast baquido, and until I had eaten little was said. Then I asked about White.

Yes, he still was here, I was told. He had spoken lately of going, and men were ready to journey with him to the Caura. But for a day or two he had been a little sick. It must be the fever. He had been very well until two nights ago, when the sickness came on him. Since then he had hardly been out of his hammock.

No, it did not seem to be serious, they said. Probably he would go in another day or two. He was in a bad temper be cause he had had to stay these two days. He had meant to leave two mornings ago.

These things I learned only by asking questions. They told me nothing unless I asked, and looked often at Juancito. He said nothing at all; but I thought his eyes looked a little hard. Nobody smiled, nobody made any joke about the blanco and the yucuta drink. I felt that Uaunana was weary of its visitor.

Asking no more, I said I was tired and would hang my hammock outside. And I walked out, finding that while I ate and talked it had grown very dark. But I knew my way about, and my matches were few, so I made no light. Working quietly, I slung the hammock where it had been before, opened my light blanket—the nights are cool in the hills—and, after taking off my alpargatas and loosening my belt, lay down. Then White awoke.

“Quien es?” he demanded.

“Loco León.”

“Oh. Back again? Glad to see you. Have a good trip?”

“Si. I hear you have been a little sick.”

“Yes, —— the luck!” he snarled. “Of all the dirty, rotten, low-down, lousy holes to be sick in— Say! Know what these stinking thieves did? Stole my mirror!”

I nearly laughed out. To lose so small a thing and be so savage about it struck me as funny. But I was not much pleased with his words about the people who had been so friendly to him, and presently I answered:

“I have seen much worse places to be sick in. These people are neither stinking nor lousy, as you say. And your little glass must have dropped somewhere.”

“It didn’t drop!” he half-shouted. “I had it here when I got the fever. Some sneak-thief swiped it when I didn’t know what was going on. That’s what gets me—robbing a sick man after he’s been a good fellow. To —— with the whole lousy pack of ’em!”

The Indians had spoken truly when they said his temper was bad. As for the little mirror, it might have been found and kept by some one of the children. I had no doubt that it would come back to him.

“Have they not taken care of you?” I asked.

“Oh, that little fool of a Juana has been pawing me over and giving me stuff,” he growled. “She’s a pest. I’m going to get out of here as quick as I can. I’m going tomorrow!”

“That is good, señor,” I said, humoring him. “You must be feeling better.”

“I do, some. I’m hot and weak, and I’m beginning to itch all over. But I’m better. Got to get a bath tomorrow. I haven’t had my clothes off since the fever hit me. Got any quinine or any other medicine?”

“Nothing. There is quinine at my caño below Quencua, but none here.”

“And I lost all my medical outfit at Salta Para. Well, I’ll be out of this —— hole soon.”

I made no answer to this. Instead I began talking of my journey to the Merevari, hoping to get his mind off himself. He listened, seeming interested, but I heard him turn and scratch repeatedly. It was very plain that, as he said, he itched all over. I wondered just what was the matter with him. But I did not let him know that I noticed it.

“What have you been doing to pass the time here?” I asked, ending my tale of travel.

“Oh, fooling around. Been hunting—got three tigres and a lot of other stuff—and hugging my hammock and—oh, just been a plain fool. I ought to have gotten out of here when you did.”

Something about his tone made me suspicious. In a joking way I asked—

“You have had no visitors after sunset?”

“What’s that to you?” he snapped.

“Nothing. I was only thinking of the Manapiare.”

There was a long silence.

“So you know about that,” he said slowly. “Well, I’ve never made any claims that my blood is ice-water.”

“Quite so,” I agreed. “You were speaking awhile ago about the ‘little fool of a Juana’ who is such a ‘pest,’ and so on.” There I paused.

“Oh, yes. She’s been interesting, but she’s grown tiresome. Anything else you’d like to know?”

“Nothing. Buen’ noche’.”

