Off the Mangrove Coast (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Read online

  Mountains loomed up around us and the way was narrower. Somewhere, hidden in these peaks, I had heard there were huge caves. We were nearing the place where I had originally found my diamonds, a long day or two and we’d be there.

  That gave me an idea. What would happen if I dropped into the Lacklan camp some afternoon and let them know my old diamond placer was nearby? John would almost certainly object but I wondered if he wouldn’t be tempted to take a day or two out to see what might be found there. With luck I could derail the whole plan, if there was a plan at all. I leaned forward to speak to Raj. “Jeru’s camp, does anyone know where it is?”

  “No, boss. Very far upriver.” He paused for a moment. “If I was Jeru I would not be on river. Police mans, they do not like to get out of the boat. They do not like jungle because their rifles are no good.”

  He was right, the limited light, limited range, and plentiful cover in the forest did reduce the effectiveness of firearms considerably.

  “I have heard on the coast that the pirate Jeru went to a longhouse where all mans dead of sickness. He took longhouse for those who follow him. They are all very bad. They take heads, even now they take heads.”

  If Borneo is famous for one thing it is its native headhunters. As romantically gruesome as the practice is it has been dramatically curtailed in recent years, at least along the coast. In the interior, the severed heads of tribal enemies are still kept for their magical power, and a freshly taken head has the most power.

  The sun was just touching the rim of the mountains when Lacklan’s boats tucked into the shore and Raj and I stopped paddling and let the current carry us back downstream about half a mile before finding a place to camp.

  As was becoming my habit I took my field glasses and started upriver, out of camp. At the last moment Raj’s voice stopped me for a moment.

  “Boss?” I turned to where he was standing by the fire. “If there no trouble, we hunt for diamonds, okay?”

  “Sure, Raj,” I said. “We’re up here, might as well.” He was right. I’d given up the canal job to come after the Lacklans; we were using up the supplies I’d bought for them and nothing lucrative awaited us back in Marudi. On the day after tomorrow I would drop in on my favorite tourists and find out if I could get them away from their guides. Then we’d see if we could dig some diamonds. I didn’t want to return from this fool’s errand with nothing. On top of it all I had a sixteen-year-old Dyak kid who thought I was just enough off my rocker that he had to remind me occasionally to keep my eyes on the target.

  *

  —

  THE RIVER WAS wide here, and though I was farther away than the first time I had spied on the Lacklans, the water was slow enough that I could hear some of what was going on in their camp. There was a clank of pots as one of the older men laid out his cooking supplies, the hard bark of an ax as someone back in the forest chopped wood.

  Helen Lacklan sat in a patch of sunlight reading a book. From its bright red cover and small size I recognized it as a popular guidebook on Indonesia and Malaysia. John Lacklan sat in the boat cleaning his gun. It looked from this distance to be a bolt-action Winchester; with an ebony cap on the forestock I figured that it was one of the fancier models. From its long barrel and scope and the fact that the Lacklans came from New Mexico I assumed that it was his prized gun for deer or bighorn sheep…whichever, it wasn’t the best weapon for the jungle. This was a place where speed and maneuverability counted most. As I watched he carefully depressed the stop and slid the bolt back into the rifle, then pressed five long cartridges back into its magazine. For the first time I was glad he was armed.

  He tucked his cleaning supplies into a small pack and then stalked over to a mound of supplies and set the rifle down. He paused and made a comment to Helen but she barely looked up. He stood there, tension building up in him, for a moment, but then broke off and went to the other end of the camp. I realized that I was witnessing an argument or the aftermath of one.

  Over the wash of the river, slow and quiet at this point, I heard a man’s voice raised in anger. Then John Lacklan was standing over Helen yelling and gesticulating wildly. His thin face was turning a dark red under the fresh burn he’d been getting, and although I couldn’t understand the words, his voice was hoarse. Suddenly, Helen threw her book at him and leaped to her feet. The red-covered guidebook bounced off of his shoulder and he backed up a step. She advanced toward him and it almost looked like she was daring him to hit her. They paused and he backed away. In some way, she had called his bluff.

