Chapter Twenty Three.
“Our Horses Stampeded”—“Poor Benighted Heathens!”—Jill’s Little Joke—Telling Jeeka the Story of the world—Adventure in the Haunted Wood.
When we looked out next morning we found, to our surprise, that the snow had all gone from the Pampas.
“Isn’t it strange?” I said to Castizo.
“No,” he answered—“at least I should say ‘yes, it is strange,’ but then one must never marvel at anything that happens on the Pampas. If I’m any judge of the weather, however, well have summer now.”
Travelling to-day was exceedingly difficult, the ground being so wet and sloppy. Peter only tumbled once. We came to a river, and had some trouble getting over it. There should be no river here, though on very rare occasions the rain from the mountains, and more particularly the melting snow, has been known to come down in an immense force and fill the cañon from bank to bank.
As the weather soon grew fine once more, with the exception of now and then a drizzling rain or thick fog, which, however, did little more than damp the surface and lay the dust, Castizo, our worthy cacique, determined to take things easy.
We therefore set about enjoying ourselves as much as we could. Our report was at all times excellent. I could not help saying to Peter that a sportsman in this country who was not afraid of roughing it a little, might actually accumulate wealth.
“And bumps,” said Peter, solemnly. “My dear Jack,” he added, “it’s the roughing it that is the great drawback. Now I can walk as well as anybody. Or if I ride and the nag goes at a nice swinging gallop, then I’m as jolly as if on the quarter-deck of an A1-er. But these beastly nags go hippity-skippity, skippity-nippity, till it’s perfectly sickening.”
“Well, but Peter, old man, you ought to be getting quite hard by this time.”
“No, Jack, it’s all the other way. Instead of the saddle hardening me, I’m hardening the saddle. There is where the grief comes in, and I’m afraid it is breaking down an otherwise splendid constitution.”
“Have an extra rug under you, then.”
“A feather pillow would suit him best,” said Jill, laughing.
“I’ll tell Mother Coates about you, Mr Greenie, soon’s we get home. That is if there be anything left of me to get home.”
“Well, Peter,” continued Jill, “it is partly my fault, after all—your being so sore, I mean.”
“How, Greenie?”
“Because I neglected to ask Mother Coates for the cold cream before the steamer left Sandy Point.”
At this moment a herd of guanacos was sighted. There was a shout from the Indians, who at once spread out to surround them.
“Hurrah!” cried Peter. “Here’s for off. Hoop!”
And away went our erratic messmate, helter-skelter over the plains, quite forgetting the hardness of the saddle in that wild gallop.
Peter had become quite an adept at throwing either lasso or bolas. The only drawback here again being that after “heaving,” as he called it, he was apt to follow them, and this resulted in more bumps. It is really surprising to me that Peter never smashed his neck, or at the very least his collar-bones. When we congratulated him on his good luck in this respect, he replied—
“Why, how can I break bones? There isn’t a bone in my body, I tell you. I’m all pulp.”
Peter certainly had plenty of pluck.
I never saw Peter happier than one morning when awaking, we found that all our horses had stampeded. Perhaps stampeded is too strong a word. It would be more correct to say they had silently disappeared. So we had to walk in search of them.
The trail was evident enough, and led us still farther to the west. There was no mistake about it. Peter could walk if he could not ride. He was constantly turning round to us and calling—
“Come on, you fellows. Haven’t you got any legs under you? Such old dawdlers I never did see!”
The Indians said that the Gualichu had lured the horses away—meaning the evil spirit whom they sometimes worship.
The Gualichu might have been an evil spirit, but if so he was a most handsome one, and shaped like a small-headed, fiery-eyed, arch-necked stallion, with marvellous mane and tail.
I was surprised to see Jeeka level his gun at the beautiful brute and fire. The stallion rolled down dead, and after that we had but little difficulty in bringing back our steeds.
