by Lou Cameron
She said, “They don’t visit towns, so they don’t know the names of any, but I was able to learn that the flagelados are most active along the Rio Putumayo and that they raid as far north as the headwaters of La Caqueta.”
He frowned and said, “Hey, aren’t we south of La Caqueta?”
“Yes, Dick. That was why the Jivaro warned us to be careful.”
Chapter Sixteen
Captain Gringo had known they were in trouble. He hadn’t known how much trouble they were in until they stopped for a noon break farther to the east. The going hadn’t been too tough, but everyone had wet feet and damp clothes and there was no way to dry out in the sunless depths of the selva. If they didn’t catch pneumonia that night, they faced jungle rot in a few more days. The parched corn and jerked beef they’d taken from the Colombian troopers’ saddlebags was getting moldy and there hadn’t been all that much to begin with. Pancho came over to ask if they could light fires. Captain Gringo told him not to. There was a slight breeze from the north, left by the trade winds dragging their bellies along the canopy overhead. The smell of smoke traveled far in damp air and would contrast sharply with the normal rain forest smell of mold and rotting vegetation.
Pancho wandered off, grumbling. There was a lot of that going around now that they’d lost the inspiration of hot pursuit. Captain Gringo knew there’d be more to come if he didn’t shape up and lead them someplace that sounded sensible.
Gaston must have been thinking along the same lines. He waited until Diablilla went off with one of the other girls to take a discreet crap in the woods before he moved over to his taller sidekick and hunkered down to say, “We are carrying a lot of extra baggage, Dick. When are we to lighten the load?”
Captain Gringo didn’t ask him what he meant. Save for the eight men who’d armed themselves with the dead troopers’ rifles the ragtag band was a large, discouraged gang of ragged, helpless fugitives. They had six women, eight ponchos, and damned near no food to share among two dozen men.
Gaston read his hesitation correctly and urged, “Come on, Dick. We owe them nothing. We saved them from captivity and got them out this far. What can they expect from us, eggs with their cerveza?”
“We can’t ditch them. Aside from it being sort of shitty, Diablilla and the ones with guns wouldn’t like it.”
“Have you asked them? Diablilla will do as you say. Pancho is a born survivor. Nunez, Quico, and a couple of others who were quick to arm themselves and move in on the women are men who think well on their feet, too. The others are just peons and a burden. A smaller, well-armed party could move faster and take on anybody we might meet. Even then, it could be a tight squeak. Have you any idea how awkward it would be to attempt to load all those people in one canoe, if we got lucky?”
“Look, Gaston, I know you’re right. I just can’t abandon kids in this green hell. If they didn’t starve to death, the damned slavers would catch them and put them to work tapping rubber trees. The guys, I mean. The flagelados would probably rape the girls.”
Gaston shrugged and said, “Tapping rubber is no more distressing than being shot against a wall. As to the adelitas, none of them are convent girls. The flagelados won’t have to rape them. They admire tough men with guns, hein?”
“Look, I said you were right. But there has to be a better way. We don’t have to worry about it right now, do we?”
“Mais non, we can worry about it ten minutes from now if you wish. But let us come up with something soon. This would be a tough trek for legged-up soldiers. These barefoot children do not move fast enough for important destinations and I, for one, grow weary of this casual strolling through the countryside.”
Diablilla and the other girl came back. They were not alone. An older Jivaro was walking between them, carrying a machete. Captain Gringo whistled for attention and called out, “Everybody stay calm like I told you before. Just go on about your whatever and pretend you don’t see him.”
Gaston nudged him and murmured, “Don’t you mean see them? We are being covered from all sides, Dick.”
“Yeah, I spotted that guy ducking behind that tree, too. But the girls were out among them alone just now. I think they’re just being cautious. The old gent looks like a chief.”
His guess was correct. Diablilla brought the old Indian over to them and as they all hunkered down she explained, “This is the casique of our earlier Jivaro’s band, Dick. He tells me his scouts have spotted a gang of flagelados headed this way. He says he is going back to his own hideout and he suggested we might like to come along.”
