“Must be twelve or fifteen of them,” he thought with a shudder. “What they won’t do to me if one of them chances to spy me!”
By great good fortune the leader, Daego, passed without looking to right or left. With him passed the bright light and much of the danger of detection. Pant watched the passing line with increasing interest. The men following Daego went in pairs, one before and one behind. Suspended on long poles between each pair was a square, black box which, from the bending of the poles and the labored tread of the men, would appear to be heavy.
For a moment the boy’s imagination played tricks on him. These men were ghosts of the pirates and buccaneers who inhabited these waters a century or more ago. The heavy black boxes were filled with doubloons and pieces of eight.
Then with a mental jerk he brought himself back to reality. These men were men of to-day. The boxes they carried were indeed treasure chests, but chests of power, not of gold.
“Batteries,” Pant murmured. “There is no need to go farther. I see it all.”
And so he did. The long, black pit-pans near the river’s mouth were only waiting these black boxes to give them the power to steal silently up the river. They were electrically driven. The stationary engine back there was connected to an electric generator. By day it was at work charging batteries. By night these batteries were busy driving the long black shadows with their burdens up the river. What sort of freight did they carry? That he could not tell.
“Have to trap them to find out,” he told himself.
As it happened, he found out before he trapped them.
Johnny Thompson and Jean found it strangely fascinating to be marching straight on over the beaten trail that led to the great unknown. It was exciting, entrancing, this sharing a secret which had not been so much as whispered by either of them, yet the glances and curious smiles which the girl bestowed upon him told Johnny plainer than words that she knew; moreover, that she knew he knew.
“But pshaw!” he told himself with a sudden shake as if to waken himself from a dream. “There may be nothing to it, probably isn’t. There probably are many hard-beaten trails leading away into this wilderness. Why should this particular one lead to the home of a wild Maya? Probably end in scattered settlements of Mexicans in some camp. It may end—” he caught his breath, “we may have gone in a circle. It may end in Daego’s camp. Pretty mess if it does! Have to be careful!”
So, beneath the flickering lights and drifting shadows of palms, over ridges, through low depressions where there were no streams, now frightening droves of small wild pigs from their sleep and now sending flocks of brilliant colored cockatoos fluttering away into the bush, they traveled on. There were more pools now. By noon they had passed three. The air was cooler. They were ascending to higher altitudes. Johnny took long, deep breaths and thought how like it was to the air of the Cumberlands in Kentucky. Now and again, through the palm leaves, he caught glimpses of distant scenes.
“Mountains over there to the left,” he said to Jean. “Looks two or three thousand feet high.”
“Johnny,” the girl stopped suddenly in the trail (the others had gone on before), “where are we going?”
“I don’t know. Do you?” Johnny’s face was sober.
“No, I don’t.”
“Want to go back?”
“No—o. But I feel sort of shivery. It’s so strange!”
“Yes, it is. But then, all life is strange, and death is strangest of all. Besides, I guess we’re doing the logical thing. We’re lost in the wilderness. What do men do when they’re lost? Find the nearest human being and ask the way home. That’s what we’re doing. And from the signs, I’d say we were almost there. I saw fresh prints of bare feet beside the last pool.”
“So did I. And Johnny, look!” she held up a short string of small, round beads.
“Green,” he said with a low exclamation. “Green jade!”
Again he seemed to hear Hardgrave running on in a low, melodious tone so suggestive of great secrets: “Three gods; a black one, a green one and one of pure gold.”
“Green—green jade,” he thought to himself. “That’s it, to be sure. The green god would be carved from jade.”
To the girl he said, “That’s a rare find. Ever see any like it before?”
“No, never.”
“We’d better go on. Ought not to get separated from the rest.”
As they hurried on, Johnny heard a slight movement among the palms to the right of him and for a second, above the tallest leaf, there flashed a gleaming blade.
“Did—did you see it?” the girl asked, gripping his arm.
