The Steampunk Megapack

by Jay Lake

  They went, all except Domengos Peixoto, a surly sot whom nobody liked. I asked him what he waited for, and he answered that there was no sense in rushing about for a man who would soon be dead. This angered us both. Pedro roughly grabbed him and shoved him toward the door, and I kicked him out into the water. He scrambled out, got into his montaria, and went away cursing.

  After he was gone, though, we had to admit that he probably was right when he said this man would not live. Not only was he at the point of death from sickness and suffering and starvation, but he was crazed. Staring straight ahead, he was whispering and muttering, and his look of fear was even stronger than before.

  We bent over him, listening. His talk was broken and confused. The terrible mud was dragging him down, he said. The jungle was black, black, and a jaguar was snarling under his tree. A huge snake was coiled beside his canoe, and if he could kill it he would eat it, but he had no weapon. Thepiums were a torment as bad as fire. Something with a long black tail was grinning at him. Oh for a machete or a rifle! These things, and many more, he mumbled.

  “Poor fellow, he raves of the terrors of the unknown jungle where he has been,” said Pedro. I nodded, for I too had seen men whose brains were twisted by hardship. But before I could an­swer, the man screamed out:

  “The tailed men! The tailed men! Devils of hell, they—ah! Drop that knife! I will do it; I will do it; yes, yes, but put away that knife!”

  He cringed and shivered miserably as he screeched.

  “Have courage, comrade!” Pedro soothed. “We will protect you. There are no knives or—or tailed demonios here.”

  But the human wreck lay whimpering and moaning, and we could make nothing of his words. Then Meldo came hastening in with a bowl of hot broth, and the other men arrived with clothes and more brandy, followed by still more men who had come to see what was going on. We raised the sufferer in his hammock and began to feed him the soup.

  The smell of that food seemed to give him strength, and he sucked it up so greedily that we had to restrain him from seizing it and burning himself. When it was gone we pulled shirt and trousers on him and laid him back. He grew stupid, like an animal which has starved and then gorged itself. Our hopes rose a little, for we thought he might sleep and gain power to live. So we drove everyone out, and, though some would not go away but stayed outside in their boats, the house became quiet. We sat in the other hammock, silently waiting.

  All that afternoon we waited. The sick man seemed not to sleep but to doze with eyes partly open. It was nearly night when he breathed deep and the eyes opened wide. As we rose and stood beside him we saw two things: that the gray shade of death was on him, but that he had become sane.

  Under his matted black hair his eyes gleamed hollowly first at me, then at Pedro. A light came into his scarred face, and a weak smile grew on his bearded mouth.

  “Pedro!” he whispered.

  My partner stared down at him.

  “Yes, I am Pedro, friend,” he said. “But I do not know you.”

  “Luis Pitta,” breathed the other.

  “Luis Pitta! Deos meo! Are you Luis?”

  The dying man nodded slightly.

  “Luis. I die.”

  He lay breathing a moment, then went on:

  “I am glad—to die and be at peace. Keep away—Jurua.”

  “Luis Pitta!” repeated Pedro in a shocked tone. “Luis—Luis, old comrade, who has treated you so? You were a strong man, and now—”

  Luis shivered. Fear shot back into his face. As he an­swered his voice rose to a scream.

  “The tailed men! The black men with tails! The demons of the Jurua! O God, save me from—”

  He went limp. His jaw dropped. He was dead.

  Again I felt cold. From the door, where other men heard that awful cry, came a low mumble of whispers and exclamations. Over the dead man Pedro made the sign of the cross. Then he began making a cigarette, and his hands shook. When it was lighted he began pacing up and down. His face grew hard and his eyes burned. Stopping suddenly, he demanded—

  “Who remembers Luis Pitta?”

  Nobody answered. The men outside had left their boats and edged in at the door, where they stared at the dead man as if trying to remember him, but none seemed to know him. The name of Luis Pitta meant nothing to me either, so I kept silence.