“Suggested, eh? Didn’t you tell me a suggestion is an order from a Jivaro chief?”
She said, “I feel he is sincere, Dick. Those others reported we were friendly and gave them salt. He knows all whites are not flagelados and of course he knows we have guns. Jivaro are shy but pragmatic. They seldom invite strangers to visit them. But I told him we don’t like slavers, either, and he suggested that our guns and his hideout might make a good match.”
“Yeah? How do we know he isn’t trying to lure us into a trap and steal our guns?”
“Oh, Dick, how silly you talk. He does not have to lure us into the selva for to rob us. We are already in the selva and surrounded by his warriors. Besides, they don’t know how to use modern guns. The only guns some few Jivaro have are old trade muskets and they don’t trust them. The powder soon spoils in this constant dampness and the guns keep blowing up when they will fire. I don’t know if this is because they are cheaply made or poorly cared for. This casique says he has no guns.”
The chief nudged the girl politely and said something else. She nodded and translated, “He says he has something interesting to show us at his camp, too.”
“Ask him what it is.”
She did, and after a long discussion in bird she looked puzzled and said, “He says he was hoping we could tell him. He says his warriors captured a creature they can’t understand. He says it looks like a human being, but that it is wilder than any monkey. They have been trying to decide whether to tame it or eat it. It is obviously not a person, but the women feel sorry for it and say it looks too much like a person for to eat.”
The American glanced at Gaston. The Frenchman shrugged and said, “Don’t look at me. I have never heard of wild apes in Latin America, and in any case these Indians would know every animal that belonged in the selva. Perhaps some species of African ape escaped from some zoo or circus? I think they have a zoo in Manaus.”
The American nodded and said, “Weil, we may as well give it a shot. We can’t stay here if raiders are moving our way. Tell the old boy we accept his invitation, Diablilla.”
The girl did so, and the casique grinned and handed Captain Gringo a greasy lump of what looked like blackboard chalk. He looked at it dubiously and the girl said, “He likes you. He has given you a lump of precious rock salt. Lick it and hand it back to him.”
Captain Gringo kept his face neutral to hide the green taste in his mouth. He could see the lump of rock salt had been slobbered over by other tongues. But what the hell? He’d shared a spit-slicked peace pipe with Apache in his time. He gingerly licked the piece of rock salt, rubbed his tummy, and said, “Yum yum,” before handing it back. The old man grinned with delight and imitated the motion before tucking the salt in with his poison darts. Then he rose and walked away without further comment. Diablilla said, “We are supposed to follow him.”
So they did. It wasn’t easy. Captain Gringo could have walked that fast with little trouble, but the others trailing behind him cursed and stumbled as the Indians led them at a mile-eating clip between the trees.
The guerrilla band was strung out and some had fallen behind completely within a few miles, but the guys packing the machine gun managed to stay in sight and he noticed one of the Jivaro warriors had moved in to help by packing one of the ammo cases. The Jivaro were shorter than the white or even mestizo Colombians, but they were sturdy little runts with muscular brown legs. They seemed to move with no effort, eve
n though Captain Gringo was starting to sweat a bit now.
As he’d expected, they led him to an area where the trees had been leveled, either by a storm or slash-and-burn agriculture a while back, so the undergrowth had grown up rank and tangled. The chief ahead walked into what seemed a solid green wall and vanished silently. Captain Gringo saw, as he followed, that they’d hacked a twisted path through the brush and what looked like monstrous lettuce armed with thorns.
As the fugitive party wound through single file, the trail suddenly opened on a clearing the size of a baseball diamond. The bright red earth had been cleared and packed down by bare feet. A circle of thatched huts surrounded the village plaza. No smoke rose from any of the huts. The Jivaro knew about the way you spot a hideout at a distance, too.
As the rebels stumbled out into the open space and clustered dubiously around Captain Gringo, some naked little potbellied kids ran out to laugh and caper around them. The Indians in the huts stayed put but peeked out with shy grins. Some of the girls weren’t bad.
