WHEN he awoke, torpid and head-achey, the tent was steamy with mid-morning heat. The Chavante boy was setting his tray of breakfast—roast crane, farinha gruel-sweetened with the toffee-like rapadura, and coffee with fermented sugarcane. Harbin made a wry face, and squinted at the boy, whose black eyes were gleaming with a curious excitement. His calm voice, however, betrayed nothing.
"Bon dia! Senhor durmiou bem?” he inquired politely.
"Muita bem," Harbin grunted, yawning. "Where’s the Senhora? She had her breakfast yet?”
The boy smiled brightly, his face an inscrutable mask now, mysterious and unreadable as the jungle itself.
"Senhora pe, pe," he announced, then elaborated in a painful combination of Portuguese and English. "Senhora es agone. Senhora, Senhor Mario. Es agone. Say let you esleep, you seeck, no wake.”
"Oh! Gone already, have they?” Sir Cedric looked disappointed, then shrugged. "Well—they should be back by tomorrow at sundown. Matura’s only a few miles down the river. They—” He broke off, puzzled again by the sly look of amusement on the Chavante boy’s face. "Eh? What are you grinning about?” he demanded.
For answer, the boy ran to the door of the tent and beckoned. An older, nervous-looking Chavante—possibly the boy’s father or older brother—entered warily, braced as to dash out again if the. white man appeared angry.
”Seniior? Pliz?” the man stammered; he was Burity, the chief; Harbin recognized him suddenly from the dried palm frond stuck in his pierced lower lip, like a spiky beard from his hairless chin. "Senhor?” he began again. "Geev present? Geev present if Burity tell?”
"Tell what, you gibbering ape?” Sir Cedric snapped. He tried to prop himself up on his elbows, a sense of foreboding suddenly knotting his stomach muscles. "Yes? All right, all right—a present! Speak up!”
The Chavante chief swayed, steadying himself against the tentpole. He was drunk, Harbin perceived; a strong whiff of fiery native rum reached his nostrils. Twice Burity started to speak, blinked and grinned foolishly, then blurted out:
"Senhora. Senhora et Senhor Mario. Es no go down rio, es go op. No go Matura. Es take boys—” He held up one finger, then two vaguely. "Es ron away, go Goyaz. Es no come bock.”
’'‘What!” Harbin wrenched himself to a sitting posture, oblivious of the pain that knifed through his broken ribs. "You’re lying!” he roared. "I’ll—I’ll beat you to a pulp, you lying scum! I’ll cut your tongue out for saying a thing like that!”
Burity cringed, shaking his head violently. "No lie! No lie, Capitao! Es a truth! Senhor zangado? No be zangado for Burity. Me no do nada, me man so—good Indian!”
Sir Cedric glanced about wildly for something to throw at him. But the Chavante whirled and darted out of the tent, followed by the explorer’s angry curses...
HARBIN fell back on his cot, breathing hard. Pain clutched at his chest under the strapping; he had probably torn loose those half-mended ribs again. The fury of complete helplessness wracked him for a moment. That Indian was lying; of course he was lying! Diana would no more desert him in this condition than—than...
Or, would she? Could a middle-aged husband ever really be sure of a young and beautiful wife?
Sir Cedric forced himself to lie still, teeth clenched, fists knotted at his sides. The Chavante boy crawled out from behind a trunk where he had hidden, and began timidly fanning him again. Harbin waved him away irritably, then called him back.
"Boy—?" He hesitated, flushing at his own lack of reserve. "Boy, did you—? Do you happen to know which way my—the Senhor Mario went? Up river, or down?”
"No, Capitao.” The Indian boy lowered his eyes respectfully, but Harbin could detect a secret contempt in his impassive face.
"Is there anyone who could find out for me? A tracker? A tracker could tell which way the baualoa took off, couldn’t he?” Sir Cedric pressed.
"A tracker, Capitao?” The Chavante was standing before him, still outwardly respectful. "Yes; tracker tell. But—Brujo know more better. Ask Brujo look upon Senhora’s batalao. Brujo see all theengs today, yesterday, tomorrow.”
"Bru—? Oh yes. Quite.”
