Players were attracted from other groups. The game, the stakes, the din, the flow of chicha—all increased as the night wore on.
Like the turn of the tide, the silent man’s luck changed. After nearly every play he raked in the stakes. Darker grew those dark faces about the board, and meaning glances glittered. A knife gleamed low behind the winner’s back, clutched in a lean hand of one of the gamesters. Murder might have been done then, but a big arm swept the gamester off his feet and flung him out of the door, where he disappeared in the blackness.
“Fair play!” roared Manuel, his eyes glowing like phosphorus in the dark. The sudden silence let in the chug of machinery, the splashing of the paddle wheel, the swishing of water. Every eye watched the giant Spaniard. Then the game recommenced, and, under Manuel’s burning eyes, continued on into the night.
At last he flipped a gold piece on the table and ordered chicha for all.
“Men, drink to Manuel’s last trip up the river,” he said. “I’m coming in rich.”
“Rubber or Indians?” sarcastically queried a weasel-featured Spaniard.
“Bustos, you lie in your question,” replied Manuel hotly. “You can’t make a slave hunter of me. I’m after rubber. I’ll bring in canoes full of rubber.”
Most of the outlaws, when they could not find a profitable rubber forest, turned their energies to capturing Indian children and selling them into slavery in the Amazonian settlements.
“Manuel, where will you strike out?” asked one.
“For the headwaters of the Palcazu. Who’ll go with me?”