By no stretch of the imagination could a Jivaro maiden be considered beautiful by a white man’s standards. They were oddly built with thick waists and swaybacks. Their faces were moon-shaped and sort of funny-looking even if they’d had eyebrows. Yet there was an appealing childish cuteness to the younger ones. Their skins were smooth as peaches and the same color. Their small, firm breasts stood proudly at attention as if someone had pasted a grown woman’s tits on a little girl. The juvenile effect was enhanced by the absolute lack of pubic hair between their chubby reddish tan thighs. This detail was apparent at a glance because all any of them wore—if that—was a string around the waist. Both male and female Jivaro wore their long hair in bangs. For headhunters they all smiled a lot and he’d never seen such perfect teeth.
As the chief orated an introduction for them to his people, some of the older Jivaro came shyly out for a closer look. In Spanish, Captain Gringo called out casually, “All right, all you men, I can’t tell you not to peek, but for God’s sake keep your hands off these girls. Remember, we’re guests and these guys are tougher than they might look.”
There was a muttering murmur of agreement. Then, apparently inspired by the sound of a white man’s lingo, a pale figure exploded out of one of the huts and ran toward them as a shorter, darker Jivaro girl followed with an exasperated expression.
It was a white woman. Or, rather, a white girl of about seventeen or eighteen. She had long blond hair, period. She wasn’t wearing a stitch, and as she got closer she suddenly became aware of this and tried to cover her breasts and blond pubic thatch with her hands. Since she only had two hands, she didn’t quite make it.
She settled for dropping to her knees, thighs together, hands over her breasts, at the feet of the bemused Captain Gringo. She was blushing beet-red as she sobbed in English, “Oh, thank God you’ve come at last! I have been a captive of these cannibals for weeks!”
The old chief was saying something to Diablilla. The brunette stared down at the blonde in dawning understanding as she translated, “This is the mysterious creature they were telling us about, Dick.”
“For God’s sake, couldn’t they see she’s a girl?”
“Apparently they’ve been debating that. Do you speak Spanish, señorita?”
The naked blonde at their feet looked up blankly. She was awfully pretty, despite her tears and dirty face. She asked in English, “Beg pardon?” and Diablilla told Captain Gringo in Spanish, “There’s part of your answer. The Jivaro know there are other people in the world beside themselves, but every Christian they’ve ever met spoke Spanish or the related Portuguese. Some Jivaro know a little of those tongues. This poor girl’s language must sound like utter gibberish to them. The unusual color of her hair and eyes didn’t help, either.”
Captain Gringo leaned down to help the blonde to her feet, but she sobbed, “No, I’m naked. They won’t give me any clothes to wear. Oh, God, don’t any of you speak English?”
Captain Gringo said, “I do, miss. Who are you and how did you wind up here?”
She looked relieved as she answered, “Oh, thank God you’re a white man! I’m Susan Reynolds from Salt Lake City, Utah. I was with a party of Mormon missionaries when we were attacked by Indians. I don’t know what happened to the others. I was bathing in a brook near our camp when the shooting started. I crouched in the bushes and watched as they looted and burned at a distance. Then, when someone seemed to be coming toward me, I ran away into the jungle.”
“So nobody stripped you? You ran off in your birthday suit, Susan?”
“Yes, I was afraid to go back for my clothing. I must have run and run for ages and then these other Indians caught me. I screamed and tried to get away, but they just tweeted at me like birds and then they tied me up and brought me here. You have to get me out of here! You have no idea what horrors I have witnessed. They have human heads in the huts. Little tiny black heads, shrunk like dried apples and hanging by the hair. They are terribly immoral, too.”
“Uh, have any of them, well, been immoral with you?”
“No. That’s the only outrage I haven’t been subjected to. The children tease me and everybody laughs at me. Every time I’ve tried to get away they slap me and put me back inside.”
He held up a hand to silence her and turned to the Spanish-speaking Diablilia and the chief. He said, “The old gent was telling us the truth, as he sees it. It seems to be a case of mutual misunderstanding. She’s a perfectly rational white missionary who thought she was about to go in the pot. I can see how her actions must have convinced them she was sort of nutty. Can you explain to the chief?”
