Dance of the Dwarfs (18 page)

I had started from the estancia at dawn. It was now eleven. Since there was little cutting and no climbing to be done, I counted on getting back to the llano in three hours' hard marching. So I had four hours to play with. I ate my sandwiches and afterwards kept as motionless as I could in spite of the sharp plague of insects.

The afternoon wore on and the place returned to normal. A small brocket deer flashed in and out of sight as it jumped the stream at the head of the swamp without stopping to drink. A green tree snake moved cleverly from branch to branch looking for birds and small monkeys. When my ears had become accustomed to the background of buzzing and humming, the place seemed as silent as the forest. The steaming, lovely pool, under a blazing sun reflected back again from peacock-turquoise water, gave me a quite reasonable daydream that I was drowsily living in the Carboniferous and should be laid down among the leaves in a coal measure.

The duende called clearly from the ridge. It was close, not more than a hundred yards away, and did not sound in the least like a seagull or any man-made pipe. It resembled the full-throated mew of an otter, though higher in pitch. I remembered Joaquín's doubtful identification of the faint print in the dried mud of the creek. He said it could be that of the giant otter, Pteronura Brasiliensis.

I watched the ragged skyline of the ridge wherever I could see it, but there was no movement. When my eyes at last returned to the swamp and its banks, the dance was in full progress, this time with only one dancer. It must have hunted my line through the bamboos.

It was inspecting me from behind the upturned roots of the tree, bobbing up and down. I saw how I could have mistaken the head for human, though it now seemed incredible. The eyes were round and set well forward, the ears hardly perceptible, the head held well up so that in bad light one could create for oneself the illusion of a man's neck. The muzzle was as pointed as that of a feline, but no more so. When seen full face, as a vague outline without any scale of reference, it had been easy to imagine something like a human nose and mouth and to mistake the slope of thickish fur on the broad, heavy skull for a forehead.

Dancing behind the root it made as easy a target as the head and shoulders which bob up and down on a rifle range. Naturally I never dreamed of firing on so handsome and presumably rare a creature. The round eyes also gave a disarming impression of innocent curiosity, as much as to say: what the devil are you?

This curiosity was not, I think, purely anthropomorphic interpretation. Since all their usual prey is four-legged, they could well be puzzled by a tall, slender upright animal with an outline closely resembling their own—making a false identification exactly like the Indians or llaneros who first saw them in dusk or darkness. This could account for the fact that I was undoubtedly hunted on May 3, but not attacked.

I saw a slight waving of the tops of the bamboos which indicated that it had moved out of the cover of the tree root and a little downstream. It then launched itself from what must have been a crouching position clear onto the fallen trunk with the peculiar loping leap which I had seen at night. It was a magnificent creature, pale fawn with a paler belly, standing about twenty inches at the shoulder. Length from head to root of tail approximately four and a half feet. Tail apparently short, but I never got a leisurely side view. Weight very difficult to judge because of the markedly lithe and slender build. For a loose comparison I should say it was longer than a jaguar (not counting the tail of either) but stood lower and was much lighter. It did not appear at all out of proportion or dachshund-like. It was as dangerously graceful as leopard or jaguar when they move with body close to the ground, but had shorter legs without the muscular striking power of the felines.

I record all this while the picture is still vivid in my mind, but at the moment my observations were more of character than measurements and were urgent. Another long bound took it out along the tree. When we faced each other with a mere forty feet between us, its curiosity did not seem all that innocent. It plainly had no idea of what a firearm was and no fear of man. That cut both ways. I had no way of quickly distinguishing whether it was a beast which could easily be tamed and domesticated (like the ferret) or whether it saw me as helpless meat.

I myself was tense but not afraid. Its Declaration of Intent had no chance to work when I had only to press the trigger and rake it from stem to stern. It did occur to me, however, that the head shot, which was the best that offered, might not be effective. The tremendous jaw muscles, which could drive the canines through the base of a skull, were attached to a formidable ridge of bone.

