Amazon Nights: Classic Adventure Tales from the Pulps

by Arthur O. Friel

  "And I thank you, senhor, and your comrades, for coming when you did,” I said. “My last shot was gone."

  "Was it so? I wouldn't think ye'd need a gun anyways, feller. Ye sure can sling a wicked knife."

  Then up came another soldier—a long, lean, easy-moving, red-spattered man.

  "Howdy, mistuh,” he drawled, looking at me. “Have yuh seen a good-fo'-nothin’ rapscallion named Hawnuh—a li'l cuss with a brass hawn an’ a lot o’ gall?"

  "He is in that house, senhor,” I nodded. “My partner and I found him with a broken leg and brought him back here."

  The tall man lifted his brows slightly.

  "Laig busted, huh? Reckon we bettuh mosey ovuh an’ see how he come through this li'l pahty. Nawthin’ mo’ to do heah—these town boys will do the moppin’ up. Come on, Mike, yuh fat Dutchman."

  "Dutchman!” snorted the broad-faced man. “Ye slab-sided skeleton of a down-South hookworm, if I'm a Dutchman ye're a greaser."

  The lean man grinned a slow grin, but made no answer, and we moved toward the Trumpeter's hut. Other soldiers joined us on the way, looking curiously at me.

  "Friend of mine,” said the man Mike, noticing these looks and moving his head toward me. “Who he is I dunno, but he's there wit’ the rough stuff. Anybody cashed in?"

  "All present or accounted for,” answered a stocky soldier with bow legs. “Tim Moran is busted up some, and so are Chicago Tony and Scotty McLeod, but nobody's gone."

  "Arrugh!” grunted Mike. “Tim and Scotty need a swift kick for mixin’ in at all—they're both rotten wit’ fever. And that little fightin’ fool of a Chicago wop—Holy Mother! Whaddye know about this!"

  We had come around to the front of the house of the Trumpeter, and we stopped and stared. Its doorway was choked by a heap of dead barbaros.

  "Hey, you Jack Horner!” some man snapped. “You all right?"

  "Sure, I'm all right,” came the Trumpeter's cool voice. “Kick that stuff out of the door and come on in."

  We threw the dead aside and entered. Horner stood on his one good leg, with the other knee supported by the hammock. His rifle-butt rested on the ground, and the long bayonet sticking up near his shoulder was dyed red.

  "Who gave you guys any license to horn in on my party?” he complained. “Here I'm getting a lot of good bayonet practice and you bust in and shoot up the whole works just when I'm going good. What you doing here, anyhow? Did the spiggoties down in Borneo give you the gate?"

  "Listen at him, will ye!” rumbled Mike. “Talkin’ like he was a growed-up man! And him blowin’ the guts out of his tin horn a while back, tryin’ to git reinforcements!"

  "Not by a jugful!” Horner denied. “I blew the Charge, but I did it just to make a racket and give these boys out here a little pep. Where were you guys, anyway?"

  "Upstream a ways. We found it bum goin', so we turned around and come back. We camped above here last night, and heard ye play taps. When yer Charge come to us this mornin’ we took our foot in our hand and come on. Didn't ye hear us yell when ye blew reveille?"

  "I heard shouting, senhor,” said Pedro. “But we thought it must be barbaros."

  "'Twas a bum guess—there ain't a barber in the gang,” said Mike. “But now listen here, Kid Horner. We got to slide right along downstream before anymore of the bunch kick off wit’ fever. Eb Peabody, that New England feller, cashed in a couple days ago, and Tim Moran and Scotty are gittin’ bad too. I hear they come ashore here wit’ the rest of the gang and got mauled, and that won't do ‘em no good. So we'll move as soon as we can git them lousy paddlers back—they was that scairt of the wild guys they beat it acrost the river as quick as we landed. I'll go git ‘em now. When we're ready we'll give ye a yell. Slim, stay here and help Jack frog it down to the water. Fall in, the rest of ye."

  He turned and went, followed by all except the lean man with the slow drawl, who stood calmly chewing tobacco and spitting in the eye of a dead savage who lay face upward.