Johnny nodded.
“Wha—what was it?”
“A spear point, I’d say.” He spoke as calmly as he could.
“Now, I am beginning to be afraid,” she said.
“No use being afraid now. We’ve gone too far. Walk straight on as if you had seen nothing. We’ll see more.”
They did. It was uncanny, unnerving in the extreme. There came a gleam from a bush and a brown face appeared, to vanish instantly. Then there came a rustle and a low call.
“It—it’s spooky,” whispered the girl, keeping close to Johnny’s side.
He wondered how the affair would end. Who were these people? Were they really wild Mayas? He thought of their own weapons. Few enough they were. He was carrying Roderick’s light rifle and there was some extra ammunition strapped in his pack. A good machete hung at his side.
“But what are we against so many? There must be no fight.”
Yet there was to be a fight, such a strange one as he could not have dreamed of, and that right soon.
As they rounded a turn in the trail, a sudden, piercing scream rent the air. The next moment a beautiful Indian girl dressed in a strange garment of scarlet, with her hair streaming behind her, came racing wildly down the trail and behind her, in mad pursuit, came the strangest creature it had ever been Johnny’s lot to behold.
As heavy as an ox, but shorter of leg and broader of back, the creature had such a face as an elephant might present had he been robbed of half his trunk. Rage gleamed from his small, black eyes. From his side there protruded the shaft of a spear and this, no doubt, was the cause of his sudden anger.
To be snatched from the silence of the jungle to the sudden strain of action is like being dragged from the deep dark of midnight to the glaring light of day. For a second Johnny stood petrified. Then, born as he was for action, and trained for it, too, he sprang forward. The shoulder straps of his pack were thrown off and the pack struck the trail with a thump. Then, like an ancient warrior, Johnny lifted the light rifle and prepared to stand his ground.
“Look out!” screamed Jean. “It’s a mountain cow, a tapir. He’s mad with pain. He—he’ll trample you to death.”
With one hand Johnny pushed her into the brush; with the other he steadied his rifle. Down the trail came Indian girl and tapir.
The tapir was gaining, and so in line with the girl that Johnny could not fire. Now he was four yards behind, now three, now two. And now, with a terrifying scream, the Indian girl tripped and fell.
For a second it seemed that nothing could save her. By great good fortune she rolled over once. This brought her to the side of the beaten path. The tapir, too near to halt or swerve, flew on by.
Not to be thwarted, as if realizing that here at his feet lay the darling of the tribesmen who had sent the spear into his side, he stopped short with a mad snort to whirl about and renew his attack.
This was Johnny’s chance. He now had a broadside shot and could reach the heart. The rifle was a light one, far too light to be used on such game unless the bullet found a vulnerable spot.
The end of the Indian girl must soon have come, had not Johnny, taking quick, but sure aim, pressed the trigger and sent a small but paralyzing bullet into the heart of the maddened beast.
It was a dramatic moment. For a moment the tapir stood swaying backward and forward, then plunged headlong into the bush, twitched convulsively for a few seconds and then lay quite still. He was stone dead.
Hardly had the tapir fallen when Johnny was treated to a sudden surprise. He was gripped tightly about the knees. Looking down, he met a pair of dark eyes looking into his. It was the Indian girl, stammering words in her own tongue. Johnny understood not one word of it, but knew well enough that he was being called a brave one, a hero, a young god. And, having read all this in her eyes, he did not know whether to laugh or smile. He ended by doing nothing at all until, finding himself surrounded by a half hundred little brown men all armed with bows and spears, and having become conscious of Jean close beside him, he stooped, and lifting the brown girl to her feet, placed her hand in the white girl’s as he murmured that word which everyone of whatever land or tongue must understand by knowledge or instinct:
“Sister,” he said, simply and quietly.
There were tears in the brown girl’s eyes, tears in Jean’s as well; yet they smiled through their tears. Who can tell how strong was the bond of friendship welded at that moment?