No more was said. I lay awhile thinking, and wondering how Juana had succeeded in fooling her father. But while men are men and girls are girls, there will always be ways for them to meet while older people sleep. White still lived, showing that no trouble had broken out. And now that he was going, all would be well. So I turned over and slept. The last thing I heard was White scratching.

A sudden startled curse roused me. Day had come again. White was sitting up in his hammock, staring at his hands. As I saw those hands and the face above them, I jumped as if hit by cold water.

The hands were smutted as if by soot. So was the face. So was the chest showing behind his unbuttoned shirt.

The beautiful skin which had made this man so handsome now was repulsive. It looked filthy. White was white in name only. He was no longer a blanco.

XII

ONLY once in my life, señores, have I seen in another man’s face the look that then came into that of White. That was when, down the Orinoco, a man whose curial had capsized was dragged under by a caimán. He clung desperately to his overturned boat while I and other men drove ours at full-speed to rescue him; but just as I was reaching for him the brute under him tore him loose and pulled him down.

That man was lost, and he knew it. It was a long time before I stopped seeing his awful eyes in my dreams. And now in the dilated eyes of White I saw the same look.

He stared into my face with the hopeless horror of the man dragged to a frightful death. And, seeing in my expression that this thing was true, he seemed to crumple up. I grabbed him to keep him from falling.

“My God!” he whispered hoarsely. “My God!”

I could say nothing. I was shocked dumb. I sat him down in his hammock and stood looking at him. In a dazed way I felt that this was why he had itched so badly last night; it was the change in his skin. And faintly I seemed to hear again the words spoken at the camp where we met the black Indians:

“In one day they had fever. In three days they turned black. They never can turn light again.”

I remembered, too, the things of which I had thought that night when I puzzled about the changed skins. And now, some how, I knew why this had been done to those men, and why it now was done to White; something which I once had heard about Indians far over in Colombia came back to me. And before I knew I was speaking, I muttered—

“Juana.”

He did not hear me, or if he did he gave no sign. He sat hunched over like a man wounded to death, his gaze fixed on his hands. Indians gathered around us, looked, grunted to one another, and went to bring others. I turned and found the capitán approaching. He walked calmly in, and I saw that his eyes were hard, as they had been last night. He looked at White’s hands, his face, his neck. Then he gave a little nod and turned to walk out.

I stepped in his way, blocking him. Pointing to the blackened man, I demanded:

“Como? Porqué? How? Why?”

I knew he understood those Spanish words; but his mouth remained tightly shut, and his eyes turned colder. Sudden anger seized me.

“Answer!” I yelled. “Answer, you dumb fool! Who did this and why?”

I got my answer—I knew it already—but not from him. Into the hut, her face set like her father’s, came the girl Juana. She was carrying something. Up to White she walked, and into one of his hands she pushed the thing she held. It was his missing mirror.

In that mirror he stared at the blackened face which always would be his. Suddenly he dashed the glass to the hard dirt, where it smashed. Jumping up, he tore his shirt from his body and looked down at himself. Black to the waist, he was—black as his hands and face.

Lifting his head, he looked into the eyes of Juana.

“You!” he said in a low, blood-chilling tone. “You did this! You put into the red yucut’ ’sehi the black blood—you poisoned me—like the men of Caño Cerbatana—you made me——”

He choked and clawed at his throat. And though he spoke English, she understood what he meant. And in her short Spanish she answered, her eyes never wavering.

“Si. You took me. Then you would go. My father knows. A week he has known. He would kill. But I would not have it. You are my man. You will stay with me. You are no blanco. You are negro. You can not live with blancos. You will live with Maquiritares. You have drunk the Maquiritare ’sehi. You are black Maquiritare. It is done.”

His eyes, like hers, did not move. In them grew a terrible gleam. His face twisted, and stayed twisted. All at once something seemed to snap inside him.

“A nigger!” he screamed. “A squaw man! —— you!”

