The Bridge in the Jungle (2 page)

'Oh, there, you mean. There is prairie, mucha pastura. In fact, it's sort of a cattle ranch. Not fenced in. All open. It belongs to an Americano. After you pass that prairie there's thick jungle again. If you ride still farther through that jungle about six or eight miles, you'll find an oil camp. Men are drilling there, testing holes to see if they can find oil. So far they haven't, and if you ask me, I think they never will. That's the same people what have built this bridge. You know, if they want to drill for oil they have to get all the machinery down here from the depot. Without a bridge they couldn't pass the river with such heavy loads. They tried it a few times during the dry season, but the trucks got stuck and it took them a week to get them out again. The bridge has cost them a lot of money, because the timber had to be brought fifteen hundred miles, and, believe me, mister, that cost money.'

'Who lives on that ranch over there?'

'A gringo, like you.'

'That's what you told me before. I mean who looks after the cattle?'

'Didn't I tell you right now? A gringo.'

'Where does he live?'

'Right behind that brush.'

I crossed the bridge on my horse, pulling my pack mule along behind me.

Behind a thick wall of tropical shrubs and trees I found about ten of the usual Indian chozas or jacales — that is, palm-roofed huts.

Women squatting on the bare ground, smoking thick cigars, and bronze-brown children, most of them naked, a few dressed in a shirt or ragged pair of pants, were everywhere. None of the little girls, however, was naked, although only scantily covered by flimsy frocks.

From here I could see across the pasture which the pumpmaster had called the prairie. It was about a mile long and three-quarters of a mile wide. On all sides it was hemmed in by the jungle. The tracks where the oil company's trucks had passed over the prairie were still visible.

It was quite natural to find an Indian settlement here. The pasture was good and there was water all the year round. The Indians need no more. The pasture was not theirs, but that didn't bother them. Every family owned two or three goats, two or three lean pigs, one or two burros, and a dozen chickens, and the river provided them with fish and crabs.

The men used to cultivate the land near their huts, raising corn, beans, and chilli. But since the oil company had started to exploit its leases, acquired twenty years before, many of the men had found work in the camps, from which they came home every Saturday afternoon, remaining until early Monday morning. The men who did not like the jobs, or who could not get them, made charcoal in the bush, which they put into old sacks to be transported by burro to the depot, where it was sold to the agents who came once a week to every depot on the railroad line.

Neither the women I saw nor the children paid any attention to me as I passed them. During the last two years they had become used to foreigners, because whoever went to the oil camps by truck, car, or on horseback stopped at this settlement, or at the pump-station, even if only for an hour or two, but frequently for the night if they arrived at the bridge late in the afternoon. Everyone, even the toughest truck-drivers, avoided the road through the jungle at night.

Among the huts I noted one which, although built Indian fashion, was higher and larger than the rest. It was located at the end of the settlement, and behind it there was a crudely built corral. No other hut as far as I could see had a similar corral.

So I rode up to that hut which boasted a corral and, obeying the customs of the land, halted my horse respectfully about twenty yards away to wait until one of the inhabitants would notice my presence.

Like all the other jacales, it had no door — only an opening against which, at night, a sort of network of twigs and sticks was set from the inside and tied to the posts. The walls were made of sticks tied together with strips of bast and Manas. Therefore if a visitor didn't wait some distance from the house until he was invited in he might find the inhabitants in very embarrassing situations.

I had waited only a minute before an Indian woman appeared. She looked me over, said: 'Buenas tardes, senor!' and then: 'Pase, senor, this humble house is yours.'

I dismounted, tied horse and mule to a tree, and entered the hut. I found the Indian woman who had greeted me to be the wife of my old acquaintance Sleigh. After recognizing me she repeated her greeting more cordially. I had to sit down in a creaking old wicker chair which was obviously the pride of the house. She told me that her husband would be here any minute now. He was out on the prairie trying to catch a young steer which had to be doctored because it had been gored by an older bull and now had festering wounds.

