Pant was in great spirits. He had lived much in the jungles of India. There he had met the great yellow tiger and the treacherous black leopard. He had heard of the “man-eater” up the river and was more than eager to hunt out his lair and do him battle. Of course his days belonged to Johnny, but nights were his own, and night is when the big cats prowl.
As for Johnny, as they went gliding up the dark river he thought of many things—of the red lure and of his hopes to win with this new and more trustworthy crew. He thought again of the mysterious brown girl who had appeared in the trail on that memorable night spent alone in camp.
“She may belong to the company of that rascal Daego,” he told himself. “I doubt it, though. Her face was too honest and frank for that. I wonder who she may be, and if she will return.”
He wondered if their camp had been destroyed by their enemies, and thought of Daego’s black boats which Hardgrave had spoken of, and the trouble Daego was in which made him want to move back across the river. He wondered if the trouble was in any way connected with the black boats. He even gave a passing thought to Rip, the burro, who under Pant’s care had learned to prick up his ears with an air of importance and had actually taken on a little flesh.
“Didn’t bring any feed for him,” he thought. “Pant will have to hunt out one of those bread-nut trees and gather some grass from it. Be an interesting experience, mowing grass from the top of the forest. Like cutting a giant’s hair,” he chuckled.
So they moved on up the river. Past the last banana plantation and cocoanut grove, through thin settlements of bushmen, between groves of cohune-nut trees, and on and on, up and up until night fell and the stars came out.
Coming to the mouth of a small stream, they decided to camp for the night. Boats were tied to overhanging mangrove branches, dry wood was gathered and soon fires gleamed out brightly. Mingled with the crackle of the blaze was the merry talk and laughter of these ever cheerful people.
While supper was being prepared, Pant shoved a dug-out from the deck of his power boat and went paddling away up the small stream. He was going on a little trip of exploration all his own. Not that he expected to find anything of real interest. It was too dark for that. He wanted to be alone for a time, and besides, there is a real thrill to be had from poking the nose of your canoe straight away in the night up a stream you have never seen.
As he moved slowly forward into the dark, the silent mystery of the night was now and then broken by the splash of an alligator as he took to the water. Nothing was to be feared from these so long as his canoe remained in upright position.
On and on he glided. The light of cooking fires faded. Laughter died away. Still he glided on. Then, of a sudden, he became conscious of a new sound—a throbbing that, beating faintly against his eardrums, seemed to come from nowhere. At first he thought it was the beating of his own heart and wondered at his increased power to hear in that silence. Soon enough he knew it was not that.
“But what is it?” he asked himself as he held his dripping paddle in mid-air to listen.
Getting no satisfactory answer, he drove his paddle into the water and sent his boat forward at renewed speed. This lasted for ten minutes. Perspiration ran down his cheeks as he paused to listen.
“Yes, yes, there it is, louder!” he murmured. “Much louder. It’s up the river. It’s a gasoline motor—a motor-boat. No, it can’t be.”
Dropping his paddle straight down, he touched bottom at eighteen inches. In such a stream there were sunken logs. No motor-boat could ascend to the spot where the motor was throbbing.
Swinging his boat about, he drove its prow against the shelving bank. Leaping ashore, he bent over, and putting his ear to the ground, listened.
“It can’t be,” he muttered, “and yet it is! It’s a stationary gasoline engine going full swing up that creek. And what’s more”—his thoughts were working rapidly now—“this creek runs up into our property. That engine is on our land. What can they be doing there?”
Creeping back into his canoe he allowed it to drift downstream. He wanted to go up and investigate, but it was too late. What that engine could be doing up there he could not so much as guess.
“But I’ll find out,” he told himself stoutly. “Leave it to me!”
Aside from slight damage done by a band of wild pigs, who in their search for food had rooted their way into the cook shack, the camp up the Rio Hondo was just as the boys had left it.
“It’s quite evident,” said Pant with a grin, “that Daego, or whoever it was that brought our work here to an end, thought there was time enough to come over and take possession.”
“Didn’t expect us back, that’s sure,” said Johnny.
“But here we are.”
“And here we go to work.”
