Off the Mangrove Coast (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures)

by Louis L'Amour

  I had to find Raj and the Lacklans. If they hadn’t made it out I’d have to go back…I wasn’t looking forward to suicide.

  I cut left along the hillside, heading in the direction they would have taken if they had gone straight up the hill. I stopped to catch my breath and found I couldn’t keep my knees from shaking. I squatted down, sucking air, and felt the prickles of adrenaline recede from my limbs. I had shot a man. Several actually, but one of them I had killed for sure. Unbidden, a phrase that my father had used came to mind, “If you fool around with a bandwagon, you’re liable to get hit with a horn.” It wasn’t as amusing as it had been but I was realizing that it didn’t only apply to me getting into this situation, it applied to those poor chaps I’d shot, too.

  Those men down there had lived as traditional Iban and Kayan or whatever. Some, perhaps many, had traveled to the cities and oil fields to try a different kind of life. But somewhere, something had gone wrong. Instead of staying on to collect their paychecks, instead of returning home to farm and fish, they had come here. In a country that was virtually without violent crime they joined with a man who made a living robbing tourists and diamond hunters. A man who was continuing to take heads not of his enemies in war, a practice, if not what I would call civilized, then at least honored by Iban tradition.

  Helen had thought quickly back there. She’d confronted that old witch doctor with his own hypocrisy, given other circumstances it might have been funny. It was something else too, though. Some of those men in there had believed in what she’d said. There was magic in the head of a brave enemy. To take a man’s head was, in a strange way, actually an honor. If you had a vision of yourself as a warrior you didn’t kill tourists. Helen might have planted a seed of doubt in a few of the men down there. Either old Jeru might have fewer followers come morning or they’d all be coming after me, the more honorable enemy.

  I started up the hill again, going slowly in order to make as little noise as possible. In the dark phosphorescent mushrooms glowed dimly. The sounds of insects and animals filled the night, covering the noises that I made but also covering the sounds of anyone who might be following me. It felt like hours since Raj and I had the fight with the dogs but I could still occasionally see the moon through gaps in the trees; I didn’t know what time it was but it had been headed down as we approached the longhouse. Higher and higher I climbed, pulling myself along using the trunks of the smaller trees and rocks and handfuls of undergrowth. I was exhausted, my legs were shot, and my arms and lower legs were covered with leeches.

  Finally I reached the bare crest of the ridge and looked out across a vast panorama, dimly lit by the setting moon. I turned east and started climbing again.

  When the landscape was left in blackness, when the last of the silver light had faded from the sky, I rested. I carefully cleaned the leeches off by feel. One leg was puckered with bird shot but most of it had not penetrated my boot. I stopped myself from touching it. I knew Borneo, it was going to get infected and the less I scared myself the better. I got up and pressed on and it was only a few hundred yards farther when I heard voices ahead.

  It was Raj and the Lacklans, and they had collapsed at the foot of a rock outcropping, half dead from exhaustion. “Raj?” I called out; I didn’t want him taking a swipe at me in the dark.

  “Boss?”

  “Yeah. Hold on, I’ll be over there in a minute.” I picked my way across the rocks toward them.

  It was a subdued reunion. We were all dead tired from running and climbing over a thousand feet of mountain. I’m not sure that Helen and John had realized what was going on yet. They were just happy to be away from Jeru’s longhouse and all in one piece.

  Not long after I got my breath back, I began to notice that it was cold. Now, there’s not too many places on the island of Borneo where you could say that but we were well over eight thousand feet and we were all dressed for the heat. To make things worse we were worn-out and the clouds were beginning to pile up against the mountain range, I could feel the moisture on my cheek and lips and when I looked up the stars were dimmer. Raj’s teeth were chattering and the Lacklans were huddled together strangely; though Helen was curled up close to him, John was positioned almost as if he was trying to pretend she wasn’t there. Well, whatever they were going through was their problem. I was worried about the cold.

  “Let’s get up,” I told them. “We’re going to go on a bit farther.”

