CHAPTER V.
INTO THE BUSH
Sleepy eyed and frowzy haired, with shirt unbuttoned and breeches andboots unlaced, Tim emerged from his iron-walled cell into thecool-shadowed main room, blinked at McKay and Knowlton lounging overtheir morning coffee and cigarettes, stretched his hairy arms, andadvanced sluggishly to the table.
"Yow-oo-hum!" he yawned. "Ain't they cute! All dressed and shaved likethey was goin' to visit the C. O. And here's pore Timmy Ryan lookin'like a 'drunk and dirty' jest throwed into the guardhouse, and feelin'worse. Top o' the mornin' to ye, gents!"
"Same to you, Tim," McKay nodded.
"Who hit you?" asked Knowlton, squinting at bumps and scratches on Tim'sforehead.
"Nobody. Couple fellers tried to, but they was out o' luck. Oh, I seewhat ye mean! I done that meself while I was gittin' to bed."
"Waves must have been running high on the ocean last night. Better drinksome coffee. Thomaz, another cup--big and black."
"Thanks, Looey. 'Twas kind of an active night, at that."
"I heard you come in," vouchsafed McKay. "Were you trying some highdiving in your room?"
"Faith, I done some divin' without tryin', but 'twas ragged work--Ipulled a belly smacker every time. I got to tame that hammick o' mine.It throwed me four times hand-running and the only way I could hold itdown was to unhook it and lay it on the floor."
"Sleep well then?"
"I did not. Cap, I thought I knowed somethin' about cooties, but I takeit back--I never knowed nothin' about them insecks till last night.Where they come from I dunno, but I'll tell the world they come, and ifthey wasn't half an inch long I'll eat 'em. They darn near dragged meoff whole, and all the sleep I got ye could stick in a flea's eye.Lookit here."
He extended an arm dotted with swollen red spots.
"Ants!" said McKay, after one glance. "Ants, not cooties. They'reeverywhere. Especially under the floor. That's one reason why folkssleep in hammocks down here. Even then they're likely to come down thehammock cords and drive you out."
"Ants, hey? Never thought o' that. And I'd sooner spend another nightfightin' all the man-eatin' jaggers in the jungle than them bugs. It'sthe little things that count, as the feller said when his wife give himhis fourteenth baby."
He downed the thick coffee brought by Thomaz, demanded another cup,accepted cigarette and light from Knowlton, and sighed heavily.
"Who tried to hit you?" Knowlton persisted.
"Aw, I dunno. Two-three fellers took swipes at me with bottles andthings. Me and Joey went to a place where they's card games and soon--only place in town where the village sports can git action. Joeyoffers to buy, and does. Stuff tastes kind o' moldy to me, so I askshave they got any American beer. They have. It's bottled and warm, butit's beer and tastes like home. It goes down so slick I buy anotherround, and then one more, lettin' in a thirsty-lookin' stranger on thethird round. That makes seven bottles altogether. Then I think mebbe Ibetter pay up now before I lose track. Looey, guess what them sevenbottles o' suds come to in American money."
"M-m-m! Well, say about three and a half or four dollars."
"That's what I figgered," mourned Tim. "But them highbinders wantthirty-two dollars and twenty cents, American gold."
"What!"
"Sad but true. Seems the stuff sells here for four bucks and sixty centsa bottle. Thinkin' I'm gittin' rooked because I'm a tenderfoot, I raisea row to oncet and start to climb the guy. Other folks mix in and thingsgit lively right off. But after I've dropped a couple o' fellers Joeywinds himself round me and begs me not to make him arrest me, and alsotells me I'm all wrong--that's the regular price. So o'course that makesme out a cheap skate unless I come acrost, and I do the right thing."
"Lucky you had the money on you," said McKay, eying him a bit oddly.
"I didn't," chuckled Tim. "All the dough I had was one pore lonesometen-spot--the one I got from ye yesterday, Cap. But I don't tell 'emthat. I jest wave my hand like thirty-two plunks wasn't nothin' in myyoung life, and start to work meself out o' the hole. After the two guyson the floor are brought back to their senses I order up drinks for allhands and git popular again. Then I git out the bones."
