Arthur O. Friel

“ Glancing at Paula, I saw a wise smile grow on her face.
“But you must go, Angela,” Pedro told her. “This place is unhealthful in more ways than one. You have been here only a short time, but even now you do not look so strong as when you came. You will be much more healthy and far more happy at one of those towns on the great river.”
Still she gazed at the floor. Then she looked shyly up at him and glanced quickly aside.
“Santarem and Ega are far from here,” she said in a small voice. “I do not want to travel so far—alone.” ”

“ Sometimes, senhores, we see vultures without wings, which walk about in the shape of men. Yes, human vultures, who scent human weakness as do their foul brothers of the air, and come from afar to prey on that weakness until they have stripped their victims to the bare bones. And now, while we stream on down the Amazon, I can tell you the tale of one of those creatures—a tale of the bush but yet not of the bush; for these things came about not in the depths of the unknown jungle but in a jungle town on the banks of the Javary.
That town is Remate de Males. ”

“ Every man of us was like a maddened jaguar, thinking only of destroying him; and we struck in blind rage, so that in our struggles to get at him we got in the way of our own attack. Some one’s rifle-barrel or butt hit me hard on the head, dazing me so that I staggered and had to grab the bar to keep from falling.
While I leaned there I saw Joaquim too go stumbling back, clutching an arm cut by a jabbing machete. Miguel also was out of the fight, for he was the man who had been stabbed after Helio, and now he was limping away, bending over with pain.
Then I saw the Vulture rise in the air. ”

“ We now have a real urubu, and he will give you any game you like and pick you clean.”
“This sounds interesting,” said my comrade Pedro, his brown eyes twinkling. “Remate de Males is becoming quite a city. What sort of thing is this Urubu of which you speak?”
Then spoke Joaquim the trader, and his tone was sour:
“He is a remate de males in himself. If there is anything worse than he I have not yet seen it. He takes the life from honest men and devours their bodies afterward.” ”

“ The montaria kept on going of itself, but as we took no more strokes no more bullets came. The same voice barked orders on the steamer, and a ship’s boat of men took the water and spurted after us.
While they came Pedro turned again to the girl.
“Angela,” he said, “when I knew you in Santarem you were a good girl.”
“And I am now!” she cried, her head high.
“I believe you. That is why I am doing what I do. Peixoto is not your uncle. You must not go with him. He is a lying dog, and he takes you to a place where no girl can go and remain good.” ”

“ Maria said she knew nothing about Januaria’s sickness or her going away. She would not talk about it, and she seemed afraid Urubu might overhear what Miguel said.”
“That does not look very good either,” said Pedro. “The story of Urubu may be true, and we can not prove it is not. But there is one thing you can do, Helio, if you are really interested in this matter. Say nothing to any one, but start at dawn tomorrow and go to Tabatinga. It is only about thirty miles, and you can soon learn whether your girl is there.”
“I will do it!” vowed Helio. “I will go before any one else is awake. ”

“ And when men have labored long in the wilderness with Death always lurking at their backs, any town where they can play is not a bad town at all.
At the time of high water I came into Remate de Males with a young comrade, Pedro Andrada, who, like myself, worked on the big seringal of Coronel Nunes. We were more than fellow workers; we were comrades. Recently we had been out on a long roving trip along the Brazilian-Peruvian frontier, and had come back so gaunt and tired that we were glad to rest for a time at the headquarters of the coronel. ”

“ A poor little girl, homeless and penniless and deceived, with only us two hardened bushmen for friends and her dream of a happy life with kind people broken, she found it hard to hold back the tears. And when she stepped to the doorway and looked at the flooded town she could keep them back no longer.
“Even the town is dirty and dismal!” she cried. “Santarem and Ega are clean, green towns with fine sandy beaches, but this is nothing but a drowned mud-hole. And the air—the air is so damp it chokes me.”
“Have courage, Angela,” Pedro said. “You shall leave it on the next boat that goes down. ”

“ If he can not bring women here he will be useless to Urubu. He will soon be ragged and dirty again and whining for drinks as he used to. Are you not ashamed to have ruined so worthy a citizen?”
Pedro grinned and made some answer, but I lost it because the other men around us laughed and drowned his words. And the thing I had predicted came true, senhores—Domengos did become once more a hanger-on and beggar. But it was not because Urubu dismissed him. ”

“ Ricardo and Alberto, though slain at different times, had both been killed for the same reason—their money. Each was a shrewd gambler and a dangerous fighter; and the Vulture, finding them hard to cheat and knowing he could not rob them alive, had robbed them dead.
The girl Januaria had been put out of the way because she knew far too much about Urubu and was likely to prove dangerous to him—indeed, she had openly threatened to tell certain things she knew. And Anna Malagueita must have died because the Vulture knew she had warned us to be on our guard. ”

