Murder Is My Dish (24 page)

We ate guan for supper. It was a pheasantlike bird and it went very well with the light-bodied red wine that had been brought out on the pack mules. After supper the Guaranis built a great fire in the center of our encampment. Then they sang a dirgelike song in their native language. It made the hounds bay. One of the hunter brothers laughed softly. “It is a song to keep away
el tigre
,” he said. “But
el tigre
does not listen.”

I sat up for a while keeping Kiki company. She was in a bad way. She was scared stiff. She sat so close to the fire she was sweating. She stared out at the blackness all around us and spoke of her childhood in Budapest wistfully, as if this were her last night on earth. The fire snapped and roared. The Guaranis went on singing. The dark jungle was alive with sound too. Kiki sweated and shuddered. Finally I got up and went over to my tent.

Lequerica was already in there, stretched out on one of the two sleeping bags. He had not crawled inside. It was a warm night.

“Oh, we sharing this tent?” I said.

“No. You have one of the brothers, I think. Tonight I'll sleep with Kiki. You saw how she was afraid?”

“Yeah.”

Lequerica was silent for a while. Then he said, “I'm taking your advice, you know.”

“Yeah?”

“What you told me in the palace. Are you surprised?”

“Maybe. What are you going to do?”

“Nothing, I hope. I hope it will be done for me.”

“Encarnacion?”

He laughed softly.

“Why tell me?” I said.

“I may need some help. You have a stake in this.”

“How do you figure that?”

“The Mistral girl.”

“Yeah?”

“Of course. Major Corso is my very good friend.”

“You're going to need what kind of help?”

He sat up and shrugged. “El Grande's daughter—”

“We already talked.”

“Well,” he said, “well, well.”

“That's what you wanted?”

“Yes, Mr. Drum. But let it die there—if you want to see the Mistral girl alive. You understand?”

I nodded and he got out of there. In a little while the youngest of the three brothers came in and stretched out on his sleeping bag. He began to breathe regularly almost at once, in a deep, healthy rhythm. I admired his uncomplicated life. I almost envied it. In New York I had gone to Lequerica for help. I had seen Duarte shoot down two men in cold blood. I had come down here thinking Duarte and El Grande were the tough boys. They were tough, all right. Duarte was tough if he had you alone in a room with a bright light shining in your eyes. He was that kind of tough. El Grande was tough if he could impress you on a white stallion with a brigade of troops behind him and a chestful of medals. But in his own way Lequerica was tougher than both of them. He didn't advertise it. I wondered if Hipolito Robles knew that Lequerica was the one you had to watch when things got rugged.

Later that night I began to see just how rugged things were. I drifted off to sleep and dreamed I was back in Washington in my office, feet up on my desk, the office bottle out, staring at the reversed lettering on the pebble-glass door and waiting for a client or a bill collector. It was a very pleasant dream.

A girl's scream awoke me.

I plunged outside a step behind the hunting brother. The fire was still high. One of the tethered horses whinnied. Two figures grappled in front of the fire. One of them had a rifle and the other was trying to get it from her. The one with the rifle was Encarnacion. She screamed again. The one fighting her called out for help. It was señora Rivera, her.
dueña
.

Figures converged on them. The oldest of the brothers helped señora Rivera get the rifle away from Encarnacion. The woman was sobbing. She wore a cotton sleeping gown and a mess of cold cream on her face. Encarnacion wore a sleeping gown too.

“… outside …” sobbed the
dueña
. “A nightmare … the poor child … I ran after her and she picked up the rifle …”

“I'll kill him!” Encarnacion screamed. “Mother of God, I swear I'll kill him. I know what he's planning. I know it. I'll kill him!”

It was Lequerica who slapped her face stingingly.

Then Indalecio Grande came lumbering into the firelight. He looked at Lequerica and looked at his daughter, cowering now, her hand to her face, and moved over to Lequerica on his bandy legs and struck Lequerica in the face with his right fist. Lequerica fell down.

El Grande kicked him and said passionately, “You had no right to strike her! Are you out of your mind?”

Lequerica didn't say anything. He sat up. El Grande did not kick him again.

