Amazon Nights: Classic Adventure Tales from the Pulps

by Arthur O. Friel

  "But I had to figure out a way to get out of there quick. Knew I had to go quick or I'd lose the ambition to go. Knew the Indians would never let me go if they could stop me.

  "So I fixed them so they couldn't stop me. Scared them with the air-devils and then fed them that Pajé-drink, which was doped heavily enough to knock them cold for twelve hours. So here I am."

  "And now that you are here, what will you do?” I asked.

  "Go home, I told you. When I reach home I'm going to atone for sacrificing that young woman's life on the altar of Bacchus. I'm going to save a good many other lives in its place.

  "No, not by surgery—I doubt if I shall ever operate again. But, as I said before, I've learned a good deal down here about native medicines, and I've experimented a lot and worked out new remedies of my own. Had to do it in order to keep up my bluff. The result is that I know powerful drug combinations of which North America knows nothing. But North America is going to hear about them soon. See that basket?"

  He motioned toward the atura which he had brought from the House of Voices on that last night, and which now lay in his canoe.

  "It's full of leaves, bark, roots, twigs, pieces of vine—stuff which you'd call rubbish. But every one of them has a big value in medicine, and I know exactly what each is good for.

  "In the next few years there may be good jobs here for men who will collect those things for the North American market. Want a job like that?"

  We laughed.

  "Thank you, senhor, but we are seringueiros,” Pedro told him. “We collect nothing but rubber, mosquito bites, and danger. Those three things keep us so busy that we have no time for anything else."

  "Suit yourselves,” he said, and arose. “You say you go westward from here. But you haven't found the furo yet, so we'll travel together until you think you've hit it.

  "Now let's move. My Indian jailers may be coming this way, and I'd rather make a clean getaway than have to fight them."

  He planted his big body in his dugout and pushed out and downstream. Half a mile below our camping place he slowed.

  "Looks like a channel there, running west,” he said. “Your furo, perhaps. Going to chance it?"

  After studying the quiet water opening out on the left bank we decided that it was what we sought. We urged him to come with us to the headquarters of our coronel, who would send him home as a gentleman. But he shook his head.

  "I'm through with bumming,” he snapped. “I'm working my way home. Glad to have met you, gentlemen. Goodbye."

  "Wait!” cried Pedro. “You must take a gun. Here is one given me by an American soldier back toward the Jurua—he and his comrades had come here on a treasure-hunting journey, led by a crazy man, and when they went back toward the Amazon they gave us each a rifle. We have another, and plenty of cartridges. Take it, senhor, and some of our food, and my clothes—I shall not need them."

  "I'll take the gun and some cartridges if you insist. Been wondering how you chaps got those Army Springfields, but didn't like to ask. Nothing else, thanks—not a thing. I can handle myself in the bush. Thanks again, and goodbye."

  He held out a hand, and we grasped it in farewell. Then he slapped his paddle into the river and heaved his boat downstream. Holding our own craft steady, we watched him until he passed out of sight. Not once did he look back.

  "If he holds that pace to the Amazon he will grow much thinner than he is now,” said Pedro as we turned into the furo.

  "He will be hard as itauba stone-wood and free from all drink-craving when he reaches the great river,” I agreed.

  "Do you honestly believe he will win his fight with himself? He has far to go, and he may find Indian villages on his way."

  "He will win. He has something to look forward to now. I have seen such men before. At first he drank as you and I drink when we feel like it—for the fun of carousing with others. Then he drank to drown the memory of the girl he had killed. Here in the jungle he drank to forget that he was, as he said, ‘a no-good white, down and out.'

  "But now he has before him the thought of home and the knowledge that he can wipe out his past. With that to draw him on, the rum of Indian villages will not snare him."

  "You have it right,” my comrade admitted. “A man's life depends on what is in his own heart. Yet you named him rightly when you called him barrigudo. Do you know what happens to a barrigudo when he leaves his own country?"

  "He dies."

  "He dies. And this man, leaving his own land, died and became a beast."

