LITMIR.BIZ

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they not do other things against authority? Might they not even try to murder the chief himself? Who knows?"

      "That is so," Amalio slowly agreed. The one thought always in the mind of Funes and his men was that some one would try to kill him. "Well, you will see him tomorrow. Then he will do as he sees fit. Now, go!"

      I intended to go farther than he meant me to, for I suspected that Funes might be ugly-tempered in the morning; but I gave no sign of my intentions. I only said:

      "Bueno. But give me my rifle, which I left here. I may need it before sunrise."

      He grinned a little and ordered that my gun be brought. By this time other men had gathered, but none came too near. When my rifle was in my hands I said to those watching:

      "I go walking, and I sleep alone. Let none of you try to follow. Amalio, thank you, and buen' noche'."

      "Buen' noche'," he yawned. And I walked away into the dark, and none followed.

      I walked southward, as if heading for the house where I usually slept when in the town. But at the first dark corner I slipped around and loped down toward the river Atabapo, where my loaded curial lay.

      Whether my crew of mestizos, who usually paddled me as far as my first sitio on the Ventuari, was at the canoe now I did not know, though I had ordered that two men sleep there in order to prevent thievery from my supplies. But luck was with me—they all were there, gambling on a box-top and laughing or cursing as the tumbling dice gave them suertes or azares. My movements since the fight had been so rapid that nobody had yet come down to tell them about it.

      "We have now," I said, jumping among them before they realized that I was arriving. "Out into the river! Move!"

      They gaped a second or two. One spoke.

      "Leave now? Tonight? In darkness?"

      "We leave now!" I growled. "There is trouble. Unless we jump out of here there will be more. Vamos!"

      They jumped. Sudden trouble was nothing new to them—they were San Fernando men themselves, of the peon class—and they knew the value of acting first and thinking afterward. In less than a minute we were aboard and had shoved away, and I had blown out the lantern.

      "Straight out," I ordered. "Then downstream."

      Their paddles thumped for a couple of minutes on the gunwales before any call came from behind. Then sounded a yell.

      "Loco León! You dog, you pig, you ——! Come here and fight!"

      Lanterns were swinging down the sloping shore toward the spot where the canoe had lain. Somebody had seen me dodge around that corner, and now the dog-pack was beginning to yelp. I cocked my gun and stood up, intending to teach them manners. But then, realizing that my gun-flash would give them a target, I held my fire. With only the dull thump of the receding paddles to shoot at, they were hardly likely to do me any harm; and I had spilled enough blood there for one night.

      Getting no answer, they yelped all the more boldly. Half a dozen rifles blazed at me, but the bullets flew wild. My men, without orders, began silencing their strokes. With hardly a sound, we slid on toward the midstream island, the current carrying us downward all the time. Then from the shore sounded a voice speaking loudly to the other men.

      "Save your bullets, save your bullets! Let the fool go. Do you not know that Paco Peldóm waits for him at the boca del Ventuari? The gang of Paco will not fail."

      A rumble of other voices followed, and the lanterns began to move back toward the streets. Then I answered them in a way that I knew would madden them more than bullets or curses. I laughed; laughed loud and high, as if I found them only amusing and contemptible.

      They bawled curses, of course, but I gave none in return. We now were far enough out to avoid the rocky point below the town, and I gave the word to head straight down the river. I was out of San Fernando, and I had no time to think further of what lay behind. I was already figuring on what waited ahead.

      As San Fernando lies on a point, with the river Atabapo in front and the Orinoco behind, these enemies of mine might cut across to get me when I passed up the Orinoco. I thought this improbable, however, for it meant half a mile of walking through the night, and they were much more likely to go back to the rum-shop—especially since they knew that Paco Peldóm was waiting for me. It was Paco and his gang, lurking at the mouth of my own river, that gave me some real thinking to do. The drunken fool who blurted that out had done me an unintended favor.

      The plot was bigger than I had supposed. This Paco was no balata merchant, like the brothers Argel and others who hated me for business reasons. He was a killer, and head of a small but deadly band of men outlawed from Venezuela, Colombia, and Brazil; one of Funes' tools, and so inhuman that he was nicknamed El Carnicero—the Butcher.

      There were many such brutes in the "army" of Funes; for birds of a feather flock together, and Funes, himself a murderous outlaw, drew around him the worst men in three countries. They took orders, of course, from the master cut-throat himself; but they also operated on their own accounts, killing and robbing for loot, for lust, or for pay. During the eight years of terror in the up-Orinoco country, many a hideous crime was committed which Tomás Funes never intended. And if any of his men was worse than this Paco Peldóm, I have not heard of that man.

      Now, since I carry little money up the river with me—I leave almost all of it in bank here at Bolívar—Paco could expect no plunder from my boat except my Indian trade-goods, which would hardly tempt him. There had been no trouble between us, so he was not seeking revenge. Funes had shown no desire to kill me yet. The only good reason I could see, then, for this gang to want my life was for pay. And the only people likely to pay them much for their trouble were my business enemies.

      So I concluded that those enemies had sent Paco up to the Ventuari to take care of me when I should arrive there, and that the Argel "accident" had come about because Otón was not satisfied to let well enough alone; if I was killed in San Fernando he would not have to pay Paco for my head.

      With me dead, perhaps the plan was to seize my balata country in force and compel my Maquiritare friends to work it, or bring in other, weaker Indians, as slaves. With me alive, there was not much chance for those schemers to get anything on the Ventuari except bullets and arrows.

      All this I thought over while we slid down the Atabapo and swung around the point into the Orinoco. And then, making a map of the Ventuari and the Orinoco in my mind, I began to laugh.

      "Paco," I said to the night, "you and your wolves never fail, no? Well, we shall see."

      Chapter 3

      III

       Table of Contents

      THE delta of the Ventuari, señores, is a puzzling place. There, two powerful rivers, the Orinoco and the Ventuari, both born in the eastern mountains, meet each other head-on, like a pair of bulls locking boras. Since neither can push the other back into its own mountains, and both must go somewhere, they stagger off westward together until they meet the Atabapo and the Guaviare, which help the Orinoco to go northward again.

      I suppose it is this everlasting fight between the two rivers which has gouged out the land all around their meeting-place and made the great Raudal de Santa Barbara. At any rate, the raudal is there, and it is a huge bay full of islands, big and little. And among these islands an experienced riverman can pick quite a number of channels if he will. And I, who had worked rubber for years on the Alto Orinoco before moving to the Ventuari, knew most of the ways through that labyrinth. So, if I had known just where Paco waited to kill me, I could have dodged around his gang with little trouble. That is, I could have done so if he had been among the islands of the delta.

      But Paco, too, knew his Orinoco. And, since he was there for the purpose of

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