Adventures Among the Red Indians Part 31

So; it was the Indians who were to do the work! Young Paez had almost left them out of his calculations.

The presents--beads, knives, briar pipes, condemned small arms, etc.--were soon collected and packed, and the four men rode away in search of natives and horses. The Indians were not easy to find; at least not the Indians of the right sort; of the wrong sort--idlers, camp-followers, and hangers-on, who had quarrelled with hard work the day they were born and never become reconciled--there were plenty. But it was not till they reached the Orinoco and had travelled down it for a couple of days, that they came across any who looked like the men they wanted. These were fishing, and the workmanlike way in which they went about their task augured well for the success of the aide-de-camp's mission.

He entered into conversation with them and learned that, some miles farther south, horses of a very fine breed were plentiful; and, after a hint from him as to pecuniary reward and a probable distribution of presents, they agreed to refer the matter to their cacique, and if he should raise no objection, to start on the morrow.

The young Venezuelan watched the native sport with keen interest, for, till lately, he had seen nothing of the kind since his childhood. The net--a kind of ground-seine--was rectangular, with a square flap at either end, and the back weighted at right angles to the bottom; in fact, while it was down, it might be likened in shape to an enormous box which has had the lid and one of its sides removed. It was shot from two canoes about fifty yards from the bank, its back and ends being stiffened and kept in place by canes, or lengths of _palma morice_ stalks. When it had been down for about half an hour, the two canoes--strictly keeping pace with one another--moved so slowly towards the bank, that scarcely a ripple was made; the tow-lines were thrown ash.o.r.e, and the net dragged into the shallow.

Considering the marvellous variety of fish which the Orinoco possesses, the result was a little disappointing to an onlooker; for the catch, though very large, consisted almost entirely of but two kinds: the electric eel, and a creature peculiar to tropical South America--the _payara_--the size of a small salmon; this had its lower jaw supplied with fangs, which the Indians said cut like razors. As the net was pulled into the shallows, an Indian waved his hand warningly to the four soldiers who were standing by.

"Be careful, gentlemen; beware of the _caribe_! Pray stand farther back; your red sashes will attract them."

As he spoke, some small fish leapt out of the water and into the net.

"Quick; quick with the forks!"

Half a dozen long slender canes, each ending in two metal p.r.o.ngs like those of a carving-fork, were instantly produced, and it was soon plain enough why such implements were required. Those few little green fish, so beautifully barred with red and orange, were like bulls in a china shop; they leapt, wriggled, or swam about the net, biting first the fish and then the net as viciously as rats; and Paez stared to see mesh after mesh snapped through before the Indians could eject them with their forks.

"If they could have got near you they would have bitten you in the same manner," said the princ.i.p.al of the fishermen, when he had got rid of the last of the _caribes_. "Anything red will attract them. We dare not attempt to swim a spurred horse through here, for he would be bitten to death, or till he was mad, before he reached the other side.

I have seen a white man killed by them, merely because he happened to have a red scratch on his leg when he entered the water."

The cacique was interviewed, and not only granted permission for the whole tribe to go on the hunting expedition, but announced his own intention of going; and, early the following morning, they all started southwards with a good supply of la.s.soes. The Indians--one of the Cariban tribes--were the finest hors.e.m.e.n Paez had seen; and this was the more noteworthy, inasmuch as the Caribs as a whole care little for riding; many of those of the forest regions and of the Central American mountains have never seen such a thing as a horse; and we know that the cavalry of the Spanish adventurers terrified the sixteenth-century Caribs as much as Pyrrhus' elephants disconcerted the Romans and their horses. Yet these Venezuelan natives rode as if they had been born on horseback, and made no more ado of eating their dinner while they were in the saddle than as though it had been an arm-chair.

The nearer the cavalcade drew to the softer gra.s.s of the Llano, the more wild horses they saw; and Paez, who had never yet used a la.s.so, was for making his maiden effort on one of these; till the cacique warned him that "horses can tell things to each other;" and that these scouts, if chased, would easily escape and caution the larger herds, thereby lengthening out the hunt by an extra week or more.

But at length they saw enough of the animals to satisfy the most wary of caciques; they could only be counted by the herd; it seemed as though all the horses in America had been turned out to gra.s.s on this particular spot. From the matter-of-fact way in which the three troopers went to work, the chief saw at once that they had little to learn from his tribe; but he bade Paez, in fatherly fashion, to keep close to him and "watch how he did it."

The young officer's riding was perfect; but, after his first one or two efforts with the la.s.so, he was tempted to forswear horse-catching.

The thing would not go right; either he ran his noose too small, or too large, or it fell short, or missed wildly; or, worse still, got in the way of the other hunters, so that they gave him a wide berth.

However, he persevered, and towards the close of the first day, actually succeeded in dropping the noose over the head of a fine black stallion; and in imagination he saw himself bestriding him proudly, to the envy of all his mess. But the beautiful creature, finding the thong about him, gave a leap that seemed to tear his captor's saddle from under him; then another, that almost pulled the ridden horse off his feet; then sped across the plain as though he moved on wings.

