Dance of the Dwarfs (24 page)

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10:30 P.M.
]

That is over, if it is. I cannot eat. I must be alone a little. Chucha, I know, is frightened. Those round, so gentle eyes stared at me, only understanding that there was no crossing the water to so foreign an island. Women—even this firefly—seem able to forget weeks of truth and to read a false significance into two minutes. Perhaps she feels rejected. But I must have time to relax. Let me finish this record, this diary which has become a damned duty to zoology, and I shall be with her again. Nothing but entirety of spirit will comfort her.

I left half an hour before sunset. I carried the rifle in front of me so that she could not distinguish it from the gun. I know very well that she always runs to the wall and looks over it after me. And a lot of use that wall is now after the rains!

It was a clear evening with little chance of rain in the early part of the night. I walked fast up the marshes and checked the tracks before the sun went down. The mustelids were still in the reeds. As the last of the duck were splashing on to the water I moved off some three hundred yards into the open. The wind, such as it was, blew from the llano allowing them to pick up my scent. They were not likely to ignore me. They had eaten very little of their relative, probably finding all but the blood distasteful.

Visibility in the last of the dusk, with a moon in the first quarter, was good. Sure killing range was about thirty yards, but so was charging range. When they started to close in, I hoped they would dance for me to get a better look. If I then missed, as I well might—the target being as narrow as a man—the chase was on.

In the singing silence I thought I heard the canes cracking and shifting. Before I could be sure a last skein of geese came over and swam around with soft, sleepy chatterings. For half an hour I had to endure a soundless, dubiously empty half circle of silvered peace, continually looking behind me to ensure that the other half was empty.

Half an hour was too much and all wrong. I had believed that the action would begin as soon as they had extricated themselves from the binding, difficult cover along the marshes. It was certain that after sunset hunger and habit would compel them to leave it.

I detected a faint whiff of musk on the wind, so I turned my back on the cover and kept the main watch in the opposite direction. I had expected that one would attack straight up from the water while the other worked round a flank; so long as I knew which flank, I could then run and bring them clearly into sight on my trail. But attack from the llano puzzled me. Although it was more in accordance with their downwind hunting, it seemed to me that they ran a risk of driving their game into the water and safety. I decided that they knew best, that experience must have taught them how to turn me towards the llano.

I write: “I decided.” But my racing guesswork merely kept half a jump ahead of what their instinctive movements ought to be and decided very little. The only available fact was that one of them, in spite of a natural impatience, had spent a long time working into position out on the open llano. It stood to reason that the other must be on the edge of the dead canes in order to signal me away from the water.

It was therefore essential to pinpoint the fellow waiting on the marshes. I tried to do this by lying down so as to get a bright background of water through the gaps in the rushes. But the scent of musk had become a little stronger, showing that the other was beginning to close. I was unpleasantly aware that the back of my neck was exposed and that I could not turn round quickly. So I got up and walked slowly towards the cover.

The mustelid's curiosity, its tendency to inspect before committing itself, gave it away. The outline was as vague as a tree stump but bobbed up and down against the stars. I took the outside chance—more to relieve my nerves than with any assurance of killing—lay down, took my time and fired. It paid no attention. The foolhardy courage of the stoat or just utter ignorance of man and his resources? I had ample opportunity for a second shot which either scored an outer in the thick skin or was close enough to convince the mustelid that its prey was being impertinent. The dancing stopped, and I caught a glimpse of it creeping unhurriedly, belly to ground, straight at me before I lost sight of it among the outlying clumps of rushes. This was out of its normal hunting pattern. I had become an enemy, like the jaguar, to be intimidated.

My own pattern was also disturbed. I did not see how I could now line the pair up and bring them after me to the edge of the water. One was in front, meaning business, and the other was somewhere out in the llano waiting for the next move of the quarry. I lay down again so that my silhouette could not be seen against the moonlit sky. I was upwind of the fellow I had annoyed, and there was a good chance of my spotting him before he spotted me.