  “We were boys together in Santarem, long before we came into this cursed Javary country,” said Pedro. “Luis went to work as a seringueiro at the rubber estate of Senhor da Costa on the Branco, while I worked for Coronel Nunes. I have not heard anything of him since two years ago, when a man of the da Costa seringal told me Luis had grown restless and homesick for the open campos and clean sandy beaches of Santarem, and, in the time of high-water, had left for the East. He intended to paddle through flooded lakes and channels until he reached the Jurua, go down that river to Fonteboa on the Solimoes, and there get an Amazon boat which would carry him home.

  “He was a strong, merry-hearted, fearless man, was Luis. Now look at him! A broken, tortured, fear-ridden wreck who raved of demons on the Jurua. Por Deos! Demons they are, the things which have done such work on my old comrade. But, demons or not, they shall pay!”

  He choked with rage and struck one fist hard into the other hand.

  “Who will go with me?” he roared. “Who will go to the Jurua and fight these fiends? Luis was a seringueiro like ourselves. Who goes to avenge him?”

  Still no one spoke. The men glanced at one another, stared at the dead Luis, shuffled their feet, but made no answer.

  “Pah! You sicken me!” Pedro growled. “You are not men of the bush, but potbellied town loafers. Get out! The air around you stinks!”

  Then up spoke a man shamed by my partner’s scorn.

  “Pedro, you are mad. From the mouth of the Javary to the mouth of the Jurua is more than four hundred miles, and from there to the upper reaches of that river is at least six hundred. Shall we go a thousand miles to avenge a man we did not know? No. And this man Luis said the ones who broke him were devils—demonios with tails! Any of us will fight men, but we will not go far away to attack things spawned in hell. So long as they stay where they are we will let them alone.”

  The others grunted their approval of this. After glaring at them a moment, Pedro slowly nodded.

  “You have it right,” he admitted. “This is not your business. What is more, I do not want any of you now. If you would travel a thousand miles to get to a place that can be reached by paddling a hundred miles in another direction, you have not brains enough to be worth taking with me. I will go alone.”

  He motioned for them to leave the house. They went, shak­ing their heads and saying he was crazed. Then he turned to me, and found me squinting down the barrel of my rifle.

  “I am not asking you to go either,” he told me.

  “You do not need to,” I said. “Where is the oil? This barrel is rusty again.”

  He laughed out suddenly.

  “Good old Lourenço! I should not have said that. The oil is there behind that cuya. But first let us bury Luis while it is yet day. We have not much time.”

  After some difficulty, we found a place where the dead man could be laid at rest. Then we went to the store, where we found men growling because we had buried Luis so quickly instead of burning candles over him all night and giving the townsmen an excuse to sit up and get drunk, as is usual when someone dies. They hushed, though, when we gave them hard looks and then bought many cartridges.

  “Are you indeed going on this wild trip of which men talk?” asked Joaquim, the trader. When we said we were, he added:

  “Then talk with my old father, who traveled much in his younger days and knows something of the Jurua. You will find him in the family-room behind that door.”

  In the room to which he pointed we found an old man lying in a hammock and smoking a long pipe.

  “Greetings, compadre,” said Pedro. “We go to the Jurua. Joaquim says you can tell us something of th
at river.”

  The old man blinked up at us, took out his pipe, and cleared his throat.

  “And so I can, my sons,” he answered. “What do you seek on the Jurua?”

  “We know not, father, whether we seek men or beasts or demons; they may be all three. We would find things with tails which have tortured my old friend, Luis Pitta. The tailed men of the furua, he called them.”

  “Si. I have heard of the death of Luis.”

  He began puffing again, gazing through the smoke as if seeing something far off. We said no more, but waited. After a time he spoke again.

  “The Jurua is bad. It is long and more crooked than a snake, and on its banks live evil things. I would advise you not to go there, but I see that your eyes are hot and your heart burns for your friend, and I am not so old that I have forgotten my own youth. You will go. But I hope, my sons, that you will not find those things you seek, for if you do you may not come back.

