The Project Gutenberg eBook of Boots
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Title: Boots
Author: Murray Leinster
Release date: January 12, 2025 [eBook #75096]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: The Butterick Publishing Company, 1929
Credits: Roger Frank and Sue Clark
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOOTS ***
It is doubtful whether Juan was moved to his act of high courage by
fear, or whether it was covetousness--which is a sin--or whether it was
merely the love of a woman. He did a most amazing thing for one of his
breed, and the woman who may have inspired him was marvelous. It is a
pity that her name is lost to posterity. And it is a pity that no one
knows what motive actually stirred Juan. But the woman was really a
miracle of femininity. She was almost half white.
Juan himself was thirteen-sixteenths Araucanian Indian, which as a
description means more in Peru than here. He had a tiny clearing up a
small jungle stream that nobody has bothered to give a name to, and from
time to time he planted something, and from time to time he gathered his
crop, and from time to time he fished. In between these activities he
thought about the woman and toilsomely acquired as romantic and hopeless
an infatuation as a man can acquire with such diluted Latin blood. Which
may be important in explaining what he did.
He was fishing when three _gringos_ came paddling down the jungle stream
from the mountains, and from the beginning he knew that they were mad.
Only madmen traveled with such energy. Only madmen beamed and smiled as
did the gray eyed _gringo_, and only lunatics splashed their paddles
hilariously and sang snatches of indecorous songs off key, like the red
headed _Yanqui_ in the bow. The third man gave no such obvious signs of
madness, to be sure. His expression was composed and calm. But Juan
looked at his eyes, and immediately thereafter Juan was thinking in
panicky fashion of certain jungle trails that he knew, and that he could
follow, but which no white man could ever unravel.
Long slanting shadows fell athwart the little stream and seemed to give
the jungle an expression of sardonic calm; of a quietly malicious
amusement which did not in the least detract from its luxuriantly leafy
beauty. The jungle is beautiful always, but sometimes its beauty is
welcoming, and sometimes its beauty is sinister and secretive. Its
beauty just then was like the beauty of those gorgeously flowering vines
which drape themselves languorously, caressingly, about the sturdy trees
they are slowly murdering.
The canoe came up to the beach where Juan fished stolidly. It touched
the shore, and Juan waited unblinkingly when the three white men
disembarked and disclosed themselves as scarecrows, as tattered, ragged,
nearly naked men whose only apparent claims to consideration were
weapons in their belts and skins still lighter than Juan’s coppery hide.
One of them wore boots.
It was the red headed man who grinned and made a totally
incomprehensible demand.
“Hello, old scout! Trot out the feed bag. Bring on the _pâté de foies
gras_ and the duck _canapé_. You’ve got cash customers!”
The words were a jumble of harsh sounds to Juan, whose throat was
attuned to the nearly impossible gutturals of Araucanian speech. Juan’s
Spanish, even, was limited to the irreducible vocabulary needed for
avoiding kicks.
He blinked stolidly as the red headed man went off into a fit of
unreasonable laughter. He was afraid, of course. These men were white
men, and they were mad, and Juan was internally in a panic. But he
blinked at them without expression.
The _Yanqui_ with gray eyes addressed him in Spanish. It was halting,
stumbling Spanish, nearly as insufficient as Juan’s own. But Juan
understood a word here and there. “_Pez ... came ... frijoles._”
These were reasonable demands. He had none of them, but he could
understand them, anyhow.
The man with the boots spoke in the unintelligible language these men
used among themselves. He was subtly native to these wilds, as the
others were subtly alien, and Juan feared him by instinct.
“He won’t have anything you asked for, Walker.” Juan heard the
meaningless syllables in an anguished unease. “We’ll just have to do
with what he’s got.”
Juan debated anxiously whether the sounds he had just heard referred
to him, whether they indicated an intention to kill him. These were
madmen...
The _Yanqui_ with gray eyes chuckled suddenly.
“How’ll we pay him? We’ve no money, no shells, nor any tobacco. How’ll
we pay him?”
