Talk:The Thirty Gang
| Information about this edition | |
|---|---|
| Edition: | Extracted from Adventure magazine, Oct 30 1923, pp. 3-45. |
| Source: | http://archive.org/details/AdventureV043N0319231030 |
| Contributor(s): | ragpicker |
| Proofreaders: | ragcleaner |
In connection with the story[edit]
(From the Camp-Fire section of the issue, pp. 176-177)
ARTHUR O. FRIEL comes across with several things in connection with his novelette in this issue:
There are a few sizable chunks of truth in "The Thirty Gang." For instance:
A COUPLE of years ago Ramón Rodriguez (his real name), a foreman for a San Fernando balata man, attacked an Indian girl on the Cunucunuma. Except for the fact that he did not attempt to carry her to the Orinoco, but left her in the bush, what followed was exactly as I have related. The avengers made no attack on Ramón's crew; they got the guilty man and got him very thoroughly; and then they turned back into the jungle and let the crew go out to tell the tale. They knew perfectly what that meant, too. So when they returned to their tribe-house they calmly gathered their effects and vanished into the mysterious mountains to the north. They have never come back.
The raid of Coronet Bayona in the Maquiritare country, via the Caura and the Ventuari, with its accompanying brutality, also is fact. He did not carry men down the river as slaves, however; it was an expedition of wanton murder and fiendishness against unsuspecting "Indian dogs." Unfortunately there was no Black White to take his trail, and he traveled fast enough to evade retribution from the unorganized Maquiritares. During one of his halts he had a Maquiritare prisoner tied to a tree and beaten to death merely for his amusement. He himself was one of Tomis Funes' bootlicking brutes (hence the self-conferred title of "Coronel") and, when his boss was killed, he fled to Brazil. I hope somebody has shot him before now, but, as I am not sure of it, I am changing his name.
Another San Fernando gang who later started up the Ventuari, however, had to turn tail before they came within many miles of the Maquiritare hills. In spite of their guns, they got thoroughly licked by a bunch of Yavaranos, and most of them became food for the caribes instead of returning to San Fernando.
Working balata by terrorizing and enslaving Indians is very old stuff in the up-Orinoco country. It's still done—oh Lord, yes. The Indians fight back when they can, and some tribes have proved themselves distinctly dangerous to meddle with.
IN A way, I'm sorry that I have to portray the men of San Fernando de Atabapo in such an unfavorable light. As previously stated, I got along very well with those who were in the town when I was there, and some of them were darned good scouts. At the same time, the place is what it is, and in Funes' time it was what it was, and there's no getting away from facts. If I tried to depict that burg as anything else than a murderers' roost (at any rate between 1913 and 1921, which is the time of this story) I'd be a liar and a fool. Paco Peldóm and Jaime Pecoro and their gangs were types only too well known in the "Rio Negro" country.
The "rifle accident" which Diego tries on Loco León is old stuff in San Fernando. In fact, if there's any form of plain or fancy assassination unknown to that town it's one that's been forgotten since prehistoric days.
There was one real man in Funes' "army"—the Amalio Lopez mentioned in this tale. That was his real name, and he is an unsung hero. He fought to the last for Funes, and when he fell mortally wounded he refused to have his wounds stanched, preferring to die in the service of his doomed Coronel. It was a noble sacrifice for a most ignoble master.
AS FOR the poison used by Loco León—well, let an old-time adventurer tell it—Sir Walter Raleigh, who in 1595 journeyed a little way up the Orinoco and had a tough time of it. In his report on what he learned there he stated:
"There was nothing whereof I was more curious than to find out the true remedies of these poisoned arrows. For besides the mortality of the wound they make, the party shot endureth the most insufferable torment in the world, and abideth a most ugly and lamentable death, sometimes dying stark mad, sometimes their bowels breaking out of their bellies; which are presently discoloured as black as pitch, and so unsavory as no man can endure to cure or to attend them. And it is more strange to know that in all this time there was never Spaniard, either by gift or torment, that could attain to the true knowledge of the cure, although they have martyred and "put to invented torture I know not how many of them."
Sir Walter ascribes the use of this infernal stuff to another tribe of Indians than the Maquiritares, but that does not mean that the Maquiritares and other nations were ignorant of it. For that matter, the Maquiritares themselves were unknown to Sir Walter, who stayed on the Orinoco, went only as far as the Rio Caroní (about sixty miles below the present Ciudad Bolívar)and saw only those Indians who came to meet him. The only poison with which I personally came into contact down there (except that in the systems of sundry snakes which came a-visiting) was the curare commonly used by the blowgun sharpshooters—and I took good care that none of that got under my hide. But I have little doubt that those usually good-natured sons of the highlands could, if they wished, produce a war-venom as bad as that used by Loco León.
SPEAKING of poisons, here's something which the anti-tobacco crusaders probably would include under that head, but which I and my crew inhaled without permanent impairment of health: black Brazilian tobacco rolled in rectangles of Adventure magazine paper. On the Ventuari I ran out of cigarets and eke of rice papers and tabari, and the only thing smokable left was that Brazilian tobacco (obtained at San Fernando, and very scarce and precious there) wrapped in scraps of Adventure. The combination was so strong it nearly knocked us cock-eyed. But we not only survived—we got so used to it that when we came out to a point where we could again buy regular Venezuelan cigarrillos (which are pretty stiff smokes) we grumbled because they had no punch!
I do not recommend this combination, except to desperate men. Anybody desiring to try it out, however, can get about the same effect by smoking full-strength perique rolled in a piece of this page. Before lighting, sit down in a sand-pile. Then you won't get bruised when you fall over.—A. O. F.