  "Yuh li'l hawn-toad, yuh!” said Slim. “Yuh sho’ did tickle these felluhs’ ribs some. Whyn't yuh jab ‘em lowuh down? Yuh might of busted the steel on them rib-bones, an’ then whah'd yuh been?"

  "Had to take ‘em any way I could get ‘em, Slim,” replied Horner. “They rushed the place after Pedro here left, and if I hadn't plugged a couple and sort of choked up the door with them they might have got me. Then I jabbed straight and withdrew quick. You can't do any footwork when you've got a dead leg. Ho-hum. I sort of hate to leave this town, it's so quiet and peaceful."

  Slim grinned, and we laughed. After looking at the dead men a minute Pedro strode out, crossed the clearing, and disappeared into the bush. Soon he returned with a long tube.

  "Perhaps you would like a remembrance of the peace and quiet of our Brazilian forests, senhor,” he suggested. “Here is the turé of the barbaros."

  "Say, that's mighty white of you!” cried the Trumpeter, reaching eagerly for it. After turning it over and examining its wooden barrel and crude mouthpiece he unfixed the bayonet from his rifle and passed the gun to Pedro.

  "It's a fair swap,” he said. “You guys will likely need a gun before you get home, and yours are no good with your ammunition all gone. The gang will give you plenty of shells. I won't need the gun anymore."

  Knowing we were indeed likely to need a gun before reaching the Javary, we took the weapon thankfully. Then came a yell from the river, and Slim came in, took Horner's arm around his shoulders, and started with him to the stream. We took down the hammocks and followed.

  At the house of the chief we stopped to say farewell, and from him we learned that about a mile down the river we should find a channel which would take us on toward our own country. Then, with a final wave of the hand to the townsmen who had been our hosts and fighting mates, we went on to the water.

  There we found two, big ygarités—long canoes with arched cabins—manned by stocky caboclos. And there we found waiting for us another of those heavy army rifles and many of the queer bottle-necked cartridges that went with it. The gun, we learned, was that of the man Peabody who had died of fever, and we were welcome to it. After big Mike had shown us how to work the bolt action and explained what he called a “safe” and a “cut-off,” we got into our own canoe and took up our paddles.

  "All set back there, Brazil?” someone called.

  "All set, North America,” we answered.

  Our little fleet pushed off and swung away toward the far-off Amazon.

  Though our canoe was lighter and faster than the big ygarités, we had to stretch our muscles to keep up with them. Perhaps because of the sick men aboard, but more likely because they themselves were homeward bound, the caboclos heaved their craft along with swift, hard strokes. It seemed that we had gone much less than a mile when we spied at our left the channel of which the chief had told us.

  "Adeos, senhores!" we shouted then, and swerved toward the bank. But a roar of protest followed. The big canoes stopped, and the soldiers yelled to us to come on. When we did so they told us they had thought we would camp with them a few times, and urged us to continue on with them for a day or so. But we said no, the water was ebbing and we must cut across country here.

  One by one they shook our hands, slapped our shoulders, and wished us well. When the Trumpeter's turn came he said less than any of them, but there was that in his eyes and his grip that spoke louder than all the jovial voices of his mates.

  "So long, buddies,” he said simply. “I want to take back what I said about that sawdust grub of yours. And any guy that I ever catch knocking Brazilians is going to get one stiff clout in the jaw from little Jack Horner."

  I grinned, but my thoughts were back in the jungle behind us. Somehow I seemed to see him again as on that first day—hunching himself along on hands and knee, sick and starved and broken, yet unflinching and brave clear through. And, though I too said little, when my hand left his it was numb.

  With one final chorus of farewells the big boats moved away. We
wriggled our fingers to bring back the blood driven out by those parting grips and paddled back to the place were the furo opened. And there, as we turned into the bush, we heard our last of the Trumpeter and his comrades.

  Out broke the hoarse, menacing blare of the turé, now blown only in fun by some homeward-bound soldier. As its growl died, the clear, smooth notes of the bugle rang again in that swift “charge” which had brought the fighting men of North America that morning to pull us out of the jaws of death. Finally, when the bugle in turn was still, there came to us a roaring, rollicking song.

