CHAPTER V

_... for now began_ _Night with her sullen wings to double-shade the desert._

—Milton.

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By its very monotony, human nature is disappointing. Interior Cubans are guileless, frank, generous, meek, dirty, willing, and altogether submissive and obedient. In other words, they are children. But a community like Macagua has its four-flushers, its liars, and its cheats, the same as London, New York, and Oshkosh. There had been at the dance a man who said he lived some distance eastward, knew every foot of the country and, on returning to his farm in the morning, would be glad to show us the difficultly followed trail. We took him along.

It was very early in the morning and the sun was straight ahead, shining into our eyes over the low mist which had not yet been dispelled. We ran right from town into a great fen, where only a few stunted palm trees rose above the vast ocean of rank guinea grass, covering invisible mires. We could not see the wet places until we ran into them. Trying to get around a deep mud hole, we bumped into a palm tree and had to cut it down.

Chopping a palm tree is like chopping steel tubing. A hundred glancing blows of machete, mattock and axe leave a few scratches on the trunk of the tree. It was while we were hacking away at this palm that our volunteer guide informed us that we were lost. There is no definite road through the tall grass which hides the treacherous swamps. The sun is the best guide. We began to wish for the rocks that we had struggled over, back in Matanzas Province. Our displeasure we vented on the unfortunate fraud who had invented his guide story to obtain a ride in the wonderful automobile from the United States. We were even disappointed that he did not mind being left anywhere to walk back. Provincial Cubans do not travel far from home, ever, but they will wander in any direction with you and worry not at all about going back. The lack of palatable food is about the same in one place as another, and the hut of one Cuban is about as homelike as that of another, so they are seemingly indifferent to time or place.

Sighting the railway, we decided to quit trying to follow the hidden trail through the swamp and take to the right-of-way. Imagine running along the worst railway roadbed of which you can think, just inside the fence, regardless of grades, banks, or ravines. Imagine such a stretch of road covered thick and deep with grass. For several leagues this is what we had, until we struck a high plateau where there was no habitation and no road—only palm trees, by the thousands, and, scattered among them, small ponds made by heavy rainfall.

The grass was short. The sun scorched and there was nothing to drink. We had forgotten to lay in our usual supply of oranges. We wandered about, guided by the sun and trying to keep to the correct general direction. Palm trees are not close together like the trees of a northern forest, but at a certain distance their white trunks bank into a solid wall. Always, it seemed, we were in the middle of a large, white-paled arena. Here, also, Rogelio pointed out to us the flat-topped guao tree, which is dreaded by the natives because of the popular belief that to rest in its shadow means sleep and death.

After awhile we hit a sandy trail which had been the bed of some long since dried-out river. It was seamed in a thousand directions by the draining off of recent rains. We welcomed the approach of the first person we had met since morning, a horse-back rider who appeared to be honestly familiar with the country and who led us, once more, to the trail we had lost. We encountered more tall grass. To a spectator, the car must have looked like some big, black beast, wallowing along in boundless marsh.

A deep blue ridge in the east betokened mountains. We were in a valley. That afternoon we forded nine shallow rivers and rushed innumerable short steep climbs up their farther banks. Some of these grades seemed to stand the car on end, both going down and coming up. At many of them we were forced to stop and cut out notches in the hard clay or solid rock, to clear the fly wheel, when the car should go up over the sharp crown of the hill.

At a small, isolated grocery store, where we stopped for oranges, we learned that we had missed San Domingo, our immediate objective point, by many miles, and so struck directly eastward for Esperanza. It was discouraging information, for we had not eaten at all that day. We were fighting hard and our mettle was improving. We had long since dropped the habit of anxiety that had shadowed our efforts on the first two days.

We kept on going lower and lower into the valley. The valley became muddier and muddier. We crossed quagmires by the score, some of them by following a carefully planned route over solid spots. Others we crossed by making a rough causeway of brush and any broken trees and limbs which we could find. Still others, whose bottoms, by probing with a stick, we found to be made of hard rock, we took by “shooting”—which means driving full tilt straight through the mud and water. “Shooting” became a common pastime with us and a by-word. At every mire one of us would run ahead of the car, size it up or investigate, and yell back the directions to “shoot her” or to get out and help build a floating bridge of brush.

[Illustration: “_The valley became muddier and muddier._”

SEE PAGE 66.]

