Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  The worst of it was that he didn’t dare tell Buckley the truth, the real reason why he was quitting. He had to make his story convincing.

  Buckley, a big man with the shoulders of a bison, and a brown, leathery face, rumpled his iron-gray hair and sat down heavily behind his desk. He glanced at Gunther, the bookkeeper, who was scribbling away busily in his corner.

  “Mind getting out for a bit, Gunther?” he said.

  The other nodded and rose, rubbing his long, thin nose with one bony finger. The door clanged shut after him.

  “I don’t like to remind you of this, Joe,” Buckley said, “but don’t you figure you owe me—a little?”

  Kenton’s face was impassive, his gray eyes chips of steel.

  “Think so?” he said. “I earned my keep.”

  “You—” The mine owner hesitated. Kenton finished it for him.

  “I was broke, sure. On the beach. You gave me a job here and made me superintendent. But I did a super’s work, and more. Don’t think it was easy, either, working short-handed and running on a shoe string.”

  In the silence the chugging of the pump was like the pound of blood in Kenton’s temples. He felt sick and cold inside. This was going to be harder than he had expected. But there was no other way.

  “I wish you’d let me know sooner,” Buckley said. “This puts me in a bad spot. You said you’d wait to draw your pay till we were solvent, and now—well, pulling out three thousand bucks will leave me short. I don’t know if I can meet the payroll next week.”

  “It’s my dough, isn’t it?” Kenton snapped. Damn, he thought. If there were only some way of leaving the money with Buckley. He didn’t want it, but unless he took the three thousand, some suspicion might arise. And Kenton couldn’t afford that. The game was risky enough as it was. He was almost certain that there was a spy in the mining camp. And it might be anyone.

  Buckley’s jaw jutted out. Without another word he got up, went to the safe and opened it. He counted out greenbacks.

  “There it is,” he said finally. “American money.”

  KENTON opened his shirt, took off a money-belt, and stowed away the currency.

  “Thanks,” he said “I’m taking a. piragua downstream. I’ll send it back by some Indio.”

  Buckley made no reply. Kenton was chewing his lower lip as he went out of the mine office and strode toward the bunkhouse. Most of the men were down in the mine, or else working on the equipment, whites and natives alike. They were short-handed, and no one could be spared to accompany Kenton on his journey. But that was old stuff.

  The whites were used to going downstream alone on their paydays. No more than two of them could be spared at a time, so that the mining operations could be kept going.

  Kenton wondered briefly who would be promoted to his post as superintendent. He couldn’t think of a suitable man. Not that they weren’t willing, but the labor was inexperienced.

  It was hell. In a few months the mine would be out of the red and making money. Then it would be easier to keep men, by paying higher wages. Up to now Kenton had had a difficult time hiring enough workers to supplant those who quit, disgusted by the hard work, fever and loneliness in this Yucatan outpost.

  He got his clothes—most of them were already in the piragua—and went down to the makeshift dock. Settling himself in the small craft, he cast off and picked up a paddle. A glance behind him showed Buckley’s giant figure standing motionless in the door of the office.

  With a shrug, Kenton started to paddle. Soon the boat shot around a bend. The green, lush jungle rose on all sides, silent and impenetrable. No, not silent. Parrakeets croaked in a blaze of bright colors. Monkeys slipped from liana to branch. Further down were caymans, but there were none this far upstream. Kenton touched the heavy Colt at his belt, and his eyes narrowed. The trap was ready—and he was the bait!

  At any moment now, death might strike. The worst of it was that he did not, could not even guess from what quarter the danger might come. But there was danger. That he knew. His vague suspicions had been crystallized by young Godfrey’s disappearance.

  Kenton’s thoughts went back to Godfrey—a keen, round-faced kid, fresh from college, ready for adventure. He had known the boy years before, in the States. And when Godfrey had written him asking for a job he had offered the lad a position in the mine.

  “It’s tough work,” he warned. “But it’ll make you tough, if you can stand the gaff.”

  For five months Godfrey stood it. Then, shaken by fever, he drew his pay at Kenton’s insistence and went down-river.