  "HAIL! HAIL! The gang's all here!

  What the Hell do we care?

  What the Hell do we care?

  HAIL! HAIL! The gang's all here!

  What the Hell do we care now?"

  THE BARRIGUDO

  HAVE you noticed, senhores, the big, slow-moving monkey which that oily-faced trader over yonder is taking down the river with him?

  It is a barrigudo—the “bag-belly” monkey—and one of the largest I have seen, though I have met many of those big fellows during my years of service as a rubber-worker in the Javary jungle. From the end of its solemn nose to the tip of that strong tail, which it can use as a fifth leg in the trees, it must be more than four feet long.

  The trader tells me that he intends to sell it as a pet in Para. But unless he is very lucky his monkey will be dead long before the end of his journey. For the barrigudo, senhores, is a creature of this upper Amazon alone, and when he is taken away from his own country he dies.

  Why this is so I can not tell you. Looking at his bulky body, you would think he could endure almost anything. Yet he is mortal, as we Brazilians say—delicate, not hardy. It may be that in his silent way he grieves himself to death because he has lost his own land and his old friends. You can not always tell, by looking at either monkey or man, what sort of heart is hidden in his breast. And, after all, the heart is the only thing that really counts.

  This may seem, senhores, like idle talk, but it is not. I have a tale to tell you—a tale of the most surprising barrigudo I ever met.

  I CAME upon this creature at the time when the great yearly floods had passed their crest and were going down again. Indeed, they had gone down so far that I was worried; for I was far from where I ought to be, and in strange country where I might soon find myself stranded in the midst of unknown jungle.

  With my comrade Pedro Andrada, a fellow workman on the big rubber estate of old Coronel Nunes, I had paddled across country from our Javary region into the upper reaches of the Jurua, a low-lying and very crooked river to the south and east. Then, after meeting with queer experiences and traveling some distance down the river, we had turned homeward, journeying along a flooded furo, or natural canal, until we met a number of roving North American soldiers who saved us from death at the hands of a horde of fierce savages. Now these men had left us and gone back toward the Amazon, whence they had come; and we were trying hard to reach our own territory before the ebbing waters should leave us trapped in some blind flood-channel.

  As I say, I was worried. If we had known where we were I should not have cared so much, for then we should have been able to judge our course. But neither of us had passed this way before, our only guide was the sun, and we had to trust to that and to luck to carry us through the maze of twisting watercourses opening around us on all sides.

  The furo itself, which had been fairly plain, now was becoming harder to follow, winding here and there in a confusing way; and already we had blundered off it more than once and lost much time in learning our mistake. Besides this, our food supply now was none too plentiful, and we found little game to shoot. And inch by inch, day and night, the thick tangle of bush was rising steadily around us as the waters slipped away.

  Yet these things, serious though they seemed, suddenly became nothing at all. They were swallowed up by something far more grave.

  Pedro fell sick.

  It must have been the Spotted People who gave the disease to him. We came upon them in the morning of a sweltering day when no breeze stirred. We were stripped almost naked, breathing with mouths hanging open, gasping now and then for the air which it seemed we could not get, but shoving steadily onward. All at once my comrade, up in the bow, held his paddle and called sharply:

  "Quem vai la? Who goes there?"

  No answer came. No sound of any kind followed his hail. He was peering at a tangle of trees rising from the water at his left.

  "Do you see anything, Lourenço?” he asked.

  "Nothing,” I replied.

  "Yet I thought I heard—Let us go and look."

  We turned the canoe into the trees. As we neared them a figure rose behind a big blown-down tree-trunk. It held a bow and arrow. Instantly we backed water and snatched up our rifles.

  For a moment we hung there, the man menacing us with his arrow but not daring to loose it with our gun-muzzles covering him. He was a naked Indian, and seemed to be standing on the water.

  "Baah derekoh? What is the matter with you?” he growled sullenly in the Tupi tongue.

  "Anih baah. Nothing,” I answered in the same language. “Put down that arrow if you would not be shot."