“My child,” El Grande said. His voice broke.

“It is nothing,” Señora Rivera told him. “Nothing, sir. A nightmare.”

With El Grande alongside she led Encarnacion back to her tent. The hunting brothers had already retired. They were probably sleeping again already. They had not been paid to understand the complicated people from Ciudad Grande. Kiki Magyar helped her husband to his feet and they went back to their tent. He looked at me as they passed, but said nothing. His eyes were black holes in his face. His mouth was a straight thin line. Soon El Grande went over to his own tent.

A jaguar coughed in the night. It was so unexpectedly close that one of the Guaranis near the fire cried out in his sleep.…

After breakfast the oldest brother blew a blast on his horn. The jaguar answered almost immediately, a deep cough and a rolling rumbling, jungle-shaking roar. It was very close. The brothers smiled and quickly untethered four horses. The oldest one blew his horn again. The jaguar answered. Two of the brothers mounted with rifles slung across their saddles. El Grande and Duarte mounted with them. Duarte's horse was a big, roan-colored stallion.

The dogs paced back and forth, pawing the ground, sniffing. The Guaranis chanted. They were stolid and unhappy. Only Encarnacion seemed almost serenely happy. “It is a beautiful sound,” she said. “It is beautiful.”

The jaguar coughed now, without roaring. I thought he was just out of sight beyond the nearest andiras and strangler figs.

The oldest brother said, “A mile. Maybe a mile and a half.” He blew his horn again and the jaguar answered immediately and with arrogance. The oldest brother smiled. “A big male,” he said. “Almost certainly a splendid male.”

He told us, “We will find him with the dogs. We will worry him. The dogs will worry him. When we are ready for the kill, you will hear my horn. My brother will lead you. All right?” He had spoken to those of us who would remain in camp.

El Grande's horse reared. He brought it under control with deft rein-work. He looked very good on horseback. Even his bandy legs looked good. He was a handsome figure on horseback. Probably he had encouraged the horse's rearing.

The oldest brother blew another blast on his horn. At once the jaguar voiced its coughing challenge. The other jungle noises, the monkeys and birds and smaller animals, were stilled.

The oldest brother smiled and waved his hand. “Come, children,” he said. “Get him, children.”

The eight hounds leaped, baying, from the clearing. The four horsemen galloped after them.

With bright eyes Encarnacion watched them go.

All morning we heard the baying of the hounds and the snarling grunting answers of the jaguar. Much of the time Lequerica stood near the embers of the fire with Encarnacion, whispering to her. Finally she went to the remaining brother and said:

“I want to go now. I want to go after them.”

“Señorita, we must wait,” the brother told her uneasily.

“Then I command you.”

His leathery face showed no expression. “I have already received my commands,” he said.

Encarnacion cursed him. señora Rivera had a shocked look on her face and said something swiftly and softly to the girl. Encarnacion laughed, then listened to the sounds of the dogs and the jaguar and stopped laughing. Listening, she went over to the crate of rifles, her boots silent on the carpet of the jungle clearing, the carpet of fallen leaves which fell from the vaults of the jungle cathedral in the ghostly green light overhead steadily all year.

She came back carrying a Weatherby .300 Magnum. She pointed it at the brother. “Now take me,” she said.

The brother looked bewildered. Lequerica and Kiki stood off to one side. The
dueña's
eyes were wide with horror. Encarnacion worked the bolt of the Weatherby, sliding a cartridge into firing position. “Well?” she said.

I came up behind her and pinned her arms to her sides. The rifle did not go off. She made a little hissing noise while the brother took the rifle away from her.

Just then the hunting horn sounded.

Quickly and with a look of great relief on his face, the brother went over to where the horses were tethered. When he had saddled two of them Kiki told us:

“I'm staying here in camp.” For once she had forgotten her accent. Her voice was hoarse. “I'll stay with the Indians.”

When the brother led the horses across the clearing, señora Rivera absolutely refused to mount. Nobody argued with her. Silently the brother handed out rifles. Before giving Encarnacion hers he looked at her and looked at me.