  I squirmed back into the shadows of the forest. At the last minute as I headed back to my camp I noticed the flamboyantly dressed Iban boy and two of the men from the boat crew standing in the tree shadows across from me. The older crewmen had averted their gazes with expressions of shock and embarrassment on their faces; such outbursts of emotion as they had just witnessed were not considered at all acceptable in Malaya, but the boy studied them carefully and with a knowing smirk from behind his dark glasses.

  *

  —

  I LAY IN MY hammock that night wondering what would happen tomorrow afternoon when I faced them again. It was going to be awkward and I was going to have to act like there was never any problem between us. I didn’t know if they would accept the story I was going to make up about deciding to use their supplies to look for diamonds, but it probably made more sense than what I was actually up to.

  Had I really followed them hoping for the worst so that I could step in and rescue Helen Lacklan and make her husband look the fool that I took him to be? And if that was true how much of a fool was he? He had chosen another guide to keep his wife and I apart. I had thought the idea amusing at the time, then I’d thought it dangerous. I had had one short opportunity to appreciate Helen Lacklan and I doubted if she had given much thought, if any, to me. But here I was, following them through the bush and rapidly developing a case that would do a sophomore proud on a married woman I hardly knew. Paranoid he might be but I was beginning to guess few people called John Lacklan stupid.

  Well, I would follow along for one more day, until we reached my old diamond placer, then I would do my best to divert them from whatever this Iban boy had planned. If they didn’t want to follow me I would leave them to their destiny.

  For better or for worse, I thought, I was back upriver. Even though it had cost me all the supplies that Lacklan had paid for, supplies that I might have sold, and losing the canal-cleaning job. I realized I’d better make the best of it. This was what I’d wanted all along: another chance at the diamonds. I drifted off to sleep as a soft rain began tapping at the shelter half strung over my mosquito net. Somehow I’d gotten what I’d wanted all along.

  *

  —

  A HIGH-PITCHED CRACK OF thunder brought me awake just before dawn. I lay listening, waiting for the echoes to roll back from the mountains or down the river canyon. Through some trick of the rain or the forest vegetation the echo didn’t come. I thought about returning home with the money from a diamond find in my pocket…I thought about returning home with enough to explain my having disappeared into the Far East for almost two years.

  An hour later when the gibbon monkeys began to noisily greet the sun, Raj rolled out of his hammock and made up some breakfast. We didn’t take long to get packed. I walked up the riverbank, the water running slightly higher because of last night’s rain, just far enough to see if the Lacklans had left camp yet. Their boats were gone so we pushed out into the stream and dug our paddles in against the current.

  Around us the forest released great plumes of steam as the sun’s heat cut into the trees. Trunks, some two hundred feet tall, leaned out over the water leaving only the narrowest slot of sky overhead. In the jungle itself one rarely could see more than sixty yards without the view being blocked by the growth. Even the tops of the trees were obscured by a much lower canopy with only the massive trunks hinting at the true size of the forest giants.

  W
e pushed past the Lacklans’ campsite from the night before. They must have had an early start because their fire was cold, not even a thin line of smoke rising from behind the piled-up rocks they had used as a hearth. The shadows between the boles of the trees behind their camp were black as night, the few penetrating rays of the morning sun overshooting this area to glance off the emerald leaves of the higher forest.

  Suddenly I stopped paddling. The canoe lost momentum and Raj looked around quickly.

  “Boss? What’s wrong?”

  Hidden under the trees, deep within the shadows but not quite deep enough to keep the morning light from revealing it, was the stern of a blotto.

  “Turn in!” I commanded, and we made for the shore.

  Leaving Raj to haul our boat out of the water I grabbed up my gun and splashed up onto the rocky beach. I hit the darkness of the forest and froze, letting my eyes adjust.

  The two dugouts rested in narrow lanes between the trees, back along the shore were drag marks from where they had been pulled out of the water and across the mud flat to the jungle. Everything, supplies, mining equipment, camping gear, everything but the paddles were gone!