  He lowered his weapon in a surly way.

  "What are you doing here?” Pedro snapped.

  For answer the man stooped and held up a spear, on which a fine big fish hung quivering.

  Laying down our rifles, but keeping them within instant reach, we pushed up to him and found that he was in a small canoe hidden by the prostrate tree. He still held the spear, and the water on its shaft showed that he had plunged the barb into the fish just before Pedro shouted. We saw that he was peaceable enough, and that he was a very ordinary-looking fellow except for one thing. His face was blotched with hard, rough, black spots.

  After telling him we meant no harm to him or to any other man who did not attack us, we asked him whence he came. In a slow, heavy manner he replied that his people lived close by, up on a little hill above the reach of the floods. We asked him if they were many, and he said no. Then, without questioning us in turn, he dropped spear and fish into his canoe, picked up a paddle, and began to move away.

  "Wait,” said Pedro. “Will you sell that fish?"

  He stopped, squinted at the fish and at us, and said he would barter for beads. But we had no beads, for we were not on a trading trip. We offered him some empty cartridge shells, though, telling him they were lucky bells which would keep demons away. He hesitated so long that we thought the fish was ours. But then he grunted, “No,” and started on.

  "Wait,” Pedro commanded again. “Is there fruit at your town?"

  The fellow said there was much fruit. So then we told him that if he would give us fruit he could have the lucky bells. At once he consented. We followed him a short distance through the watery forest to the hill where his village stood.

  It was a miserable little place of a few scattered huts, and the people in it seemed as wretched as the town. When we walked boldly in among them, following our guide, they gathered around us in a sluggish way and looked us over without saying anything. Their eyes were dull, their expressions blank, their movements lifeless and their skins spotted with those same black patches which disfigured the fisherman. Everyone of them—men, women, children—was spotted.

  The older they were, the worse they looked. The children had only small spots, with lighter rings around each blotch. But the grown people were crusted with hard patches, and among them I saw a withered man whose face was one great black scab. And not only the people, but the town itself, seemed sick; for there was a smell in the air—a heavy, depressing odor of disease which made me wish we had not come.

  "Let us get our fruit at once and go,” I muttered. “I can not breathe well."

  "Nor I,” my partner agreed. “But I want something fresh to eat, and I will have it. Here, stabber of fish! Fetch the fruit quickly, or we will go and keep our demon-bells."

  The fisherman grunted, moved his he
ad for us to stay there, and went away. He was gone for what seemed a long time. We stood still, and all the others stood still, staring without a blink. And the odd thing was that they stared not so much at our guns and breeches as at our skins. After a time it dawned on me that they marveled because we were not blemished as they were.

  "Por Deus!" muttered Pedro. “When we leave this place I shall take a bath. These people make me feel slimy."

  "I feel the same way, and the smell here makes my stomach squirm,” I said. “But here comes our man."

  The fisherman was returning, bent forward under a long atura basket which hung down his back. We turned at once toward the water. He followed, and at the canoe he put basket and headline and all into the bottom.

  Handing him the empty shells, we pushed off and away, leaving him jangling his “demon-bells” in his palms. No doubt he thought we were great fools to give such a charm for a simple basket of fruit. And the time was not far off when I was to believe we had indeed lost our luck at that place.

  We paddled away fast and traveled some distance before we either ate of the fruit or took the bath we had promised ourselves. Somehow the sickly smell of that village seemed to stay with us long after the town itself had disappeared behind us. A thin mist had hung over the place of the Spotted People, and the same vapor was crawling along the water and keeping up with us. Not until we finally got clear of it and breathed clean air once more did the odor fade away.

  "Phew!” whistled Pedro, his nose wrinkled. “What an unwholesome hole! Now that we are quit of it, let us bathe and eat."

  So we found a firm bare spot where we could stand and pour gourds of water over ourselves. We wanted to take a swim, but the water did not look inviting and we knew well that under its surface might be lurking death in the shape of fish or reptile, so we bathed on land.

  When we felt clean again we ate heartily of the fruit, which tasted very good. And as we paddled onward after that we munched now and then at other fruits taken from the basket.