They went to work with a will. Two days’ time saw a bigger and better camp erected, new roads cut into the jungle and everything in readiness for operation.
It was early in the afternoon of this day that Johnny saw a small dugout, paddled by two Spaniards, moving up the creek.
Surprised at their appearing on these little frequented waters, he paused at the entrance of the trail to see them pass.
They did not pass, but, pulling up to the landing, tied their boat and got out.
Seeing this, Johnny stepped from the shadows.
“Pardon,” said the taller of the two. “We are looking for Johnny Thompson.”
“I am Johnny Thompson,” said Johnny, not a little surprised that any stranger should be looking for him at this lonely spot.
“A message for you.” The man bowed low as he held out a sealed envelope.
With fingers that trembled ever so slightly, Johnny tore this open and read:
To Johnny Thompson.Sir:It would give me the greatest of pleasure to have your most entertaining and entirely fascinating presence at a dinner to be served at my camp a few miles above your own, at six this evening. We have had the great good fortune to secure two wild turkeys and your assistance in eating them would be both a service and a pleasure to me.Your Most Humble Servant and, I trust, Friend,El Vincia Daego.
To Johnny Thompson.
Sir:
It would give me the greatest of pleasure to have your most entertaining and entirely fascinating presence at a dinner to be served at my camp a few miles above your own, at six this evening. We have had the great good fortune to secure two wild turkeys and your assistance in eating them would be both a service and a pleasure to me.
Your Most Humble Servant and, I trust, Friend,
El Vincia Daego.
For a moment Johnny stared at the note. He wanted to laugh, but did not quite dare. He was tempted to use some very strong language, but refrained from that, too.
“So he came up here ahead of me and is now at his camp,” he thought to himself. “He invites me to a feed of wild turkey. I wonder why?”
A half hour later he was showing the note to Pant.
“You won’t go, of course,” said Pant.
“I shall go. Why not?”
“Why should you? He might get rough—or something.”
“That’s a good reason for going. Can’t afford to show a white feather, can I? If I excuse myself, it’s equivalent to saying: ‘No, I won’t come. I’m afraid.’”
“You’re going into a strange country, Mexico, without a passport,” Pant protested.
“What’s a passport in a wilderness? Why, if it wasn’t for this gloomy old river they wouldn’t know where the boundary runs. There are hundreds of miles of unsurveyed and unexplored boundary lines down here.”
“You’d better take a bodyguard.”
“I’ll take a dugout and a paddle. What do you think this is? Cannibal land?”
“Well,” said Pant, a trifle grimly, “good luck, and may you come back!”
“I’ll come back, right enough,” said Johnny.
Had he known what was to come from this turkey dinner, would he have gone? He might, and then again he might have stayed on his own side of Rio Hondo. Who knows?
“Since you’re going out to dinner,” said Pant, as Johnny prepared to take the trail to the river, “I think I’ll go on a hunt for a bread-nut tree that grows grass for leaves. That old burro, Rip, is showing signs of being hungry. I caught him trying to chew the picture from the side of an empty corn can this morning.”
True to his word, just as dusk was falling, Pant found himself paddling slowly down the river. Suddenly, as his keen eyes followed the outline of the forest that crowded the river bank, he caught sight of a tree that towered above its fellows. From the tip of its branches hung great masses of green hay. Reaching down a yard, two yards, even three, it looked like long green streamers hung out for a St. Patrick’s Day celebration.
“Bread-nut tree,” he said to himself.
On reaching the tree he found himself presented with a serious problem. The trunk of the tree was immense; the first limb twenty feet up. At first sight he felt himself defeated. But on circling the tree he discovered a stout vine which reached far above the first branch.
Soon, with his machete still swinging at his side, he was going up hand over hand.
Scorning the first branch, where the grass clumps were small and ragged, he climbed to the second, then to the third, fully thirty feet above the ground.
“I must be careful,” he warned himself.
Many a man had been killed by a fall from these trees. To gather the grass one must climb far out on a slender limb and hack off the end which holds the heavy clump. Suddenly released from its load, the limb springs up and if the grass gatherer loses his hold he is unseated and down he plunges to injury or death.
