Yaguaí · II

The drought continued; the forest slowly grew deserted as the animals concentrated around the trickles of water that had once been great streams. The three dogs forced the distance that separated them from the beasts’ watering hole with moderate success, for since this was heavily frequented in turn by jaguars, the small game grew wary. Fragoso, worried by the ruin of his clearing and disputes with the owner of his land, had no humor for hunting, not even out of hunger. And the situation threatened to become very critical thus, when a fortuitous circumstance brought a little encouragement to the lamentable pack.

Fragoso had to go to San Ignacio, and the four dogs, who went with him, felt in their dilated nostrils an impression of plant freshness—very vague, if you will,—yet which hinted at a little life in that furnace of heat and drought. Indeed, the region had been less battered, as a result of which some cornfields, however wretched, were still standing.

They did not eat that day; but upon returning panting behind the horse, the dogs did not forget that sensation of freshness, and the following night they set out together in a mute trot toward San Ignacio. On the banks of the Yabebirí they stopped, smelling the water and lifting their trembling snouts to the other shore. The moon was rising then, with its yellowish waning light. The dogs advanced cautiously across the river upon stepping stones, leaping here, swimming there, at a crossing that in normal water is three meters deep.

Without barely shaking themselves, they resumed their silent and tenacious trot toward the nearest cornfield. There the fox terrier watched his companions break the stalks with their teeth, devouring the green corn cobs in dry bites that sank right down to the cob. He did the same; and for an hour, in the clearing blackened by burnt trees, which the funeral light of the waning moon made more spectral, the dogs moved hither and thither among the stalks, growling at one another.

They returned three more times, until on the last night too close a gunshot put them on their guard. But as this adventure coincided with Fragoso’s move to San Ignacio, the dogs did not feel it very much.

Fragoso had finally managed to move there, deep in the colony. The forest, interwoven with tacuapí bamboo, proclaimed excellent soil; and those immense skeins of bamboo, laid low on the ground with the machete, were bound to prepare magnificent clearings.

When Fragoso settled in, the tacuapí was beginning to dry out. He cleared and quickly burned a quarter of a hectare, trusting in some miracle of rain. The weather broke, indeed; the white sky turned leaden, and in the hottest hours livid rims of cumulus clouds showed through on the horizon. The thermometer at 39 and the north wind blowing with fury finally brought twelve millimeters of water, which Fragoso took advantage of for his corn, very pleased. He saw it sprout, he saw it grow magnificently up to five centimeters, but nothing more.

In the tacuapí, beneath it and feeding perhaps on its shoots, live an infinity of rodents. When it dries out, its guests scatter, hunger drives them perforce to the plantations; and thus Fragoso’s three dogs, who went out one night, returned immediately rubbing their bitten snouts. Fragoso killed four rats that same night as they assaulted his lard tin.

Yaguaí was not there. But the following night, he and his companions ventured into the forest (although the fox terrier did not run after the trail, he knew perfectly well how to unearth armadillos and find tinamou nests), when the former was surprised by the detour his companions made so as not to cross the clearing. Yaguaí advanced through it, nonetheless; and a moment later he was bitten on a paw, while rapid shadows darted everywhere.

Yaguaí saw what it was; and instantaneously, amid the full barbarism of the tropical forest and misery, the bright eyes, the high and stiff tail, and the fighting attitude of the admirable English dog emerged. Hunger, humiliation, acquired vices, everything vanished in a second before the rats pouring out from everywhere. And when he finally went back to lie down, bloody, dying of fatigue, he had to leap after the hungry rats that were literally invading the shack.

Fragoso was delighted by that sudden burst of nerves and muscles that he no longer remembered, and the memory of the old fight with the tayra rose to his memory; it was the same bite over the shoulder: a dry snap of the jaw, and on to another rat.

He also understood whence that baleful invasion came, and with a long series of oaths spoken aloud, he gave his cornfield up for lost. What could Yaguaí do alone? He went to the clearing, stroking the fox terrier, and whistled to his dogs; but as soon as the tiger trackers felt the rats’ teeth on their snouts, they whined, rubbing them with two paws. Fragoso and Yaguaí bore the brunt of the day alone, and if the former came away with a sore wrist, the latter breathed out bloody bubbles through his nose.

In twelve days, despite all that Fragoso and the fox terrier did to save it, the clearing was lost. The rats, much like tinamous, know very well how to unearth the grain still clinging to the little plant. The weather, fiery once more, did not permit even the shadow of a new planting, and Fragoso found himself forced to go to San Ignacio in search of work, taking his dog to Cooper at the same time, since he could no longer keep him at all. He did so with genuine sorrow, for the recent adventures, placing the fox terrier in his true hunting theater, had raised the hunter’s esteem for the little white dog very high.

Along the road, the fox terrier heard, far off, the cart-track noise of the Yabebirí grasslands burning in the drought; he saw at the edge of the forest the cows that, enduring the cloud of horseflies, bent the catiguá trees with their chests, advancing mounted upon the arched trunk until they reached the leaves. He saw the subtropical forest itself drying up upon the stony patches, and over the misty horizon of the 38-40 degree afternoons, he saw once more the sun falling suffocated in a red and dull circle.

Half an hour later they arrived in San Ignacio, and it being already too late to reach Cooper’s place, Fragoso postponed his visit until the following morning. The three dogs, though dying of hunger, did not venture much to prowl in unknown country, with the exception of Yaguaí, whom the suddenly awakened memory of the old runs ahead of Cooper’s horse led in a straight line to his master’s house.

The abnormal circumstances the country was passing through with the four-month drought—and one needs to know what this means in Misiones—caused the peons’ dogs, already famished in times of abundance, to carry their nocturnal pillaging to an intolerable degree. In broad daylight, Cooper had had the occasion to lose three hens, snatched away by the dogs toward the forest. And if one remembers that the ingenuity of a lazy settler manages to teach his puppies this maneuver to take advantage of the prey together, it will be understood that Cooper lost his patience, unfailingly discharging his shotgun upon every nocturnal thief. Although he used nothing but birdshot, the lesson was harsh all the same.

Thus one night, just as he was going to bed, his alert ear perceived the sound of enemy claws trying to force the wire mesh. With a gesture of annoyance he unhooked the shotgun, and going outside saw a white patch moving within the yard. He fired rapidly, and at the piercing howls of the animal dragging itself along its hind legs, he felt a fleeting start of alarm that he could not explain and vanished immediately. He reached the spot, but the dog had already disappeared, and he went back inside.

“What was it, Papa?” his daughter asked him from the bed. “A dog?”

“Yes,” Cooper replied, hanging up the shotgun. “I shot rather close...”

“Is the dog big, Papa?”

“No, child.”

A moment passed.

“Poor Yaguaí!” Julia continued. “How he must be!”

Suddenly Cooper remembered the impression he had felt upon hearing the dog howl: something of his Yaguaí was there... But thinking also of how remote that probability was, he fell asleep.

It was the following morning, very early, when Cooper, following the trail of blood, found Yaguaí dead at the edge of the banana grove well.

In a foul mood he returned home, and Julia’s first question was about the little dog.

“Did he die, Papa?”

“Yes, down there in the well... it’s Yaguaí.”

He grabbed the shovel, and followed by his two dismayed children, went to the well. Julia, after gazing motionless for a moment, walked slowly over to sob against Cooper’s trousers.

“What have you done, Papa!”

“I didn’t know, little one... Step aside a moment.”

In the banana grove he buried his dog, tamped down the earth on top, and returned deeply troubled, leading his two kids by the hand, who cried softly so their father wouldn’t hear them.