[Illustration: “_The sun’s farewell glance spread a woven gold mantilla on the naked shoulders of a grim, forbidding world and the motor car sank, helpless, into the mud as if, also, its day was done._”

SEE PAGE 69.]

We had crossed several rivers that would have been ten to fifteen feet deep with water during the rainy season. Even now some of them had treacherous bottoms of irregularly piled stone. Before fording, it was necessary for one of us to wade through to map out a route over the high places along which the car might be safely driven through the water. We did not stop for a meal at Esperanza, because the daylight was going away from Santa Clara faster than we were going towards it and we wished to spend the night there. We had not yet driven after dark, but to-night it seemed that either we would have to do so or camp in a seemingly uninhabited tract of marshy land.

The low clouds in the west, reflecting the crimson glory of the sun’s farewell glance, spread a woven gold mantilla on the naked shoulders of a grim, forbidding world, and the motor car sank, helpless, into the deep mud as if, also, its day was done. We hesitated before we went to work. We knew that, somewhere, away off behind the big, dark hills, was Santa Clara, food, and shelter. We knew that, somehow, we would raise the car from the enveloping mire. We had accomplished more difficult tasks, yet we hesitated. The flaming clouds darkened into livid fires which flickered and went out. There was no twilight. In the gloom of ominous night, broken only by the slender rays from an oil lamp, we took a new reef in our nerve and began another round of the desperate, elemental fight against the mud. One of us searched for long poles to use as pries. Another vainly sought to make a solid foundation for the jack underneath the car. The others collected rocks. We had previously cursed these ever-present boulders, which we now welcomed. All worn by the day’s hard work and with a big job before us, we stopped, enchanted, as from the far-away hills came the clear, melodious “ah, ohs!” of the voceo de ganado—the silver tones of the native Cuban, calling home his cattle.

“Oiga, chico!” yelled the sanguine Rogelio.

“Que hay!” came the answering call.

Soon white-trousered, bare-footed, dark, wiry fellows surrounded the strange vehicle of los Americanos. All the wealth of words in the Spanish tongue seemed insufficient to express their wonderment. Like a small army, guided and bullied by their natural leader, they carried stones, swung on the long poles, yelled and fussed until, one after another, the wheels were raised and set on an uncertain floor of rough rocks. Waldon jumped to his seat behind the wheel. The motor spit and steadied to the old familiar purr. The native audience stood tense and spellbound. The clutch engaged. With a mighty wrench, the big car tore itself free, scattering behind a wild volley of stones and mud, and jumped to the solid ground ahead.

“El Toro!” cried a Cuban.

“El Toro!” echoed the chorus. And thus was christened the car.

It was nine o’clock, with headlights going for the first time on the precious store of gas, when we again set out to find Santa Clara. The hills were flat-crowned and in quick succession. We could see nothing but a narrow streak of yellow rock ahead. We seemed always to be rising, rising, rising, to the top of everything. Palestine must have looked like this on a still, dark night. We could almost imagine some Old Testament friend would steal out of the dark and bid us halt.

Our entrance to Santa Clara was in sharp contrast to the last few hours of wandering in the solitude of the black night. We rambled noisily over its cobbled streets. We had knocked the muffler away from the exhaust pipe on some grass-hidden rock, and El Toro roared. The whole population ran to the iron-barred windows or into the streets to follow us in a curious, turbulent stream.

The hotel landlord welcomed us at the door and, as it was now raining hard, hurried to help us find shelter for the car. Then we ate a cold and disappointing meal in a night owl street café. An excited little man with a big pad of paper, who said he was the reporter of the Santa Clara newspaper, persisted in getting an extensive interview through the now collapsed interpreter. None of us ever read that story, but, judging from the manner of the fervid scribe, it must have drained empty the possibilities of Cuban journalism.

We retired in a hopeful mood. This had been our record day—sixty-three miles. We had gone to Matanzas, and they said we could not. We had crossed rivers and swamps, and they had said we could not. In five days we had gone 231 miles over country that was said to be impossible for any four-wheeled vehicle. We had yet to cross the mountains. They said we could not, but we thought we could.

Macagua to Santa Clara—sixty-three miles.

[Illustration: “_A river would be reached by following down a tortuous pass._”

SEE PAGE 77.]

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