“I will be cautious,” Pant told himself. Had he but known it, no amount of caution could save him from facing the peril just before him.
Carefully he climbed over the stouter part of the limb, then out and still out on a slender branch from whose tip there hung a clump of “grass” that seemed as large as a haycock.
“Three days’ feed for old Rip from a single clump,” he told himself as, gripping the branch firmly with one hand, he drew his machete from its sheath.
He had lifted the machete for the first hack when his action was arrested by a slight scratching sound coming from somewhere above him. Imagine his surprise and horror when, upon looking up, he caught the gleam of two yellow eyes and at the same time heard the thumping lash of a great cat’s tail. It was a jaguar about to spring!
Pant was so startled that he all but lost his hold upon the limb. Overpowered by something akin to fear, for the instant he was unable to move. He was not so far bereft of his senses as to fail to note that above the creature’s left eye was a broad white stripe.
“The—the killer!” he gasped.
* * * * * * * *
To do two things at once; to listen and talk intelligently, and to employ one’s mind with planning safe escape requires a steady nerve and active mind. Johnny Thompson was doing that very thing. He was talking in an intelligent and connected manner to Daego, the Spanish half-caste millionaire of British Honduras. They had been talking for some time about many things that had to do with industries on the Rio Hondo, and all the time their discussion had become more animated.
Johnny was seated before a small table. Daego sat opposite him. On the table was a pile of bills. A gentle breeze, entering the hut through its lattice-like walls of cohune-nut stems, fluttered the corners of the bills. They were big bills—fifties and hundreds. There was in that carelessly flung pile over twenty thousand dollars. Although one may not feel at liberty to refuse to attend a wild turkey dinner, he may refuse to accept other things, even at the hand of a millionaire. Johnny was refusing, refusing in the most vigorous language, and at the same time his keen eyes were taking in the construction of the hut and his mind plotting swift and sudden exit.
He smiled involuntarily at thought of it. The smile, without a meaning as far as the half-caste millionaire, Daego, was concerned, angered him.
“I offer you a fortune,” Daego burst forth in a sudden rage, “and what do I get? A laugh. What sort of people are these ones from the United States? They call you dollar men. I offer you dollars, many, many dollars—your own American dollars—and all you offer me for answer is a smile!”
Johnny did not smile again. The situation was grave enough. He had been foolhardy to cross the river without his men. Daego was flanked by six husky Spaniards and at the side of each was a gleaming machete. Johnny was backed only by a wall of cohune-nut tree stems. He hoped and prayed that they might prove fairly well rotted when his moment came.
The camp in which Johnny had enjoyed his wild turkey dinner was a chicle camp. Up until these last few minutes Daego had proven a most perfect host. The food he offered was the best the jungle could provide. He was politeness itself, with one and the same breath pressing food and compliments upon his guest.
One peculiarity of the man’s nature disgusted Johnny. He seemed at every turn to wish to impress Johnny with respect and awe for his wealth and power. Before dinner he had showed Johnny about.
“This,” he had explained, “is one of my many chicle camps. I import into Honduras every year more than two million pounds of chicle. The price, as you know, is fifty cents a pound. The profit,” he smiled out of one corner of his mouth, “the profit is, well, very large—perhaps half. These men work very cheaply; like slaves they are, almost; always in debt to me. I employ them by the thousands. You have no idea how many. For that matter, neither have I. This Rio Hondo, this Black River, has made me rich, rich and powerful. On the Rio Hondo I am, you might say, a king.”
And now this “king” of the Black River, with a strong backing of his armed men, was attempting to bribe or brow-beat—he apparently did not care which—a red-blooded, honest American boy.
“On this Black River,” he repeated now, as they sat at the table, “on this river I am king. It is I who have always developed its industries and I it shall be in the future, and none other! I have offered you money—money not that you should speak an untruth, but that you should return to the people who control your tract and say to them: ‘There is no profit to be made in a quest for your red lure and your chicle.’
“And is it not so?” He showed all his white teeth in a half smile, half snarl. “I—will I not see that you make no profit, that no other person beside myself make a profit? More than twenty thousand dollars I offer you—for what? That you may tell the truth to a friend. What could be easier than that? Now I ask you for the last time—do you take that money or must I resort to harsher methods?