  They looked at me uncomprehendingly, but Raj stumbled to his feet and picked up our packs; he had brought mine along from the longhouse somehow.

  “Mr. Kardec?” Helen was sitting up. “I don’t know if my husband can…he hurt his leg before we got to that village.”

  “Let me see it,” I said. “We have to go on. We need some shelter or at least a fire and some food.”

  Lacklan pulled away from me as I squatted down beside him. “I can make it. I don’t need help.” Then he said, “I don’t need your help.”

  *

  —

  WE HELD TO the ridge and we kept climbing. I needed someplace to camp and this was probably not the place to find it but the slopes on either side of us were too steep to negotiate in the dark, especially given our condition. I was beat, every muscle hurt, and my body begged to stop moving. John had turned his ankle and could walk only with difficulty but he and Helen were managing the altitude the best; after all, they lived near Santa Fe, over a mile above sea level. Raj was cold and something else was bothering him but he wasn’t ready to talk about it. He helped John Lacklan along and kept his mouth shut.

  Something was going on between John and Helen; she had tried to help him at first but he was having none of that. Finally, she gave up and he was on his own for a while but then, because he was stumbling badly, Raj offered to help and he’d accepted. Helen came up to me in the dark; she took my hand and pressed the haft of my knife into it. I returned it to its sheath.

  “Thank you,” she said. After that she walked with me more and more, and while I liked that in some ways, it disturbed me too.

  During a pause to rest I got Raj aside and questioned him on what went on before I joined them. “Nothing,” he said. “They just act like they having big fight but they don’t fight, they don’t talk.”

  “Did they ask what we were doing here?”

  He laughed softly. “Oh, yes. I tell them that you come to save them from the bali saleng.”

  For a Dyak, a people who tend to tell you only what you want to hear, Raj is sometimes too straightforward.

  We came to the rocky upthrust of another peak, its blackness vaguely defined in the starlight, but there was shelter here, a bowl of rocks and, within it, the black mouth of a cave. From the sounds in the jungle below I could tell it was still a couple of hours until dawn. Huddled just inside the entrance we rested and I emptied my rucksack onto a rock. I used some peroxide on my leg and poured some across the cut in my back, then got up. With the empty bag I headed back into the night.

  “Mr. Kardec, where are you going?” Helen’s voice spoke out of the darkness.

  “To find some fuel, I’ll have to go down into the forest a ways.”

  “Are we still in danger?”

  “I don’t know. Come morning I expect they’ll be after us.”

  “And they’ll find us, too,” Lacklan mumbled softly.

  “But will they come up here?” she asked. “I read that many of the tribes feel that there are spirits in the mountains, especially the peaks, and will never go there.”

  I had heard the same. The natives were very aware of the Toh, the spirits of the forest and mountains. An area that was rarely visited was often considered to have dangerous Toh and was therefore avoided. It was Sarawak’s version of our own self-fulfilling fear of the unknown. The high mountains were reputed to be the home of powerful Toh.

  I didn’t reply as I thought about it. I hoped she was right.

  “So, maybe this place is safe. At least that’s what I read.�
�� She was looking for some reassurance but she didn’t get it from her husband.

  “You and that confounded guidebook,” he snapped. “We don’t know that will work!”

  “Well if that confounded guidebook is where she learned about headhunting, it probably saved your life.” I said I’d had enough of Lacklan’s attitude and he wasn’t a potential client anymore. “Jeru wasn’t even going to sharpen his parang.”

  “I’m glad you enjoyed that at my expense. I’ll have you know that the weapons I’ve made could blow this miserable island off the map.”

  I was amazed. He was fuming because she had told that bunch of renegades he wasn’t a warrior. He was an egomaniac and a fool. Or maybe just a brilliant man who was so small inside that he had become lost in the forest.

