Arthur O. Friel

“ Senhores, that was the Spider's nest—a lair made from the growing bushes and vines so cunningly twisted and woven among themselves that a man could stand within ten feet of it and never suspect that it was a shelter and hiding-place. ”

“ We all started and looked at one another, and I said—
"Yes, Senhor Affonso must have been shot—and Pedro, too."
I explained how I had sent Pedro to follow. The coronel snapped:
"Go, men, and find them! And find that—that Schwartz, too!"
We growled. The Spider would not come back alive if we found him. But we did not find him, for he had vanished. We pressed on to find our own people. I could not keep up with the others, but I was not far behind when they met Pedro. He came staggering down an old estrada, his face twisted with pain, and he bore the body of Senhor Affonso. ”

“ Schwartz boldly made himself at home there at the headquarters and talked vaguely about looking over the country for the people he said he represented. He went out in the jungle with us men and saw all he could see. Always he carried two weapons—the rifle, and a pistol.
It may be a foolish fancy, senhores, but I have sometimes thought that a man may be judged by his weapons, and not only the man himself, but the country whence he comes—for a man usually carries the weapons made in his own land. ”

“ At first we believed that body to be dead, for it hung limp and there were two bullet-holes in it, but while we were cutting down branches to make a litter Senhor Affonso stirred and moaned. Pedro cried out joyously:
"He lives! The senhor lives!"
Then he dropped, did Pedro, fainting from loss of blood, for he, too, had been shot by the Spider, and his wound was bad, near the shoulder. So now we had two men to carry home. ”

“ At the headquarters I got what we had been sent for and, as the things were few, I gave them over to Pedro to put into the canoe while I told the coronel how all was going at our lamo up the river. When I came out and saw our canoe I was astonished. It seemed to be full of supplies.
"What is this, Pedro?" I asked.
He smiled his odd smile, and answered:
"It is bait. The boxes and bags are filled with trash." And as I stared at him he added: "The Death strikes at men with full canoes, Lourenço. I would see what this Death looks like." ”

“ But nothing was found; neither Gumercindo himself, nor his canoe, nor even his hat.
After that no man traveled alone. We felt that some terrible thing was on the river, though what it might be we could not guess. We made note of one thing, though—that both of these men had disappeared with something of value. Custodio had vanished with some supplies; Gumercindo with money. Men who had nothing were not molested. Still, the fact that both of those lost men had been alone when they were destroyed made us want to travel in pairs, whether we had anything or not. ”

“ The man Schwartz had followed the trap-door spider's example inside his den, as well as outside. That spider, as you probably know, not only makes a door which swings shut behind him, and covers that door with things that grow around it, but he also makes a secret pocket at the side of his nest, where he can hide if any enemy discovers his lair. ”

“ Senhor Affonso, though, was much interested sometimes by the black-bearded man's talk of things he had studied in the jungle, and now and then he went out with him to see those things for himself. At such times I always felt uneasy, and Senhorita Flora, too, kept watching anxiously until they returned.
Mind you, senhores, the Spider never had done anything to make us distrust him. But dark crimes can easily be committed when two men are alone in the bush, and we knew that Senhor Affonso was wealthy and that, no doubt, he had a tempting sum of milreis with him ”

“ So you see, senhores, it was as I told you at the beginning—this man lived like a spider and he died like one. If you know spiders, you know that the female is larger and stronger than the male, and that often she turns on him and destroys him. ”

“ As you perhaps know, a man lying down is hard to hit, but his bullet ripped across my shoulders and tore the shirt from my back and burned my skin. I could not shoot again without striking the senhorita, so I did not try.
Then came a burst of fire from the house, where the coronel had seized weapons. Now he came bounding out like a jaguar, with a pistol in each hand spitting flame and lead, as he ran. Somewhere behind me, too, a rifle barked, fired by some man about the place.
Of course, both the coronel and the workman shot high, lest they kill Flora. ”

“ Yet strange creatures sometimes come aboard these river-boats while they are tied up at the bank. Some of them are harmless, and some are deadly. And not all of the deadly things are found on the outgoing steamers, nor are they all bred here in the jungle.
Sometimes they come up the river from the outside and are the more deadly because they are human. The memory of one of them came into my mind just now while I watched that great spider leaping aside from your blows. He, too, was called the "Spider," that man, though his name was Schwartz. ”

“ Finally he stepped back into the canoe, and we went on up-river until we were out of sight. There we picked a place to camp and stayed there that night, lighting no fire.
Before we slept, he told me that the woman was living in the jungle with a man, but what sort of a man he was or where he lived she would not tell him. This man, she said, was away somewhere that day, and what he was doing she did not know. When Pedro asked her if she would lead us to the man's camp she refused. Then she asked what we had in our boat, and he told her they were supplies for a new camp. ”

“ Had she been a man it would not have seemed so strange, for the savages are rovers and hunt for long distances away from their homes; but a woman, all alone on the bank, was something to be wondered at. ”

“ So you see that though he could not know the law was so close behind him, he did know he could not go back down the river on the next boat. He had reached the last place where he could live among men, and now there was no place left for him but the jungle.
My leg was well long before the senhor and Pedro were, and I went back to work. I heard, though, that Senhor Affonso vowed he would stay there until he had hunted down the man who had shot him and assailed the lady Flora, if it took the rest of his life. ”

“ The Spider had told Senhor Affonso he had found a trap-door spider's nest which was quite the most wonderful thing he had ever seen, and the senhor, greatly interested, went with him into a place where no men were working. ”

“ And though he would never allow her to remain very long, lest she become ill from the climate or meet some mischance from snakes or other things, we all knew that he looked forward to these short visits of hers as the brightest days of all the year.
We knew, too, that he planned eventually to make his own home again in Rio, where he had lived until his wife died. ”

“ And why are you so interested in this savage woman?"
"Lourenço," he answered, "we are now not very far from headquarters. All of our five friends whom the Death has struck have disappeared not far from headquarters—or so I believe. The place where we first saw that woman is not far from headquarters. The place where she answered my call today is still nearer to headquarters. More than that, she answered from a spot very near where Antonio Maciel vanished. Now there is a riddle for you to puzzle over. I am going to sleep."
IN THE morning we took out all our bait and put it into the bush. ”

“ That is the way of women. Yet she pleaded with him not to seek the Spider, as he might be killed in doing so. The coronel, too, pointed out that he was city-bred and not fitted for man-hunting in such terrible country as ours, that the Spider must have perished in the jungle, and that even the police had abandoned the idea of looking for him. ”