“Think well!” He held up a finger of warning, “I am a millionaire. Thousands serve me. They are all in debt to me. They are my slaves. The Rio Hondo is mine. All I need do is to stretch out a hand and take.” He swung his arm in a dramatic gesture.
“But I,” he went on, purring now like a cat, “I am not a man who loves violence. See! Here is proof. Here is money, twenty thousand American dollars. And for what? For peace. What do you say now? Do you take it?”
“We Americans,” said Johnny with a ghost of a smile about the corners of his mouth, “do not talk. We act.”
With that he seized the small table before him, swung it above his head and sent it crashing through the frail side of the hut, then followed it through the hole it had made in the rotten walls of the cohune-nut stems.
To say that Pant was surprised at sight of the jaguar, the well-known “killer” above him in the bread-nut tree, would poorly express it. For once in his young life he was without a solution to the problem that lay just before him. He knew that he must act, and act instantly. But what to do? Thirty feet below him was the solid earth, far too solid. Through the gathering shadows he thought he saw directly beneath him the wide spreading leaves of a young cohune-nut tree. Of this he could not be sure. In any event these soft yielding leaves would offer slight cushion at the end of a thirty foot fall.
Flight back over the limb, the way he had come, was not to be thought of. The instant he began creeping forward the great cat would be upon his back. To remain in his present position was equally perilous. There was his machete, to be sure, but what was this against the claws of a man-eater? It would doubtless be knocked from his hand at the first spring of the spotted beast.
The great cat’s tail ceased to lash the twigs. The boy’s heart beat wildly. Was the end at hand?
Time passed. Ten seconds seemed an hour, and yet no spring. And then, of a sudden, there flashed into his mind a desperate chance, yet it was a chance—at least something to do.
He was now sitting with his back to the tiger, looking over his shoulder. Slowly, with his eyes fixed steadily on the killer, he began to turn about on the limb. It was a hazardous undertaking. Should he slip, lose his balance, fall, it might mean death. But this was a moment for hazards.
Swinging a leg over the limb, he sat sidewise for an instant; then with a second swing the thing was accomplished. Still the killer lingered. The tail was lashing furiously now, sending dry twigs flying downward.
Pant began sliding back upon the limb. With eyes still fixed upon the tiger, with heart beating like a throbbing motor, he moved back a foot, two feet, three, four. Still the tiger waited. His eyes, in the gathering darkness, had turned to red balls of fire.
Suddenly the boy’s hand went up. The machete was raised above his head. The great cat gave forth a blood-curdling snarl. But the big knife was not meant for him.
Once in his boyhood days on a farm Pant had climbed far out over the track that ran beneath the ridge of a tall hay-loft. He had gone out to adjust something that had gone wrong with the double harpoon fork. It would not trip. He had used every ounce of his strength climbing out there hand over hand. He had not dared attempt the trip back. The hay of the loft was twenty feet beneath him. There was a load on the fork. Choosing the least of three evils, he had taken the drop with the half-ton of hay when the fork was tripped. He would not soon forget that breath-taking drop, yet he had landed without a bump or bruise.
“This,” he told himself as calmly as he could, “will be exactly like that—maybe.”
He was now seated firmly on the great clump of “tree grass.” Some three feet across, this clump hung down a distance of two yards.
“Now,” he breathed, “Now!”
He said the last “now” out loud and at the same instant the machete came down upon the branch on which he sat.
It was a master stroke. Bent as it was by its double load, the branch snapped clean off and instantly the boy shot downward through space.
One breath-taking instant, then bump! He landed with a thud that made his teeth rattle, then pitched head foremost into the brush.
Hardly had he had time to realize that he was still conscious and probably unharmed, when there came, not four feet from him, a terrible thud.
Once more his mind was in a whirl. What had happened? Had the tiger, angered at loss of his prey, risked a thirty-foot leap to the ground? It seemed incredible, yet there he was.
For the answer to his problem regarding the jaguar who had dropped in the bush beside him, Pant did not have long to wait. For ten seconds, as if stunned, the great cat remained where he was, then with a sudden rush he dashed wildly away.