  “Mr. Lacklan,” I told him. “I don’t know if you’re suicidal or exactly what your problem is but I look at life this way—an adventure is something you return home to tell about. If you don’t make it back, it’s just an exotic funeral. Be happy Helen did what she did. I am. If she hadn’t I might have died because I was stupid enough to try and help you.”

  “And why did you come after us? Because you are the good Samaritan? Or because you are after my wife?”

  “John!” Helen flinched and I could see that he’d aimed that barb more at her than me.

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but this late in the game I’d be a fool to try to figure it out.” I grabbed up the knapsack and headed out into the darkness. I started down the slope and Raj came scrambling after me. I hadn’t planned on his coming but was just as happy; I knew he would be very uncomfortable if the Lacklans decided to continue the fight.

  The purple light of predawn was just coming to the sky as we made our way along the mountainside about one hundred feet above the forest. I was headed toward an area below us that I had glimpsed from the ridge; it was lighter in color and I was sure it was a rock slide. Where it had hit the trees we might find some downed wood.

  Sure enough, it was a slide. A huge lip of rock had flaked off and gone crashing down into the jungle. Underneath the scar were the dark mouths of several caves, probably connected to the cave above where the Lacklans waited. Thirty feet into the tree line we found all the wood we wanted, picking out the dry pieces was easy for little of it was damp. I figured that we were so high that we were above most of the rain that soaked the lower elevations, either that or we were just lucky.

  We gathered as much wood as we could fit in our packs and turned to go back up the mountain. For an instant Raj froze and so did I. Between ourselves and the brightening sky was a moving, flickering black cloud. There were bursts of darkness against the sky, a sound like water rushing up a shallow sandy beach; wings, thousands and thousands of wings. The dawning sky was darkened with bats. A thin cloud rising over the jungle, they coalesced into a dense riot of swooping, dodging confusion directly over us. Their wings cupping the thin air they streamed toward the mountainside. Under the scar of the fallen brow of rock, they flew, pouring into the cave mouths just above us.

  Then from above us I heard a thin scream. Raj and I looked at each other, then I grabbed up my rifle and took off up the hill. The gun and the wood and the previous twenty-four hours of clambering up and down hillsides slowed me down. However, we made it to the top without having to ditch our loads and I eased around the rocks, rifle at the ready.

  The Lacklans were well out of the circle of rocks and away from the cave, crouched behind the rocks and harried-looking. I almost laughed but couldn’t summon the energy; a miniature tornado of bats fluttered and turned around the tunnel entrance, the last stragglers of the mass from below using the back door.

  I’d had enough alarms for one day. Leaving Raj to start a fire in a small pocket in the rocks I went back into the cave and refilled my pack with its supplies. I ducked and shook my head as the last of the bats flew past but I got my rope, stove fuel, first-aid kit, and most importantly the little food I’d been able to bring along.

  We warmed ourselves silently around the fire; the Lacklans didn’t seem to feel like talking and I didn’t feel comfortable conversing with them either. I shared our dried pork and heated two cans of condensed soup over the fire. It wasn’t much and it wasn’t very good but it was all I had and we needed anything we could get. When we were done I put out the fire. I hated to do it as we were all chilled but the sun was coming up and our smoke might have been visible. In the treetops below us the gibbons began their whooping cries, staking out their territory for the day.

  “We’re going to have to keep going,” I said. “We’re not safe until we’re back on the river and we won’t be safe even then.” I looked in their eyes and was afraid of what I saw.

  John, with his leg barely capable of bearing his weight, was nearly finished. Helen would go on without complaining but she couldn’t go farther without rest. Raj could do what was necessary, he’d shut his mind down and go at it like a Chinese coolie, he’d survive if he could, regardless of the suffering. I hoped I could do the same but I wasn’t sure.

  “We’ll be okay,” I said, standing up. I looked out across the high ridge and the forest and clouds that swept away in both directions and I realized we weren’t going to make it.

  All we needed was rest. All we needed was to move slowly and accommodate John’s injury. All we needed was time and I saw then that we were out of time.

