“Why don’t you watch where you are going?” queried the laughing Carmen.
“I might,” sputtered Harris, “if I could keep my eyes off 371 of you.” Whereat Carmen pursed her lips and told him to reserve his compliments for those who knew how to appraise them rightly.
They camped where night overtook them, out in the open, often falling asleep without waiting to build a fire, but eating soggy corn arepa and tinned food, and drinking cold coffee left from the early morning repast. But sometimes, when the fatigue of day was less, they would gather about their little fire, chilled and dripping, and beg Carmen to sing to them while they prepared supper. Then her clear voice would ring out over the great cañon and into the vast solitudes on either hand in strange, vivid contrast to the cries and weird sounds of the jungle; and the two Americans would sit and look at her as if they half believed her a creature from another world. Sometimes Harris would draw her into conversation on topics pertaining to philosophy and religion, for he had early seen her bent and, agnostic that he was, delighted to hear her express her views, which to him were so childishly impossible. But as often he would voluntarily retire from the conflict, sometimes shaking his head dubiously, sometimes muttering his impatience with a mere child whose logic he, despite his collegiate training, could not refute. He was as full of philosophical theories as a nut with meat; but when she asked for proofs, for less human belief and more demonstration, he hoisted the white flag and retired from the field. But his admiration for the child became sincere. His respect for her waxed daily stronger. And by the time they had reached the great divide through which the Rosario fell, he was dimly aware of a feeling toward the beautiful creature who walked at his side day after day, sharing without complaint hardship and fatigue that sorely taxed his own endurance, that was something more than mere regard, and he had begun to speculate vaguely on a possible future in which she became the central figure.
At Rosario creek they left the great cañon and turned into the rugged defile which wound its tortuous course upward into the heights of the Barra Principal. They were now in a region where, in Rosendo’s belief, there was not one human being in an area of a hundred square miles. He himself was in sore doubt as to the identity of the quebrada which they were following. But it tallied with the brief description given him by Don Nicolás. And, moreover, which was even more important, as they began its ascent there came to him that sense of conviction which every true son of the jungle feels when he is following the right course. He might not say how he knew he was right; but he followed the leading without further question.
Up over the steep talus at the base of the cañon wall they clambered, up into the narrowing arroyo, cutting every foot of the way, for the macheteros were now no longer keeping ahead of them––the common danger held the band united. Often they believed they discovered traces of ancient trails. But the jealous forest had all but obliterated them, and they could not be certain. In the higher and drier parts of the forest, where they left the creek and followed the beds of dead streams, slender ditches through which the water raced in torrents during the wet season, they were set upon by countless swarms of bees, a strange, stingless variety that covered them in a buzzing, crawling mass, struggling and fighting for the salt in the perspiration which exuded from the human bodies. Harris swore he would cease to eat, for he could not take even a mouthful of food without at the same time taking in a multitude of bees. Often, too, their machetes cut into great hornet nests. Then, with the shrill cry, “Avispas!” Rosendo would tear recklessly through the matted jungle, followed by his slapping, stumbling companions, until the maddened insects gave up the chase. Frequently they walked into huge ant nests before they realized it, sometimes the great tucanderas, so ferociously poisonous. “Ah, señores,” commented Rosendo, as he once stopped to point out the marvelous roadway cut by these insects for miles straight through the jungle, “in the days of the Spaniards the cruel taskmasters would often tie the weak and sick slaves to trees in the depths of the forest and let these great ants devour them alive! Señores, you can never know the terrible crimes committed by the Spaniards!”
“And they were Christians!” murmured Harris, eying Carmen furtively.
But she knew, though she voiced it not, that the Spaniard had never known the Christ.
Night was spent on the summit of the divide. Then, without further respite, Rosendo urged the descent. Down through ravines and gullies; over monster bowlders; waist deep through streams; down the sheer sides of gorges on natural ladders formed by the hanging mora vines; skirting cliffs by the aid of tangled and interlaced roots of rank, wet vegetation; and then down again into river bottoms, where the tenacious mud challenged their every step, and the streams became an interminable morass, through which passage was possible only by jumping from root to root, where the gnarled feeders of the great trees projected above the bottomless ooze. The persecution of the jejenes became diabolical. At dawn and sunset the raucous bellow of the red-roarer monkeys made the air hideous. The 373 flickering lights of the forest became dismally depressing. The men grew morose and sullen. Reed and Harris quarreled with each other on the slightest provocation.
Then, to increase their misery, came the rain. It fell upon them in the river bottoms in fierce, driving gusts; then in sheets that blotted out the forest and wet their very souls. The heavens split with the lightning. The mountains roared and trembled with the hideous cannonade of thunder. The jungle-matted hills ran with the flood. An unvaried pall of vapor hung over the steaming ground, through which uncanny, phantasmagoric shapes peered at the struggling little band.