He struck her in the face. She fell senseless, six feet away.

With a wild laugh he jumped at Juancito. His fist cracked under the chief’s ear, and the capitán dropped as if shot.

In another instant he was among the Indians, kicking, striking, attacking the whole tribe of Uaunana with his knotted black hands and laughing like a fiend from hell.

Men threw themselves at him, their faces flaming. None had a weapon, but none ran to get one. With hands curved like talons they leaped to claw him, to choke him, to throw and break him. Their Carib blood, usually cool, had suddenly boiled up as they saw their capitán fall.

Man after man reeled and sprawled under the blows of those black fists. But other men surged in like maddened peccaries attacking a tigre. They yanked him backward, kicked his legs from under him, threw him down and swarmed on him.

It had all happened in a few seconds. Now I did the only thing that could save him. Grabbing my rifle, I fired shot after shot just over their heads. The crash of the gun so near their faces shocked them into a pause. They jumped up and retreated a step or two.

“Stop!” I yelled. “Es loco—he is mad! Stand away!”

With that I walked at them. They looked at my big black gun-muzzle, at the man gasping and writhing on the ground—some one had kicked him in the stomach, and he was struggling for breath—and broke away. I stood over him and roared at them.

“Mad!” I repeated. “You made him so. Now you try to kill him because he is what you made him. You are snakes! You are poisoners! Are you murderers too?”

They looked at me—the man known from the Padamo to the Caura as the friend of Maquiritares—and heeded what I said. Some seemed a little ashamed.

“Get to your house!” I commanded. “Your capitán is not dead. Take him and throw water on him, and on this woman also. Leave the man to me. Go!”

They went, muttering among themselves. With them they carried Juancito and Juana. Not until they were well away did I take my eyes off them. Then I looked down to find White struggling up.

He was a terrible sight now, scratched and bruised, streaked with blood, smeared with dirt, his breeches torn to tatters through which showed that blackened skin. Worst of all was his face. His bloodshot eyes glared like those of a mad dog; his mouth turned down, and from its corners oozed froth. I felt chilly. But I spoke as calmly as I could.

“Come, amigo, and sit and control yourself,” I said. “There may be some cure for this. Let us talk. Come!”

I put a hand on his shoulder to lead him to the hammock. It was a mistake. A snarl broke from him. Before I could jump back out of reach he drove a fist with all his power upward at my jaw. I felt that my head was torn from my body. Then I felt nothing more.

A long time later I found myself in my hammock. Men stood around me, watching. One of them was Juancito, his face swollen at one ear.

As I tried to move my head, a sharp pain in my neck wrung a groan from me. Juancito spoke.

“Be still. You are hurt. It is finished.”

Raising a hand, I found my neck wrapped in crushed leaves and cotton strips. My chin, too, was bound up. It was sore. Later I found that the flesh there had been split to the bone by that savage blow.

“Finished? Have you killed him?” I demanded.

Another Maquiritare answered.

“No. He is gone. He took his gun and went into the forest.”

“And Juana?” I asked.

“She too is gone. She has followed him. Men have gone after her.”

I tried to sit up, but the pain was too great. It seemed that the whole top of my head would blow off. My stomach sickened. For minutes I could only grit my teeth and lie still.

When I could talk again I asked:

“That is why men are made black? It is done by women to keep men from leaving them?”

“It is so.”

That was what I had thought; for those Colombian Indian women of whom I had heard are said to do the same thing for the same reason, though the drink made there covers the skin with blue patches instead of blackening it all over.

“So Juana, seeing that el blanco liked the ’sehi, put into it the blood of—what?”

“A black dog. A black hen.”

“And what else?”

There was no answer. So I felt sure that there was something else. If there was not, why should these people refuse to answer?

“What else?” I persisted. “What is the thing that makes the black skin? The blood of two black creatures, and what?”

The silence continued. At length one said shortly—

“Loco, there are things that no blanco may know.”