  Off down the backbone of the mountains, three miles away but plainly visible as the sunlight poured across a low shoal of clouds to the east, was a group of men. They were coming up the ridge toward us and there was an easy dozen of them…more men than I had bullets, more men than I cared to engage even with my pockets full of ammunition.

  “Raj!” I called. “I think we’ve got trouble.” Instantly he was beside me, John and Helen not far behind. I pointed. “Is that Jeru?”

  “Yeah, boss.”

  “What are we going to do?” This question was from Helen but there was no panic in her voice. She stood there, dirty, clothing torn, having had no sleep, and little rest…it was an honest question, she was ready to get started.

  “I hold them off as long as possible. You get out of sight; retreat into the cave. Take my rope, I believe there’s a way out down below.”

  “You believe?” John was belligerent.

  I shrugged. “With any luck they’ll be satisfied with me and they won’t know where you’ve gone.”

  “You’ll be killed!” Helen grabbed my arm and turned me toward her. Her eyes searched mine, for what I didn’t know; it was one of those moments when men and women have different things in mind.

  “I might be. With luck I can kill enough of them that they decide I’m not worth it.”

  John shifted on his bad leg. “How much ammunition have you got?”

  “Nine rounds.”

  “She’s right, you’ll be killed.”

  “You got a better idea?”

  Nobody said anything. The men on the distant ridge were getting closer.

  I turned. “Let’s start by getting out of sight.” I ripped open my pack and pulled out the bottle of stove fuel. Going to where we’d had our fire I picked up a fair-sized branch and blew on the white coals at one end. Ash flew away on my breath and deep in the darker cracks flickers of red glowed. I poured a bit of the fuel on the branch right up near the sparks and I blew again. In a minute I had a flaming torch.

  The cave angled down, turned, and then dropped off abruptly, a black shaft corkscrewing downward. It would be a nasty climb but that in itself might save us. Bats skittered nervously on the ceiling, they didn’t like the smoke from my torch.

  “Raj,” I called. “Get me my rope.” He wasn’t behind me, only the distant forms of the Lacklans peering in from the entrance. “Raj?”

  I cursed and tossed my torch down the shaft. It fell, bounced, flared, and went out. In the darkness I could see reflected daylight deep in the shaft. Well, the lower cave was a way out, that was something in
our favor. We could run, or they could. It wouldn’t be much of a lead, but it would hold off the inevitable an hour, three? It would hold off the inevitable for them, not me. I headed back out of the cave. “Damn it, Raj, where’s my rope?”

  When I got to the entrance he was holding it in his hands but that was all. He looked at me strangely.

  “Come on!” I insisted. We had to get him and the Lacklans started or this would all be for nothing.

  “I stay with you, boss.”

  “This is no time for loyalty or bravery or whatever it is, Raj. If you don’t go with them they’ll never find the boats. Get going!”

  He shuffled forward, hesitated…he was scared! Scared of the cave.

  I moved over to him and spoke softly, “What’s wrong?”

  “I go. But this not good. You think Toh big joke. I hope you right.”

  Suddenly I had an inkling of an idea. Maybe we could get out of this, all of us. If it worked it was going to take brains, and luck, and courage. But I’m better at courage when I think I’ve got a chance.

  “Raj, if you’re worried about the spirits, what about them?” I pointed out at the ridge. Jeru and his men were out of sight, negotiating a low spot, but I doubted we had more than half an hour. “Is Jeru afraid of Toh?”

  He frowned. “Maybe…” Then he looked up at me, squinting. “His mans, they afraid, I think. Jeru he make obat, a spell, he say he bali saleng. He say what he does okay, but all mans still afraid.”

  “Good,” I said. “Come with me.” I snatched the coil of rope out of his hand and I ran to get my stove fuel.

  “What’s going on?” John Lacklan grabbed at me but I avoided him.

  “I’ve got an idea!” I said and tossed him my rifle. “If they get within five hundred yards shoot once, I’ll be back.”

  “Tell me what you’re up to, damn it!”