Looking from one to the other, Juan felt momentarily reassured. He
lumbered to his private larder. _Yuca_, and maize, and various roots. He
began to grub among them while the red headed _gringo_ laughed
uproariously. He had to sit down on the beach and laugh. Juan stared
stolidly at him as he slapped his knees.
“We can’t pay him!” he panted hilariously, rolling on his back to laugh
at the graying sky. “We--can’t pay him. We’ve found the Inca’s emerald
mines and we can’t pay for a dollar’s worth of grub! Can you beat it?
We’re millionaires and we can’t pay--”
He rolled upon the sand while Juan stared, with stray articles of food
in his hands. Thirteen-sixteenths of Araucanian blood do not sharpen a
man’s sense of humor anyhow, and Juan quite simply classed these men as
maniacs. The gray eyed _Yanqui_ bubbled over with laughter likewise and
pointed at Juan and gasped out:
“The s-solemn m-mummy! He--he don’t know what we’re talking about! He
th-thinks we’re crazy!”
When the gray eyed man laughed at him, Juan did not think of the
hysteria that comes of good fortune at last secure. Juan thought
explicitly of madmen. They were unpleasant things to have about. It was
frequently necessary to shoot them or do something else drastic to them,
just in case they became violent. These men were assuredly insane.
Ragged and emaciated and laughing while they rolled upon the beach...
It was not the babbling of fever. It was madness. And Juan thought
wistfully of certain tortuous jungle paths it was dangerous to try to
reach--while these white men had guns--and then he thought desperately of
a long Araucanian bow in his shack behind him. Juan was nearly
one-fourth Spanish, but he owned no gun. If he had...
* * * * *
A voice spat an order at him. It was in Spanish, and only a fraction
less comprehensible to Juan than the gibberish in which these _gringos_
spoke to one another. But this was the voice of the dark man, the man
with boots, and Juan trembled.
He hastened to kindle a fire and cook humbly, while that man watched him
ominously. That one man frightened Juan more than any of the others. He
was all too familiar a type; the type of certain saturnine, hard-bitten
men who rove the backwaters of all the new countries of the world. They
are not amiable persons, and they are not especially moral persons, but
they obtain their desires in highly effective fashion from the natives
of backward nations. Those same natives, as a rule, fear them a great
deal more than whatever local devils there may be. And, as a rule, with
much more reason.
The man with the boots watched Juan coldly while he cooked. Juan’s hands
trembled a little. He sweated more than the heat would call for; at the
same time he shivered. Once, when the man with the boots moved behind
him, Juan cringed as if expecting a kick, and his eyes were agonized. A
man who is mostly Araucanian Indian can tell you stories which do not
redound remarkably to the credit of the white races.
With an exterior showing only the most impassive stolidity, Juan was
nevertheless nearly a nervous wreck from pure terror when the food was
cooked; yet all that the dark man had done was to look at him. But
considering that Juan knew the man’s breed and dreaded them sane, and
considering that he considered this man probably mad, Juan’s terror was
as understandable as it was abject.
When they began to eat Juan was a quivering bundle of nerves beneath an
appearance of Indian stolidity. He squatted down beside his hut because
he was afraid to run away, and he waited in anguished terror for them to
discuss the food.
But a slow amazement began to fill him. These men ate as if they were
starving. They wolfed down the unappetizing mess he had brought out as
his best. They fed themselves eagerly, hungrily, hugely. They grunted
with satisfaction as they thrust huge chunks of tough and insipid roots
into their mouths.
And Juan watched in bewilderment. He lived upon such victual in private,
of course. But up this nameless little jungle stream it was not
necessary to live up to his fraction of white blood. In San Teodoro De
Los Angeles, naturally, Juan paraded his descent from hypothetical white
men. In that metropolis of forty houses, Juan himself would scorn such
food with a lofty scorn as befitting only _Indios_, and not worthy of a
man in whose veins ran, however diluted, Spanish blood. But these men
ate it without even cursing him for having nothing better.
Incredible doubts assailed him and slowly turned to convictions.
Unthinkable thoughts occurred to him and became unassailable facts. And
in Juan’s slow brain there formed comforting opinions. His fraction of
white blood asserted itself for pride. The pride became the starting
point for scorn. A very few drops indeed of the superior blood of
the white man will make a vast change in an Araucanian Indian’s
potentialities. Juan regarded his guests with new eyes, though his
stolidity was unchanged.