  “Get the hell out,” the superintendent ordered. “If you don’t we’ll be burying you muy pronto. Come back again when you’re on your feet, and we’ll hoist some pulque to celebrate.”

  “Guess you’re right,” Godfrey said, and took his piragua down the river. He promised to write, but he did not. He said he would send back a special brand of tobacco Kenton wanted, and that never arrived. Knowing Godfrey, the superintendent gradually came to the conclusion that something had gone wrong.

  Then, back in the bush he found a lucky pocket-piece that had belonged to Godfrey dangling from an Indio’s necklace. The native could tell him nothing. He had traded shell-money for the piece, which another Indian from some unknown tribe had owned. Kenton started to think things over.

  THE river went down for a three days’ journey, after which it branched out into five or six channels, all of them forking out to the coast and the roaring little towns that clung to it. Once a man went downstream it was almost impossible to trace him. There were too many boats, tramps and freighters, stopping at the banana ports for cargo.

  Beyond the river forks was an enigma, for Kenton. The ores from the mine went down to Casayuga, but that did not mean that the men did the same. On their few days off they went one by one, and two by two, to the roaring ports, to spend their pay-checks on liquor and dice and women.

  Most of them were wise enough to take only a little money with them on these excursions, banking the rest with the company till the day they decided to quit.

  It was curious, Kenton thought, that he had never heard a word from any of those who had quit. They simply vanished. Just as Godfrey had done.

  Stories had begun to spread among the men, and Kenton had caught the whispers. The men were beginning to be afraid. Knowing that this might be the forerunner of a panic which might mean a mass resignation—leaving the mine helpless without workers—he decided to take action.

  So he quit, taking pains to make his resignation seem real. He dared not tell Buckley of his plan, for he felt certain there was a spy in camp. If he didn’t actually take his pay with him, there might be a slip-up. And the trap must be baited.

  But he hadn’t quite realized that the mine was in such dire straits. As it was, he dared not fail. He had to bring the three thousand back to Buckley. But first of all this deadly mystery must be solved. So Kenton sent the piragua shooting downstream, his paddle digging strongly into the water . . .

  Bright butterflies flew from the banks where twisted roots made dark little caverns. Howler monkeys sometimes sent up their weird cry. Insects were troublesome, and once or twice Kenton saw the sliding long bulk of a cayman rippling across the river, its snout and eyes visible above the surface of the water, the rest of it a shadow beneath.

  The sun dipped behind the jungle wall, and Kenton made camp tying his craft to the bole of a river hardwood. He hesitated before making a campfire, but at last built one and kindled it. He must not seem to be talking precautions, in case there were any watchers. The money-belt around his middle burned like fire.

  He slept lightly, but undisturbed, and before dawn he scrambled out from under the mosquito netting and brushed the assortment of bugs from it. He doused his face in the cool river water, drank hot coffee that he had left buried under the coals—a time-saving device—and lit a battered pipe. The first stage of the journey had been completed successfully. But now—

  Something on the p
row of the piragua caught his attention, a curious curving mark that might have been left by the scrape of a rock. Kenton bent closer. An accident? Perhaps. But on the other hand it might have been made purposefully, and for some good reason!

  SMILING mirthlessly, Kenton cast off the painter and sent the little craft out into the current. The morning mists still clung to the surface, and he watched closely for submerged logs or rocks.

  The day dragged past monotonously. Several times Kenton passed Indio villages, and brown-skinned figures waved at him as he slid past. The sun slowly slipped toward the horizon.

  Rounding a bend, he came in sight of a small settlement, which was merely a group of native huts. And some distance from them, he saw a frame house, built of jungle wood, and with smoke rising from the chimney-hole in the steeply-slanting roof. Roofs here had to slant, or they would collapse under the driving torrents, during the rainy season.

  Kenton hesitated as to whether he should stop for the night here or go on. Finally he decided to keep going. A few Indios were wandering about. Otherwise there was no sign of life, save for a native who was trying to manage a balky log canoe at the edge of slow water.

