Free The Bridge in the Jungle by B. Traven Page A

heart was able to invent. Seen from this side, where I was standing, every move she made looked ghostly. Everybody expected soon to hear a cry which would be horrible and gruesome.
    For half a minute she stood still by the bank, thinking of what had to be done. Her arms were hanging motionless. In her right hand she held the lantern. It lit up her dress. But her face was partly in shadow, and it resembled no face I ever saw before. It might have been a face created by an insane sculptor who had tried to outsmart nature.
    On this side people were gathered close to the bank, looking at the lonesome mother who, with a lantern, wanted to get back her baby. Two enemy camps divided by the river, two worlds opposed to each other. One world was in deepest sorrow and pain, the other world ready to help yet none the less happy, in a way, that it was the other world which had been floored by a merciless fate.
    A few men crossed the bridge to join the lonely mother. Aimlessly they crawled through the shrubs and brush. They didn't really believe they would find the kid there. They merely wished to show the mother that they were willing to do all in their power to lessen her sufferings.
    The mother came back towards us. As she crossed the bridge she held the lantern over the river, but the light hardly penetrated the muddy yellow water.
    The pump-master woman walked over to her, put one hand upon her shoulder, and said: 'Let's wait, Carmelita dear, and see first before we worry so much. Come, sit down by me on the bench and don't worry and break your head to pieces. The kid has really ridden away with that boy, I'm sure of it. We may worry later a good deal if the men come back without having found a trace of him. Yet they'll find him all right. With all that worry now we can do nothing. Just wait and see.'
    'Carlos hasn't ridden away,' the Garcia said, firmness and conviction in her throat. 'He does not ride away when Manuel is home.'
    'Tut, tut, Carmelita! There, there! Children, dear me!' The pump-master woman laughed loudly. 'You have got only that one. What do you know about these brats? I know better, I've five. What you never dream of, that's exactly the first thing they'll do.'
    The Garcia put her lantern on the ground by her feet. She turned her head towards the river and with tired, heavy eyes looked into the darkness. Then she faced again the group of women she was standing with, and looked from one to another without saying a word. Though she was in the midst of neighbours and friends, she felt utterly alone in the world. Her head drooped and she closed her eyes for a few seconds. Then suddenly her body stiffened and she cried out: 'The boy is in the river! The boy has been drowned!'
    Everyone present stood aghast, as if lightning had struck near by. Some women crossed themselves. The pump-master woman fought to catch her breath, and finally gasped: 'Carmelita, for heaven's sake, by the Most Holy Virgin and Her Holy Child Jesu Cristo our Lord and Master, don't commit such a horrible sin against God. How can you say such a terrible thing? Have you gone mad, woman? Come to, come to, woman!'
    The Garcia uttered a deep sigh. She felt relieved of the thick lump in her throat which had been trying to choke her for the last half-hour. She stretched her neck and moved her head round in a wide circle to free herself still more from that nightmare. Her eyes became sober, almost brutally sober. She was at last herself.
    While everybody was still dumbfounded, the Garcia started explaining, so clearly and fluently that one might think she had memorized it. She was getting rid of all her anxiety by talking fast, by summing up all her thoughts concerning the whereabouts of her baby.
    'How excited that kid was this evening and the whole afternoon! Never have I seen him like that. Wild, swift, uncatchable. I might have chained him to a post and he would have broken away, so wild he was. He had practically lost all sense of what he was doing and