These men were ragged and gaunt. Their shirts were in shreds and showed
the sun scorched flesh beneath. In the case of the red headed man bones
showed, sticking almost through the skin. Their trousers were ripped,
were shredded to almost nothing below the knees. Two of the three men
wore what were hardly more than sandals made from uncured hide.
It was at this moment, with his new formed scorn hot within him, that
Juan first really noted the dark man’s boots. He had seen them before,
but then he was an Indian and the _gringos_ were white men. Now Juan
thought of his own white blood, and the _gringos_ ...
He regarded the boots for a long time. Then he went into his hut and
found a jug of _chicha_. He drank of it, wiped his mouth and went out to
look again.
The white men were still eating wolfishly. He could inspect the boots
at ease. They had been beautiful boots once, and a man who is mostly
Araucanian Indian looks upon boots as the distinguishing mark of the
superior race. In Bogota, which is in Colombia, a gentleman is a man
with a collar on. In Lima, there was a time when a gentleman was a man
with a cane. But in the small jungle towns and the sierra of Peru, and
most especially to a man who is more Indian than white, a gentleman--why,
a gentleman is a man who wears shoes.
Juan looked at the boots unwinkingly for probably ten minutes. Then he
went in and took another drink of _chicha_.
Juan, of course, was in love. And in love all men are alike. They desire
to shine in the eyes of the woman they temporarily worship. And the
woman of Juan’s desire was a marvelous woman. She was unquestionably the
belle of San Teodoro De Los Angeles, which contained forty houses and
was the largest town Juan had ever seen. A miracle of femininity. She
was almost half white.
The boots stirred when the three men had stuffed themselves to bursting.
Juan remained squatting by his hut. He was still stolid, still
absolutely impassive as far as appearance went. But it was not at all
the same Juan who thought his own thoughts while the white men spoke in
the language that was only a babble to him.
“D’you suppose we can get enough grub from him to see us through?”
The voice was the voice of the red headed _gringo_.
“Only one more day’s travel down this stream,” said the man with the
boots. “Then we can get all we want at San Teodoro.”
His tone was curt. It would have made Juan shiver, ten minutes before.
Now his eyes shifted to the red headed man as he spoke again.
“But how will we pay him?”
With food in their bellies, the exaltation of spirits the white men had
displayed had now gone curiously flat. “We haven’t a damned thing he’d
want. Of course an emerald--”
The man with the boots laughed. It was more like a bark.
“He wouldn’t know what it was.”
Juan returned his gaze to the boots. He ignored the uncouth sounds
issuing from the lips of the white men. Wearing such boots as these, he
would be envied. Even Pedro, though he boasted a Spanish surname and was
full three-eighths white, possessed no such footgear. And he would be
admired by all the women. The economic factor in feminine admiration
bulks large in every climate.
The white men talked, and Juan heard the syllables, the combinations of
consonant and vowel sounds, but they meant nothing. He looked at the
boots.
“With a belly full,” said the red headed man, “I can think. And I tell
you, it looks good. What d’you think we’ve got there? How much cash?”
The booted man shrugged.
“No use guessing,” he said curtly. “Plenty.”
“It was a cache,” said the red headed man wisely. “We hit on the place
where they stored ’em. We got the product of the mine for a couple of
months, maybe. All ready to send down when old Pizarro seized the Inca
and orders went out to cover all workings.”
The dark man stood up suddenly. He flung a word over his shoulder.
“Smokes.”
He advanced toward Juan. And Juan raised his eyes from the boots, and
they traveled up the dark man’s ragged, dilapidated costume, and they
penetrated the innumerable rents and tears--the white man’s clothes were
even worse than Juan’s--and Juan’s eyes were not at all humble when they
reached the white man’s face.
Juan veiled his eyes and sat stolidly still when the white man went into
the hut. He remained motionless when the white man came out bearing a
handful of Juan’s precious native-made _cigarros_ and the jug of
_chicha_ from which Juan had just drunk twice.
