“I’m sorry that I’ve no money,” Hi said. “But as for mess-bills, if you’ll tell me your name and agents, I’ll pay what you think fair for what I have had here. Or you can take my watch. It is a good one and nearly new: it will go well when cleaned.”
“We’ll talk about bills to-morrow,” the man said. “You’d better go and turn in.”
“Very well. Good-night.”
The man did not answer. He stood staring at Hi out of his cold, hard blue eyes: his lip was lifted in a sneer. Hi felt that he had never yet met a man so hateful. “He is a loathsome swine,” he thought. “A vile, taunting, silver-ring tick.”
He came to his hut and again had the sensation that someone was there: this time so strongly that he called out. “Yes, who is it, there?” before he saw that there was no one. “It is odd,” he said, “I keep thinking that there’s a man here. I’ve got to be all jumpy from being in the forest; and then, this hammock-post is like a man, and gives me the illusion every time. I wish there were a man here, Dudley Wigmore or another; then I might not be so dependent on this sneering devil.”
Still raging against the man, he turned into his hammock to think of things which did not bear thought; Carlotta and Rosa depending on him; Carlotta’s marvellous grace, beauty and goodness; now in gaol among blackguards at the whim of a madman; then, himself, who was to have saved her, all astray in a forest, all those miles from even beginning to send word about her. There was no sleep for one with thoughts like that.
Sleep would not have been easy in any case, for the village was celebrating something, a hunt or a moon-feast: he could not tell what. Half a dozen drums were beating. Presently the boys of the tribe lit a bonfire in the midst of the patio or space in the midst of the village. They piled it high with wood which the women had collected during the day. As soon as it burned well, they began to march round it, blowing into horns of one note and flutes of two notes: some of them clacked discs of hard wood or rattled beans in goobies: those who could not make music, sang. The little, sharp-eared dogs sitting on their haunches at the hut doors put back their heads, till they seemed all throat, and sang likewise. The babies wakened from their sleep wailed upon high notes. The men of the tribe sang or told stories: the women and little girls dragged wood for the fire.
“I might be a thousand miles from anywhere,” Hi thought. “It may take me days to get to Anselmo or anywhere else.”
The bonfire lit up the inside of his hut so as to shew the tin boxes marked D and W. Since he could not sleep, his mind turned to these boxes. “There is something queer about this man,” Hi said to himself. “There is something odd about his relations with Wigmore. He said something about these solitary prospectors being always bad eggs; well, he doesn’t strike one as being a very lofty egg. He says he went through Wigmore’s things and found no letters. I know that there were letters, which he pitched on to the rubbish pile only a little while ago. He made no effort to find Wigmore’s friends. It’s true that he says he sent in an account of his death; yet he wears Wigmore’s belt and uses his rifle. And then, to keep away from the poor chap while he was ill: good Lord.”
There rose in his mind suddenly the image of the forest fever, as a grey thing without a head, a thing like a worm, which said: “It is just after the rains now: very likely I have put a touch upon you, so that people will leave you in a hut till you are dead. It is a very catching complaint, the forest fever.”