Ramon Paez was certainly as strong as most young men of one-and-twenty who lead active outdoor lives, and he had distinguished himself in every variety of English sport from boxing to ferreting; but he could no more stop or haul in this wild horse, than he could have la.s.soed the Flying Dutchman. The line was as taut as a fiddle-string, and his own mount, unused to such diversions, was being drawn along irresistibly. How much farther did the outraged beast intend to drag horse and rider?

"Let him run himself out, Senor," bawled one of his troopers, as the stallion fled past the outer line of hunters.

The recommendation was superfluous, for this was the very thing the n.o.ble animal seemed to intend doing. He galloped another half-mile, then changed his mind, as though the strangulation were beginning to tell on him. He swung straight round as if resigned to the notion of going back to the rest, hesitated, then caught the slackening thong in his teeth and bit at it as savagely as a wild a.s.s. Naturally the beginner at once turned his own horse, meaning to pay his prisoner out in his own coin; and spurring vigorously, headed towards the central part of the hunt. But this did not please the irate captive, and, after useless efforts to stand--first on his dignity and then on his head, he made a dead weight of himself for an instant, then took several successive bounds forward, easily outstripping his tormentor and slackening the pressure of the noose.

"Is the brute going to dance?" Don Paez asked himself wrathfully.

This was just what the brute was going to do; not after the common or circus fashion, but with the fixed idea of crushing the lad's arm with his great jaws. The young man's fine horsemanship was the only thing that could now save him from a bite which would not only mangle a limb, but would probably lead to blood-poisoning--a disease not exactly sought after in England, and almost sure to be fatal in the tropics. He backed, and the line tightened; but the stallion was on him again in another spring. He backed once more, dodged to the right, to the left, waved his arm at the infuriated creature, but to no purpose; and, though he would have bitten his tongue out before he would own himself beaten, by shouting for help, he felt that he was playing a losing game. There was just one chance left for him, and that was to spur his already enfeebled horse to a gallop and race his antagonist.

Never did Derby compet.i.tor work a horse more recklessly; Don Paez spurred and smote, smote and spurred, and only to lose at one minute the start he had gained the minute before; only just now he had been endeavouring might and main to slacken the la.s.so; now he would have given a five-pound note to feel it taut. Suddenly his horse seemed to turn round like a wheel, he had a confused vision of the sky falling on him, then of the earth coming up to meet him, and he and the horse lay on the ground together. He had obeyed his instinct to kick himself free from the stirrups, and so fell clear of the horse and escaped with only a severe shaking.

Then he looked up and saw the cause of his fall; an old Carib, who had watched his struggle from a distance, had pegged down his own capture, galloped across and neatly dropped a second la.s.so over the head of the rebellious wild horse.

The next few nights, all camped out on the Llano, and by the end of the week, were ready to start for the camp with fully three thousand horses. South American ways with animals are not our ways, and Indian methods of taming and transporting horses are not such as English readers love to hear of;[5] it will be sufficient to say that, for transport, the captives were yoked up in long teams, each horse being thong-hobbled on his fore-legs.

[5] A full account of wild horse-taming will be found in the writer's "Adventures among the Wild Beasts."

Horse-hunting was not the only species of sport which Don Paez witnessed among the Caribs. On the journey to the camp, it became necessary to replenish the food-supply, and he accompanied six of the Indians on one of their curious deer-hunts. As a preliminary, the hunters made a call at a native village and each returned with a small bundle in his hand.

"They are our masks," said the cacique, who was of the party. "Some of our people hunt with an ox, but you will see that the mask is as effective. I have brought one for you, Senor Commandante. Will you put it on?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: CRANE STALKING-MASKS

On the llanos the Indians use masks made of the head and feathers of the crane, then, imitating the actions of the bird searching for snakes and other reptiles among the reeds and gra.s.ses of the river bank, wait until the unsuspecting deer come down to drink, when they form an easy target for their arrows.]

Paez had already humoured the Indians by leaving his gun at the camp and bringing a bow and arrows, about which he knew as little as they of gunpowder. But when the cacique produced a not too sweet-smelling head-dress of brown and white feathers, adorned with the bill of a _cariama_ (a species of crane), he thought the good man was rather overstraining his willingness to become a savage. However, he put it on, and took up his bow and arrows, but so awkwardly that the cacique hinted that, on this occasion, he might like to be a mere spectator.

The masks, as worn by men who knew the workings thereof, were very satisfactory disguises; when the Indians had fallen on their knees with their heads bent, they might easily be mistaken in the distance for cranes feeding; and in this guise they crawled down towards the edge of the river just before the deer came down to drink. Paez, concealed in the long gra.s.s, had an excellent view of the proceedings, and could well understand, at that distance, how the unsuspecting game might fall into the snare. The "cranes," with their backs to the water and their heads bobbing so as to make the pendent bill move as if in search of the small snakes or other reptiles beloved of such birds, waited till a good-sized herd came within range; then the six bow-strings tw.a.n.ged, and six deer lay dead or helpless, while their startled brethren fled across the plain; and six more of these were brought down by a second volley before they could get out of reach.

THE END.

WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD.

PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH

THE ROMANCE OF SAVAGE LIFE

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