And he watched while the three white men lighted his _cigarros_ and
smoked with avid enjoyment, and while they drank his _chicha_ with the
intense pleasure of men who have been deprived of the luxury of any
stimulant whatever for a very long time. In every gesture, in every
sign, they acted like beggars suddenly possessed of plenty. Even the man
with the boots was smoking with a fierce satisfaction.
“Ah!” said the red headed man, “this is something like comfort!”
The gray eyed _Yanqui_ smiled a little.
“You forget,” he said dryly. “I’ve heard you swear no decent cigar could
be had under half a dollar. What would this sell for?”
“I said it,” said the red head, “and I’ll never smoke another one under
a dollar! We’ve earned some luxury now!”
Darkness was settling down. The man with the boots was gazing somberly
at the end of his cigar. His features were curiously harsh in the
flickering light of the fire Juan had made.
The gray eyed man arose.
“Get in some wood,” he said briefly. “It won’t take long.”
Juan remained squatted, unnoticed in the shadow of his hut, while the
two white men brought in wood. It did not take long. The red headed man
sang while he tugged his burden back. The gray eyed _gringo_ came into
the firelight loaded down and smiling. The dark man’s face was as harsh
and as hard as if carved from granite. He stared at his cigar until the
wood went down with a crash. He jumped, then, and Juan noted that his
eyes were burning.
* * * * *
Darkness fell silently and very suddenly. There was still no breath of
wind. The night was hot and humid, as the day had been one of stifling
heat. The stream contracted to a little space of smooth and oily water,
illuminated by the camp-fire. The jungle vanished save for the wall of
the clearing, where leaves and occasionally the mottled trunk of a
jungle tree were pricked out by the dull red flames. Small noises began
in the jungle. Little, furtive creepings.
The canoe was unloaded. The small clearing about Juan’s hut was tacitly
adopted as a camping place. The equipment of the three men was old and
worn out. The hammocks were laced together with strips of untanned hide
where they had ripped. Had they been Indians they would have been no
worse provided. One single package from the canoe alone was carefully
wrapped and anxiously watched by all three until safely deposited in
their midst.
Juan was lost in the darkness. He was motionless, he was silent--and he
was eventually forgotten. Now and then fugitive gleams from the small
camp-fire glinted on his eyes. But the thoughts behind the bronze mask
of his face were strange thoughts for one of his breed. The white men
had eaten of his food without cursing its quality. They had smoked his
cigars with a passionate pleasure. They had brought in their own
firewood--white men!--while an Indian was nearby idle.
An Indian ... But he, Juan, was part white himself. His skin was dark,
it was true, and no white man had admitted parental interest in the past
two generations of his forbears. But boastful myths concerning imaginary
forefathers recurred to him. A putative ancestor had been great among
the white men, a _jéfe_, no less. A greater man, probably, than these.
Certainly a greater man. He would have worn shoes every day and other
white men would have called him señor. Yes. Certainly. And these were
madmen, no less, and beggarly madmen at that, and it was not fitting
that the descendant of a white man whom other white men had called señor
should go barefoot while madmen wore boots...
“We’ll take our evening look,” said the red headed man. His voice was
strained. And Juan, observing, found the words a mere jumble of sounds
or else he might have realized that the hilarity with which these three
men had come paddling down the river was a protective hilarity, a
constant dwelling upon good fortune for the forgetting of hunger. There
was certainly no hilarity in the voices now. The red headed man’s tone
was harsh, by that immutable law which fixes every man’s emotion upon
his greatest desire. When hungry, emeralds did not matter. They were
encouragement, yes; a means of forgetting starvation by providing
dreams.
The man with the boots moved back a little into the shadows as the gray
eyed _Yanqui_ slowly unfastened the intricate wrappings of untanned hide
and unfolded the stiff and stinking cover of that guarded parcel. Other
wrappings were inside the first. Juan, squatting motionless in the
deepest shadows and quite forgotten, saw the faces of the two men
stiffen and grow tense. The face of the third man was invisible.
Juan caught a glimpse of greenish pebbles in the firelight. The men
regarded them with hypnotic attention, with a feverish intensity. As one
of them moved, Juan saw the pebbles more clearly. Dull, uninteresting
small stones. Colored, to be sure--but uncut emeralds are not articles of
surpassing beauty. Even by the handful they are not impressive.