The boy laughed a low laugh.
“Pity it didn’t kill him,” he murmured.
He had guessed what had happened. Suddenly released, the limb on which he had been seated had shot upward and, striking the jaguar, had perhaps stunned him. At least it had unseated him and he had fallen.
“Well,” Pant grinned, “here is plenty of hay to last poor old Rip for three days. I came down rather sooner than I expected and in a manner quite unusual. Wouldn’t care to try it again, but it did work that time.”
Searching out his machete, he hacked the grass from the limb, tied it in three bundles, then began making his way back to his boat with one of them.
“I must get after that beast,” he told himself. “If the Caribs hear too much of him they may take fright and desert us.”
He was not long in putting this resolve into execution.
* * * * * * * *
Daego thought he had been quite shrewd in his choice of the spot to be occupied by his guest. There were no windows to the hut. Light entered between the palm walls. The rich half-caste and his six men sat before the door and that way lay the path to the river. Back of the place where Johnny had been seated was the jungle, an all but impenetrable mass of palms, great mahogany trees and creeping, twining vines.
As Johnny sent the table crashing through the flimsy, rotting walls of the hut he followed after it so closely that both he and the table made their exit at almost the same instant. He had but one thought—to get into the jungle as quickly as possible. It was his only chance. Daego and his natives, surprised into temporary inaction by this sudden turn of affairs, were delayed just long enough to permit Johnny to get into the jungle. After that, Johnny knew, it would be a game of “hide and seek” with at least a fair chance for escape.
A moment after Johnny had dived headlong into the dark, dank jungle, Daego’s men came tumbling through the newly made hole in the wall of the hut, eager to win their master’s praise by seizing this unarmed boy.
But so tardy and clumsy was their pursuit that Johnny had gained enough distance to cover up the sound of his movements. For the moment, at least, the advantage was his. But what if he did make good his escape? Where would he go? How could he hope to make his way back to his own camp?
Without thinking much of the outcome, more from instinct than reason, like a rabbit close pressed by the hounds, he leaped for the jungle.
By some good or evil chance he came at once upon one of those low, narrow trails made by the small short horned deer that abound in that wilderness. By stooping quite low, almost bent double, he was able to make rapid progress.
After covering a hundred yards he paused to listen.
Yes, he could hear the men shouting and beating the bush.
“There must be a hundred of them,” he murmured. “And dogs! Trapped here by dogs!”
He turned and fairly flew down the trail.
On and on and on, not knowing where, but ever on until at last with hands and face bleeding and clothes in rags, he fell flat in the trail and lay there motionless.
Could Johnny have witnessed the dismay and confusion caused by his sudden escape he would have felt far less concerned over his present plight. The first eager pursuers crashed wildly about in the jungle, rushing forward at every sound only to discover that it was made by another hunter instead of the hunted. Their shouts brought other men pouring from the huts and a half score of dogs, who jumped about and added to the din with their senseless yelping.
Daego shouted directions, but his shouts were either unheard or not clearly understood. Then he made an attempt to set the dogs on Johnny’s trail. There were dogs a-plenty to overtake Johnny and slay him but for one thing—dogs are never eager to enter a tropical jungle.
Unaccompanied by his master, the native dog seldom goes far into that tangled mass of vegetation. There are reasons enough for this. Poisonous snakes, ten feet long, lurk in the decay at the base of great trees. Jaguars, prepared to pounce upon a dog, lie flat along great branches, and the uncouth “mountain cow” (tapir) is all too ready to tear him to pieces with her sharp hoofs.
So, though urged on by their enraged masters, the dogs did not venture far and soon enough came crawling back, their defeat registered by drooping tails.
So Johnny Thompson was safe. And yet, was he safe? As the dull agony of exhaustion left him, he began, in a slow, numb sort of way, to remember where he was. He was in a tropical jungle. It was early dusk and the coming night would be made hideous by the barking of alligators, the scream of wild parrots and the hoarse call of jaguars. To move down the trail after darkness would be dangerous. Curled on that trail might be a great snake whose fangs offered sure death. Further movement might call a jaguar to leap upon him from the tree tops.