And, señores, I do not yet know more than was told that night at my camp below the Caño Cerbatana. As the Uaunanan said, there are things no blanco may know. But if you doubt that this can be true, reflect a moment on the fact that the Indians of our Guayana make that marvelous curare poison, which paralyzes and kills any creature, yet leaves it meat sweet and harmless for eating. To people who can create such a mixture, what is impossible?

It was two days before I could leave my hammock, and six before I could move my head freely. If it had not been for the care given me by the Maquiritares, who from time to time brought more of those crushed leaves and bound them on, I might not have risen as soon as I did; for that terrible blow under the chin, striking me so suddenly that I could not even set my jaw to receive it, had nearly broken my neck.

As I lay there aching through the long hours and reflected on what I had done for White and considered how he had repaid me for it, I cursed him and myself bitterly more than once. It was the deed of a mad man, I kept telling myself; but that did not change the fact that I was in pain, or lessen the feeling that I had been a fool to put myself in the way of such an assault.

As the pain grew easier and my usual strength came back, though, I became more reasonable. And the Maquiritares, now that the man who had injured all of us was gone, held no grudge against me for saving him. Perhaps the fact that I too had suffered at White’s hands made them realize that he must truly have been out of his mind, and caused them also to feel more kindly toward me than they otherwise might have done.

At any rate, they tended me faithfully and well, and their capitán often lounged for hours beside me in White’s abandoned hammock, saying nothing but keeping me silent company.

Then back came the men who had taken the trail of the blackened white and of the girl who had made him what he was. Five of them had gone out, and five only came in. Neither White nor Juana was with them.

They told their tale briefly to Juancito, who sat for a time looking solemnly at the edge of the forest. Then he spoke a few words. The five went to the house and put away their weapons, and the chief walked slowly away by himself, his face giving no sign of his thoughts.

“They have followed Juana and found her,” one of the men with me explained in Spanish. “She was with el blanco. The white man who now is black takes no rest by day. He goes on and on and does not stop. He seems not to know or care where he goes. She walks behind him.

“When these men tried to come up with her she cried out. The blanco turned and shot the gun at them. They covered themselves behind trees. They tried to get around him. But the woman would not have it so. She said they must go back. She said she would stay with her man. If in time her man would come to Uaunana, then her father Juancito would see her again. If not, not.”

“And the men came back with no more words?”

“It is so. El blanco wears a big belt full of bullets. His gun is strong. His woman will not leave him. So they came back.”

“And what says el capitán?”

“He says that what has been has been, and what is to be will be.”

And that, señores, is how the matter was left by all of us. From that time till the day when the curial taking me back down the river left Caño Uaunana, not another word of the pair was spoken in my hearing. Neither did I speak of them. There was nothing more to be said.

And as my canoe slid swiftly away down the Ventuari that last morning I looked back once, seeing only the narrow stream rushing smoothly out from the high green forest in which wandered somewhere a man of the North and a girl of the South. And in my mind ran over and over the calm words of Juancito, capitán of the Maquiritares of Uaunana—

“What has been has been, and what is to be will be.”

XIII

SO, señores, that is the tale of Black White; of the man who once, at this table, laughed at a proud white girl and a law thousands of miles away, and who was trapped by a bare brown maiden and branded by the law of the Carib hills.

Because of that black brand, he now roams like a caged tigre from end to end and from side to side of that Parima upland which has become his prison, and in which walks no other white man except, at times, Loco León. It is a huge outdoor prison, to be sure—hundreds of miles long and wide—but still a prison; for that blackened skin and the cancered mind it has given him will hold him there forever.

How he lives, what he does, where he goes, are questions which white men may ask but which receive no answer; for the mouths of the Maquiritares, who alone know, are shut. They seem to feel now, those sons of the Caribs, that El Blanco Negro is one of the creatures which belong to their Parima and so belong to themselves; and that his life is one of the matters of which no other blanco may know. Even I, Loco León, friend of Maquiritares, never can get a word from them about him, except—

“He lives.”