  Could they have headed away from the river to a legitimate place to placer for diamonds? Had they hidden the canoes or just pulled them away from the rising waters of the river? I walked back out to their campsite.

  The fire was dead and there was no sign it had been doused with water. They had not had breakfast.

  Then I saw it. Shining brightly in a patch of sunlight; the answer to my questions…the worst answer to my questions. A long thin cylinder of brass. I picked it up and turned it over. It was stamped .30-06. The empty cartridge casing smelled powerfully of gunpowder even in this dampness. It had not been thunder I had heard just before dawn. It had been John Lacklan’s rifle!

  *

  —

  I HAD TRACKED ANIMALS while hunting in Arizona and Nevada but following a trail in the jungles of Borneo was a different experience altogether. Luckily, the Lacklans and their captors had left camp after the rain stopped and they were not trying to hide their trail. The fact that there were ten of them heavily laden with the goods from the canoes helped also.

  Raj and I were burdened only with water, light packs, our parangs—Raj’s being more along the lines of a traditional headhunting sword, thus larger than mine—and my rifle.

  They left occasional slip marks in the mud, breaks or machete cuts on protruding branches and vines. The trail was not hard to follow. But another problem soon became apparent.

  Away from the river we found ourselves climbing a tall ridge cut by many small streams. The trail then followed the top of the ridge as it switchbacked along between the Baram River on one side and a deeply cut canyon on the other. Visibility was so limited and the landscape so broken that although I could easily follow the trail or backtrack my own path I had no idea which direction was north, south, east, or west. I could barely tell which way was up-or downriver unless I could see the water close up and by now we were hundreds of feet above the banks. To make matters worse it was dark, dark as deep twilight, and the humidity had increased tremendously. I was overheated, slick with sweat, and making far too much noise as I pushed along the trail.

  Raj was doing better than I and it wasn’t only because of his youth. Although he had lived his life in Marudi he often went with his uncles to the forest and had some of the natural ease of the jungle peoples. He seemed to be able to instinctively place his feet in the most solid spots whether we were climbing over rocks covered with wet moss or skirting a deep bog of leaf mold. I dropped our pace to the point where I could follow him more exactly, and in relative silence, we pressed on.

  By noon we seemed no closer to our quarry and I was down to the last of my canteen. We stopped by a brook that cascaded down the dim mountainside and had some dried pork while I boiled water on a tiny gas stove I had bought for the Lacklans. I didn’t always purify my water when I was in the bush but this would be a disastrous time to get sick so we waited while the stove hissed and the pot finally boiled. Raj harvested a vine growing nearby and after pounding it with a rock he made a paste that we rubbed on our legs. “Kulit elang,” he said. “Will help a couple hours, leeches don’t like.” We pressed on.

  *

  —

  THE DIM LIGHT under the tree canopy was fading and the black cicadas had started their rasping, throbbing chorus when we reached what seemed to be our destination. We were on another river, much smaller than the Baram, and tucked back in the trees at the edge of a gravel bank was a decrepit longhouse. Dugouts were pulled up on the bank and all around the main dwelling stretched a wasteland of squalor such as I had only seen in the native villages that had become ghettos because of their closeness to the large coastal cities.

  The last of the sunlight was striking the overgrown slopes of the nearby mountains and the river valley was in shadow but I could barely make out overgrown fields and collapsed farm huts behind the ring of trash that had been ejected over the years from the longhouse. In most cases a Dyak longhouse is a fascinating structure; built up, off the ground and out of the flood plains on stilts, sometimes as much as twenty feet high, the interior of the building is twenty feet from floor to ceiling and often over one hundred feet long. Its roof and sides are made of a kind of native thatch or sheathed in tin, where available. Although surrounded by farming huts and storehouses it is the communal dwelling for the entire village.

  This longhouse was one of the smaller ones and obviously very old. One corner was drooping dangerously on poorly repaired stilts and in this and other areas the verandah had all but given way. Across the distance I could hear harsh laughter and a slight strain of sapeh music on the wind, lights could be seen coming on through the doors and breaks in the walls.