  Kenton dug his paddle deeper. The current was a maze of eddies here, and he cried out in warning as the Indio in the canoe came spinning out into midstream, frantically attempting to guide his craft. There was a brittle, rending crack.

  Cold water closed over Kenton’s head. His piragua capsized, overturned by the thrusting prow of the log canoe. Spluttering furious curses, Kenton came to the surface and cast an anxious glance around. The native was yelling something, and on the shore figures were running.

  “Swim to shore!” a high-pitched voice shrilled. “It’s shallow here!”

  Kenton hesitated, looking for his piragua. It was caught on rocks further down, he saw, and slowly sinking. But natives were running toward it.

  “The boys will get your stuff!” the voice yelped.

  Kenton struck out for the bank then, and made it in a few strokes. He crawled up, dripping wet, and stood shaking the water out of his eyes.

  A tall, gaunt man in stained, discolored tropical whites was moving toward him. Yellow skin hung in sagging folds on his skull-like face. His jet black eyes were set deep in their sockets, and he apparently hadn’t shaved for days. He was carrying a thin malacca cane.

  “You’re all right?” his shrill voice asked.

  Kenton nodded.

  “Sure. Lucky there were no ’gators.”

  “We cleaned those out.” The other turned to bawl at the natives, and then grinned at Kenton, baring stained, discolored teeth. “We’ll have your stuff ashore directly.”

  “Damn careless boys you have here,” Kenton said. “Don’t they know how to handle a canoe?”

  “I’ll speak to that Indio,” the gaunt man said, his dark eyes suddenly hooded with reddened, inflamed lids. He looked meaningfully at his cane. “You’re from the mine?”

  “That’s right. Name’s Joe Kenton.”

  “I’m Stuart Quayle,” the man said. “Here! You’d better get out of those duds unless you want a dose of fever. Come along. I’ll have the boys bring your stuff up to the house and dry it out.”

  “Thanks,” Kenton said, and followed Quayle along the river bank toward the big house. He was wondering. Had the upset in the river been an accident, or a cleverly-contrived trick?

  THIS outpost, a clearing cut out of the jungle—what was it? Kenton never stopped here before, though he had passed the place. But he knew that it was a trading post with the Indios, run by a man named Harrigan. But there had been no mention of Quayle.

  They stepped up on the porch of the house. Quayle swung the door open and brusquely gestured to Kenton.

  “Trot along in, Mister,” he invited. The room in which Kenton found himself was like a store, cluttered with innumerable articles used for trading with the natives. Quayle escorted his guest through a curtained doorway into a cool, dim room where a punkah swung in the shadows overhead, setting up refreshing drafts of air.

  Screens kept the sunlight out. Light rattan chairs were set here and there. From one of them a man was rising, a short, fat fellow in neat whites. The man had the round face of a cherub and a waxed, pointed mustache. He was mopping a bald head with a silk handkerchief.

  His blue eyes were startled, a bit frightened, Kenton thought.

  “Got a guest, Harrigan,” grunted Quayle. “Dig up a towel for him.”

  “My name’s Kenton,” the superintendent said, extending a hand which Harrigan took after a slight hesitation. “You’re the trader, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Harrigan said. “I’ll get a towel.”

  Kenton stripped, and rubbed himself down till his sinewy, well-muscled body glowed. He kept the money-belt around his waist. The currency was wrapped in oiled silk and had not suffered by his involuntary plunge. He noticed that Quayle’s sunken eyes were intent on the belt.

  What was the set-up here? Harrigan was seemingly taking orders from Quayle. He was almost afraid of him. Why? Who was Quayle, who looked like a seedy beachcomber?

  Kenton pulled on shirt and shorts that Harrigan tossed to him, and sank down in one of the rattan chairs.

  “That’s better,” he sighed. “Anybody got a smoke? Mine are soaked.”

  The fat trader extended cigarettes and busied himself mixing a drink, while Quayle pulled up one of the window-screens and shouted out at the natives, who, Kenton saw, were carrying his rescued equipment up to the house.

  Outside the window was a large garden, where corn, melons, and other vegetables grew in profusion. Harrigan noticed Kenton’s surprised glance.