While I was wishing to God that I had never fired those two shots and muddled the natural course of the hunt, a long strip of black cloud, which I had been too busy to notice, drifted over the moon. Starlight would have been good enough for close quarters if my eyes had become accustomed to it, but this sudden blotting out of a silver world blinded me. It looked as if I might need the machete again. I had not got it. I was stripped for running.

Nothing happened. No sound. No scent. Loss of contact. My reading of the position then was that I hadn't a hope. My reading now is that the mustelid's night sight, like my own, needed a moment to adjust itself; meanwhile, the compulsion to avenge annoyance faded away and was replaced by the instinct to continue the hunt. It must have changed direction and passed across my right flank to join up with the other.

It was at this point that I probably received the Declaration of Intent, but there was quite enough general panic to be resisted without attending to details of clinical analysis. I prefer to put it this way: the involuntary compulsion to run coincided with my deliberate plan to run. So I ran. All very pretty, but one essential fact was missing. I did not know what lead I had.

I think I would have bolted straight for the water if there had been any quick way of reaching it through the thick stuff where the mustelids had spent the day. As it was, I was forced to stick to my original intention and run more or less parallel to the marsh. When at last I dared to turn my head, I could see nothing; but instinct insisted that they were committed and on my trail.

The moon cleared for a moment and I looked behind again. There they were, both in line and producing the leaping-porpoise effect exactly as when hunting the peccary. The target was impossibly narrow and oscillating as I had foreseen. One, perhaps. Two, no.

I began the curve—the wrong way from their point of view. The distance between us and the distance to the blessedly gleaming water were about the same. A man sprinting could hold them over a hundred yards. Horse or deer could leave them standing, if it used its speed and kept straight. But even Tesoro was run down. They do not have the decent doubt of the felines. They know what the end will be.

I charged through the rushes and into the water, went over my knees in mud, stuck fast and could only turn to fire very clumsily. The leader was sitting up and slavering at me. I shot it through the body but missed any immediately vital spot. Water or no, it then sprang at me. I finished it with a heart shot almost on the muzzle of the rifle, throwing myself sideways to avoid the falling body.

When I struggled up again, the other had gone. The dead mustelid was floating out of reach in a fan of red water. It had taken up the position of a sinking ship, buttocks and tail above the surface. If that does represent the relative buoyancy of the animal in life, it would certainly find swimming laborious. There will not be much of it left to collect. Alligators should now be working upstream, and what the eels cannot manage they will finish.

I pulled myself out by the reed stems and scraped the mud from my watch. Incredibly, from first contact to finish, only fifty-five minutes. I thought of it then as finish, for the disruption of the hunting pattern was complete, and the lesson surely enough for any animal. In my relief I overlooked the vital stimulus of hunger. This particular individual, whose normal range was far away to the southwest, had no experience of an upright beast of familiar outline which ran, but made a loud noise and was associated with the dangers of water. Its vague picture of an urgent present, lacking cause and effect, only inhibited action without forbidding it.

In any case half of me was ready to welcome a second meeting if the mustelid did not continue its course to the north and the head of the marshes. Now that I had got my breath back and the foresight had stopped wobbling, the odds were acceptable. Conditions were as good as could be expected, though the angle of the moonlight was treacherous, and folds of ground, hardly perceptible in daylight, were in black shadow.

My right flank was protected by the water, my left a target area where nothing within thirty yards could live if I were fast enough. There was of course no protection against attack from behind, but by glancing round after I had passed clear of any possible line of approach I more or less secured myself against surprise. After I had walked a cautious half mile or more I began to curse my sight. The outline of the black dips was fuzzier than it should have been. The stars had lost their brilliance. The change was so slight and gradual that I really thought it was the result of intense straining of the eyes. Not until the crescent of the moon was also hazed did I realize that a ground mist was thickening.

