In Far Bolivia Part 24

He sought once more the shelter of a tall pine-tree of the spruce species. Here he could be safe and here he could sleep.

But after a hearty meal he took the precaution to lash himself to the stem, high, high up.

His descent from the last tree had been accomplished with safety certainly, but it was of rather a peculiar nature, and Benee had no desire to risk his neck again.

The wind softly sighed in the branches.

A bird of the thrush species alighted about a yard above him, and burst into shrill sweet melody to welcome the rising sun.

With half-closed eyes Benee could see from under the branches a deep-orange horizon, fading into pure sea-green zenithwards, then to deepest purple and blue where rested the crimson clouds.

And now there was a glare of brighter and more silvery light, and the red streaks were turned into wreaths of snow.

The sun was up, and Benee slept. But he carried that sweet bird's song into dreamland.

About three days after this Benee was rejoiced to find himself in a new land, but it was a land he knew well--too well.

Though very high above the sea-level it was in reality a

"Land of the mountain and the flood".

Hills on hills rose on all sides of him. There were straths or valleys of such exceeding beauty that they gladdened the eye to behold. The gra.s.s grew green here by the banks of many a brown roaring stream, and here, too, cattle roamed wild and free, knee-deep in flowery verdure, and many a beautiful guanaco and herds of llamas everywhere. The streams that meandered through these highland straths were sometimes very tortuous, but perhaps a mile distant they would seem to lose all control of themselves and go madly rus.h.i.+ng over their pebbly beds, till they dashed over high cliffs at last, forming splendid cascades that fell into deep, dark, agitated pools, the mist that rose above forming rainbows which were never absent when the sun shone.

And the hillsides that bounded these valleys were clad in Alpine verdure, with Alpine trees and flowers, strangely intermingled with beautiful heaths, and in the open glades with gorgeous geraniums, and many a lovely flower never seen even in greenhouses in our "tame domestic England".

These were valleys, but there were glens and narrow gorges also, where dark beetling rocks frowned over the brown waters of streams that rushed fiercely onwards round rocks and boulders, against which they lashed themselves into foam.

On these rocks strange fantastic trees clung, sometimes attached but by the rootlets, sometimes with their heads hanging almost sheer downwards; trees that the next storm of wind would hurl, with crash and roar, into the water far beneath.

Yet such rivers or big burns were the home _par excellence_ of fish of the salmon tribe, and gazing below you might see here and there some huge otter, warily watching to spring on his finny prey.

Nor were the otters alone on the _qui vive_, for, strange as it may seem, even pumas and tiger-cats often made a sullen dive into dark-brown pools, and emerged bearing on high some lordly red-bellied fish. With this they would "speel" the flowery, ferny rocks, and dart silently away into the depths of the forest.

And this wild and beautiful country, at present inhabited by as wild a race of Indians as ever tw.a.n.ged the bow, but bound at no very distant date to come under the influence of Christianity and civilization, was Benee's real home. 'Twas here he roamed when a boy, for he had been a wanderer all his life, a nomad, and an inhabitant of the woods and wilds.

Not a scene was unfamiliar to him. He could name every mountain and hill he gazed upon in his own strangely musical Indian tongue. Every bird, every creature that crept, or glided, or walked, all were his old friends; yes, and every tree and every flower, from the splendid parasitic plants that wound around the trees wherever the sun shone the brightest, and draped them in such a wealth of beauty as would have made all the richness and gaudiness of white kings and queens seem but a caricature.

There was something of romance even in Benee. As he stood with folded arms on the brink of a cliff, and gazed downward into a charming glen, something very like tears stood in his eyes.

He loved his country. It was his own, his native land. But the savages therein he had ceased to love. Because when but a boy--ah, how well he remembered that day,--he was sent one day by his father and mother to gather the berries of a deadly kind of thorn-bush, with the juice of which the flints in the points of the arrows were poisoned. Coming back to his parents' hut in the evening, as happy as boys only can be, he found the place in flames, and saw his father, mother, and a sister whom he loved, being hurried away by the savages, because the queen had need of them. The lot of death had fallen on them. Their flesh was wanted to make part of a great feast her majesty was about to give to a neighbouring potentate. Benee, who had ever been used to hunt for his food as a boy, or fish in the lakes and the brown roaring streams, that he and his parents might live, had always abhorred human sacrifice and human flesh. The latter he had seldom been prevailed upon even to taste.