Sir Cedric suppressed a smile. This was not the first time he had heard marvelous powers attributed to the Brujos, the witchdoctors of these Matto Grosso native tribes. The Inspector of Indians had advised him to take one along on this expedition—as arbiter, medico, and general adviser to his Chavante bearers. Brujos were usually old men with wrinkled faces and mystic eyes —half-crazed from addiction to yage, the deadly topaz-green drug brewed from liana pulp. Murika, the Brujo of his Chavantes, was no exception.
But Murika, Harbin considered swiftly, would know about Diana and that sneaky Brazilian, if anyone would. All rumors, all remnants of local gossip, found their way quickly to those wise old ears—to be palmed off later on the credulous as knowledge gleaned from supernatural sources.
"Of course, Murika!” Sir Cedric nodded eagerly, snapping his fingers at the Indian boy. "Well? Go fetch him! At once!”
The young Chavante nodded and dashed out of the tent. He dashed back presently, but more reverently, holding the tent flap aside for a wizened old Indian to enter.
Murika was a very small man, for a Chavaate, most of whom stood well above six feet. But there was something about his erect bearing, about the serene wrinkled face under its feathered headdress, that commanded respect. The old man’s face and chest were heavily pigmented with red and black, blue-black stain from the genipapo fruit and red from the uruku berry. A jaguar skin, with the tail dragging, was wrapped around his skinny loins, and a great deal of stolen copper telegraph wire coiled around his arms from wrist to elbow. In his pierced lower lip was a rather large bone from a howler monkey, which affected his speech but slightly. He evidently knew no English at all, but spoke perfect Portuguese, probably learned at a Christian mission school before he took to black magic. His voice was deep and mellow like the music of a distant oboe, and Sir Cedric was impressed in spite of the smile that twitched at the corners of his mouth.
"Murika?” he greeted the old Indian haltingly. "I—I called you here to—to—”
The aged Brujo nodded matter-of-factly, stuffing some kind of fibre shreds into his cigar-holder-like pipe. He sat down cross-legged beside the explorer’s cot and leaned back comfortably against the tent-pole. Without a word he closed his eyes, puffing slowly at the pipe. A peculiar acrid odor filled the tent, making Sir Cedric feel suddenly light-headed and queer. He frowned, annoyed.
"Now, see here,” he said. "I’ve no time for a lot of mumbo-jumbo. Just, tell me if you know which way my—”
The Chavante boy hissed sharply, shaking his head and making a silencing gesture. On the opposite side of Harbin’s cot, he whispered in obvious awe:
"Senhor—do not espeak! Brujo esmoke the ayahuasca. The drug of second sight—”
"Oh!” Sir Cedric snorted, impatient. “I’ve heard of that—damned lot of nonsense. Or,” he smiled wryly, "maybe it isn’t. Maybe it works something like sodium pentothal. Releases the subconscious mind. Helps dig out. facts the conscious mind’s forgotten. Hmmp!” He rolled over on his side, wincing, to watch the old man as he sat, swaying and smoking, in utter silence.
Presently, however, the Brujo’s eyes opened. They had a weird doped look staring unseeingly at Harbin as though they gazed through him, through tire stained tent walls, and farther, much farther, through the matted jungle outside. Very slowly the old witch-doctor began to speak, chanting a curious singsong now in Chavante, now in Portuguese. Harbin made out the Portuguese with an effort, but the Indian was beyond him.
"They go toward the rising sun. The batalao moves slowly. There are three hearers, Chavantes. The Smiling One sleeps under the toldo. The man watches... Now he shoots the gun, killing a blood-red arara. He brings the feathers to the Sen-hora. She laughs, thanking him and putting the feathers in her golden hair...”
SIR CEDRIC cursed, heaving himself upright again furiously. It was all a lot of s
illy patter, meaningless and without any foundation on truth, he told himself sickly. Or, was it? Toward the rising sun,' the old man had said. Then the balalao was being paddled east toward Goyaz, just as Burity had said; not west to Matura. Did the Brujo know for certain, from tracks he had found along the river-bank amid a network of other spoors—the round cup-like tracks of jaguars, the broad three-toed marks of a tapir, the splayed track of the capivara, those sheep-sized water-guinea-pigs of the jungle? Or was he only guessing?