“ Meldo, one of the quiet men who often joined us at Joaquim’s stopped yawning and became wide awake.
“A little thing like a snake on my floor does not disturb me much—I see plenty of snakes when I am in the bush,” added Pedro. “And if people wish to amuse themselves by bumping trees against my barracāo they can have their little joke. But any one who would spoil good liquor is a vile brute and should be shot.”
Meldo grinned at his way of putting it, but quickly became serious again.
“Here is another thing,” he said. “Helio Alves has not been seen for days. He disappeared overnight. ”

“ To all except Meldo and me the story of the snake, the tree, and the poison was news, and they listened with faces hardening. While he talked two other men came in, and one of these was Miguel.
“But even yet we have no proof,” Pedro concluded. “Urubu will say those three must have been drowned and devoured on their way to Tabatinga, and no man can prove otherwise. There is nothing at all against him except suspicion.”
“Then here is another suspicion for you,” Miguel broke in. “Your little friend Anna Malagueita is ‘sick,’ as Januaria was. ”

“ Urubu is no cannibal.”
“Where are Ricardo Bautista and Alberto Alencar?” demanded Joaquim. “Each was drunk at his place, and the next morning each was gone. Gone where? No man has seen them since.”
Nobody spoke. Joaquim went on.
“I would not say that he actually ate them. But there is a jacare-assu—a huge alligator—living under his house, and perhaps that reptile could tell things if he would. A jacare does not live where it finds no food.”
Again there was silence. Then Helio Alves said slowly:
“I have been wondering what became of that girl Januaria. ”

“ Pedro pointed out that no man could prove how much he had lost here; that the losers had had some pleasure in spending it; that we all could earn more money if we needed it, and that any attempt to divide it among us would probably lead to trouble. ”

“ Then he turned, faced the girl, and asked sharply—
“Angela, what are you doing here?”
A little cry of surprize came from her.
“Pedro! Pedro Andrada! I did not know you! How big you have grown!”
“Three years makes a difference in a man in this Javary country,” he said. “Here a man must either be strong or die. But how come you here? ”

“ We knew well that the money spent on bringing Angela here had come from the pocket of the Vulture, not from that of Domengos. But he said no word.
Then Pedro cursed them both. He cursed them thoroughly and well. He called them such names as no real man would have swallowed. Yet he said nothing of the jacare under the house, or of the two men and the girl who had disappeared. He used fighting talk, meant to goad them into fight then and there.
But he had forgotten the nature of vultures. A vulture does not attack anything dangerous, nor did Urubu show fight now. ”

“ But the poisoning-of our cachassa must have been done by Urubu himself while we were passing the evening at Joaquim’s place.
If the floating tree should destroy us, you see, no trace would be left of the poisoned jug. If the tree spared us and the poison killed us there would still be no proof that he had been concerned in it, for men would know we bought our cachassa from Joaquim, and suspicion would be most likely to fall on the man who had sold it to us. To ruin his enemy Joaquim as well as to kill us would be much to the taste of the Vulture. ”

“ Held in that sunken cage, carried away down the black waters among alligators and piranhas and other evil things—no, we should not have had much chance. It was our luck that the house happened to be firm and that the heavy tree had not hit it squarely. ”

“ But after a few days of ease we found this very dull, since most of the other men had gone out to spend their time and money at their homes, or, if their homes were too far away, at Remate de Males. So, after drawing some money from the coronel, we paddled down the river for several days until we reached the town.
There we hitched our dugout to one of the posts before the door of a trader named Joaquim, whom we knew well, and went inside. Several friends of ours were loafing there, and for a time they kept us busy telling of our adventures on that rambling trip. ”

“ And they were rough, hard men who thought only of themselves, and if they came back with money they would not let a girl’s sickness interfere with their staying here and drinking.
“What is more, they have had plenty of time to return from Tabatinga, but they have not come back. The tale does not sound good to me at all. And what Joaquim said about the jacare disturbs me. It is true that a jacare-assu lives under the house of Urubu—I have seen the beast myself.” ”

“ And it is an odd thing but true that people accustomed to the air of the Amazon often sicken and die soon after leaving it for one of the branch rivers, even though they go only a few miles from the main stream. ”

“ And it will be better for you to stay there than here, for one never knows what may happen, and later on in your life some spiteful person might say you lived with two men here, and it might do you much harm. ”