The two hundred miles which lay before Rosendo and his little band stretched their rugged, forbidding length through ragged caÑons, rushing waters, and dank, virginal forest. Only the old man, as he trudged along the worn trail between SimitÍ and the Inanea river, where canoes waited to transport the travelers to the little village of Boque, had any adequate conception of what the journey meant. Even the cargadores were unfamiliar with the region which they were to penetrate. Some of them had been over the GuamocÓ trail as far as Culata; a few had ascended the Boque river to its farthest navigable point. But none had penetrated the inmost reaches of the great caÑon through which the headwaters tumbled and roared, and none had ever dreamed of making the passage over the great divide, the Barra Principal, to the TiguÍ beyond.

To the Americans, fresh from the luxury and convention of city life, and imbued with the indomitable Yankee spirit of adventure, the prospect was absorbing in its allurements. Especially to the excitable, high-strung Harris, whose great eyes almost popped from his head at the continuous display of tropical marvels, and whose exclamations of astonishment and surprise, enriched from his inexhaustible store of American slang and miner’s parlance, burst from his gaping mouth at every turn of the sinuous trail. From the outset, he had constituted himself Carmen’s special protector, although much to Rosendo’s consternation, for the lank, awkward fellow, whose lean shoulders bent under the weight of some six-feet-two of height, went stumbling and tripping along the way, swaying against every tree and bush that edged the path, and constantly giving noisy vent to his opinions regarding trails in general, and those of the tropics in particular. His only accouterment was a Winchester rifle of tremendous bore, which he insisted on carrying in constant readiness to meet either beasts of prey or savage Indians, but which, in his absent-mindedness and dreamy preoccupation, he either dragged, muzzle up, or carried at such dangerous angles that the natives were finally obliged, in self-protection, to insist that he hand the weapon over to Rosendo. To Carmen, as the days passed and she 362 gradually recognized his sterling qualities, he became a source of delight. Hour after hour she trotted along after him, chatting merrily in her beloved English tongue, poking fun at his awkwardness, and laughing boisterously over his quaint slang and naÏve Yankee expressions. She had never heard such things from JosÈ; nor had the priest, despite his profound knowledge, ever told her such exciting tales as did Harris, when he drew from his store of frontier memories and colored his narratives with the rich tints furnished by his easy imagination.

The first day out had been one of mental struggle for the girl. She had turned into the trail, after waving a last farewell to JosÈ, with a feeling that she had never experienced before. For hours she trudged along, oblivious of her environment, murmuring, “It isn’t true––it isn’t true!” until Harris, his curiosity aroused by the constant repetition which floated now and then to his ears, demanded to know what it was that was so radically false.

“It isn’t true that we can be separated,” she answered, looking at him with moist eyes.

“We?” he exclaimed.

“Yes, God’s children––people––people––who––love each other,” she replied. Then she dropped her eyes in evident embarrassment, and refused to discuss the topic further.

“Lord Harry!” ejaculated Harris, pondering the cryptical remark, “you surely are a queer little dud!”

But the girl turned from him to Rosendo. He understood her. Nor would she permit the old man to leave her until, late that night, exhausted by the excitement of the day, she dropped asleep in the house of Don NicolÁs, on the muddy margin of the river Boque, still clinging to Rosendo’s hand.

Despite the protestations of Don NicolÁs and the pleading of the cargadores, Rosendo stolidly refused to spend a day at Boque. Apprehension lashed him furiously on. They were still within reach of the federal authorities. He dared not rest until the jungle had swallowed them.

“Ah, compadre,” said Don NicolÁs, in disappointment, “I would like much for you to enjoy my house while it is still clean. For the ants have visited me. Hombre! they swarmed down upon us but a day ago. They came out of the bush in millions, straight for the house. We fled. Caramba! had we remained, we should have been eaten alive. But they swept the house––Hombre! no human hands could have done so well. Every spider, every rat, beetle, flea, every plague, was instantly eaten, and within a half hour they had disappeared again, and we moved back into a thoroughly cleaned house!”

Harris stood with mouth agape in mute astonishment when 363 Carmen, whom he had constituted his interpreter, translated to him the story.

That evening, after they had eaten out in the open before the house, and the Americans had tickled the palates of the villagers with some tinned beef of uncertain quality, Don NicolÁs approached Reed. “SeÑor,” he said, “my mother, now very aged, is sick, and we think she can not recover. But you Americanos are wonderfully skilled, and your medicines powerful. Have you not some remedy in your pack that will alleviate the good woman’s sufferings? They are severe, seÑor.”

Reed knew how great was the faith of these simple people in the wisdom of the American, and he had reason to wish to preserve it. But he had come into that country illy prepared to cope with disease, and his medical equipment contained nothing but quinine. He reflected a moment, then turned to Harris.

