Jan of the Jungle (9 page)

"And why can't you?"

"Your description of him... Do you know who he is?"

"To be sure. He is Jan. He told me so."

"Yes, but your description of him: red hair, a garment of jaguar skin. He is the wild boy who has slain so many natives during the past two years. Many strange tales have been told about him. When first seen he had two companions--a giant black man and a great hairy ape. Both of these wore jaguar-skin garments, also. They terrorized a small Indian community, killing several. Since then the boy has been seen once or twice with the great ape, but mostly be travels alone. No one knows what has become of the black giant. Do you know what they call this boy?"

"No."

"They call him the jungle Demon. Some say he is half man, half jaguar. He travels with equal facility on the ground or through the tree tops. When an Indian is found dead, stripped of his weapons and ornaments, they say: 'It is the jungle Demon again.' He is more fierce, more terrible and more dangerous than the puma he has slain. All men are his enemies."

"But he said he liked me."

"Carramba! Did he? Then promise me this: that you will never leave the house or patio again unless I or one of the men go with you, armed. Some day he will come to steal you-to carry you off to his jungle lair to a horrible fate. It would be a terrible blow to your mother and me, and to poor old Senora Soledade. Won't you do this much for us? Won't you promise?"

Don Fernando had long since learned that threats or commands meant nothing to Ramona, but that she could be appealed to in a reasonable manner, and that if she made a promise, that promise would be carried out.

"I don't know, daddy," she answered. "I so love to get away by myself once in a while."

"Yes, I know. But think of the danger. And think of your mother and father, and of your old duenna, who loves you."

"All right daddy, I'll promise."

And so they went into the patio, arm in arm.

As the first man-monster of the ruined temple struck at him with his cudgel, Jan, who had often dodged the swift blow of a jaguar's paw, easily eluded his clumsy swing. The force of the blow turned the hairy one part way around. Jan leaped in and dealt him a blow on the back of his neck with the keen machete. The monster fell on his face without a sound, his spinal column severed by the sharp blade.

With savage yells the other two closed in to avenge their fallen comrade, but Jan was already running swiftly toward the river.

Sheathing his weapon, he sprang from the top of the bank, in a long, graceful dive. He swam frog-like beneath the surface until a shadow above him told him that he had entered the underground channel. Then he arose and, turning on his back, inhaled the welcome air.

As he drew himself up on the bank in the semidarkness, he hesitated for a moment. These men were deadly enemies. Being bearded like Dr. Bracken and the brutal Jake Grubb on the ship, they were doubly hateful. He wanted to go back-to stalk and slay them.

But the jungle, his jungle, was calling. Already he was longing to swing through its sun-dappled branches and lianas again, and tread the soft leaf mold in its deeper shadows. And' beyond the jungle was a beautiful being-Ramona.

Jan groped his way back to the falls. Then he descended the notched cut in the cliff, dived through the curtain of water into the pool, and came up beneath his tree-hut. Shaking the water from his glistening body, he climbed up and found Chicma dozing peacefully in her compartment. She gave a little grunt of greeting as he looked in, then went to sleep once more.

As time went on she had been paying less and less attention to his comings and goings. No longer did she romp with him in mimic combat, or play at tag with him through the tree tops. She liked her soft nest, and rarely left it except when urged by hunger or thirst. Chicma was getting very old.

Jan took up his favorite bow and a well-filled quiver of arrows, and left. As he plunged into his jungle, it was good to feel the soft leaf mold under his bare feet, the cool leaves brushing against his face and body.

He was meat-hungry, and his archery soon won him an unwary curassow. Having eaten, he hurried onward with a fixed purpose-to reach; as soon as possible, the place where he had found Ramona. With Borno gone and Chicma become grouchy and unsociable, he longed for the companionship of a friend. And Ramona was the only other living creature who had shown friendship for him.

She attracted him, too, in a different way from the others. At thought of her his pulse would quicken in a manner quite impossible to explain.