It had the extraordinary impertinence to pop up for a better look. I could now see at close quarters how the dwarf effect was produced. It sat upright, hind paws and base of tail giving support at three points, fore paws held close to the body and dangling. That made quite a considerable pygmy. I had already formed the opinion that it was one of the Mustelidae, and this trick confirmed the classification. Otter, stoat, badger, tayra—they all do it.

Now undoubtedly gathering itself for the spring, it crouched again. I was aiming straight between the eyes when the hornets took a hand. The mustelid had put some weight on their private dead branch, which I had been most careful not to do. The swarm could make no impression on the fur but went for the nose and the belly, which suggested that this was the female of the pair with vulnerable teats, possibly nursing cubs. At any rate he or she was off to the bamboos again in two curving leaps with a cloud of hornets following.

It left behind a strong, not unpleasant whiff of musk: another proof that it was a mustelid. All of them, so far as I know, emit scent when at play or when alarmed, varying in power from the appalling stench of the skunk to the woodland smell of badger. It was evident that the hornets caused more alarm than I did. If jaguars will not tackle this fellow, the only other possible enemies are wasps, hornets and Eciton ants.

My guess—worthless until proved or disproved by anatomy—is that the duende and the giant otter had, a few million years ago, a common ancestor. One genus developed on the great rivers very successfully; the other not so successfully on land—perhaps because it grew too heavy to catch easy prey in the trees and so developed speed and killing power as a rare but formidable land predator.

It was now fully time to start my return home. Whether to go while the duende was close but occupied by hornets or to wait on the chance that it was moving clear away was a toss-up. I decided to go.

The edge of the swamp, the bamboos and the close thicket behind them were hard on the nerves. I could see nothing. The rifle was so useless that I was tempted to sling it and trust to the machete to deal with any sudden attack; but of course I could not bring myself to do so. I examined every clump before passing it and tried always to face the long grass and looser undergrowth in which an animal could hide, and to keep at my back the impenetrable stuff from which a charge was unlikely.

This meant a wretchedly slow journey. I did not want to climb to the ridge again, where the going would be slower still, so when I came to the beginning of my own path to the water I cut my way straight on. At last I came out into the big timber at the foot of the ridge and felt more confident, though the trees were set too close together for my liking.

When I had covered rather more than a mile—it is difficult to be exact about distance unless one can see well ahead—I turned north and made straight for the long glade. This sudden turn is interesting. I can remember no reason whatever for my decision. I knew where I was. I knew that by making for the glade I should add to my journey. Yet the change of direction was sharp, imperative, unarguable.

In another ten minutes or so I began to run. I did not even make any determined effort to stop myself; the most that my superior human brain could do for me was to insist that I go straight. Even that was difficult. The hair on the back of my neck was bristling. I was panting. I was inclined to run into obstructions or to lose direction when I went round them. The circling must have partly begun, for when I trotted into the long glade I was closer to the cliff than to the middle. It was perhaps as well. I could burst out into the sun with hardly any delay.

Open space reminded me that I had once claimed to be salted against peccary panic. Thirty yards out from the edge of the glade I dropped to the ground under cover of dead tufts of grass and turned round to face the forest. I was having no more nonsense about rare animals. If I saw what I was dead certain I was going to see, I meant to kill.

Twenty seconds later the mustelid appeared low down in the ferns. It was not much of a target and I should not have spotted it at all if I had not been concentrating on my own track. I fired and was sure that I had put the bullet behind the right shoulder—a shot which should have raked the lungs on its way to more damage; but when I got up and walked to the spot—the smell of cordite having restored my courage like a tot of rum—there was no sign of blood, only a powerful patch of scent. At least I had now handed out some alarm myself. I had no intention of being a proper sahib and following my wounded beast into the jungle—the main object being, I gather, to prevent disablement turning it into a man-eater. That seemed unnecessary when all the evidence suggested that the duende found human flesh as edible as any other.

