Another half-year passed before there reached me in Brazil local papers and letters giving details. According to these, the judge wept when he read the sentence, but “Thompson” shook hands with him, telling him the sentence was just, and that the only criticism he had to offer was that the execution had been so long delayed. As his last favor, he asked that jail conditions be improved, that his friends might be more humanly housed. On his last night he got permission to have a few of these—all jailbirds—to dinner with him, but refused to touch liquor himself, “so I shall be able to take in every detail clearly.” In the morning he informed friends that he had parents, brothers, and sisters in London, and a wife and son in the United States. To these he had been writing since his arrest that he was engaged in an enterprise that would in time make him rich, if luck was with him. On the evening before his execution he wrote bidding them all farewell, saying he had suddenly contracted a tropical disease the doctors despaired of, and would be dead by the time they got the letter. He was shot at noon, while the bells of the cathedral were striking, so that nothing should be heard outside the prison.
In Santa Cruz Tommy fell victim to that loathsome ailment popularly known as “cold feet.” An attack of fever and a hazy promise of employment for his trusty trowel were no doubt among the causes; it is probable, too, that he had not entirely lost faith in the attractiveness of sandy hair. But the inoculation was chiefly due to the replies to our inquiries about the road ahead. These were not exactly reassuring. It was characteristic of Tommy, however, that he pretended to be eager to push on, while secretly planning to remain behind.
There is one of the sand streets of Santa Cruz de la Sierra which does not run out to nothing in the surrounding jungle, but dwindles to what is known locally as the “camino de Chiquitos,” and pushes on to the Paraguay river, some 400 miles distant. “Road” in the cruceño sense, however, means anything but a comfortable highway. As usual, the town was scornful of the suggestion that two lone gringos could make the journey on foot. Disheartening stories assailed us of the dangers from snakes and “tigers,” of the unending pest of insects, of the almost total lack of sleeping-places and even of supplies. For the first week we must carry all food with us; in this rainy season the route was sure to abound with chest-deep mud-holes and miles of swamps; the last twenty leagues, near the Paraguay, would be completely inundated and impassable for months, until the waters subsided. Or, if the rains did not come on at their accustomed time, there was as much danger of the country being wholly waterless for long distances. Moreover, beyond the Rio Guapay, eight leagues east of the capital, stretched the notorious Monte Grande, a dense, unbroken forest in which roamed wild Indians given to shooting six-foot arrows of chonta, or iron-heavy black palm, from their eight-foot bows, with such force that they pass clear through a man at fifty yards. This was said to be quite painful. Nor were these mere idle rumors; we had only to drop in on one of several men in town to be shown arrows taken from the bodies of victims, and a sojourning fellow-countryman had several relics of the tribe he had had the good fortune to see first while prospecting on the banks of the Guapay.
Reading Tommy’s real opinion of the journey behind his face, I laid plans to continue alone. Experienced travelers asserted that boiled water, a careful diet, a selected medicine-kit, waterproofs, a tropical helmet, and a woolen cholera-belt for night chills were prime necessities. I had all but six of this half-dozen requisites. By choice I should have turned rural native entirely and worn a straw hat, a breechclout, a pair of leather sandals, and a towel. But life can seldom be reduced to such charming simplicity. Two things at least were indispensable,—a cloth hammock and a mosquitero to hang over it; for the only sleeping-place on most of the journey would be that which the traveler carried with him. Then I must “hacer tapeque,” as they say in Santa Cruz, or “pack” a bag of rice and some sheets of sun-dried beef, to say nothing of distributing about my person a kodak, revolver, cartridges, and money in various forms of metal. Add to this a few indispensable garments, sealed tins of salt and matches, kitchenette, photographic and writing materials, and the other unavoidable odds and ends for a scantily inhabited 400-mile trip of unknown duration, and it will be readily understood why, after mailing the developing-tank and even my coat, razor and accessories, I staggered heavily across town on January 8th, to begin the longest single leg of my South American journey.
Fortunately, the German who had sought my assistance in the matter of the gun license, was bound for at least a few days in the same direction. Heinrich Konanz, born in Karlsruhe, had served the last of three years as a conscript in the expedition against the Chinese Boxers, and had since worked as a carpenter in China and California, until he had concluded to seek a permanent home as a colonist in some region where population was less numerous. He was largely innocent of geography, spoke habitually a painful cross between his once native tongue and what he fondly fancied was English, with a peppering of Chinese, and knew almost no Spanish. The mule that had carried him from Cochabamba he found it necessary to turn into a pack-animal for the tools, materials, and provisions he had purchased in Santa Cruz, and was to continue on foot. He had been placidly making plans to push on alone, when rumors in his own tongue suddenly reached him of the Monte Grande and its playful Indians. His first inclination had been to throw up the sponge and return to Cochabamba. But his capital had been greatly reduced and his hotel room was heaped with the supplies sold him by his local fellow-countrymen, who would not have taken them back at a fourth of the original cost. He made a virtue of necessity, added a new rifle to his revolver and shotgun, and offered to find room on the mule for the heavier portion of my baggage in return for the reassurance of my company.
Konanz seated on our baggage in the pelota de cuero, or “leather ball” in which we were both carried across the Rio Guapay
The force of one of the four fortines, or “fortresses,” with which the Bolivian government garrisons the Monte Grande against the savages
It was a brilliant day when I shouldered the German’s rifle, my own revolver well oiled and freshly loaded, and led the way out of town. Mud-holes, along which we picked our way on rows of the whitened skulls of cattle, soon gave place to a great pampa, with tall, coarse grass and scattered trees, across which lay a silent sand road so utterly dry that we had already suffered long from thirst when we reached the first “well,” a mud-hole thick with green slime, attesting by its taste the also visible fact that all the cattle for miles around made it their loafing-place and protection from the swarms of flies and insects. Here we not only drank, but filled the German’s water-bag. When the liquid mud in this gave out, my companion took to lapping up that in the cart-ruts and the footprints of cattle along the trail. I held out until I overtook a boy carrying on his head a pailful of guapurú (wah-poo-roó), of which I bought a hatful for a medio. This is a fruit cruelly like a large luscious cherry in appearance, growing without a stem on the trunk of a gnarly pampa tree, of a snow-white meat not particularly pleasant to the taste, but a welcome antidote for tropical thirst.