He shortened what had been a four-day journey to three. Arriving at the edge of Don Fernando's grove of young rubber trees, he hurried to the place where he had last seen her. But he found only the gnawed bones of the puma.

Recalling the direction in which she had gone when called, he went that way and eventually arrived at the patio gate. It was made from heavy planks which fitted a high-arched gateway. He looked through a crack between two planks and saw the object of his quest, seated beneath a tree and holding before her the basket of white leaves with little black tracks on them.

Jan knew nothing of the mechanism of the gate, and the smooth, plastered surface of the high patio wall offered no opportunity for a finger hold, but he observed that a branch of the tree under which the girl was sitting overhung the wall near a branch of a rubber tree outside. This made a clear path for the jungle-trained Jan.

Hearing a slight sound in the tree above her, Ramona was about to cry out in fear, but she stifled the sound when her knight-errant dropped softly beside her.

"Jan!" she whispered. "You startled me!

"Come see you," he responded. "Jan like you."

"Shh! Not so loud. You will wake my duenna."

"Jan don' understan'," he said, imitating her low tones.

She rose, and drew aside the branch of a bushy shrub, one of a clump. Just behind it he saw a short and very round woman in black, seated in a gaudily striped lawn chair with her hands folded in her lap, snoring quite audibly. The thought flashed to his mind that this must be some deadly enemy of Ramona's. With a low growl he whipped his bow and arrow from the quiver, and took quick aim at the old lady.

The horrified girl caught his hand.

"No, no! You must not hurt her! She is my friend. She loves me. But she must not know that you are here with me."

Puzzled, the youth replaced bow and arrow in his quiver.

"Jan try understan'," he whispered.

She laid a hand on his arm.

"Sit here beside me," she said, "so you will not be seen. Then, if we talk quietly, no one will know that you are here, and perhaps you may come again."

They talked for nearly half an hour, Jan asking questions in his limited broken English aided by the universal language of signs and Ramona trying to explain things to him. He asked her about the little basket of white leaves covered with many black tracks, and she told him the little tracks talked to her. She told him the basket was called a "book," and that the tracks were called "letters," while groups of tracks were called "words."

At the end of a half hour Ramona said:

"You must go now, Jan. As soon as Senora Soledade finishes her siesta she will look for me and I don't want her to see you. Come tomorrow at this time, and I will be here."

Jan left without protest, going over the wall as he had come. Once in the jungle, he shot a peccary, ate his fill, drank deeply at the river, and crept beneath the roots of a ceiba to dream of a pair of lustrous brown eyes.

And Ramona, having sent him away, was thrilled by her power over 'this handsome youth who, though he was a mighty slayer of fierce beasts and savage men, obeyed her, lightest request without question.

ON THE following day, and for many days thereafter, Jan met Ramona beneath the tree in the garden. As she had made it plain that she did not want these meetings known, he always came and went with the utmost caution. The hollow beneath the roots of the ceiba tree became his home. The fruit and game of the nearby jungle supplied him with ample food.

On the second day, Don Fernando, walking in the patio with his spotless white suit and smoking his long, slim cigar, had a narrow escape from death when Ramona stopped Jan just in time as he was preparing to launch an arrow. Gradually she was able to make him understand, how dear her father, mother and duenna were to her, and that her tutor and the servants were friends who must not be slain or injured.

Much of the time she spent in tutoring him. Jan was an eager pupil, and mastered the alphabet in a few days. Then he tackled an English reader. Ramona's parents, having been educated in the United States, she was able to correct Jan's accent.

He was particularly interested in her books on natural history. Many animals he recognized at once by their pictures, having seen them in the jungle. He marveled at the pictures of the mighty prehistoric monsters, saying he wished he could meet and overcome some of them in battle. He was quite disappointed when Ramona told him they were all dead.

Jan was greatly attracted, too, by Ramona's writing and drawing materials. For many days, he watched her sketch. Then, one day, she gave him pencil, paper, and drawing board, and found that, without training, he could do almost as well as she. His greatest delight was to copy the pictures in the natural history books, labeling each sketch with its correct name which, having once learned, he never forgot.