  "But now the barrigudo is dead and a new man lives in his place."

  "Si. It is as it should be. Now let us lean on our paddles, for we have many miles to go and the water ebbs."

  We shot away along the furo, homeward bound.

  THE BOUTO

  NO, SENHOR, that loud snort which sounded from the river just now was not made by an alligator. I do not wonder that you thought so, for this upper Amazon is full of alligators big and small—jacaré uassú, jacaré tinga, jacaré curúa, and others not so common—and the alligator, like other beasts, has his night call. But the sound which you heard was made by a river animal far more graceful and less dangerous—a dolphin.

  Look! Over there you can see its back fin glisten in the moonlight. Ah, it is gone. It has dived, and by the time it rises again this steamer will be so far downstream that we shall see it no more.

  What is that? You would like to take a shot at one? If you will pardon me, I would urge you to do no such thing. You might be so unfortunate as to kill it with your heavy bullet. Have not you and your companion learned, while exploring our Amazon headwaters, that to kill a bouto is bad luck?

  Indeed it is true, senhores. Everyone on the river knows that. If you do not believe it, tell some Indian that you want dolphin oil to burn in your lantern and that you will pay him well to harpoon one for you. He will answer that blindness creeps on those who use the oil of the bouto for light, and that even worse fortune falls on him who slays the fish.

  He may tell you, too, the legend of the Bouto Woman, which you perhaps have heard before. No? At our river towns the tale is told that sometimes the bouto turns itself into a handsome girl whose hair is so long that it sweeps on the ground behind her when she walks. Leaving the water at night, she strolls about until she meets a man. She smiles on him and coaxes him to walk down to the riverside, saying that there they will be alone. And if he goes with her he goes to death. For at the edge of the water she seizes him around the body and leaps with him into the flood, and he is gone for all time.

  Yes, it is an odd tale, as you say. But, senhores, an odd story is not always untrue. I will not say that I believe the bouto itself does this, yet—well, you North Americans have a saying, have you not, that “where there is smoke there is fire"? And queer things sometimes come about on this Amazon of ours and on the jungle rivers which flow into it—happenings which the great world outside never knows. I myself, a rubber-worker of the Javary region, have seen some such things. And now that we speak of the Bouto Woman I can tell you of something which I saw not very long ago.

  The great annual flood, which turns nearly one-third of our Brazil into a vast tree-choked sea, was nearly at its end. Indeed, the flood itself was long past, and in many places the wet land had risen once more above the water. To me and my comrade Pedro, urging our canoe northwestward through the jungle toward the river Tecuahy, this reappearance of the muddy earth was both welcome and unwelcome. Welcome, because it meant that the time was near when we could return to our rubber-work in the forests of old Coronel Nunes and earn more money. Unwelcome, because we had not yet reached the river we sought, and the rising of the thick bush from under the flood had made our travel slower and harder.

  We had been on a long journey to the upper reaches of the river Jurua, off to the southeast—a trip with which our work for Coronel Nunes had nothing to do, for it was made in the time of high water when neither we nor any other men could labor in the flood-swept lowlands of his s
eringal. We had gone in burning rage and hate to avenge the death of another seringueiro captured and tortured by a tribe of beast-men—and we had avenged it well. Then, drifting down the Jurua while I recovered from a wound, we had at length turned off westward on a flood-channel through the forest, hoping by this to return to the Tecuahy and then go down that river to the Javary town of Remate de Males, whence we had started.

  On this channel, which we never had seen before, we had met with delays. Most of them were due to losing our way, but a few had arisen from more serious causes. The latest of these was an attack of malignant fever which had struck my partner suddenly and nearly swept him across a river wider even than this Amazon—the river which runs between the worlds.

  But he had been saved by a white medicine-man who was at once the ruler and the prisoner of an Indian tribe; and when Pedro was strong again this man had arranged our escape and himself fled with us to a wandering river running northeast, where he had left us and struck off alone toward civilization. And now, days later, we were still driving our canoe onward, guiding ourselves by the sun and holding as true a course as we could in the maze of thick bush and blind channels.