We encamped that night by a very small stream, which meandered through a chaos of round stones and boulders. And here, for the first time since we set out, we succeeded in catching fish—a kind of grey mountain trout; they were of excellent flavour, but small in size.
We saw some commotion among the Indians this evening after dinner, and found they were muttering prayers or incantations, and making salaams to the new moon.
“Poor benighted heathens!” said Peter, glancing up at the lunar scimitar, which had just escaped from beneath a little cloud. “Poor heathens! I quite feel for them.”
“But what are you doing,” said Jill, “with your hands in your pockets?”
“Why, I’m turning my money of course. Don’t you always do that when you see the new moon?”
“Poor benighted heathen!” cried Jill.
Peter now saw what was meant, and laughed as heartily as any one.
Presently we entered the toldo, and Peter sat down as usual to smooth his bumps. I noticed Jill looking towards him with a half-subdued smile of mischief on his face. Soon he glanced towards me, and we went out together.
“I’ve thought of a little trick to play Peter,” said Jill.
“Well?” I said.
“Get Nadi to give him the baby again.”
“But how will you manage?”
“Come and see.”
Nadi’s innocent face always lighted up with smiles when Jill and I went near her. My brother addressed her in broken Patagonian. It was very much broken, but it suited the purpose. Nevertheless, Nadi understood English well, though too shy to talk it.
“Peter,” he said, pointing to little copper-face. “Peter ywotisk, Peter kekoosh, moyout win coquet talenque.” (Peter is weary and cold, and would like to have the baby for a little while.)
Up jumped Nadi, her eyes sparkling with delight, and went off to the tent. We followed. In she went, and without a word popped the baby down on Peter’s knee, then retired most gracefully.
Everybody laughed at Peter, but, like a sensible young man, he made the best of it; and when we entered, looking as innocent as sucking guanacos, there he was talking away to the child, and making it laugh and crow more than ever its mother did.
“You see what it is to be a good-natured fellow,” Peter said to me. “Now you’ll live a long time before you get baby to hold.”
Peter often got baby after this, and I really think he came to like it, only he told Jeeka to inform his wife, that the danger of handing him the child when on horseback was extreme. So this never occurred again.
I think, on the whole, then, that Peter had the best of Jill and his little joke.
The country now became changed in aspect, far more rugged and hilly and wild, but at times its beauty was almost awesome.
One day we came upon a patch of woodland, the first real trees we had seen. Then we knew we were within a measurable distance of Castizo’s romantic home in the Cordilleran forests.
We encamped this night close to the wood.
The Indians did not, according to Jeeka, quite relish the propinquity. The wood was haunted by evil spirits. There was a fox with two heads that had been frequently seen within its dark shades, and there was something in white which Jeeka could not well define. It might have two heads or it might have twenty, he could not say; but it was very terrible, and death soon visited the person whose track this something-in-white crossed.
There was no good could accrue from laughing at Jeeka. I could not help thinking, however, what a pity it was so noble a fellow—savage, if you choose to call him so—should remain in such mental darkness. Could we not do a little to help him, Jill and I?
We might try. One never does know what one can do till a trial is made.
“Jeeka,” I said that evening, “will you go for a walk with Jill and me, and bring Nadi?”
“So, so,” was the reply, meaning “yes.”
We would have led him towards the wood, but he shook his head, and spoke but one word in a very firm and decided tone—
“Gualichu!”
He led us down into a rocky ravine where grew many strange bushes we had never seen before, and in the more open places an abundance of wild flowers, many like our own pinks and primroses that grow among the dear Cornish hills. In this ravine was a streamlet which, however, had so worn away its rocky bed that we could hardly see it. We could hear it, however, and when we peeped over the cliffs that formed its banks, there it was foaming and tearing along, and leaping from shelf to shelf of its stony bed. Sometimes it formed great pools of dark brown water, in which fish were leaping after the swarming flies.