Each day Jan brought some offering from the jungle for his little goddess. He sought out the rarest orchids and the most luscious fruits and berries. Once, after art encounter with a Carib native, he brought her a necklace of jaguar teeth. But she did not dare to keep it, much to his disappointment.

Jan noticed that she had in the palm of her right hand, a blue tracing of a many-petaled flower. One day, with pen and ink, he traced a similar flower in his own palm. But to his surprise, the ink soon rubbed off. He tried to find out what made hers stay, but she, didn't know. The mark had been there always-.as long as she could remember.

One afternoon Jan was drawing, using a sharp, flexible pen and India ink, when he accidentally pricked his finger. The next morning he noticed a little blue spot where the wound had been. When, after a lapse of several days, the spot remained, he began to trace a blue flower in his own palm in this manner. The work took some time, and cost him a sore hand for a while, but he ended by having a permanent tattoo mark almost identical with that of Ramona, and was delighted with the result.

As soon as he had learned sufficient English, Jan told Ramona about his early life in the menagerie, and of Dr. Bracken, whom he called "Cruel One." He was amazed and deeply relieved when Ramona told him that it was impossible for Chicma to have been his mother. He often wondered after that what his real mother was like, and if he would ever see her.

For more than two months, Jan lived beneath the ceiba near the plantation, watching the rubber workers, the house servants, and Ramona's parents and friends, and stealing in to see her at every opportunity.

To Ramona these secret meetings with her jungle hero were delightfully romantic. She felt a little remorseful about them at first, knowing that her parents would not approve. But she had only promised her father that she would not leave the house or the patio alone, and this promise was being carried out to the letter.

When she had progressed sufficiently with her studies, her parents planned to send her to the United States, then to Europe, to complete her education. At the end of the two-month period of Jan's stay the time for her departure was near at hand. He noticed a change in her and asked what was wrong, but she would not tell him until the last day.

As she was helping him with his reading lesson, a tear suddenly splashed on the page. Jan looked at her in surprise.

"What is the matter?" he asked. "Why do you cry?"

"I'm going away for a long time," she said. "I may never see you again."

"If you go away I will follow," he replied.

"You must not try to follow," she said. "You could only go along for a little way, anyhow. First we will travel down the river in some of my father's small boats. We will go around the rapids, several of them, the Indians carrying the boats and luggage. Then we will take a small steamer. This steamer will carry us to a seaport where we will take a bigger one that will take us across the ocean, far, far from here. Many thousands of miles."

"But won't you come back?"

"I hope to, some day. But it will be a long time."

"I will wait and watch for you," said Jan.

He stood up and slung his quiver over his shoulder. There was a heavy weight in his breast, and something was choking him.

Suddenly Ramona stood on tiptoes, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

"Goodby," she whispered. "Wait for me, and I'll wait for you."

Then she darted off through the shrubbery, light-footed as a young deer.

To Jan, who had never before been kissed, who had not known there was such a thing, it was a most astounding and pleasant experience. For a moment he stood in a daze, gazing after the fleeing girl. Then he scampered up the tree, swung out on the limb, and dropped to the ground beyond the patio wall.

At last his preoccupied mind thought of Chicma, and he felt a twinge of remorse at having neglected her so long. No knowing what might have happened to her. Plunging into the jungle, he resolved to go straight to his tree-hut. Never before had he been separated from Chicma for so long, and though the old comradeship had dwindled, he could never forget the tender care she had given him, nor the many romps they had taken together. He was very sad and lonely, and his mind was filled with gloomy forebodings.

As fast as he had hurried away from the hut, he hurried back.

Late in the afternoon of the third day, he reached his objective. He peered into the hut and called softly in the language of the chimpanzees.

There was no answer. The hut was deserted.

Alarmed, he swung out on one of the upper limbs and called again, as loudly as he could shout.