In another few minutes I was in almost complete darkness, and the moon only a lighter patch of sky. I could just make out the water and keep direction; otherwise visibility was down to nothing. I stopped to think. Not that it did any good. My position was desperate if the mustelid had not lost interest. I tried my pocket flashlight, but it was worse than useless. The far end of the beam showed a mere, blurred oval of llano, leaving me with even less night sight than I had.

There was no scent to help. In fact all my senses were out of action except hearing. I would have been thankful to receive the “superstitious” fear, which at least would have told me for certain what I was in for and perhaps turned the rifle in the right direction. But even that was absent. I was empty of fear and could understand what Joaquín meant when he said that fear was over as soon as the prey went down under the teeth and claws.

Always there were little noises from the marsh: the splash of fish or frog, the rustle of reeds as they parted to let through the invisible. Under the pall of the mist the faint activity of my unseen companions was hushed but continuous. Without interruption of the business of living they let my footsteps pass. I could imagine that they were friendly or that I was no longer of any importance.

Ten paces behind me two duck rose with a whir and a clatter. I jumped round and fell on one knee, instinctively meaning to bring the muzzle of the rifle under the body as it rose for the final spring. The mustelid, too, was startled by the duck, I heard a squelch as it slipped on the edge of the mud and then the unmistakable, soft sound of a leap to firmer ground.

It could kill me when it pleased. Walking backwards was no use. One fall and it had me. Standing still in the hope of that last split-second shot was no use either. I tried it. My follower also stopped still. After we had covered a few hundred yards I began to learn exactly where it was. My ears could pick up the footfalls, some real, some no doubt imaginary. There were times when I knew the beast was far behind, times when it was so close that I would swing round and cover nothing. I dared not fire. I might wound. That would infallibly end this state of neutrality. My only chance of safety seemed to lie in letting it follow me like a dog at heel for as long as it would.

I strode out more boldly, for there was nothing else I could do. I remember and repeat that I was emptied of fear—so much so that I controlled myself by analyzing the validity of my repugnance at what was coming to me. To be eaten—why such horror of it? Death in war, death in our suicidal transport, we accept both; or, if we refuse to accept, at least they are not nightmares. Yet this death, quick, clean, a last offering of hospitality to a fellow hunter, men think the most terrible.

The water tempted me, but I should be floundering in mud before I was out of reach. So we walked on, never hurrying lest one or the other should end this intimacy. When I felt that it was too close and that hunger was overcoming caution, I would turn round gently. Then there was silence. I could never be sure that I had seen it. I think I never did. It can flatten itself to less than the thickness of a man. Even in full daylight one cannot be certain, as I had already discovered, where is the bone and where is skin. The weasel—tiny, but of similar anatomy—can both kill a rabbit and pass through a wedding ring. That should be remembered by the millionaire who thinks he can shoot fast or the proud Brazilian hunter who is not afraid to use a spear as his second line of defense.

We walked in our curious companionship of death until I received a waft of musk. It was not for me; it was for the horses. Much later than the mustelid I picked up the smell of the corral spreading under the mist. That was the first sign that I was nearing home; till then I could not have said whether I had two more miles to go or was already near the outlet of the creek. I knew at once that the beast had broken contact and that I could at last run with safety. It was very necessary. In spite of all the rules, there could be a little gossiping by an open window.

I took the chance that the mustelid was over on the far side investigating the corral, and came in over the rubble of the east wall. Chucha heard me and flung open the kitchen door, staying in the light to welcome me. I shouted to her to shut it, which she did not, and rushed across the courtyard nearly knocking her over in my anxiety.

The three of them drew away and stared at me, for I was plastered with black mud on hair, face and clothes. I must have made a convincing duende straight out of the depths of the marsh. That may have contributed to my escape. Even to the efficient night sight of my follower I was black against black, never clearly distinguishable, smelling of foul water.