  At length, late one day as we were watching ahead for a place to make camp for the night, we saw rising ground at the right. We slowed and scanned it as our dugout floated by, but found that between it and us was mud too thin to walk on but too thick to paddle through. So we continued on, curving around a bend in the channel, until a sudden brightening of the light and widening of the water drew our eyes to the left. We found ourselves just entering a river.

  "Por Deus! Have we reached the Tecuahy at last, Lourenço?” cried Pedro, both joy and doubt in his voice.

  "It is time we did,” I growled, squinting in the glare of the low sun on the wide water; “but from what I can see I fear it is not. It seems to run almost east."

  "True. But this may be only a turn. Let us go down it and see."

  He stroked hard and the canoe jumped. But after a swift glance at the sun I dug my paddle in deep and held back.

  "Not today,” I disagreed. “We must get ashore soon if we are not to be caught by black night. The sun is dropping fast."

  He grumbled something, but he too began looking again at the right bank. Then he nodded sidewise and edged the bow shoreward. I swung the stern, and we floated into a little natural port. Above us were firm ground, tall trees, and only a little of the low bush growth.

  Landing, we threw up a small tambo to keep off any night rain, slung our hammocks, built a fire and ate. Night fell. The sky was clear, but we knew the moon would be late, so, though we spoke of paddling downstream a little way by moonlight, we decided against it. The river would not disappear overnight, and we were tired. Before long we slept.

  Bright moonlight, breaking through openings among the treetops and shining on my face, woke me. I blinked, glanced at Pedro, turned in my hammock and let my eyes droop again. But just as they were closing they flew open. Something had moved.

  I had heard nothing except the usual nightly hammering chorus of frogs, seen nothing but the dark mass of jungle sprayed with moonlight. Yet something had come between me and the moon, for its light had dimmed. And as I lifted my head and peered toward it I started. Framed in the glare were a head and a pair of bare shoulders.

  They did not move. They stood out against the moonshine as if they belonged to a dusky statue with a neck nearly as thick as its body. For minutes I hung there squinting at it, and it stared straight back at me. Then the moon, rising fast, rolled up past the gap at the back of the creature; the light became more evenly balanced, and the face and form of the phantom grew more distinct. And I was more astonished than before, for I saw that it was a woman.

  A woman, quite young, but with the plump shoulders and full bosom of maturity. A woman whose hair hung unbound behind her to her waist, where it was looped around her body like a belt. I saw now that she was not thick-necked, for with the change in the light her face and throat glowed pinky-brown against that black cloud of hair which at first had made her look so misshapen. And as I continued to stare I found that she was far from bad-looking.

  She smiled, lifted a hand, and beckoned. I dropped my feet to the ground and sat up. At my movement she turned and began to fade away into the murky bush, still beckoning. Profoundly puzzled, I arose and took a step toward her. And just then Pedro, lying back in the shadows, cried out.

  He was still asleep, but struggling with a bad dream. At his smothered yell both the woman and I jumped. For an instant she poised as if startled. Then, with a swift movement, she was gone.

  Pedro yelled again and awoke. Seeing me standing there, he snatched his machete and leaped up and at me.

  "Drop it!” I snapped.

  "Oh, it is you, comrade!” He laughed nervously. “I am not quite myself—I have just been fighting with some cannibals. Why are you up?"

  "Because you were howling so hard that I was looking for a rope to choke you with,” I grumbled.

  "Sure you were not sneaking out to make love to some lady monkey?” he chuckled.

  "Not to a monkey. But I might have gone walking with a handsome young woman if you had not scared her away."

  He stared, then grinned.

  "So you too were dreaming—a more pleasant dream than mine. Pardon me for waking you. Were you in Remate de Males, or back at your old home below Manaos?"

  "Neither. I was here. And if I dreamed I am still asleep."