"Oh! I see!" McKay laughed silently.
"Sure. Remember they told us on the boat that these guys will gamble onanything? And that a feller without shoes on may be some rubber workerpackin' a roll that would choke a horse? Wal, I make a few passes withthem dice o' mine and their eyes light up like somebody had switched onthe current. Then I scrabble me hand around in me pants pocket, like Iwas peelin' a bill off a roll so big I didn't want to flash the wholewad, and haul out that pore li'l' ten and ask would anybody like to playa man's game.
"They would. I'll say they would. And they got the coin to back up theirplay, too. Before I come home I was buyin' beer by the case instead o'the bottle. And it's all paid for, and I got more 'n a hundred dollarsleft, besides givin' Joey a fistful o' money jest for bein' a goodfeller. This ain't a bad town at all, gents. Outside o' thatbuckin'-broncho hammick and the man-eatin' ants I had a lovely evenin'."
"How about Joao's lady friend?" quizzed Knowlton.
"Huh? Oh, I didn't git to see her. When bones and beer are rollin' highand handsome I got no time for women. Besides, I found out she wasmostly Injun and fat as a hog. Nothin' like that for li'l' Timmy Ryan.Oh, say, before I forgit it--I asked Joey about this Dutchman here, andhe says--"
McKay scowled, shook his head, pointed toward the closed door ofSchwandorf. Tim lifted his brows, winked understanding, and went on witha break: "--that this guy Sworn-off is a reg'lar feller and knows thisriver like a book. Says he's one fine guy and a man from hair to heels."
Following which he grimaced as if something smelled bad, adding in abarely audible whisper, "And that's the worst lie I ever told."
"We met Mr. Schwandorf last night after you went," Knowlton said,easily, drawing down one eyelid. "Very likable sort of chap. He's goingto help us get started upriver."
"Uh-huh. When do we go? To-day?"
"If possible."
"Glad of it. This big-town sportin' life would be the ruination of asimple country kid like me. Yo-hum! Wonder how all our neighbors arethis mornin'--the goat and the drunk and the two sick fellers. Kind o'quiet over that side o' the room."
Thomaz entered just then with more coffee. Knowlton turned to him.
"Are the sick men better to-day, Thomaz?"
"Much better, senhor," the lad said, carelessly. "They are dead."
"Huh?" Tim grunted, explosively.
"Dead," the youth repeated. "They were taken out at dawn. Do not bealarmed. It was the swamp fever, which is not--what you say?--catching."
"Humph! Sort of a reg'lar thing to die of fever here, hey?"
Thomaz shrugged as if hearing a foolish question.
"_Si._ Swamp fever, yellow fever, smallpox, beriberi--to-day we live,to-morrow we are dead."
"True for ye. They's allays somethin' hidin' round the corner waitin' tojump ye, no matter where ye are. If 'tain't one thing, it's another."
Despite his philosophical answer, however, Tim fell silent, his eyesgoing to the doors of the rooms where Death had stalked last night whilehe was gambling. Like most men in whose veins red blood runs bold andfree, he had no fear of the sort of death befitting a fighter--suddenand violent--but a deep repugnance for those two assassins against whicha victim could not fight back--disease and poison. The Brazilian youth'snonchalant fatalism aroused him to the fact that here both those formsof death were very near him; the one in the air, the other on theground--fever and snakes.
For the moment he was depressed. Then curiosity awoke.
"If this here, now, Javary fever ain't catchin', how does a feller gitit?"
"Mosquitoes," McKay enlightened him. "The _anopheles_. It bites a manwho has fever, then bites a well man and leaves the fever in him. Insideof ten days he's sick, unless he takes a huge dose of quinine rightaway. Mosquito attacks perpendicular to the skin. That is, it stands
onits head. If you ever notice one of them biting that way get busy withthe quinine."