  “I have not seen those demonios, but I have heard of them. They are far up the river and they are beasts which walk like men. To reach them by going up the river would take many days and you might not live to enter their country, for the Arauas would murder you if they could. These Arauas live eight days’ journey from the Solimoes and they are not to be trusted.

  “There are also the Catauxias, but these are not so bad. Above these were the Canamaris, but the Canamaris have nearly died out through war with the Arauas. And much farther up are the Culinos and Nawas, of whom I know little, for it takes two moons to reach their region from the Amazon. Above all these are the Uginas. They are the tailed men.

  “Yet you can avoid the tribes lower down the river, and shorten your journey to the Ugina country, by paddling up the Tecuahy and following a furo to the south.”

  “That was our plan,” Pedro nodded. “I know there is a furo, but I do not know where it begins.”

  “It is in the Red Jungle. Far up the Tecuahy you will find it—a great forest of massaranduba trees. Soon after you have entered it you will see opening at the left a long enseada. Go into this bay and you will find it narrowing to a furo which will run almost straight for a time and then will become more winding. Where it ends I do not know, but it leads toward the land of the tailed demonios. Adeos, my sons. Go with God.”

  As we strode out Pedro turned and looked back at him. And when we got into our canoe he said:

  “There, Lourenço, is the first real man I have seen this day, except yourself. Did you notice how his old eyes followed us when we came away? He has been an adventurer in his day, and even now he hungers to go with us. It is a pity he is so old and feeble.”

  Back to our barracão we went, stowed our equipment in our canoe, cleaned our guns, curled up in the hammocks, and slept. As soon as the black night turned to gray day we rolled out again, ate, and started.

  * * * *

  Days of paddling followed. On our first night out we found ourselves very tired, for the loafing at the town had softened us and shortened our wind, and the next morning we were sluggish and stiff. After that, though, our muscles hardened, and we swung along at a stroke that put the miles steadily behind us. We talked little, for Pedro brooded on the fate of his old friend Luis, so that for a time he was not the lighthearted fellow I had usually found him. He did not seem like himself again until we reached the Red Jungle.

  Late on a day of rain we found it. The dense green wall of jungle along the banks of the Tecuahy thinned out. Then the huge reddish trunks of massarandubas began to slide past us, their lofty crowns matting together so thickly that they seemed to make a solid roof. Soon we were in the midst of them. To right and left and up ahead they towered out of the flood waters. Through them we paddled on fast, looking to the left. And before long, as the father of Joaquim had told us, a long enseada opened out toward the southeast.

  In among the giant trees we pushed until we reached a hill where we could land. There Pedro took from the canoe his machadinha—the little hatchet which we use in tapping rubber trees—and cut into a big trunk until milk came pouring out. As you know, senhores, the massaranduba is a “cow-tree,” and its milk is good to drink if taken fresh, though it soon thickens to a tough glue if exposed to the air. We were hot and thirsty, and each of us drank a cupful of milk. Then, much refreshed, we made camp between the root-walls of that tree and ate our evening meal.

  Though the day had not quite ended when we finished, it was very dark under that thick roof of branches and leaves. But the rain had stopped, and now the low sun suddenly flashed out, shooting its long rays in from the bay and making the wet reddish trunks glow like dull fire.

  “This is a solemn place,” I said, gazing at the great columns standing out against the farther gloom. “It seems weird and unnatural. No Indians would ever live in such a place; they would believe it to be the home of the Caypor, that great jungle-demon with the flaming red hair.”

  He nodded and opened his lips to answer. But no words came. His eyes widened, then narrowed, as if a strange thought had come to him, and he looked sharply at the nearest tree. I looked too, but saw nothing odd.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “The women—” he said slowly, “the women of the caboclos make red dye from the bark of the massaranduba.”

  “Yes. But what of that?”

  Still he studied the tree. Then, for the first time since Luis Pitta came floating down the river, he laughed. But why he laughed he would not tell. So, knowing him well, I asked no more questions.

  As suddenly as it had come, the sun left us. At once it grew so black that we could see nothing at all. Tree frogs and crickets burst out into their usual nightly hammering. Their racket made us feel more at home here, and we soon slept.