“Did you smuggle any of your beloved root-beer extract into the equipment?” he inquired, his eyes twinkling.

Harris looked sheepish, but returned a sullen affirmative.

“Well,” continued Reed, “dig out a bottle and we’ll fix up a dose of pain-killer for our worthy host’s mother.”

Then he turned to Don NicolÁs. “Cierto, seÑor,” he said with an air of confidence. “I have a remedy which I know to be unfailing for any disease.”

He disappeared into the house, from which he emerged again in a few moments with an empty cola bottle. Washing this clean in the river, he partly filled it with water. Then he poured in the small bottle of root-beer extract which Harris handed him, and added a few grains of quinine. Shaking the mixture thoroughly, he carried it to Don NicolÁs.

“Be very careful, seÑor,” he admonished, giving him the bottle. “It is a medicine extremely powerful and immediate in its action. Give the seÑora a small teaspoonful every hour. By morning you will notice a marked change.”

Don NicolÁs’s eyes lighted with joy, and his gratitude poured forth in extravagant expressions.

With the first indications of approaching day Rosendo was abroad, rounding up his cargadores, who were already bickering as to their respective duties, and arranging the luggage in the canoes for the river trip. Additional boats and men had been secured; and Don NicolÁs himself expressed his intention of accompanying them as far as his hacienda, Maria Rosa, a day’s journey up-stream.

“It was there that I hid during the last revolution,” he said, “when the soldiers burned the village and cut off the 364 ears and fingers of our women for their rings. Ah, seÑores, you can not know how we suffered! All my goods stolen or burned––my family scattered––my finca destroyed! We lived two years at Maria Rosa, not daring to come down the river again. We wore the skins of animals for clothing. Caramba!” His eyes burned fiercely as he spoke, and his hands opened and closed convulsively. He was a representative of that large class of rurales upon whom the heaviest burdens, the greatest suffering, and the most poignant sorrow attending a political revolution always fall.

“But, seÑor!” he exclaimed, suddenly turning to Reed, “I had all but forgotten! My mother, she sends for you. She would see the kind American whose remedies are so wonderful. For, seÑor, she rose from her bed this morning restored! And you must leave us another bottle of the remedy––at whatever price, seÑor!”

Reed gazed at the man uncomprehendingly, until at length the truth dawned upon him. His root-beer remedy had done its work! Then a broad grin mantled his face; but he quickly suppressed it and went with Don NicolÁs to receive in person his patient’s effusive thanks. When he returned and took his place in the waiting boat, he shook his head. “It’s past all understanding,” he muttered to Harris, “what faith will do! I can believe now that it will remove mountains.”

Throughout the long, interminably long, hot day the perspiring men poled and paddled, urged and teased, waded and pushed against the increasing current, until, as the shadows began to close around them, they sighted the scarcely visible opening in the bush which marked the trail to the hacienda of Maria Rosa. It was a desperately lonely clearing on the verge of the jungle; but there were two thatch-covered sheds, and to the exhausted travelers it gave assurance of rest and protection. Before they made the landing Rosendo’s sharp eyes had spied a large ant-eater and her cub, moving sluggishly through the bush; and Reed’s quick shots had brought them both down. The men’s eyes dilated when the animals were dragged into the canoes. It meant fresh meat instead of salt bagre for at least two days.

Early next morning the travelers bade farewell to Don NicolÁs and set their course again up-stream. They would now see no human being other than the members of their own little party until they reached Llano, on the distant NechÍ.

“Remember,” called Don NicolÁs, as the canoes drifted out into the stream, “the quebrada of CaracolÍ is the third on the right. An old trail used to lead from there across to the Tiguicito––but I doubt if you find even a trace of it now. 365 There is no water between that point and the Tiguicito. Conque, adios, seÑores, adios!”

The hallooing of farewells echoed along the river and died away in the dark forest on either hand. Harris and Reed settled back in their canoe and yielded to the fascination of the slowly shifting scene. Carmen chose to occupy the same canoe with them, and perforce Rosendo acted as patron. They therefore took the lead. Between his knees Reed held the rifle upright, in readiness for any animal whose curiosity might bring it to the water’s edge to view the rare pageant passing through that unbroken solitude.