The still and silent figure in the shadows found scorn increasing.
Juan’s impression of these men’s madness now was certified. The men were
staring at the stones in utter silence. The gray eyed _Yanqui_ began to
speak monotonous, meaningless words--
“One, two, three, four, five...”
His voice went on, while the sodden heat of a breezeless jungle night
made sweat pour out on a man’s flesh, and while stars glowed luridly
overhead, and while dancing moths and night flies from the jungle
flittered drunkenly in the ruddy light of the camp-fire before they
plunged crazily down into its coals.
Small, slithering sounds in the jungle. Small, furtive lappings from the
stream. Tiny, crackling sounds from the fire. The monotonous, rhythmic
murmur of a man counting tediously in the stillness. That was all.
The dark man’s face was hidden, but his boots were limned clearly in the
firelight. Juan’s motionless figure was in a position where his eyes
could remain fixed upon them. But visions were flitting through his
brain. Of himself, in the metropolis of San Teodoro De Los Angeles. As
he would be, wearing those boots. Haughty. Condescending. And there was
that woman who was the acknowledged belle of San Teodoro.
The counting came to an end after a long, long time. There was
stillness. Then the voice of the red headed man--
“We’re rich men!”
Slowly, painstakingly, the _Yanqui_ with gray eyes was replacing the
dull green pebbles in their malodorous packet.
“Yes, we’re all rich men,” he said quietly.
“I wonder,” said the red headed _gringo_ harshly, “if you’re thinking
that if they didn’t have to be divided, one of us would be richer.”
The man with gray eyes looked steadily across the firelight.
“I’ve thought of it,” he said evenly. “Of course. But don’t be an ass.
We’ve only got another day’s paddling, and we’ll be out in the main
stream. Then we’ll be safe from the jungle and temptation together--if
it’s a temptation to you.”
The red headed man swore irritably, as if ashamed.
“It hasn’t been, until just this minute. And it won’t be again.” He
stopped, and said suddenly, “I’ll tell you something. Back up in the
mountains we were all nearly crazy. You know it. And I got to thinking
about Norma. She’s waiting for you. She’s going to marry you when you
get back.”
The other man nodded.
“I was crazy, I guess. I figured that if you died, back up there, I’d
have a chance to win her myself when I got out. I got out of my hammock
to kill you... And that was the night that damned jaguar chased us
out into the middle of the river and kept us there till daybreak. He
saved your life.”
The other _Yanqui_ shrugged and bent again to his wrapping.
“You see what a fool I am,” said the red headed man savagely. “I’m
sorry. Do you want me to let you keep my gun?”
The wrappings were nearly complete about the dull green stones. The gray
eyed man shrugged.
“Don’t be a fool. You’re cured.” He smiled suddenly. “There’s not a
shell among the three of us, anyway.”
He put the package carefully down. He stood up and stretched and climbed
unconcernedly in his hammock, slung only a few inches from the ground.
“Go to sleep,” he said dryly. “We’re all fools.”
He was still. The red headed man sat staring into the fire for minutes.
Then he, too, stood up. But he stared down at the wrapped and laced
package of uncured hides. He frowned. The frown became a scowl. Suddenly
he kicked the package and growled inarticulately. Within thirty seconds
thereafter he was in his hammock. But tossings that continued for a long
time showed that it was not easy for him to sleep.
* * * * *
Juan squatted in the darkness. The flickering firelight fitfully glinted
red upon his eyes. They moved from time to time, as he gazed alternately
from the tossing hammock to the hide wrapped bundle, and from the bundle
to the boots. Juan was wholly scornful now, and his three-sixteenths of
Spanish blood was wholly in the ascendant. These men were plainly mad.
They made much ado over small green pebbles not even bright enough to be
used for beads. They made a long recitative over them in a monotonous
voice. They rewrapped the green pebbles, and one then kicked the
package. Madness. Pure madness!