This has taught me a lot more of its habits. First: it is a forest dweller which does not kill in the open except at night; it was hot on my trail but obviously hesitated to enter the glade. Second: it does not stalk its prey. Joaquín said as much after examining the print which he thought might be of otter. The movement of the bamboos by the swamp and the swaying of fern tops prove that it is an inefficient stalker. Game would be alerted and away like a shot. The mustelid chases, not very fast but relentlessly.

It may also lie up in ambush after foreseeing by instinct or experience, like any other carnivore, the probable track of the oncoming game. That is what I think happened. My change of direction was a wholly unconscious warning—very difficult to be understood by any townsman with all his natural instincts degenerated—that if I walked straight on I should run into certain trouble.

I am becoming a connoisseur and analyst of fear. There is a definite distinction between that unconscious warning and the Declaration of Intent; the latter produces a conscious terror in every way equivalent to that caused by the classical ghost, whether or not the ghost is an illusion.

It may be that the fear is the reality, which itself causes the illusion, rather than the other way round. I am reminded of:
And turns no more his head because he knows a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread
. Coleridge must have guessed that by instinct. It's a fact. One runs and does not turn one's head. Or would not turn it if one hadn't a rifle. But I have still to clarify my thinking on this whole subject. It is difficult without a library; and even among books one would probably be muddled by the psychologists who invent one phobia after another but don't know the first damned thing about real, justified, animal fear.

To return to the journey. All of it must be recorded for future reference. My mind is inclined to suppress and forget incidents which are disgraceful or temporarily unacceptable. If I had not been able to look up what I wrote on May 3, I should have sublimated the memory and been unable to compare my two experiences of sheer cowardice or to draw conclusions from them.

I trotted down the long glade—making up time, not running away—and headed straight for the point of easiest access to the forest where any game in a hurry would crash through into the trees. I hoped the duende was dead or dying but, if it wasn't, that was where it would wait for me.

I could not tell how good its long sight was. Available evidence suggested that the round eyes were as good as a cat's in darkness but not designed for daylight. So I dropped down, vanished into the grass again and crawled off to the southeast at right angles to my former course. I had not far to go before I could safely stand up. Then I skirted the well glade, and just in time picked up the cathedral aisle. The light was beginning to fail and the racket in the treetops was at full blast. The duende certainly could not hear my progress any more than I could hear his. I reckoned that I was quite safe, always provided that I could reach the llano before dark, for the timber was so well spaced that I had time to use the rifle and space to swing it. I did consider spending the night in a tree on the rare occasions when I saw one that was climbable, but the thought of Chucha's anxiety was just enough to prevent it.

I longed for a horse, especially Tesoro, who would have used his gift for dodging fast through woodland to get us out of there in ten minutes. As it was, ten minutes merely brought deeper dusk and slower progress. The just visible compass gave me direction but could not tell me where the passage was. It was really my little howling cousins, the monkeys, who led me out. They were holding a students' demonstration at their usual playground on the edge of the llano, and ears were a quicker guide to it than eyes. I marched on straight for the excitement, when a little casting about revealed starshine and the gap.

I thought that somewhere I heard the slow beat of horses' hooves and supposed they had broken away through the open gate while Mario was moving them from the corral to the hall. I cursed his carelessness, for the llano in darkness so close to the forest could be thoroughly dangerous. I did not much care for it myself in spite of the stars. Then I heard Chucha's voice calling for Ojen and I let out a yell in answer. She was up in a moment, riding Pichón and leading Tesoro—which always takes some doing. When dusk fell and still I was not home, she had forced Mario to help her to saddle up, choosing Tesoro because of her belief that he looks after me, and ridden straight across the creek and down to the gap. Courage beyond belief! I wonder if she would be proof against the Declaration of Intent. Perhaps. I know that I should be if I thought her in danger. But I have a rifle, and she has nothing much but an amateur
chiripá
. However, she must never do this again.