The river was now narrowing, and there were often rapids whose ascent necessitated disembarking from the canoes, while the bogas strained and teased the lumbering dugouts up over them. In places the stream was choked by fallen trees and tangled driftwood, until only a narrow, tortuous opening was left, through which the waters raced like a mill-course, making a heavy draft on the intuitive skill of the bogas. Often slender islets rose from the river; and then heated, chattering, often acrimonious discussions ensued among the men as to the proper channel to take. Always on either side rose the matted, tangled, impenetrable forest wall of dense bush and giant trees, from which innumerable trailers and bejuco vines dropped into the waters beneath. From the surface of the river to the tops of the great trees, often two hundred feet above, hung a drapery of creeping plants, of parasitical growths, and diversified foliage, of the most vivid shades of green, inextricably laced and interwoven, and dotted here and there with orchideous flowers and strange blossoms, while in the tempered sunlight which sifted through it sported gorgeous insects and butterflies of enormous size and exquisite shades, striped and spotted in orange, blue, and vivid red. Scarcely a hand’s breadth of the jungle wall but contained some strange, eerie animal or vegetable form that brought expressions of wonder and astonishment from the enraptured Americans. At times, too, there were grim tragedies being enacted before them. In one spot a huge, hairy spider, whose delicate, lace-like web hung to the water’s edge, was viciously wrapping its silken thread about a tiny bird that had become entangled. Again, a shriek from beyond the river’s margin told of some careless monkey or small animal that had fallen prey to a hungry jaguar. Above the travelers all the day swung the ubiquitous buzzards, with their watchful, speculative eyes ever on the slowly moving cavalcade.

Carmen sat enthralled. If her thought reverted at all to the priest, she gave no hint of it. But once, leaning back and 366 gazing off into the opalescent sky overhead, she murmured: “And to think, it is only the way the human mind translates God’s ideas! How wonderful must they be! And some day I shall see those ideas, instead of the mortal mind’s interpretations of them!”

Harris heard her, and asked her to repeat her comments in English. But she refused. “You would not understand,” she said simply. And no badinage on his part could further influence her.

Rosendo, inscrutable and silent, showed plainly the weight of responsibility which he felt. Only twice that day did he emerge from the deep reserve into which he had retired; once when, in the far distance, his keen eye espied a small deer, drinking at the water’s edge, but which, scenting the travelers, fled into cover ere Reed could bring the rifle to his shoulders; and again, when they were upon a jaguar almost before either they or the astonished animal realized it.

In the tempered rays of the late afternoon sun the flower-bespangled walls of the forest became alive with gaily painted birds and insects. Troops of chattering monkeys awoke from their midday siesta and scampered noisily through the treetops over the aerial highways formed by the liana vines, whose great bush-ropes, often a foot and more in thickness, stretched their winding length long distances through the forest, and bound the vegetation together in an intricate, impenetrable network. Yellow and purple blossoms, in a riot of ineffable splendor, bedecked the lofty trees and tangled parasitical creepers that wrapped around them, constituting veritable hanging gardens. Great palms, fattened by the almost incessant rains in this hot-house of Nature, rose in the spaces unoccupied by the buttressed roots of the forest giants. Splendidly tailored kingfishers swooped over the water, scarce a foot above its surface. Quarreling parrots and nagging macaws screamed their inarticulate message to the travelers. Tiny forest gems, the infinitely variegated colibrÍ, whirred across the stream and followed its margins until attracted by the gorgeous pendent flowers. On the playas in the hazy distance ahead the travelers could often distinguish tall, solemn cranes, dancing their grotesque measures, or standing on one leg and dreaming away their little hour of life in this terrestrial fairy-land.

Darkness fell, almost with the swiftness of a snuffed candle. For an hour Rosendo had been straining his eyes toward the right bank of the river, and as he gazed his apprehension increased. But, as night closed in, a soft murmur floated down to the cramped, toil-worn travelers, and the old man, with a glad light in his eyes, announced that they were approaching 367 the quebrada of CaracolÍ. A half hour later, by the weird, flickering light of the candles which Reed and Harris held out on either side, Rosendo turned the canoe into a brawling stream, and ran its nose into the deep alluvial soil. Plunging fearlessly through the fringe of delicate ferns which lined the margin of the creek, he cut a wide swath with his great machete and uncovered a dim trail, which led to a ramshackle, thatch-covered hut a few yards beyond. It was the tumbled vestige of a shelter which Don NicolÁs had erected years before while hunting wild pigs through this trackless region. An hour later the little group lay asleep on the damp ground, wrapped in the solitude of the great forest.

The silvery haze of dawn was dimming the stars and deepening into ruddier hues that tinged the fronds of the mighty trees as with streaks of blood when Rosendo, like an implacable Nemesis, prodded his little party into activity. Their first day’s march through the wilderness was to begin, and the old man moved with the nervous, restless energy of a hunted jaguar. The light breakfast of coffee and cold arepa over, he dismissed the bogas, who were to return to Boque with the canoes, and set about arranging the cargo in suitable packs for the cargadores who were to accompany him over the long reaches of jungle that stretched between them and Llano. Two macheteros were sent on ahead of the main party to locate and open a trail. The rest followed an hour later. Before the shimmering, opalescent rays which overspread the eastern sky had begun to turn downward, the little cavalcade, led by Rosendo, had taken the narrow, newly-cut trail and plunged into the shadows of the forest––

“the great, dim, mysterious forest, where uncertainty wavers to an interrogation point.”