A burned-through stick collapsed and sent up a slender fountain of
sparks. The dark man had been silent, had been as motionless as Juan
himself. Yet Juan had seen his eyes darting from one to the other of his
companions. He remained motionless now, but his eyes moved from one
hammock to the other, and then to the wrapped hide package on the floor.
The stillness was so complete that a sudden snore caused even Juan to
start a little. That snore came from the hammock of the gray eyed man.
And Juan saw the dark man rise slowly. Juan saw his face clearly, and it
was the face of a devil. He saw the long hands work strangely, saw them
go to the revolver in his holster, saw them drop away again. And the
Indian in Juan felt death in the air.
The jungle may have found the next few moments subtly humorous to watch.
As the dark man reached his full height, Juan moved very quietly. As the
dark man moved soundlessly toward the hammock in which the wakeful man
lay, Juan began to crawl with infinite stealth into his hut. He vanished
within its doorway as a startled voice said--
“What’s the matter?”
And Juan was feeling his way very delicately about the abysmal blackness
of the hut when the man outside hissed sibilantly for silence. No one
knows, of course, just why Juan first looked for and found a second jug
of _chicha_ from which he took an encouraging draught. It may have
been that Juan was afraid, or it may be that he was covetous, or it is
of course possible that he was merely in love with a woman. _Chicha_,
however, is helpful in all three of those emotions.
He looked out of the doorway and saw the dark man close by the hammock
of the red headed _gringo_. He was talking in an urgent low tone.
Tumbled, incomprehensible syllables reached Juan’s ears. And Juan could
see the dark man’s face as demoniacal in the fire glow.
“Listen to me,” he was saying softly. “Last night, Walker proposed that
we should kill you and divide the emeralds two ways instead of three.”
Juan felt the _chicha_ begin to warm his inwards. He felt for and found
another possession of his, in the hut.
“I pretended to fall in with him.”
The sounds meant nothing, but Juan could see the dark man whispering
when he looked out of the hut again. His head was close to that of the
man in the hammock. Juan could not see the expression of the red headed
man. He could not see a look of horror and unbelief changing slowly to
one of dawning suspicion.
“We were to play with you until tomorrow,” the whisper went on, while
Juan did certain things which were only possible by virtue of a dash of
Spanish blood. “That was so you’d help paddle the last stretch. And
tomorrow night----”
While the red headed _Yanqui_ listened, staring, the lean fingers of the
dark man darted out. There was a little sound--not enough to waken a
sleeping man no more than two yards away. And then a horrible, silent,
struggle began. The dark man bent over the hammock like some monstrous
vulture. His hands were closed about the throat of the man with red
hair, who fought frenziedly in the toils of his hampering hammock to
tear away the grip that shut off his breath. There was no sound at all
except the ghastly rustling of the hammock cloth. Juan deliberately
waited as the struggles slackened, as the writhings of the red headed
man became less. After all, these men were madmen... And the cause of
Juan’s calmness may have been _chicha_ and the motive for his action may
have been love of a woman, or covetousness, or it may have been pure
fear. But Juan had fitted a long arrow to the string of the tall
Araucanian bow in his hands. Standing in the darkness, he drew that
arrow to his ear. He released it.
And then everything was very quiet.
Dawn was breaking as the gray eyed Yanqui woke. He tumbled out of his
hammock. He stared about him. He stiffened and looked about in what was
almost terror. He plunged through the ashes of a dead camp-fire toward
his companions.
The red headed man was breathing. A little. A very little. The gray eyed
man brought him slowly back to life. For the dark man, of course,
nothing could be done. An arrow stuck out a foot beyond his back.
The red headed man could not talk, because of his swollen throat, but by
gestures he told what he knew. It was only then that the gray eyed
_gringo_ looked for the packet of emeralds. Juan had opened that
package, and he had fingered the stones, and he had flung them
contemptuously aside. Juan, you see, was not a madman. Juan was gone.
And so were the dark man’s boots.
“M-my God!” said the gray eyed Yanqui shakenly. “M-my God! You’d have
killed me for a girl, and--he’d have killed both of us for the
emeralds--and--and that damned Indian killed him for his boots!”
Which, somehow, seems to point a moral of some sort. But it is elusive.
[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the August 15, 1929 issue
of “Adventure” magazine.]
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