On the other hand, if he went forward on this trail he might come to water. Already his throat was parched, his tongue swollen. Then, too, a small stream meant a certain amount of protection and a possible fire. He had matches in his pocket, a small box of them. As he thought of these he wrapped them in his handkerchief for safer keeping.
Then of a sudden a more terrible realization came to him. Not only was he in a tropical jungle, but he was lost.
“Lost!” he whispered in an awed tone.
“Lost!” “Lost!” the strange rustle of palms seemed to answer back.
It was true, must be true. Hardgrave, who had spent years in the jungle, had warned him: “Don’t ever dare to enter that jungle without a guide, not to go even a few rods. If you do, you’re lost.”
“Rods,” Johnny repeated, “I’ve gone miles!”
As he thought of it now, he realized that he must have crossed scores of these low, criss-crossings paths. Should he will to attempt it, he could not in a thousand days find his way back to Daego’s clearing over that dry sponge-like patch.
“Nor any other place,” he told himself. “I’m lost! Lost!”
At first the thought left him so weak that he could not move. But in time strength and courage came flooding back. He was young, strong, resourceful. There was a way out. He would find it. Daego was doubtless at this moment sitting in his cabin smoking cigarets and contemplating the day when he would move across the river and take charge of Johnny’s deserted camp.
“That will never be!” Johnny told himself, setting his teeth hard.
To his surprise, as his hand went to his knee he found his clothing wet.
“Must have crossed some small stream and in my wild fear, never knew it. No more of that. I’ll be calm. I must be calm—and I must think clearly.”
“A stream,” he mused, “means water for drinking and a place of greater safety. What’s more,” he exclaimed, attempting to spring to his feet only to be tossed back by closely woven vines and branches, “that means a way out. A small stream flows into a large one; the larger one into one still larger, and in time one comes to Rio Hondo, the old Black River. There I might find a rotting native cabin and perhaps a dugout for floating down to my camp. But first I must find the beginning. There is a beginning to all things.”
He contemplated the gathering darkness. There was yet a little time. Which way should he go? He shuddered at the thought of going back. There seemed to be an equally good chance ahead. So, slowly, always with an eye out for those terrible snakes, he crept forward into the gathering gloom.
As time went on he struggled forward, and as the darkness deepened it seemed to him that he must, Tarzan-like, spend the night in some great mahogany or Santa Maria tree. The thought was depressing. His throat ached from thirst. There were jaguars in the trees. Exhausted as he was, he might fall asleep and plunge from the tree to his death.
As this thought came near to a conviction and when hope had all but fled, he rounded a sudden turn in the trail and his eyes were half blinded by a light which was much brighter than the gloom to which his eyes had been accustomed. The light was at the spot where the bush and the trail appeared to end,—a distance of less than a hundred yards.
What could it mean? Had fate played a trick on him? Had he followed a circle in the jungle, only to return to Daego’s camp? Was this some other clearing? If so, whose could it be?
For a moment he remained there motionless, staring. Then, with a speed born of sudden hope and maddening fear, he sprinted forward toward the light.
Even as he moved forward the light faded, and night, such night as only the jungle knows, settled down over all.
Driven half mad by this sudden fading of his dreams, throwing all caution aside, Johnny rushed straight on until, with a sudden gasp, he threw himself backward. One foot had plunged into water. In another second he would have pitched head-foremost into some stream; what stream he could not know. The thing he did know very soon was that out in the water some little distance away gleamed two red balls.
“The eyes of an alligator,” he murmured. “Well, anyway, here is water.” He drank greedily.
As he attempted to pierce the darkness about him, he was able to guess what it was that had caused the unusual light. The sky, dimly visible through overhanging branches, was filled with black clouds. There had come, without doubt, one of those last sudden flashes of sunsets which gleam out, then are lost forever. This light shining upon the water had been dazzling in its intensity. Because of its very intensity the following darkness had appeared quite complete.
Once his eyes had become accustomed to the feeble light, Johnny was able to distinguish some of the black bulks about him. Downstream, hanging far over the water, was a palm. Upstream he caught the dim outline of some dull gray masses.
“Rocks, I hope,” he murmured as he moved slowly in that direction.
