“It seems to me that you’re using the plural a little too lightly, Mister Gauna. What has your family quarrel got to do with me?”
“But my ‘family quarrel’ is what it’s all about! All the rest is simply idle chatter! Do you want the hare? Do you want Cafulcurá?”
“I’m not. . convinced.”
“Well then, just listen. There’s more. My half-sister, the Widow, is in fact. .”
At that moment a deafening noise cut their conversation short. Night had fallen while they were talking, and the Indians had lit their bonfires. There were so many of them, and they were so close together because of the confused huddle of the tents, that the whole camp was lit up like a city. In fact, the profusion of bonfires had brought forward nightfall artificially, and it was not yet completely dark. The sky still gave off a viscous glimmer of light, which made the intervals between each fire a dull gray rather than black. Even the distances floated, mysteriously visible, a while longer.
The shouting was coming from all around them. Clarke, who was always startled by the least little thing, leapt up, his head spinning like a top. Gauna understood what was going on before he did:
“An attack!” he shouted.
And indeed a surprise attack was taking place. A disheveled rider passed close by them, along the top of the riverbank. He was the typical Indian warrior: spear in one hand, stone bolas whirling in the other, his naked body covered in grease, hair streaming in the wind, his face contorted in a ferocious war-cry, his mount galloping flat out under him, plunging forward without reins. The horse’s features were a picture of pure terror. The two men stood paralyzed at the sight, but it was gone in a flash. Fortunately the warrior had not spotted them, but it might be very different with the next one (leaving aside the fact, unimportant as ever in the darkness, that they had nothing whatever to do with what was going on). They rushed to find shelter. As he ran, Clarke looked back and saw other attackers streaming past at the speed of imaginary blinkings of an eye. They were charging along the same path, which must have been chosen by the enemy strategist as one of the lines of attack on the camp. From their new vantage point, he and Gauna could see the upheaval going on there, where only a few moments before the Indians had been peacefully awaiting the arrival of night. The camp was a seething mass of writhing bodies: hideous-looking centaurs launched themselves on howling groups of women; men stood stock still in the center of deadly circles of stone bolas, whose dreadful whirring could be heard even above all the uproar; leaders gesticulated, hoarse from shouting orders into empty air; bodies jerked upright until they reached the height to have their throats cut; children and dogs scrambled desperately amid the horses’ hooves; even the hens were trying in vain to take to the air in fizzing gaggles. And the campfires were reflected in a thousand moving dots, in the sinews of every muscle: the Indians of the camp may have been surprised without their weapons, but not without their body grease — in this at least they were equal to their attackers. A wave of Indians swept out of the camp, then swept back almost at once on horseback.
The lack of space became increasingly evident: tents were knocked down by the flailing horses like houses of cards. The top of the bank on the far side of the river was clear, and the two white men at first thought they could take refuge there. But even as they looked, it filled with a motley gang of horsemen. The bank where they had originally been sitting was now empty, but there seemed no point going back there: their troop of horses had dispersed at the start of the raid. There was no escape. The band of marauders on the far bank charged down, shouting wildly, and Clarke and Gauna were alarmed to realize that they were the target. Clarke ran like the wind back to their things, and felt among the shadowy bundles for his shotgun and a bag of bullets. As he turned again, he saw the silhouette of a savage on the point of spearing Gauna. Clarke shot him and he fell from his horse. The other Indians charged on through a gap between two ridges, heading for the tents. Gauna waited for Clarke to catch him up.
“Are you all right?”
“Never better,” said the gaucho, wheezing like a duck.
“What a disaster,” Clarke exclaimed, gazing at the camp of Agramante that the Indian village had become. Everywhere, bodies had become fountains of blood, which darkened the darkness. Some of the bodies had fallen on to fires, and the stench of charred flesh added another dimension of horror to the scene.
Unfortunately for them, the battle flowed back toward them. A fierce combat was going on behind them. Clarke raised his shotgun and downed two Indians. He ran with Gauna until they were protected by tents. Then they were dragged by a mob of wailing, crazy women toward the very center of the fighting. The most dangerous thing were the bullets which, as usual with the Indians, were fired off at random. More than once they felt them buzz too close to their heads for comfort, like tiny nocturnal bees. All of a sudden, the two men became separated. It seemed as if successive moments of time were all being thrown together: there were women bending over wounded Indians to give them water, while a few steps away, another Indian was climbing on to a bloodstained horse and loosening his bolas. . Clarke wondered how on earth he had started out on the outside of the camp, and finished in the center, right where the fighting was at its height. The dust raised by the charging horses had mixed with the smoke from the burning tents to create a thick, impenetrable fog. Everywhere, people trod on dead bodies. Clarke had no time to worry about anything but himself; he tried to avoid any dangerous encounter, and ran first in one direction and then another, until he was completely disoriented. Even so, to his amazement, he still found himself in the thick of the combat, but his dodging kept him out of the way of the hand-to-hand fighting, and he did not have to fire any more shots, despite often being on the point of doing so. Horribly overexpressive horseheads kept looming through the walls of dust and smoke. The Indians’ war-cries constantly echoed through the confusion. Suddenly a rush of people carried him away with them. They plunged through the ruins of several tents, and just as he was trying to jump over the bodies of some wounded Indians, Clarke was astonished to hear. . laughter. There was something very familiar about it, and from the mist in front of him he soon saw emerge the figure of Carlos Alzaga Prior, together with a group of young Indians of both sexes.
“Clarke, I was so worried about you!”
“Throw that cigarette away!”
The Englishman’s indignation exploded like a storm within a storm. He went up to the youth, seized his arm with his left hand (he was still clutching his shotgun in the other) and shook him, all the while dragging him away from the others. Carlos had a lighted cigarette between his fingers.
“How irresponsible, how thoughtless of you!” Clarke was choking with fury, and had to shout at the top of his lungs to make himself heard.
Carlos shook himself free. He wasn’t very lucid. The bleary smile did not leave his face even when it was his turn to shout:
“Leave me in peace! You can’t tell me what to do!”
“Come here!” Beside himself, Clarke raised the gun as though he were about to shoot.
Then something extraordinary happened: a horse that may or may not have had a rider (they didn’t see one) galloped between them. Clarke was stunned, but Carlos carried on as if nothing had happened.
“Have a puff,” he said, holding the cigarette out to Clarke between his thumb and his middle finger.