"Huh! Fat chance a feller's got o' seein' just how all these bugs bitehim. And one muskeeter standin' on its head does all that, hey?"
"So they say. Also they say it's only the female that bites."
"Yeah. I believe it. I been stung more 'n once by females before now.How about the yeller fever? Git that the same way?"
"Same way, only a different mosquito--the _stegomyia_. When you begin tovomit black you're gone. And if you get beriberi you're gone, too. Firstsymptoms of that are numbness of the fingers and toes. Muscularparalysis goes on until your heart stops."
"Uh-huh. Nice cheerful place to die in, this Ammyzon jungle. Aw well,what's the odds?"
Wherewith he inhaled more coffee, flipped his cigarette butt at a smalllizard on the floor not far away, yawned once more, and swaggered out tothe piazza, bawling:
"And when I die Don't bury me a-tall, But pickle me bones In alky-hawl--"
When his roar had subsided and the two former officers had sat silent amoment, smiling over his nocturnal adventures, the door of Schwandorf'sroom opened abruptly and the German stepped out.
"_Morgen_," he grunted, striding to the table. "Thomaz!"
"_Si_, Senhor Sssondoff." The youth faded away into the kitchenquarters.
"Always feel grumpy until I eat," grumbled the blackbeard. "None of thiscoffee-cigarette breakfast for me. A real meal, coffee with gin in it, acigar--then I feel human. Sleep well?"
His bold gaze never flickered as it encountered Knowlton's.
"Fine. If you snored I didn't know it. Didn't hear the bodies taken outthis morning, either."
"Bodies! Oh! Those fellows dead?" He tilted his head toward the doorsbehind which the sick men had lain. "Glad of it. Best for them andeverybody else. Hate to have sick people in the place."
The Americans said nothing. They lit new cigarettes and waited for theother to become "human." And when his substantial breakfast was down,his gin-flavored coffee had disappeared, and his big cigar was aglow, hedid.
"Well, gentlemen, have you decided to take good advice and let yourRaposa alone?" he asked, affably.
"Who ever follows good advice?" Knowlton countered. Schwandorf chuckled.
"_Niemand._ Nobody. So you will go." He shook his head solemnly. "I havesaid all I can without offense. But if you persist I can only help youto start. If possible I should like to go with you up the river to theplace where you will take to the bush; but I must go to Iquitos, inPeru, on the monthly launch which is due in a day or two, so all mybusiness is in the other direction. If now I can aid in the matter of acrew--"
"That is what we were about to ask of you."
"So. Then let us be about it. I have been thinking, since you showedyour determination last night, and have made inquiries about men. Thereare now in Nazareth, the little Peruvian town across the river, severalmen from whom you can pick an excellent crew. Men of the river and thebush, not worthless loafers like these townsmen here. Men who are notafraid of hell or high water, as the saying is. Not remarkable foreither beauty or brains, but good men for your work--by far the best youcan obtain. I would suggest a large canoe and six or eight of those menas crew."
The others smoked thoughtfully. Then McKay said, "We should preferBrazilians."
"Not if you knew the people hereabouts as well as I. It, of course,makes no personal difference to me what sort of crew you get, but I tellyou that these men are best. What does it matter which side of the riverthey come from? Men are men."
"True," McKay conceded.
"Can't be too fussy here," Knowlton added. "Let's see the men."
All rose. But then Schwandorf suggested:
"No need of your going to Nazareth. Better stay here, unless you want togo through a great deal of ceremonious foolishness over there. It'sPeruvian ground and the barefooted ignoramuses of officials may insiston showing their importance by demanding your papers and all that. I cango across, get the men, and be back here before you'd be half throughthe preliminaries. Saves time."
"All right, if it's not too much trouble."
"A good deal less trouble than if you went, to be frank. I'm known, andI can go straight about the business. So sit down and wait. Thomaz! Myhat!"
Out he tramped to the piazza, where he paused a moment to run a swifteye over the disheveled figure of Tim, who had fallen sound asleep in achair. Then, without a further word or glance, he descended the ladderand swung away down the street. The Americans, watching him from thedoorway, observed that children in his path hastened to get out of it,and that he spoke to nobody.
