In Far Bolivia Part 25

"Yes, Weenah mine! and deadly are they as the lightning's bolt that flashes downward from the storm-sky and lays dead the llama and the ox.

"See yonder eagle, Weenah? Benee's aim is unerring; his hand is the hand of the rock, his eye the eye of the kron-dah" (a kind of hawk), "yet his touch on the trigger light as the moss-flax. Behold!"

He raised the rifle as he spoke, and without even appearing to take aim he fired.

Next moment the bird of Jove turned a somersault. It was a death-spasm.

Down, down he fell earthwards, his breast-feathers following more slowly, like a shower of snow sparkling in the suns.h.i.+ne.

Weenah was almost paralysed with terror, but Benee took her gently in his arms, and, kissing her brow and bonnie raven hair, soothed her and stilled her alarms.

Hand in hand now through the forest, as in the days of yore! Both almost too happy to speak, Benee and his little Indian maiden! Hand in hand over the plain, through the crimson heath and the heather, heeding nothing, seeing nothing, knowing nothing save their own great happiness!

Hand in hand until they stood beside Weenah's mother's cottage; and her parents soon ran out to welcome and to bless them!

Theirs was no ordinary hut, for the father had been far to the east and had dwelt among white men on the banks of the rapid-rolling Madeira.

When he had returned, slaves had come with him--young men whom he had bought, for the aborigines barter their children for cloth or schnapps.

And these slaves brought with them tools of the white men--axes, saws, adzes, hammers, spades, and shovels.

Then Shooks-gee (swift of foot) had cut himself timber from the forest, and, aided by his slaves, had set to work; and lo! in three moons this cottage by the wood arose, and the queen of the cannibals herself had none better.

But Benee was welcomed and food set before him, milk of the llama, corn-cakes, and eggs of the heron and treel-ba (a kind of plover).

Then warm drinks of coca (not cocoa) were given him, and the child Weenah's eyes were never turned away while he ate and drank.

He smoked then, the girl sitting close by him on the bench and watching the strange, curling rings of reek rolling upwards towards the black and glittering rafters.

"But," said Weenah's mother, "poor Benee has walked far and is much tired. Would not Benee like to cover his feet?"

"Yes, our mother, Benee would sleep."

"And I will watch and sing," said Weenah.

"Sing the song of the forest," murmured Benee.

Then Weenah sang low beside him while Benee slept.

CHAPTER XV--SHOOKS-GEE'S STORY--A CANNIBAL QUEEN

What is called "natural curiosity" in our country, where almost every man is a Paul Pry, is no trait of the Indian's character. Or if he ever does feel such an impulse, it is instantly checked. Curiosity is but the attribute of a squaw, a savage would tell you, but even squaws will try to prevent such a weed from flouris.h.i.+ng in their hearts.

That was the reason why neither the father nor the mother of Benee's little lady-love thought of asking him a single question concerning his adventures until he had eaten a hearty meal and had enjoyed a refres.h.i.+ng sleep.

But when Benee sat up at last and quaffed the mate that Weenah had made haste to get him, and just as the day was beginning to merge into the twilight of summer, he began to tell his friends and his love some portion of his wonderful adventures, even from the day when he had bidden the child Weenah a tearful farewell and betaken himself to a wandering life in the woods.

His young life's story was indeed a strange one,

"Wherein he spake of most disastrous chances, Of moving accidents by flood and field; ... of antres vast and deserts idle, Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven.

The while Weenah

"... gave him for his pains a world of sighs.

'T was strange, 't was pa.s.sing strange, 'T was pitiful, 't was wondrous pitiful: She wished she had not heard it; yet she wished That heaven had made her such a man."

Then when Benee came down to that portion of his long story when first he found the children and their mighty wolf-hound lost in the forest, Weenah and her parents listened with greater interest and intensity than ever.

There was a fire on the rude, low hearth--a fire of wood, of peat, and of moss; for at the great elevation at which this cannibal land is situated the nights are chilly.

It was a fire that gave fitful light as well as heat. It fell on the faces of Benee's listeners, and cast shadows grotesque behind them. It beautified Weenah's face till Benee thought she looked like one of the angels that poor Peggy used to tell him about.

Then he related to them all his suspicions of Peter, but did not actually accuse him of bringing about the abduction of Peggy, to serve some vile and unknown purpose of his own. Next he spoke, yet spoke but lightly, of his long, long march, and the incidents and adventures therewith connected.

There was much, therefore, that Benee had to tell, but there was also much that he had to learn or to be told; and now that he had finished, it was Shooks-gee's turn to take up the story.

I wish I could do justice to this man's language, which was grandly figurative, or to his dramatic way of talking, accompanied as it was with look and gesture that would have elicited applause on any European stage. I cannot do so, therefore shall not try; but the following is the pith of his story.

This Indian's house was on the very outside and most northerly end of the great wild plateau which was the home of these savages and cannibals.

The queen, a terrible monarch, and bloodthirsty in the extreme, used to hold her court and lived on a strange mountain or hill, in the very centre of the rough tree and bush clad plain.

For many, many a long year she had lived here, and to her court Indians came from afar to do her homage, bringing with them cloth of crimson, wine and oil, which they had stolen or captured in warfare from the white men of Madeira valley.

When these presents came, the coca which her courtiers used to chew all day long, and the mate they drank, were for a time--for weeks indeed--discarded for the wine and fire-water of the pale-face.

Fearful were the revels then held on that lone mountain.

The queen was dainty, so too were her fierce courtiers.

When the revels first began she and they could eat the raw or half-roasted flesh of calves and baby-llamas, but when their potations waxed deeper, and appet.i.te began to fail, then the orgies commenced in earnest. Nothing would her majesty eat now--horrible to say--but children, and her courtiers, armed to the teeth, would be sent to scour the plains, to visit the mud huts of her people, and drag therefrom the most beautiful and plump boys or girls procurable.

I will not tell of the fearful and awfully unnatural human sacrifice--the murder of the innocents--that now took place.

Demons could not have been more revolting in their cruelties than were those savage courtiers as they obeyed the queen's behests.

Let me drop the curtain over this portion of the tale. Well, this particular cottage or hut, being on the confines of the country, had not been visited by the queen's fearsome soldiers. But even had they come they would have found that Weenah was far away in the woods, for her father Shooks-gee loved her much. But one evening there came up out of the dark pinewood forest, that lay to the north, a great band of wandering natives.

They were all armed and under the command of one of her majesty's most bloodthirsty and daring chiefs.

Hand to claw this man had fought pumas and jaguars, and slain them, armed only with his two-edged knife.

This savage Rob Roy M'Gregor despised both bow-and-arrow and sling.

Only at close quarters would he fight with man or beast, and although he bore the scars and slashes of many a fearful encounter, he had always come off victorious.