  Again I looked out at the bush. The woman was not there. Pedro, wondering, said nothing, and I listened. As I was about to speak again I heard a slight splash. No further sound came.

  "Did you hear that splash?” I muttered.

  "Yes. A fish jumping."

  "Perhaps. But it came from over yonder, not from the river. In the morning I shall explore this place."

  With that I sat down and told him of what I had seen. He grunted in disbelief.

  "Moonshine!” he scoffed. “I have heard that men with weak heads should not sleep in the moonlight. You say the moon was shining in your eyes when you awoke. Your mind is full of moonbeams and moon-dreams. Unless"—and he laughed again—"you had a visit from the Bouto Woman of the Amazon. If it was she, beware! You know what comes to men who follow her. Did her hair drag at her heels?"

  "No, but it might have done so if she had let it down. It was wound around her waist and hips like a tanga. Laugh if you like, but this was no dolphin-woman. Besides, a dolphin turned to a woman would be black, unless it changed color as well as shape."

  "But no, it would not,” he disputed. “Some of our river dolphins are entirely black, but others are black-backed and pink underneath, and some are pink all over. Have you never seen flesh-colored dolphins? They are not uncommon."

  He spoke truth. It had been some time since I had seen a dolphin, and still longer since I had heard anyone tell the tale of the Bouto Woman. Now, thinking about them there in the dark mystery of the jungle, I half-believed that the old legend might be true. But I said no more, and soon my partner lay down again.

  "If your fishy lady comes back before dawn wake me,” he yawned. “I should much like to see the famous Bouto."

  And with another derisive chuckle he went back to sleep.

  I lay awake for some time, listening to the night noises but hearing nothing strange. Several times I sat up and stared long at the place where that moon-born woman had stood. But whatever might have been there before, nothing human was there now. So at length I too drifted off to sleep.

  PEDRO'S HAND on my shoulder roused me. The sun was up in the sky, the smell of wood-smoke and boiling coffee was in the air and excitement was in my partner's face.

  "Wake up, old lady-charmer, and receive my apologies,” he said. “I knew well you were a fascinator, but I never suspected that fish would turn into women for your sake. The Bouto Woman was here last night! Come and see!"

  A few feet east of our tambo he pointed to the ground. There in a soft spot was the
print of a bare foot.

  We had worked barefoot in building our hut at sundown, but this track could not have been made by either of us. It was much too small. In another place a couple of yards farther off Pedro pointed out another footprint of the same size. Working back through the bush, he showed me more of them here and there. The trail brought us to water.

  "This is an enseada—an inlet,” he explained. “It must run in from somewhere downstream. Your woman seems to have walked out along that fallen tree and plunged into the water. There is no track anywhere else along the shore."

  As he said, the trail began and ended at the base of a tree stretching out into the quiet water. I stepped out along the floating trunk and on its rough bark I spied little dabs of earth scraped off the feet which had passed along it.

  Fifty feet out from shore, at the point where the first branches jutted upward, I halted and scanned trunk and limbs. They showed no sign that a canoe had been tied there. And the enseada itself, as I looked along it, held no indication of life. The woman had come from the water and gone back to it, leaving nothing but a few scattered footprints.

  "Before you jump in after her,” Pedro called, “come back to the fire and have some breakfast."

  "I am not jumping after her or any other woman,” I retorted, turning toward shore.

  And we hastened back to our boiling coffee.

  When we had eaten and stowed our few belongings in the dugout we pushed off downstream, keeping near the right bank. The hill on which we had camped stretched along the river for perhaps a mile, rising steep from the muddy waters and seeming unbroken by any cleft. Yet we had already found one dent in it—the small port where we had spent the night—and we looked for another opening where the enseada began. And before long we found it.

  It was so narrow and so overgrown that if we had not been hugging the shore and watching for it we should have passed it without a glance. And even when we forced our way through the half-drowned bush choking it up we were not sure that it was what we sought, for it turned to the left and seemed to end. But as we paddled on we found that it did not stop there but looped sharply back around a point. Turning the point, we held our paddles and stared.