"Prussian," rasped McKay.
"M-hm! Done time in the Kaiser's army, too, even if he has been heresince before the war. But he's treating us pretty white."
The captain made no answer. Their eyes followed the big figure untilthey saw it go sliding away toward Peru in a canoe propelled by twolanguid townsmen. Then McKay dropped a hand on Tim's shoulder. Thered-lashed eyes flew open instantly.
Briefly, quietly, Knowlton told of what had passed while he napped, thenasked what information he had gleaned from Joao.
"He says," answered Tim, "this guy is a queer duck. Been around herequite a while, but Joey don't know what's his game. He goes off on tripsupriver, stays quite a while, comes back unexpected, and nobody knowswhere he's been or why. He don't use Brazilian boatmen--gits his men onthe other side. And the Peru boys themselves dunno where he goes, or,anyways, they say they don't.
"Two of 'em come over here awhile back and got drunk, and Joey tried topump 'em, but all the dope he got was that this here Fritz goes awayupstream to a li'l' camp, and from there he goes off into the bushalone, and the Peru guys jest hang around the camp till he gits back.Sounds kind o' fishy to me, and Joey says it does to him, too, but hecouldn't work nothin' more out o' the drunks because about that timeSworn-off himself comes buttin' in and asks these guys what they thinkthey're doin' on this side the river, and they beat it back to Peru tootsweet. He's got their goat, all right, and I wouldn't wonder if he's gotJoey's, too. Anyways, Joey tells me he's off this geezer and advises meto lay off him, too, though he can't name a thing against him."
"Queer," said Knowlton, looking again at the canoe out on the water.
"Gun running?" suggested McKay.
"Nope," Tim contradicted. "I thought o' that, but Joey says they'snothin' to it; they watched this sourkrout close, and he don't never gitno guns from nowheres. Besides, they's nobody up there to run guns tobut Injuns, and them Injuns are so wild they don't want no guns; theystick to the bow and arrer and such stuff, which they sure know how touse. Whatever his game is, he plays a lone hand as far's this townknows. Got no pals here, and nobody wants to walk on his corns."
"May be perfectly all right, too," mused Knowlton. "A little gold cacheor something--though he said there was none in this region. Oh, well,what do we care? We have our hands full with our own business, and allassistance is appreciated."
An hour drifted past. Men of the town lounged by, looking curiously atthe strangers, some nodding and voicing a friendly, "_Boa dia._" Women,too, watched them from windows and doors, and children slyly peepedaround corners until something more important--such as a cat, a goat, ora gorgeous butterfly--came their way. Tim went inside and slicked up abit by buttoning and lacing his clothes and combing his rebellious hair.At length a long boat put out from the farther shore and came surgingacross the sun-gleaming river.
"Handle themselves well," McKay approved, noting the easy grace of thecrew. In the bow a tall, slender fellow stood with arms folded,balancing himself to the sway of the rather clumsy craft and watchingthe water ahead. In the stern, on a little platform whence he could lookover the heads of the others and catch any signal from the lookout, asquat, dark-faced steersman lounged against his crude rudder. Betweenthese two the paddlers stood, each with one foot on the bottom of thelong dugout and the other on the gunwale, swinging in nonchalant unisonas their bl
ades moved fore and aft. Under the curving roof of arough-and-ready cabin, open at the sides to allow free play of air,Schwandorf lolled like some old-time barbarian king.
Down to the landing place trudged the three Americans, and there theemployers and the prospective employees looked one another over withinterest. Eight men had come with Schwandorf, and a hard gang they were.The bowman, hawk nosed, slant eyed, black mustached, with hairy chestshowing under his unbuttoned cotton shirt, had the face and bearing of abuccaneer chieftain; and the effect was intensified by a flaring redhandkerchief around his head and the haft of a knife protruding from hiswaistband. The rowers behind him, though of varying degrees ofswarthiness and height, all had the same sinewy build, the same boldstare, the same devil-may-care insolence of manner; and though none butthe lookout wore the piratical red around his brow, more than one knifehilt showed at their waists. The steersman, whose copper-brown skin andflat face betokened a heavy strain of Indian blood, gazed stolidly atthe Americans with the unwinking, expressionless eyes of a snake. Backinto the minds of McKay and Knowlton came Schwandorf's words, "Men notafraid of hell or high water." They looked it.