It was not long before I heard Sleigh ordering a boy to open the gate of the corral and drive the steer in.

He came in. Without showing even the slightest surprise he shook hands with me and then dropped into a very low, crude chair.

'Haven't you got a paper with you? Damn if I've read or seen any paper for eight months, and believe me, man, I'd like to know what's going on outside.'

'I've got the San Antonio
Express
with me. Sweat-soaked and crumpled. It's five weeks old.'

'Five weeks? Hombre, then I call it still hot from the press. Hand it over!'

He asked his wife for his spectacles, which she pulled out of the palm leaves of the roof. He put them on in a slow, almost ceremonious manner. While he was fixing them carefully upon his ears he said: 'Aurelia, get the caballero something to eat, he is hungry.'

Of each page he read two lines. He then nodded as if he wished to approve what had been said in the paper. Now he folded it contemplatively as if he were still digesting the lines he had read, took off his specs, stood up, put the glasses again somewhere between the palm leaves under the roof, and finally pushed the folded paper behind a stick pressed against the wall, without saying thanks. He returned to his seat, folded his hands, and said: 'Damn it, it's a real treat to read a paper again and to know what is going on in the world.'

His desire for a newspaper had been fully satisfied just by looking at one, so that he could rest assured that the people back home were still printing them. Suppose he had read that half of the United States and all of Canada had disappeared from the surface of the earth, I am sure he would have said: 'Gosh, now what do you make of that? I didn't feel anything here. Anyway, things like that do happen sometimes, don't they?' Most likely he would not have shown any sign of surprise. He was that kind of an individual.

'I'm here to get alligators.'

'After alligators, you said? Great. There are thousands here. I wish you'd get them all. I can't get them away from my calves and my young steers. They make so damn much trouble. What's worse, the old man blames me. He tells the whole world that I'm selling his young cows and pocketing all the money, while in fact the alligators get them and the tigers and the lions, of which the jungle is packed full. I can tell you, the old man that owns this property, he is a mean one. How can I sell a cow, even a very young one, or anything else, without everybody here knowing about it. Tell me that. But he is so mean, the old man is, and so dirty in his soul, that's what he is. If I wasn't here looking out for his property, I can swear he wouldn't have a single cow left. But he himself is afraid to live here in the wilderness, because he is yellow, that's what he is.'

'He must have money.'

'Money, my eye. Who says money? I mean he hasn't much cash. It's all landed property and livestock. Only, you know, the trouble is there is nothing safe here any longer, no property, and cattle still less so. It's all on account of those bum agraristas, you know. Anyhow, I absolutely agree with you that you can easily shoot a hundred alligators here. Whole herds you can shoot if you go after them. There are old bulls among them that are stronger than the heaviest steer, and they are tough guys too, those giant alligator bulls. If one of them gets you, man, there isn't anything left of you to tell the tale. But, come to think of it, why don't we first go after a tasty antelope? '

'Are there many antelope here too?' I asked.

'Many isn't the right word, if you ask an old-timer. You just go into the bush over there. After walking say three hundred feet, you just take down your gun and shoot straight ahead of you. Then you walk again a hundred feet or so in the same direction and there you'll find your antelope stone dead on the ground, and more often than not you'll find two just waiting to be carried away. That's how it is here. I'll tell you what we can do. Stay here with me for a few days. Your alligators, down the river or up it, won't run away. They will wait with pleasure a few days longer for you to come along and get them. What day is it today? Thursday. Fine. You couldn't have selected a better day. My woman will be off tomorrow with the kids for a visit to her folks. I'll take them to the depot. Day after I'll be back again. From that day on we'll be all by ourselves here, and we can do and live as we like. The whole outfit and all the house will be ours. One of the girls of the neighbourhood will come over and do all the cooking and the housekeeping.'

3

On Saturday morning Sleigh returned. In the meantime I had been fishing, with not much result.