Not far from this wild stream, and within hearing of its ceaseless song, we all threw ourselves on the grass in a ring. Nadi, woman-like, had brought some sewing with her, some beautiful skunk skins from which—we afterwards discovered—she was making a little roba or poncho for her favourite Peter.
“You’re not afraid of the Gualichu?” I said.
Jeeka looked hastily round as if to make sure there was nothing very dreadful in sight, before he replied—
“I shoot he quick, suppose I can.”
“But you shot him before in the shape of a horse?” I said.
“So, so.”
“And he has come to life again?”
“He, everywhere.”
“You speak the truth, Jeeka: the spirit of evil, if not the evil spirit in person, is everywhere. Now who, think you, made these grand old hills, the mountains beyond? Who made trees and those sweet flowers? Who made the horses at first, the guanaco and the ostrich? Who made man? Not the Gualichu, surely?”
“N-no. He not make them good,” said Jeeka, thoughtfully.
It was an innocent, childlike answer, but yet it brought to my mind at once the words in the first chapter of Genesis, “And God saw that it was good.”
It brought me at once to my subject too. I had felt very shy in speaking at first, but I felt it my duty to speak, and I really think I waxed eloquent as I proceeded. Words seemed to come at all events, simple words and simple language, but they suited the occasion.
I told Nadi and Jeeka the story of the world, the story of its fall, and of its redemption through the mercy and loving-kindness of the Good Spirit who made it.
A story so simple that babes and sucklings can understand it, appealed to the very hearts of these poor handsome heathens.
Nadi dropped her skunk skins in her lap, and listened open-mouthed. Jeeka was cutting the root of a bush which he had plucked into chips with his dagger. He never once looked up, but I knew he was listening too.
There was silence for a time after I had finished. Then Jeeka rose, and grasped my hand.
“Brother,” he said, “you tell me this story again? So, so?”
“So, so,” repeated poor Nadi.
During all my story she looked as though she understood every word, and I have no doubt she did; but her husband frequently interrupted me by saying to her—
“Ma Onques?” (Do you understand?) on which Nadi would merely nod assent, without taking her eyes a moment from my face.
I have often thought since then what a blessing it is that all a poor human being needs for his soul’s salvation is so easily understood, that even the intellect of a savage can compass and comprehend it. What a hard road it would be to the New Jerusalem were the finger-posts that point the way written in a language few could understand, or the directions couched in technicalities only a limited few could fathom. But no, there it is in a nutshell. “Repent, love, believe and be forgiven.”
The truth had got firm hold of Jeeka, or Jeeka had got firm hold of the truth. I was soon sure of that. It was not so much that he tried to be a better man, as that he seemed ever afterwards to live as if he were only “down here”—the woods are his own for a brief time,—and that his real home was in the far beyond.
He used often now to make Jill or me repeat the story of the world to him, and especially the story of the Cross. He always brought Nadi with him when he desired to speak to me on such subjects. But he sometimes asked us strange questions. Such as about the grass: was it a good crop in heaven? Horses: were they well trained? etc, etc. Once Jill read to him from the Revelation a passage where white horses are mentioned in a vision.
Jeeka was delighted, and made him read it over and over again. He was also greatly pleased with descriptions of Bible battles.
One day Jill read to him the description of the great fight between the Israelites and the Canaanites, in which it is said that the Lord caused great stones to be rained from heaven upon the enemy.
Jeeka here grew quite excited.
“Hum-m-m. So. So. So!” he cried. “The same thing I have seen.”
“You, Jeeka?”
“So, so. Big stone. Terrible fire, much smoke and t’under. Big stone fall eberywhere. So, so.”
As he spoke Jeeka waved his arm away towards the west, and I at once understood him to refer to an eruption of some great volcano of the Cordilleras, for there are several such.
What pleased Nadi more than anything else was the singing of hymns. She used to join with us, but it was more of a child’s voice than anything else.
However, Nadi was very young, not more than sixteen perhaps, wife and mother though she was.