"Here they are," announced the German, stepping ashore deliberately."Jose, the _puntero_"--his hand indicated the lookout--"Francisco, the_popero_"--pointing to the steersman--"and six _bogas_. Good men."
McKay ran a cold eye along the line of faces, his gaze plumbing each.Under that chill scrutiny the third man's stare wavered and dropped.That of the next also veered aside. The rest fronted him eye to eye.
"Two of them will not do," he asserted, in the brusque tone of a captaininspecting his company. "Numbers Three and Four--fall out!"
Literal obedience would have put Three and Four into the river,wherefore they stood fast. But, though they did not quite understand themeaning of the words, they grasped the fact that they were not wanted.One laughed impudently, the other slid a poisonous glance at thebleak-faced officer. The squat Francisco scowled. So did Schwandorf.
"No man who cannot look me in the eye is needed on this trip," McKaydeclared. "Also, six men are enough. If necessary we will bear a hand atthe paddles ourselves. Jose, you have been told by Senhor Schwandorfwhat we want?"
"_Si._"
"You can start at once?"
"_Si._"
"What pay?"
"We leave that to you."
"Um! A dollar a day for each man?"
"Money or goods?"
"American gold."
"_Si. Bueno._"
"Very well. Take those two men back to Nazareth, get what belongings youneed, return here, and report to me at the hotel. I am captain.Understand?"
"_Si_--Capitan."
"All right. On your way!"
As the boat drew out the two rejected men bade the Americans an ironical"_adios_," and one spat in the stream. In the faces of the others,however, showed something like respect for the crisp-spoken captain, andJose snarled something at the ill-mannered Three and Four.
"You might need those men," mumbled Schwandorf.
"Guess not," McKay answered, serenely, turning toward the hotel. "Comeon, boys. Let's get our stuff ready to ride."
Less than two hours later their rooms were vacant, their duffle wasstowed in the long dugout, the Peruvian crew stood arrogantly eying theBrazilians who had gathered to witness the departure, and the Americanswere bidding good-by to Remate de Males in general and its Germanresident in particular.
"Mr. Schwandorf, we thank you for your efficient aid," said Knowlton,extending a hearty hand. "You have helped us to get going with alldispatch, and we trust that we can repay the favor soon."
"You owe me no thanks," was the curt reply. "I would expect you to do asmuch for me if our positions were reversed. I wish you luck."
"Get aboard, Tim!" McKay ordered, setting the example himself. Timobeyed, first giving the important Joao d'Almeida Magalhaes NabucoPestana da Fonseca a real American handgrip and getting in return adouble embrace from that worthy official. Whereafter he winked andgrinned expansively at several women garbed in violent hues of red,yellow, and green, frowned slightly at Schwandorf, lit the last cigar hewas to smoke for many a long day, and, as the dugout began to move,erupted into a more or less musical farewell to the females of thespecies:
"The Yanks are goin' away, Pa-a-arley-voo! They're movin' on to-day, Pa-a-arley-voo! The Yanks are goin' away, they say, Leavin' the girls in a heartless way, Rinkydinky-parley-voo!"
With one final wave of his cigar to the gesticulating Joao and thegrinning women he turned his back on the town and faced the little-knownriver and the inscrutable jungle. But neither his eyes nor his thoughtstraveled beyond the bow of the boat. Through narrowed lids he studiedthe swaying paddlers and the piratical Jose. And in his mind echoed thewhispered warning of Joao, delivered during the effusive embrace atparting:
"Comrade, watch those _bastardos Peruanos_."