So from that terrible day he resolved to be a wanderer, and he registered a vow--if I may speak so concerning the thoughts of a poor boy-Indian--to take revenge when he became a man on this very tribe that had brought such grief and woe on him and his.

Benee was still a young man, but little over two-and-twenty, and as he stood there thoughts came into his mind about a little sweetheart he had when a boy.

Wee Weenah was she called; only a child of six when he was good sixteen.

But in all his adventures, in forest or by the streams, Weenah used to accompany him. They used to be away together all day long, and lived on the nuts and the wild fruit that grew everywhere so plentifully about them, on trees, on bushes, or on the flowery banks.

Where was Weenah now? Dead, perhaps, or taken away to the queen's blood-stained court. As a child Weenah was very beautiful, for many of these Indians are very far indeed from being repulsive.

And Benee used to delight to dress his tiny lady-love in feathers of the wild birds, crimson and green and blue, and weave her rude garlands of the gaudiest flowers, to hang around her neck, or entwine in her long dark hair.

He had gone to see Weenah--though he was then in grief and tears--after he had left his father's burnt shealing. He had told her that he was going away far to the north, that he was to become a hunter of the wilds, that he might even visit the homes of the white men, but that some day he would return and Weenah should be his wife.

So they had parted thus, in childish grief and tears, and he had never seen her since.

He might see her nevermore.

While musing thus to himself, he stretched his weary limbs and body on the sweet-scented mossy cliff-top.

It was day certainly, but was he not now at home, in his own, his native land?

He seemed to be afraid of nothing, therefore, and so--he fell asleep.

The bank on which he slept adjoined a darkling forest.

A forest of strange dark pines, with red-brown stems, which, owing to the absence of all undergrowth save heather and moss and fern, looked like the pillars of some vast cavern.

But there was bird music in this forest, and Benee had gone to sleep with the flute-like and mellow notes of the soo-soo falling on his ear.

The soo-soo's song had accompanied him to the land of forgetfulness, and was mingling even now with his dreams--happy dreams of long ago.

But list! Was that really the song of the bronze-necked soo-soo?

He was half-awake now, but apparently dreaming still.

He thought he was dreaming at all events, and would not have opened his eyes and so dispelled the dream for all the world.

It was a sweet girlish voice that seemed to be singing--singing about him, about Benee the wanderer in sylvan wilds; the man who for long years had been alone because he loved being alone, whose hand--until he reached the white man's home--had been against everyone, and against every beast as well.

And the song was a kind of sweet little ballad, which I should try in vain to translate.

But Benee opened his eyes at last, and his astonishment knew no bounds as he saw, kneeling by his mossy couch, the self-same Weenah that he had been thinking and dreaming about.

Though still a girl in years, being but thirteen, she seemed a woman in all her sympathies.

Beautiful? Yes; scarcely changed as to face from the child of six he used to roam in the woods with in the long, long ago. Her dark hair hung to her waist and farther in two broad plaits. Her black eyes brimmed over with joy, and there was a flush of excitement on her sun-kissed cheeks.

"Weenah! Oh, Weenah! Can it be you?" he exclaimed in the Indian tongue.

"It is your own little child-love, your Weenah; and ah! how I have longed for you, and searched for you far and near. See, I am clad in the skins of the puma and the otter; I have killed the jaguar, too, and I have been far north and fought with terrible men. They fell before the poison of my arrows. They tried to catch me; but fleet of foot is Weenah, and they never can see me when I fly. In trees I have slept, on the open heather, in caves of rocks, and in jungle. But never, never could I find my Benee. Ah! life of mine, you will never go and leave us again.

"Yes," she added, "Mother and Father live, and are well. Our home have we enlarged. 'Tis big now, and there is room in it for Benee.

"Come; come--shall we go? But what strange, strange war-weapons you carry. Ah! they are the fire-spears of the white man."