  “I like gardening,” he explained. “It’s my hobby. You’d be surprised at how many things grow in this climate.”

  He extended a drink and for a while there was silence. Quayle sank into a chair and glowered. Harrigan nervously drummed pudgy fingers on his knee.

  “How about a walk around the village?” Quayle said suddenly. “There’s plenty of time before dinner.”

  “Okay,” Kenton agreed. He rose, conscious of a curious expression on Harrigan’s fat face. But the trader said nothing as Quayle led the way out of the big house, pausing on the doorstep to destroy a black scorpion unerringly with his malacca cane.

  “Damn pests,” he said in his shrill voice. “What with ants, ticks, centipedes and tarantulas, you’ve got to sleep wrapped in cheesecloth like a mummy. Well, come along.”

  KENTON suddenly remembered something.

  “I forgot my gun,” he said.

  “You won’t need it.” There was a hint of sardonic amusement in the other’s tones. “You’ll stay overnight, of course, and your equipment will be ready for you, dried out, by morning. We’ll find a boat if yours is wrecked.”

  “I’ll be glad to pay—” the superintendent began, but Quayle cut him off.

  “Forget it. Glad to oblige.” Kenton watched keenly as they wandered about the little village which was hacked out of the jungle on the river bank. Natives were busy here and there. Once an Indio appeared from the bush carrying a killed iguana over his bronze shoulder. The natives might have been thousands of years in the past, living as their ancestors had done. Their ancestors? Scarcely!

  The Mayans, Kenton knew, possessed a high level of civilization, long since destroyed by Cortez and his ilk. There had been great cities on the Yucatan peninsula and in Mexico. But today all that was meat only for archeologists, and the flat, forested peninsula of Yucatan, jutting out into the Caribbean, was a savage country. A country where anything might happen, Kenton thought.

  “Here’s the cenote,” Quayle said, indicating a large pool twenty feet wide, fed by a bubbling spring. “Good water, believe it or not.” He glanced at a native girl who was filling a gourd on the bank, and Kenton saw an unpleasant glow come into the sunken eyes. The Indio noticed it, too, for she edged away.

  Quayle bent to dash a handful of water on his sweating, sallow face, and as he did so
the girl hurried past. She stumbled and fell against Kenton. His arm involuntarily went about her, and, without warning, he heard her whisper almost inaudibly: “Danger, Senor! I will wait here—” There was no more time for more. Quayle straightened, eying them suspiciously. The native girl, her face impassive, went sure-footedly toward the village. Kenton didn’t move, though every nerve in his body was shrilling warning. Danger!

  Did Quayle suspect the brief interplay? If so, he said nothing, but merely continued to escort his guest about the village. With the swift suddenness of the tropics, night came on. But there was a yellow lantern of a moon, silvering the river into a broad, bright path.

  The heat of the day was gone. Yucatan was a land of magic and mystery now, with the rippling of water and strange sounds from the jungle making a chorus that mingled with the low voices of the natives.

  “Time for dinner,” Quayle grunted and led the way back to the house, swinging his cane.

  On the veranda an armadillo—probably a pet, Kenton thought—uncurled and waddled clumsily away, its tapering tail dragging in the dust. They went through the store and into the adjoining room, where a boy was setting the table. Harrigan sat sweating in his chair, from which he had apparently not moved since they had last seen him.

  His waxed mustache drooped disconsolately in the heat, which he seemed to feel more than the others.

  His face was upturned to the swinging punkah.

  “Fix yourself drinks,” he gasped. “Whew! What heat!”

  QUAYLE busied himself with a V, siphon, decanter, and glasses. Kenton saw a door that led out directly on to the garden, and opened it casually.

  “Be right back,” he said. “I want to take a look at my luggage.” Before any objection could be raised he disappeared into the night, a pulse of excitement rising within him.

  He hurried through the garden, almost tripping over the round bulk of a melon on its vine, and melted noiselessly into the shadow of a hut.

  Flattening himself against its wall, he waited, alert and ready. But he was not being followed.