In which Orpí and Araypuro come down with gold rush fever and it very nearly ends in homicide
Not without much effort, Joan Orpí and Araypuro dragged along with them all the gold they’d managed to save from that floating temple, walking arduously through the jungle and crossing vast harsh deserts, rough mountains, rivers, marshes, and great lakes. And all that while hearing, night and day, the shrieks and drumming of the Indians, who continued to stalk their prey. During six days and their respective nights, they advanced with their precious cargo until, on the seventh, they stopped in a forest clearing, near a grotto that served as their temporary shelter.
“I can take no more, massa,” said Araypuro, dropping two sacks brimming with gold. “I quit …”
“Never, injun!” bellowed Orpí. “Don’t get persnickety with mee or I shant pay thine wages!”
Araypuro suddenly burst into laughter.
“I seeth not what the gleek is, injun.”
“The gleek is that we’re filthy rich! But the way this gold is slowing us down, those Indians finna eat us alive!”
“Very well. We shall camp here this night,” said our hero, sitting down. “On the morrow we shall decide what to do.”
While Araypuro went hunting for some game, Orpí prepared a campfire with dry brush. The two men ate in silence, watching the flames rise and spark into the sky, as they tried to digest the impossible adventures they had recently lived through.
“I recall reading The Adventures of Esplandián as a boy,” our hero said sadly, “where tis recount’d the dream of El Dorado. We hath made that dream a reality, injun.”
“Pero, bro, what use to us is this pure gold?” he asked, gnawing on an iguana drumstick.
“It shall finance New Catalonia,” said Orpí, looking into the fire. “We no longer must waite for financing from the Crowne. If all the coin we hath forked over as the anata and the royal fifth were retornned to us as aid, these lands would have long been prosperous and booming. Yet those Castilians ere want more and more, and the King hath alreddy saith he shant helpe me againe. This here treasure means the ende of begging for scraps. We shall live in abundance! From the fountains shall spring gold! No one will ere go hungered!”
“And what do we want wid dat? We’d be better off headin’ to France to live like lords, off the fat a da land, like kings!”
“Thine be a trick question, injun. Is it that …” said Orpí, picking up a red-hot ember, “… thou wishest to catch me unawares and steal mine gold?”
“Master, don’t get thine bloomers in a twist, thou knowst I am sensitive …” said Araypuro, frightened.
“Inveigle me not, injun …” said our mad hero, threatening him with eyes aflame. “I shant allow thee to purloin this treasure!”
“Master!” said Araypuro, leaping up and running toward the jungle. “How now!?!”
“Thou canst run, but thou canst not hide!” bellowed Orpí, completely bonkers, chasing after him, while Friston barked without knowing exactly why he was barking.
“Don’t crosseth that line, massa, for I hath done nothing wrong!” whimpered Araypuro, running in circles amid the trees. “Quit thy aggression against me!”
Crazed, Orpí chased Araypuro for a good long while through the forest thicket until he finally caught him and threw him to the ground. When our hero was about to bash in the Indian’s head with the torch, he stopped, hesitating, in a state of shock. He threw the red-hot branch far away and kneeled beside Araypuro, crying disconsolately.
“Mine Godde … apologies … !” he said, his nose dripping with snot. “Mine Faustian ambition be repellent … ! I did wend crazy for a moment, as if Satan himself had possess’d me … ! Canst thou ever forgive me, injun?”
“Dale! Have I any choice? All ist ever forgiven to the massa if he pays enuf,” said Araypuro, hugging our hero.
“Forgive me, injun, mine greed got the best of me, but I’m cured now,” begged Orpí. “I shall tell thee what we will doo: bury the treasure in this clearing, near this cove, and that way we may verily escape these Indians and stay alive. Once we reach New Barselona, we shall retornne with horses and soldiers to recover it, what say thee?”
“I darent say no, for fear thou wilt go all mandinga on me aginn, and send me straight to hell, hence … dale.”
After hiding the gold in the darkest corner of that cave and drawing an improvised map on a piece of paper, Orpí and Araypuro continued on for New Catalonia. Three days and three nights they traveled, lost in the mountains, until finally losing the tribe that was on their trail and, on the fourth day, the two men reached the shores of a river, where they found a detachment of New Andalusian colonists, made up of twenty people living in deplorable conditions in a few straw houses around a wretched garden patch. A man of syphilitic appearance, who seemed as if he could drop dead at any moment, emerged from among the townspeople, prepared to challenge them, but our hero, who had kept a few ounces of gold from the treasure in his pocket, exchanged one for a ship. And that was how our hero and Araypuro set sail in a small canoe, with Friston sitting in the back, vanishing into the fog as they traveled down the Orinoco. What happened to them on that river no one can rightly say, however what remains of our outlandish story will please all who wish to persevere with it.