Wild Life in the Land of the Giants Part 38

"Poor benighted heathens!" said Peter, glancing up at the lunar scimitar, which had just escaped from beneath a little cloud. "Poor heathens! I quite feel for them."

"But what are you doing," said Jill, "with your hands in your pockets?"

"Why, I'm turning my money of course. Don't you always do that when you see the new moon?"

"Poor benighted heathen!" cried Jill.

Peter now saw what was meant, and laughed as heartily as any one.

Presently we entered the toldo, and Peter sat down as usual to smooth his b.u.mps. I noticed Jill looking towards him with a half-subdued smile of mischief on his face. Soon he glanced towards me, and we went out together.

"I've thought of a little trick to play Peter," said Jill.

"Well?" I said.

"Get Nadi to give him the baby again."

"But how will you manage?"

"Come and see."

Nadi's innocent face always lighted up with smiles when Jill and I went near her. My brother addressed her in broken Patagonian. It was very much broken, but it suited the purpose. Nevertheless, Nadi understood English well, though too shy to talk it.

"Peter," he said, pointing to little copper-face. "Peter ywotisk, Peter kekoosh, moyout win coquet talenque." (Peter is weary and cold, and would like to have the baby for a little while.)

Up jumped Nadi, her eyes sparkling with delight, and went off to the tent. We followed. In she went, and without a word popped the baby down on Peter's knee, then retired most gracefully.

Everybody laughed at Peter, but, like a sensible young man, he made the best of it; and when we entered, looking as innocent as sucking guanacos, there he was talking away to the child, and making it laugh and crow more than ever its mother did.

"You see what it is to be a good-natured fellow," Peter said to me.

"Now you'll live a long time before _you_ get baby to hold."

Peter often got baby after this, and I really think he came to like it, only he told Jeeka to inform his wife, that the danger of handing him the child when on horseback was extreme. So this never occurred again.

I think, on the whole, then, that Peter had the best of Jill and his little joke.

The country now became changed in aspect, far more rugged and hilly and wild, but at times its beauty was almost awesome.

One day we came upon a patch of woodland, the first real trees we had seen. Then we knew we were within a measurable distance of Castizo's romantic home in the Cordilleran forests.

We encamped this night close to the wood.

The Indians did not, according to Jeeka, quite relish the propinquity.

The wood was haunted by evil spirits. There was a fox with two heads that had been frequently seen within its dark shades, and there was something in white which Jeeka could not well define. It might have two heads or it might have twenty, he could not say; but it was very terrible, and death soon visited the person whose track this something-in-white crossed.

There was no good could accrue from laughing at Jeeka. I could not help thinking, however, what a pity it was so n.o.ble a fellow--savage, if you choose to call him so--should remain in such mental darkness. Could we not do a little to help him, Jill and I?

We might try. One never does know what one can do till a trial is made.

"Jeeka," I said that evening, "will you go for a walk with Jill and me, and bring Nadi?"

"So, so," was the reply, meaning "yes."

We would have led him towards the wood, but he shook his head, and spoke but one word in a very firm and decided tone--

"Gualichu!"

He led us down into a rocky ravine where grew many strange bushes we had never seen before, and in the more open places an abundance of wild flowers, many like our own pinks and primroses that grow among the dear Cornish hills. In this ravine was a streamlet which, however, had so worn away its rocky bed that we could hardly see it. We could hear it, however, and when we peeped over the cliffs that formed its banks, there it was foaming and tearing along, and leaping from shelf to shelf of its stony bed. Sometimes it formed great pools of dark brown water, in which fish were leaping after the swarming flies.

Not far from this wild stream, and within hearing of its ceaseless song, we all threw ourselves on the gra.s.s in a ring. Nadi, woman-like, had brought some sewing with her, some beautiful skunk skins from which--we afterwards discovered--she was making a little roba or poncho for her favourite Peter.

"You're not afraid of the Gualichu?" I said.

Jeeka looked hastily round as if to make sure there was nothing very dreadful in sight, before he replied--

"I shoot he quick, suppose I can."

"But you shot him before in the shape of a horse?" I said.

"So, so."

"And he has come to life again?"

"He, everywhere."

"You speak the truth, Jeeka: the spirit of evil, if not the evil spirit in person, is everywhere. Now who, think you, made these grand old hills, the mountains beyond? Who made trees and those sweet flowers?

Who made the horses at first, the guanaco and the ostrich? Who made man? Not the Gualichu, surely?"

"N-no. He not make them good," said Jeeka, thoughtfully.

It was an innocent, childlike answer, but yet it brought to my mind at once the words in the first chapter of Genesis, "And G.o.d saw that it was good."

It brought me at once to my subject too. I had felt very shy in speaking at first, but I felt it my duty to speak, and I really think I waxed eloquent as I proceeded. Words seemed to come at all events, simple words and simple language, but they suited the occasion.

I told Nadi and Jeeka the story of the world, the story of its fall, and of its redemption through the mercy and loving-kindness of the Good Spirit who made it.

A story so simple that babes and sucklings can understand it, appealed to the very hearts of these poor handsome heathens.

Nadi dropped her skunk skins in her lap, and listened open-mouthed.

Jeeka was cutting the root of a bush which he had plucked into chips with his dagger. He never once looked up, but I knew he was listening too.

There was silence for a time after I had finished. Then Jeeka rose, and grasped my hand.

"Brother," he said, "you tell me this story again? So, so?"

"So, so," repeated poor Nadi.

During all my story she looked as though she understood every word, and I have no doubt she did; but her husband frequently interrupted me by saying to her--