“Oh, that's all right now. Everything's going to be fine now,” she told him. “I like you now. I love you now. I will tell my father great things about you. Please. Please.”

He gave her the rifle, a Remington .300, and she slid it into the harness alongside her saddle.

Sounding very close, the jaguar snarled. The hounds bayed, then one of them screamed. Then we galloped from the clearing with the hunting brother in the lead.

It was a wild ride. After the first hundred yards or so, I gave my horse his head. He had been trained for jungle hunting and almost instinctively he knew how to avoid the castlecones of the jungle ants and the holes made by peccaries. There was the drumming of hoofs and the wild rush of air and the swinging dipping cathedral vaults of green and Encarnacion's horse galloping past me with a rush and pretty soon Lequerica's too. There were the sounds ahead of us, the coughing roar of the jaguar, worried all morning by the dogs and now apparently too tired to run in circles through the jungle any longer, the baying and sudden yelping screams of the hounds.

Then all at once we came upon them.

My mount pulled up short, rearing and almost throwing me. The other horses, lathering and blowing, had stopped just ahead, close to four riderless horses.

The brother who had brought us dismounted. So did Encarnacion. Lequerica remained in his saddle. I swung out of mine and took my rifle as the others had done, dismounting mostly because I felt better able to cope with an emergency on foot than in the saddle.

About thirty yards from us across a little clearing were the hounds. They danced, darted, lunged, side-stepped and retreated like boxers with good legs. They never stopped moving. Seven of them made a circle which swayed and swung and broke and re-formed. The eighth lay off a little ways on the ground, its head red and smashed.

Inside the circle was the jaguar.

It was a big orange-yellow cat with black rosettes on its smooth-muscled, sleek body. It was as big as a tall man. Snarling and coughing, its flanks heaving and bloody, it whirled in the hound-circle, jabbing hard and straight at the dogs with its forelimbs, using them as a man who knows how to fight uses his left hand, jabbing and hooking but never slashing. Another one of the dogs fell with a scream from the circle. Its head too was smashed. But two others darted at the jaguar from behind, nipping at its flank. It turned snarling, but they were gone. The circle of six dogs moved. The jaguar struck at air with its forelimbs and extended claws. There was blood on its panting flank and blood on its forelimbs.

To one side of the circle of hounds stood the two hunting brothers, their rifles ready. On the other side and also very close was Indalecio Grande. Behind him and a step or so off to one side was Duarte.

The hunter who had brought us called out something. The other hunters did not look around. They held their rifles loosely. With the dogs they had cornered and tired the great cat. They had done their work. Now unless something went wrong the party from Ciudad Grande would finish the job.

Suddenly the oldest brother shouted: “
Basta, hijos! Batra!
”

The circle of hounds fell away, the dogs panting and breathing hard, their jaws slack, their tongues protruding.

There was a look of utter animal delight on Encarnacion's face.

For a moment the jaguar's head darted from side to side on the thick strong neck. With his tormentors so abruptly called off, the big cat was bewildered.

El Grande and Duarte raised their rifles.

I stood right next to Encarnacion. Her face did not change. She brought her rifle up too. From where we were standing it almost looked as if Duarte was directly behind El Grande and aiming his rifle at the
caudillo's
back. Actually he stood off to one side with room to shoot.

Duarte fired his rifle and the bullet
whonked
home in the flesh of the jaguar. The big cat screamed and charged. In the same instant El Grande got down on one knee in rock-steady firing position. It all happened very swiftly, Duarte firing, the cat's charge, El Grande dropping to his knee. Maybe it looked to Encarnacion as if Duarte's bullet had struck her father. Maybe it didn't look that way at all. Maybe she was really trying to hit the charging jaguar.

Her rifle roared and the recoil of the big .300 Magnum drove her back a step and Duarte, dropping his own rifle suddenly as the jaguar leaped, fell forward on his face.

Then El Grande yelled hoarsely that his rifle had jammed. Even as he yelled it the hunting brothers were firing, but by then the jaguar reached El Grande and they went down together, the cat snarling and the man screaming, rolling over in a yellow-orange and black blur.