As Diablilla twittered at the Jivaro, Captain Gringo took off his shirt and handed it to the blonde, saying, “Here, put this on. It’s going to be okay, Susan. These aren’t the guys who attacked your party. I suspect they were outlaws rather than Indians if they had guns. These headhunters were trying to help you, but you’ve about convinced them they caught a critter.”
The Mormon girl put on the shirt with a grateful sigh, but complained, “My legs will still show if I stand up.”
“Hey, let’s not get silly! I’m not about to take my pants off for you, and besides, we all saw anything you might want to hide.”
She blushed again and hung her head as she allowed him to help her to her feet. She was right about the shirt. It only hung down to her mid-thighs and she had nice legs indeed.
Diablilla said, “The casique says he is glad you have tamed her. He says she has been a great bother and that you can be vile with her if you wish. But I, Diablilla, will carve out both your hearts if I catch you doing any such thing!”
He was glad the blushing missionary didn’t speak Spanish as he answered, “Take it easy, querida. I’ve already got a sweetheart, remember?” Then, in English, he told Susan, “Listen sharp. I think you’re out of the woods. Stay close to me. But don’t act like we’re in love. The pretty brunette is a good kid but inclined to be possessive and I saw her kill a guy one time.”
“Why sir, whatever are you suggesting? I’ll have you know I’m a good girl!”
He imagined she would be good, at that. “Okay,” he said, “keep a stiff upper lip and let’s have no more sudden moves you don’t clear with us first.” He pointed at Gaston and added, “This is M’sieu Verrier. He speaks English too, sort of. If he tells you to do anything, don’t argue.”
In Spanish, Gaston asked, “Anything, Dick?” and Captain Gringo answered in the same lingo, “Keep your pants buttoned, you wise ass. The Indians find her yelling tedious, and she’s a yeller if I ever saw one.”
Gaston smiled at the blonde and said, “Enchanted, Miss Reynolds.” Then he turned back to Captain Gringo and added, “Eh bien, we have reached the secret castle and rescued the maiden from the dragons. What comes next on the menu? Do we ask them to show us their collection of heads, get drunk with them, start a football pool, or what?”
Captain Gringo asked, “Diablilla?” and the Colo
mbian girl said, “The casique says he will have some huts and hammocks ready for us soon. Meanwhile, we should probably just find some shade and stay out of their way, no?”
He nodded, looked around, and called out, “All right, gang. Let’s all stick together. We’ll head over there to the shady side of the clearing and take a break. If anybody comes near you, offer them a smoke. Otherwise, leave them the hell alone.”
His rebels and the “rescued” girl followed him into the strip of shade afforded by one brushy wall’s angle against the slanting afternoon sun. The sky above, even in the open, was a dazzling misty white rather than blue. Unfiltered by the forest canopy, the light through the overhead cloud cover was uncomfortably warm in the open, and Captain Gringo knew you could get a nasty sunburn through the mist. As they hunkered down together he asked Susan how she’d managed not to do that. She said, “They made me stay inside. Every time I left the hut they were holding me in, the women in charge of me dragged me back.”
“They might have saved you a nasty burn. They probably knew they were doing it. Even Indians get sunburned if they stay out in it long enough. We’re damned near to the Equator.”
Two little kids came over, leading a pet armadillo on a string. They all admired it, and Diablilla told them it was swell. Hanging around an Indian village could get pretty tedious. The other Jivaro, having accepted them, went on about their business as the afternoon began to drag. The men squatted on their muscular haunches making darts and weaving cage traps. The women nursed babies or made chichi, according to Gaston, who knew most disgusting native customs in these parts. He said the two girls chewing starchy roots nearby and spitting the results into calabash bowls were preparing the mildly alcoholic native beer called chichi by the riverboat crowd. Gaston said it tasted like malt liquor. Captain Gringo didn’t want to hear how he knew. The two girls looked healthy and he supposed their saliva was no worse in beer than it would have been in a French kiss, but the idea of drinking fermented starch and human spit just didn’t appeal to him very much.