  Raj edged closer, he seemed jumpy, his fingers toyed with the hilt of his parang.

  “You were right, boss.” He whispered, although we were a good half mile away. “This is the longhouse of Tuan Jeru.”

  I was surprised by his use of the term “Tuan,” which indicates respect, and by his nervous whisper. I had seen Raj stand calmly by and thrust the same parang he was now nervously tapping deep into the side of a boar that attacked one of our workmen on a construction job. He had then pivoted like a matador and finished the enormous animal off when it turned to attack him instead. He had been barely fifteen at the time.

  “Are you afraid of going in there? Tell me why?” I wasn’t feeling too good about it myself but I figured I better know as much as possible.

  Raj’s chin came up and the dying light in the sky glinted in his eyes. “I am not afraid of any man!” he stated flatly. “But it is said that Tuan Jeru is a bali saleng, a black ghost, that he has killed many mans and taken their blood to bless the buildings of the English and Dutch and now for the oil companies.”

  “Do you believe that?” I demanded. “You’ve worked with me on many buildings. Have you ever seen a foreigner take the time to make a sacrifice of blood or anything else?”

  “No…”

  I wasn’t sure that this was really the right argument to use and I actually had a fair amount of respect for the beliefs of Raj and his people, but if he went in there scared, witch doctor or not, Jeru would take advantage of the situation.

  “How many do you think are down there?”

  “If the stories are true, twenty mans, maybe ten womans, maybe more.”

  “What else do the stories say?” I asked.

  “The mans of Tuan Jeru are sakit bati; they are killers and rapists from the oil camps and towns on the coast. No village would have them. They are collectors of blood and they take heads to make magic.”

  “Do you want to stay here, guard our backs?” I gave him a chance to get out with honor.

  “I will go with you, boss,” the boy said.

  “Good. Now, what do you think is going on down there?”

  “I think they have big arak party. Everyone get v
ery drunk. They have all new trade goods, shotgun shell, fancy rifle. I think we wait.”

  “What about the Lacklans? Will they be all right?”

  Raj paused, he wanted to tell me what he thought I wanted to hear but he knew I would press him for the truth. “I don’t know, boss,” he said. “I think maybe they cut off man’s head. The woman, I don’t know…These people, they not Iban, not Kayan, not Kelabit,” he named off the three major tribal groups, “they something different now…outlaws, you know. I bet they get drunk like Iban though, you’ll see.”

  I hoped so, because outlaws or not I was betting that just like a normal village they had plenty of dogs and roosters. The typical longhouse celebration in Sarawak was a roaring drunk and I hoped that was what they were building up to because otherwise we weren’t going to get in there without raising an alarm.

  I wanted to be ready when the moment came, so we moved in closer, carefully waded through the rushing waters of the stream, and circled away downwind of the skeletal silhouette of the longhouse. We settled down just inside the secondary tree line and waited to see what would happen. The noise from inside was getting louder and I was sure that Raj had been right about them working themselves up to an all-night drunk. I just wasn’t sure what was going to happen to John and Helen…or when.

  They might be dead already and I couldn’t wait much longer without trying to find out. I decided to split the difference; wait another hour but if I heard a commotion I’d go in with the rifle and hope for the best. If there were twenty men in the longhouse, at least five would have the cheap single-shot shotguns that were common in the backcountry of Borneo. Someone in there had possession of Lacklan’s deer rifle and certainly there would be a full complement of spears, blowpipes, and machetes. My only hope was to get in and get as many of them covered as possible before anyone thought to grab a weapon. It wasn’t much of a plan; get in fast, get out fast, and put my confidence in the local arak’s potency.

  Now, in my experience, arak has the punch of the best (or worst, depending on your expectations) moonshine. It seemed to have the chemical properties of torpedo fuel or the infamous “Indian whiskey” that was made in the old days in Oklahoma. One shot would make you stagger, a couple more would make you stupid. Imbibing further could leave one blind or even dead. Waiting for a level of intoxication that would give me an edge was a risky business.