Our route lay even more to the north than the west now, and it was soon evident that we were on the great border-line betwixt the wild bleak Pampas and the forest-clad mountains, which are but a continuation of the great Andes chain.
The way was now a winding one, for we often had to make long détours to get round a lake or the spur of a mountain, although the lower hills we still continued to face and cross.
Sport, and plenty of it, still fell to our lot, though the gun and revolver and spear came in now more handy than the bolas and lasso.
Even here, however, in the midst of the wildest mountain and sylvan scenery, there were vast stretches of level valleys and plateaus between the hills. Most of these were the feeding-grounds for vast herds of guanacos and of wild horses.
Our camping grounds of a night were now generally in some grass-covered glade, and it was indeed a pleasure to fall asleep in our toldo with the sound of the wind whispering through the trees like the murmur of waves on a sandy beach.
There were many night sounds now, however, besides the whispering of the trees, and some of these, to say the least, were not over-pleasant to listen to. If, for instance, we were anywhere near to rocky ground, there was the mournful and weird yelling of wild cats. These were mingled at times with the “Yap-yap-yeow—ow” of the Patagonian fox. There were also many strange cries and sounds which we could not account for, so we were fain to put them all down to the birds.
It was not safe to enter the forests by night; sometimes even in daytime there was danger enough. I remember I went to bathe one day by myself in a bright clear pool formed by a mountain torrent. The water was delightfully cool, so I stopped for a full hour enjoying myself.
After lounging a little by the river’s bank, dressing leisurely and falling into a kind of day-dream, I prepared to return. No one knew where I was, and if I were missed, both Jill and Peter would be anxious. I commenced to retrace my steps up a little pathway through an entanglement of bush and thorn, but had only advanced a short way when from the scrub in front I heard a low growl, emitted evidently by a puma, and he could not be many yards away. To fly was to court pursuit, and that meant death, for I had no arms of any kind. I shaded my eyes with my hand, and looked cautiously under the bush. Yes, yonder was a pair of huge green fiend-like eyes glaring at me, watching me as a cat watches a mouse.
I drew cautiously back, glad to get away with my life, and re-crossed the stream. But here I was on another horn of the dilemma, for the only other way back to the camp would take me fully three miles about, with the probability, too, that I might lose myself and wander about all night long. No, this would not do; I must scare that puma. The little pathway, it just then occurred to me, must have been made by wild beasts—perhaps pumas.
“Whatever man dares, he can do,” I said to myself, as I gathered an armful of big round stones. Then I advanced once more towards the puma’s bush, and shouting, threw a stone I was answered by a snap and a growling roar. Another stone: result the same, only the snap more vicious and the growl more angry. I was in for it now, so I threw the third stone with all the force I could command, giving vent at the same time a yell that would have startled a Chak-Chak Indian.
This had an effect that I had hardly bargained for. I had counted upon the denizen of that incense bush going off in any direction rather than mine. Not so. With a spitting coughing roar, that went through my nerves like a shock from a powerful battery, the brute sprang out towards me. But a merciful Providence was surely protecting me, for at the very moment the huge extended talons were nearly in my neck, another and larger puma bounded from the bush, striking the first and sending it rolling down the little pathway. Then over and over they rolled like two huge overgrown kittens, until they finally disappeared. Indeed it is evident enough the two beasts had been all the time romping together, and that even my presence did not suffice to interfere with their sense of fun.
Peter laughed heartily when I told him of the occurrence; but Jill did not. He even scolded me. What right had I to go away into the bush without him? he inquired, and hoped it would be a warning to me.
Poor innocent Jill!
The Indians, and even Jeeka, were rather afraid of the wood in which this adventure had taken place. It was haunted.
Strange, I thought, that so many woods were haunted.
Yet one cannot wonder at these poor people being superstitious, wandering so much as they do in this wild lone land, seeing so many sights and hearing so many strange sounds for which they cannot account.