”Now she sings,” Murika droned abruptly. "She sings this song, it is plain to hear...” He began to hum. And Harbin's scalp prickled as he recognized the halting strains of Noel Coward’s Never Try to Bind Me, an old favorite of Diana’s. The very tune she had been dancing to, with young Forrester, at the Explorer’s Club that night—that night—
Amazingly, unbelievably, Murika was even singing the words now, although he knew not a phrase of English:
"Never try to bind me, Never try to hold...
Take me as you find me,
Love and let me go...
The sound of those words, their import so obviously meaningless to that wrinkled Chavante singer, stabbed at Sir Cedric like a knife thrust.
"Stop!” he yelled furiously. "That's— it’s a lot of damned nonsense! How... how could you possibly hear them, if they set off down the river—or up the river, as you say—four or five hours ago?"
The old Brujo closed his eyes, for answer.
In a few moments, when he opened them and looked at the white man again, their weird faraway look was gone. He rose from his cross-legged position and stood quietly beside Harbin’s cot, waiting. Sir Cedric glowered at him, then shrugged and thrust a cheap plug of tobacco at the old Indian, who took it with a gracious air of bestowing a gift rather than of receiving one"
"Is there more which you wish to know, Capiiito?” he asked softly. "Murika has looked into the past—-and has seen the padre in Rio speaking the marriage vows. The Capitao drops the ring, in his eagerness to place it on the Smiling One’s finger.
A man with a golden mustache picks it up and gives it back to—
Harbin started, his scalp prickling again. "Kimball!’’ he murmured. "He—he was my best man. And I did drop the ring... How could you possibly know...? Did you ever overhear Diana and myself...? That must be it," he broke off, surreptitiously mopping at his forehead. "Of course. Nothing... supernatural about it!”
Murika’s bland expression did not change. He merely stood quietly, waiting, looking more sure of himself than Harbin had ever felt in his whole life. In fact, the quiet wisdom in that wrinkled, face made him feel more unsure of himself now than ever.
"Do you desire that I shall look into the future, Capilao?” the old Chavante asked gently. "The ayahuasca sends the eyes in all directions. One is able to see what was, what is, and what is to be.”
"The devil you can!” Sir Cedric snorted, more to convince himself than to scoff at Murika. "All right!” he snapped. "What is to be? My wife’s run off with a damned Brazilian, you say. Is she coming back?”
Murika took another puff at the pipe his eyes again taking on that opaque drugged look, the pupils widening until the iris had disappeared. Harbin watched him, fascinated, trying to feel amused and scornful, trying to deny that hollow sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Murika opened his eyes wide, swaying. His voice sounded very thin and echoing as he spoke, like the voice of one shouting down a mine shaft.
"I see... ” he intoned.. "I hear... the Smiling One... screaming. It is written in the stars... that the Capitao may keep before him, for all the rest of his days, the smiling face of his senhora. But...”
"Yes?” Harbin urged tensely, as the Brujo paused. "Yes?”
"But it is also written in the stars,” Murika said thinly, "that the sight of it will drive the Capitao into madness. This I see, and no more.”
Sir Cedric expelled a quivering breath. Rubbish, all of this, sheer rubbish. And yet... That bit about the Noel Coward song, and the dropped ring. And Kimball’s blond mustache—he and Diana had certainly never mentioned that in Murika’s hearing, though it might have been only a clever bit of guesswork. Still—
He lay back on his cot, battling for self-control. At his sides his hands were clenched so tightly that his nails bit into his palms. Two drops of blood oozed from the broken flesh and ran down his wrists, unfelt. But Murika noticed them, and approached the white man’s cot. He made a few curious passes in the air with a monkey skull produced from somewhere under the folds of his jaguar skin, then laid the skull gently on Harbin’s forehead.
"Capitao,” the old man said. "Forgiveness is better than vengeance...”
The archaeologist jerked his head away savagely, the monkey skull bumping hollowly to the ground as he glared up at Murika.
"Get out of here!” he grated, sweat popping out on his forehead, and upper lip. "What are you trying to do to me, lying here trussed up? Are you trying to drive me crazy? Get out!”
He wrenched himself up again, panting and cursing. The Chavante boy dodged behind his trunk again, but the old Brujo merely bowed slightly and backed toward the tent opening.