'Tonight there will be a dance,' Sleigh said. 'The party is to be on the other side of the river, on that square by the pump. It's the pump-master who has ordered music.'

'Out of his own pocket?'

'Of course. You see, it's this way: he has also ordered two cases of bottled beer and four cases of soda and lemonade from the general store at the depot. That's how he will get his money back for the music.'

'How many musicians?'

'One fiddler and one with a guitar.'

'That music can't cost much.'

'Certainly not. But he won't get rich on the beer and soda either. He'll make a little profit all right, which he deserves since he takes the risk of bringing the music out here.'

The Indian girl Sleigh had talked about had come already and was busy about the house. Although she was hardly out of her baby shirt herself, she had with her a baby of her own.

'The guy she got the brat from has left her,' Sleigh said.

She was not a pretty girl; in fact, she was ugly.

'It seems to me,' I said, 'that man saw her only at night or when he was drunk, so when he saw her for the first time by daylight or after he had sobered up, he got so sick that he couldn't help but run as far as his feet would carry him. Somehow, I think that girl should be grateful to the night when it happened. Without that dark night she might never have had a baby. Now, since she has one, it's not unlikely that another guy might get interested in her, believing her possessed of rare qualities which can't be seen from the outside.'

Sleigh eyed me for a while with a quizzical look, as if he had to think out what I had just said. When he got the point or at least thought that he had caught up with it, he nodded and said: 'There is something in what you say. She certainly has had her fun. And if you ask me I am sure she is not a bit sad about it that this guy left her. It isn't that. It is only that she can't have the same fun every night that worries her.'

We sat down and ate tortillas and frijoles while the girl was baking the few fish I had caught early that morning. She just laid them upon the open fire and all she did was to watch that they didn't get burned.

The hearth was a simple affair. It consisted of an old wooden box, three feet by two, which had been filled with earth and put on four sticks.

In the afternoon I rode with Sleigh over the prairie to look at the cattle. We also searched for fresh tracks of antelope. As I had expected, there were no such tracks.

'They must have migrated,' Sleigh said. 'They sometimes do and then you can't possibly find any tracks.'

Early in the evening when we were eating dinner I asked Sleigh whether only the people who lived in this settlement would be at the dance. He explained that at least eighty, even a hundred, other people would join the party. They would come from all directions, from settlements, hamlets, and huts hidden deep in the jungle, and they would come from little places along the river-banks and from ponds and creeks in the bush. Many would travel from five to eight miles on horseback, on mules or burros; some would come from even farther away.

'How does the pump-master advertise this party?'

'No difficulty at all,' Sleigh said. 'Whichever native comes this way is told that on this Saturday or that there will be a dance at the pump-station, and that music has been ordered already. So every passer-by takes the word wherever he goes and the people who receive the word repeat it to their neighbours and friends and whoever comes their way. It's remarkable, I tell you, how quickly such a notice reaches twenty miles in every direction.'

4

Night had fallen and we were on our way to the pump-station on the other side of the river.

While passing Sleigh's neighbours, I observed that one hut had a lantern tied by a string to a post in its portico. When I came closer I saw an Indian sitting on a bench and playing a fiddle. He seemed to be about forty-five years old. A few silky black hairs, so few that one could easily count them, framed his brown chin. I was sure that because of these few hairs his friends called him the one with a beard. He played pitifully badly, but he tried hard and with some success to keep time.

'What's that?' I asked Sleigh. 'I thought you said the dance would be at the pump-station.'

'Sure enough. Well, the fact is I don't know. Anyway, I don't think the dance will be here.'

'Then why should these people here have cleaned up the whole front yard? And here's this elegant lantern. They don't look to me so fat that they'd use lanterns just for the fun of it.'

'In a minute we'll know all about it. The pump-master will tell us. Anyway, why shouldn't they have their own dance if they want to? There are always two or three parties going on around here. Perhaps he has had a row with the pump-master and wants to have his own party.'