  In the morning we drank again of the tree-milk, and before we left the hill Pedro cut off chunks of the rough mas­sa­ran­duba bark. These he stowed away in the canoe. Seeing my questioning look, he grinned.

  “Perhaps I will make a red dye and paint the tails of the Uginas with it,” he joked. “Who knows?”

  “If we find them, I think we will paint them with red from their own veins,” I replied.

  His face hardened, and he grunted agreement. We left the hill, paddled away through the trees to the open water, and went on until we found the furo.

  * * * *

  In the next three days we journeyed far and fast. The furo was narrow, but straight and deep, and there was neither current nor low-hanging bush to hold us back. The Red Jungle still rose around us, and its thick roof prevented the usual small stuff from growing around its trunks. In the dim sha­dows among those tremendous trees we saw no living thing, and heard no sound except that of frogs and bugs.

  Then the big trees ended, and again we met the tangle of undergrowth and hanging vines. Here we had to travel more slowly. In some places we had to use poles instead of paddles. Snakes dropped down around us from branches overhead. Swarms of piums and motucas attacked us and bit until blood dripped from us. At night we heard jaguars roaring near by, and once we had to sleep almost buried under our supplies to protect ourselves from vampire bats. But we made good speed along the narrow canal in the daytime, and at length we shot out into a clay-colored water which at first we took for the Jurua.

  We soon learned, however, that this was not even a river. It had a slight flow, but it was only a winding maze of flood waters in which we wandered for days. And in this wandering we lost the furo. When we found that we were not on any river we sought it again but could not find it. But we did find a small river flowing in from the south, and up that stream we went.

  Before we had gone far on this river we were attacked. Shrill yells sounded in the bush, and arrows dropped around our boat. We snatched our rifles, but could see no men—only the heavy arrows rising slowly from the farther shore, curving in air and plunging straight down. Several struck in the canoe.

  “Drop as if you were hit,” snapped Pedro. Even as he spoke an arrow fell down my back, scratching my shoulder muscles
and catching in my shirt. I slumped forward, thinking that now I was a dead man in truth—for if that arrow was poisoned I could not live long. A second later Pedro gave a groaning cry and flopped backward.

  At once the arrows stopped. The yells became screeches of savage joy. We lay quiet, our boat drifting downward, until Pedro gave the word. Then we popped up and found naked wild men in plain sight on the bushy bank. Before they realized we were alive our bullets were striking them down.

  At the belch of our guns they screeched again—this time from fear. They jumped away, but not before three of them had fallen dead and a fourth had tumbled into the river. We slammed several more bullets into the jungle, and heard their yelps grow fainter as they fled. Then I yanked that arrow out of my shirt and looked at its point. There was no stain of poison on it, and so the scratch across my shoulders meant nothing.

  “Let us get that man,” said Pedro, and I saw that the Indian who had fallen into the water was alive and trying to crawl out. We drove the canoe at him, caught him, and dragged him in. Then we crossed the river again and hung to bushes while we questioned him.

  He had been shot in one leg but he paid no attention to the wound. He was more afraid of what we might yet do to him than of what we had done. His face was dull and stupid but his beady eyes showed his fear. We took care that he should keep on fearing us and tried to make him talk.

  It was hard to make him understand. We spoke in Tupi, the lengoa geral of the Amazonian Indians, but he seemed to know only a few words of it. From this we judged that he belonged to one of those small tribes often found far away from the Amazon, who have lived in one place so long they have almost forgotten the language of others.

  Yet we learned a few things. We had been attacked because we were strangers, and these people feared all strangers. They would not assail us again, because now they would be too much afraid of our guns. The river we were following came out of a chain of swamps, and at the other end of that chain another stream ran south. This was what we most wanted to know, for it meant that we were on a route that would bring us out on the Jurua. We tried to find out something about the tailed men, but he could not—or would not understand; he seemed to think we spoke of monkeys. So, having learned all we could from him, we let him go.