"Jealousy,” he said in his soft mellow Portuguese, "is like a poison, Capitao. The Senhor stands where the trail forks. Think well!”
"Get out!” Harbin roared, hurling his gourd of matte at the old Indian’s head. The missile described a peculiar curve as it neared its target, however, and fell harmlessly to the floor. Again the white man shivered; he had heard before how a Brujo can deflect the flight of an arrow or a blow-gun dart. Impossible, of course.
HE FELL back, gritting his teeth against the pain of his ribs. Sweat poured from his forehead now; the tent was like a steam cabinet. From outside he could hear the faint splashing of an alligator somewhere upriver, the dismal hiss of a flock of ciganas, the mew of a hawk sailing enviously above where some of the bearers were shooting fish with their short bows and five-foot arrows barbed with the tails of arrays—sting-rays. Harbin’s mind sailed upstream, following a batalao where a lovely blond girl and a handsome young man sat very close together under the palm-thatched toldo awning. Perhaps they were kissing now; perhaps only clinging together, in the way of young lovers.
A groan escaped him, half rage, half pain.
Diana, Diana.
Of course it had been too good to be true. The first handsome, virile young idiot to come along, and she had left him—the glamor of his reputation worn thin, now that she had seen him make such a botch of this expedition. He would never hold her again, never see that dazzling good-humored smile of hers that had caused the Chavantes to call her Rissante, the Smiling One.
Harbin’s eyes chilled. Dammit, she was always smiling! Had she actually been cheerful and courageous, or was she merely laughing at him? These American girls, they were so light-hearted, so unconventional— unlike all the strait-laced British women he had known. Perhaps she had merely married him for a lark, planning all along to leave him when she became bored! Leave him to face all these grinning natives, to get back to Belem the best way he could —without a guide.
At the thought of Mario, Sir Cedric’s face hardened. Damned insolent Brazilian! If he could follow them, if he could only get Ins hands around that tanned neck! His fingers flexed with the desire to kill, and suddenly he let out a roared command:
"Boy! Boy! Where the devil are you hiding?” The Chavante lad scrambled out from behind his trunk, quaking. "Get me Burity again!” Harbin snapped, then shook his head. "No, no— he wouldn’t go. It’s Urubu country. Ah—!” His eyes glittered. "Those new porters! Send them to me. Now!”
The Indian boy dashed off to obey, eager to placate and worried about that gift of - cufflinks.
He was back with the four squat Urubus in five minutes, and Harbin looked them over, still quivering with rage; He blurted his order in Portuguese, then in a few halting words of Chavante, but the Vulture Men shook their heads, grinning foolishly. Harbin scowled, re
sorting to sign-language.
"Senhora . . He drew the form of a woman in the air. "Understand? I want you to... bring her back ” he made scooping motion toward himself..
The leader of the Urubus, a stocky evil-eyed Indian with deep scars cut from eye-corners to mouth-corners, nodded suddenly, and jabbered a few words to the other three. They nodded eagerly, gabbling—and sounding for all the world, Harbin thought with a shudder, like the nauseous, hideous-looking birds they worshipped. The leader edged forward, beady eyes gleaming.
"Turi?” he asked slyly, then brought up an English word, pointing to Harbin, then vaguely out into the jungle. "Mon?”
"Oh-—the white man? Mario?” Harbin’s face was contorted. "The devil with Mario!” he growled. "I don’t care what you do to him!” He made a broad gesture of dismissal, at which the Urubu chief grinned delightedly, nodding and replying with a throat-cutting gesture. His face held the unholy delight of a child given permission to pull the wings off a fly.
Then they were gone, like a flock of. gabbling scavenger-birds, and Harbin lay back on. his cot, closing his eyes wearily.
In a day or so the Urubus, in a light fast montaria, could overtake the other slower boat. And well, if they were cannibals, if that was what the Inspector of Indians had warned him; the devil with Mario! Luring a man’s wife away from him as he lay helpless, unable to follow! Diana, they would bring back with them, and—well, he could take it from there.
TEARS of reproach seeped from between Harbin’s closed lids. Diana—how could she have done this to him? But she was such a child, easily impressed, overly romantic. Forgiveness? What was it old Murika had said about forgiveness being better than vengeance? Sir Cedric smiled wryly. Well,
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