There was now reason enough for caution. Sharp-nosed alligators of these streams sometimes slept on the banks. To disturb one was to invite disaster. To break a twig or make any other unusual sound might be to call other wild creatures to attack him.
So, parting the branches with great care, he moved on cautiously until with a grateful heart he put a hand out to touch a huge rough boulder.
Mounted upon this heap of rough rocks, of which there were five, each as large as a sleeping elephant, he breathed more freely.
“Now for a little fire,” he thought. “All wild things fear fire.”
It was not long until the stream, which appeared to be some twenty feet wide at this point, was lighted by the blazing flames of quick burning palm leaves.
Sudden as was the blaze, even more sudden was its fading. Looking away from the red glow of coals, Johnny tried to peer into the dense darkness that followed. He could distinguish only the red gleam of eyes. They were all about him; upon the water, on the bank, in the tree tops.
Monkeys, fierce black little creatures, chattered from the tallest trees. From the ground sounded many odd grunts, which the boy could not interpret. Coming down the river, like a dimly lighted floating burial procession, were the silent alligators.
“It’s all very strange and—and somewhat spooky,” he told himself.
With a shudder he seized a dully glowing brand and, having fanned it into flame, went boldly forth in search of wood. This time he would gather more substantial material. His fire must last longer, much longer, for somehow he must snatch a little sleep.
Waving his firebrand before him in one hand, he gathered fuel with the other. Some dead ferns and palm branches, the fallen branch of a black tamarind, the half rotted stem of a yamra, some large branches of a tree quite unknown to him, all these would send the light of his fire gleaming out into the night for hours to come.
Soon, with his fire glowing cheerily, he settled down on a chair-like rock crevice and with head bent forward, hands hanging down before him, every muscle relaxed, he tried to induce sleep to come.
It did not come at once. His mind worked on. Across its silver screen there passed a long procession of pictures. The trip up the river, the wild forest, the dark Caribs all about him, the silent black river, Daego seated before the table, money, twenty thousand dollars fluttering before him, the surprised look of the Spaniards as the table tore through the wall, then the jungle, the terrible uncertain jungle with its wild perils and its noisesome nights.
Then, as will happen when half thoughts and half dreams come, the reel changed. He was sitting with old Hardgrave, his friend who had seen sixty-eight summers, twenty-five of them in the tropics. In the cool shade of the hotel porch at Belize the old man was showing him a crudely drawn map and was pointing to a spot on that map.
“If you ever get to that spot,” he seemed to hear him say, “you’ll find Indian gods. I have seen them. Three of them, a black one, a blue one, and one of pure gold. I don’t say you’ll come back to tell anyone about it,” the old man smiled a queer smile. “They say it’s dangerous to go up there and I reckon it is. Truth is, no one knows the way there and back. It’s up in the bush somewhere. That’s all anyone knows. It’s all I know, and I’ve been there once.
“You may be sure I didn’t mean to go there,” he reminisced. “They found me sick with a fever, the Indians did, and carried me to their village in the bush and cured me up. Wanted me to stay on with them. Seemed to sort of take a liking to me. I told them I wouldn’t.
“At first they said I didn’t have any choice in the matter. Took me to see some bones, human bones. White man’s bones I’d say from the size of them. Then they took me back to the village.
“Something changed their minds, though. I don’t know what. One day they blindfolded me and took me through the bush and downstream for a whole day. When my eyes were uncovered I found myself in a dugout on a part of the Rio Hondo that I knew.
“So, Johnny,” he added with a rare smile, “if you really want some Maya gods, you just hunt that place up. They’ve got some black ones, and some that are green, and at least one of pure gold.”
Johnny did want one or two of these Maya Indian gods. A very good friend had asked him to bring back one or two for his collection. He had promised to perform this commission.
“I had no notion they were so hard to get,” he told himself now. “It would be strange if I should stumble upon those Mayas up here somewhere,—strange and rather startling.
“Black gods and green ones, and at least one of pure gold,” he repeated, half asleep.
Then of a sudden he started up. His fire was burning low. After throwing on a fresh supply of fuel, he thought more clearly of the consequences if he should fall into the hands of these strange bush people. He was not at all sure that, once they had found him, they would allow him to return.