Yet I know certain things. I know that the Maquiritares and the Macusi Indians of Guayana Inglesa—British Guiana—are friends, and that they trade back and forth by making overland marches now and then to each other’s country. I know some of those men of the Macusi, having met them on their journeys to the Maquiritare paraguas; and since they are not Maquiritares, they have no reason to keep Maquiritare secrets unless so minded. And from them I know this:

At times there appears on the river Cuyuni, which flows from our Venezuela into Guayana Inglesa, and on which men hunt gold and diamonds, a small band of Maquiritares. They are not always the same ones, but they bring always the same things: small hide bags and a cartridge shell. The bags hold gold, in dust and nuggets. The men will trade this gold for only one thing—cartridges. And those cartridges must be of the same size as the shell they bring. That size is caliber .30.

They tell no men whence they come, or where they get the gold, or what they do with the cartridges. They take the bullets and go, and that is the end of them. A few men have tried to follow them and find out where the gold comes from, but those men have never come back—except one who floated down the river with his head split. So nobody follows them now. The gold-hunters of the Cuyuni call them “The Thirty Gang.”

Now, I know that the Maquiritares have no rifles; their few guns all are long-muzzle-loading shotguns of very weak power, which they get from the Macusi. I know also that the rifles used by us Venezolanos are of caliber .44. But I happen to know that the gun of Black White is a .30.

I know, too, that the girl Juana still is with El Blanco Negro. Sometimes in the dry season, when I am scouting for new balata or, having found it, merely rambling about the land of Parima to see whatever I may see, I hear light footfalls in the darkness near some little night camp of mine. And presently out of the night speaks a woman’s voice.

“Loco León!” it calls softly. “Loco León!”

“Quién es?” I answer, peering into the gloom.

“Juana de Uaunana,” says the voice. “Y El Blanco.”

The first time I heard this I started to rise from my hammock and step forward. But I was stopped by the click of a rifle-hammer and the hard, strained voice of El Blanco himself.

“Sit still!” he commanded. “Don’t come near me or I’ll shoot. No white man sees me and lives. Talk! Talk English!”

So for some time I sat still and talked English, telling all I could think of about matters outside. At length, though I heard no movement, I felt that I spoke to the empty dark; and when I called his name no answer came.

Since then I have never tried to rise. When that woman’s voice comes to me I say:

“Buen’ noche’, Juana. Como está uste’?”

“Bien,” she answers. “Well.”

Then comes White’s harsh order:

“Talk! Talk English!”

And I, who brought him to Uaunana and so to his prison, talk the language of his own land as nearly as I may, and feed his hunger for the white-man words he never can hear from another tongue. And, as on that first night, when he goes it is like an Indian, with no farewell.

Once, and once only, I have spoken of his business, his home, his father, telling him I had heard that inquiry was made about him at Bolívar by the American Minister at Caracas. He stopped me with a bitter curse.

“I’m dead!” he snarled. “Dead! Understand? I died at Salta Para with the rest. I was smashed to jelly and the crocs ate the jelly. Father? ——! The little shrimp needn’t worry any more about my disgracing him. I’m dead!”

Then he broke into a laugh that chilled my blood, and I heard that horrible laugh go away in the night and die out at last, leaving me covered with cold sweat. When at length I could speak again I said to the darkness where he had been:

“It is true. You are dead.”

And to the world which knew him he is dead for all time. And although he nearly killed me too, that last day at Uaunana, often I have pitied him; for he was no worse than many another man, and much better than some. Yet who shall say that the grim mystery-mountains of the Land of Falling Waters have not measured out justice, and that the red yucut’ ’sehi of the Maquiritares has not saved many a girl in your North America from tasting a far more bitter cup?

Quién sabe?

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 Metasyntactic variable, which is released under the 
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