“And then,” he thought, “our camp would fall into the hands of Daego unless—unless Pant were strong enough and resourceful enough to hold his own against that wily half-caste rascal.
“Poor Pant,” he murmured, “what will he think when I don’t return? I hope he doesn’t start a big fight right off the bat. He must not. I must return. Somehow I must get back. I’ll do it, too! See if I don’t! I’ll make some sort of raft and float down this stream from nowhere to somewhere.”
At that he fell asleep and, as the fire burned low, the glow of eyes from the river, in the trees, on the ground, moved closer and ever closer.
As for Pant, he was worried enough by Johnny’s prolonged absence. It had been dark for fully three hours. Having returned from his gathering of tree hay and his brush with the jaguar, he had gone down to the creek landing to wait for Johnny.
Two anxious hours passed and still he did not come. For a half hour he paced the creek trail in deep and troubled thought. Over and over, as a squirrel turns his cage, questions revolved in his mind. What was keeping Johnny? Should he go for him? Had he been attacked, perhaps slain? Who could tell, if he went to Daego’s camp, what would happen? Johnny had left him in charge of the camp. If something should happen to him, should he fail to return, the Caribs would pile into their boats and go drifting down the river.
“No!” he exclaimed, “Johnny left me here to carry on in his absence, and carry on it is. If he does not appear by morning I’ll send a messenger to Daego’s camp to find out what he has to say about it.”
He did send a messenger in the morning. The millionaire half-caste received him with the greatest courtesy. Johnny, he said, had indeed had dinner with him and they had enjoyed quite a long chat when the meal was over. The boy had left his camp in quite a hurry on account of the gathering darkness. He had not seen him since that time.
Daego assumed an attitude of greatest surprise upon being told that Johnny had not returned to his own camp and expressed the hope that he might soon learn of his safety. The Rio Hondo was a treacherous river, treacherous indeed.
All of which was more or less true, and at the same time a most diabolical lie.
“He’s a crook and a scoundrel!” Pant raged to himself when the messenger had made his report. “He’s done something to Johnny, locked him up, or sent him up some river, a prisoner. Depend on that. But he’ll not get his way on our side of the river!”
After laying out the day’s work for his men, Pant sat down on a red log and indulged in some long, long thoughts.
“The way to keep a man from making trouble for you,” he told himself, “is to make as much trouble for him as you can. A fight like this is just like a game of chess. If you can keep a man busy getting his knights, bishops and castles out of danger he isn’t like to make much trouble for your king.”
For a long time he sat blinking at the little patches of sunshine that filtered down though the tropical foliage.
“That was a capital ghost story Hardgrave told me when I was down at Belize,” he told himself at last with a little chuckle. “Happened on one of the islands, but I’ll bet it would work right up here. He promised to send me up the things I need for trying it if any sort of craft comes up this way. Don’t suppose there’s much chance, though.
“What’s that I hear?” he exclaimed, starting up suddenly.
Hurrying down the river trail, he was just in time to see four pit-pans moving slowly up the river. The pit-pans, great dugouts sixty feet long, were loaded with Spaniards.
“Daego’s men,” he murmured. “Re-inforcements. He doesn’t need them for work. I wonder?”
Cold dread gripped his heart. Daego was assembling his men. This addition would give him a force double the number of their Caribs. Could it be that, in the absence of their leader, he meant to lead an attack at once? There would be a fight, a battle to the finish between Johnny’s forces and Daego’s. Caribs against Spaniards, but Pant hadn’t expected it for some time yet.
“Wish I had the stuff Hardgrave promised to send,” he murmured. “Might thin that force out a bit.”
The stuff Hardgrave had promised was on its way and much nearer to Johnny’s wild lumber camp than Pant guessed. Hardgrave was on his way, too; in fact, he was bringing the supplies up the river at that moment. It was a strange assortment of articles that he carried in a box beneath the seat in his little motor boat; a dozen or so of large blue toy balloons, a bottle of phosphorus, a number of yards of cheesecloth, some putty, three tubes of glue, two metal retorts and two packages of chemicals.