It would have been difficult for either Jean or Johnny to tell how the movement started, but before they realized what was happening, a line of march formed along the trail. Before them were many brown hunters with their weapons; in long procession others followed, while close beside them was the Indian girl. Just as the procession started, awe-struck and silent, Roderick and the Carib woman materialized from somewhere to join them.
A wild, weird chant was struck up, then all moved slowly forward.
“How strange! How—how fascinating!” whispered Jean.
“Like a march of triumph,” Johnny whispered back.
In and out among the palms the procession wound. There appeared to be no end to that trail. Whence had come these people? Whither were they bound?
“Now where are we?” Johnny asked, an air of mystery in his voice.
As if in answer to his query, a great brown shaft, elaborately carved and gray with the moss of centuries, reared itself up before them. Beyond this they came at once into cleared spaces where were cornfields and pastures with goats grazing in them. Beside the trail were stone cottages with thatched roofs. Beside these dwellings women sat weaving cloth on narrow looms while others working over strange stone bowls beat soaked corn into batter.
“The wild Mayas,” the girl whispered with a thrill in her tone. “We have found them! At last we have found them!”
“And they have found us,” Johnny’s tone was solemn. “We are in their hands. This is their land. When shall we leave it? Ever?”
“Ev—ever?”
“Perhaps never. Who knows?”
It was strange, weird, fascinating, this march of the Mayas. The rhythmic chant, the all but inaudible pat-pat of their bare feet, the sighing wind in the palms that waved like plumes above their heads, all this stamped deep into the minds of the boy and the girl impressions that time will never erase.
It was a march, a grand processional, but where to? What was to be the end of it? Armed to the teeth, these men had but a short half hour before been following, surrounding them, perhaps planning to kill them as intruders in their secret land. What of the present? Was this a march done in their honor? Was Johnny being thought of as a hero because of having saved the life of that beautiful Indian girl, and was this march given in his honor? Or was it a ceremonial march which would end with their being sacrificed to some gods, black, green or gold?
As he pondered these questions, Johnny remembered something he had read in Hardgrave’s book, something that had made his blood run cold. The Mayas did offer sacrifices to their gods, or at least they had in olden times. And now, as he recalled it, he understood the presence of those pools along the trail. The Maya country was a land without streams. It was a limestone country. All the water ran in underground grottos. From time to time one of these grottos caved in, forming a pool. That was the secret of the pools they had seen. Some of these pools held more terrible secrets. Some of them were thousands of years old. A party of scientists, coming upon one of these in a territory that had been abandoned by the Mayas, had found not only rich treasure in ornaments of gold, silver, onyx and jade, but human skulls as well. The lives of those whose skulls lay hidden for so many years beneath the water had been sacrificed to some god. What god? The god of the rising sun? of the noon-day sun? of the setting sun? of fire? of water? Who could tell. There lay their skulls, mute testimony of the death they had died.
“So we, too, may die?” Johnny whispered to himself. “Who knows?”
As for Jean, knowing nothing of this, she was enjoying the experience to its full. And why not? Why dream of tragedy in the sunlight of a glorious day?
The march came to a halt before a long, low building, and at once an elderly man, dressed in an embroidered cape which, with his dignified bearing, gave him quite an air of distinction, came out to greet them.
At once the beautiful Indian girl broke away from the ranks of the warriors and began a long and excited speech. Accompanied by many gestures and many a nod of her head in the direction of the white trio, this speech was impressive indeed.
“What’s it all about?” asked Roderick.
“Don’t understand Maya,” smiled Johnny, “but as far as I can tell, she is Pocahontas and I’m John Smith. She is pleading for my life before the great chief. If I’m not mistaken there’s a strong family resemblance. She’s his daughter.”
“Pleading for your life?” exclaimed Jean.
“My life and yours perhaps,” Johnny smiled. “These Mayas have a way of sacrificing folks to their gods. Also I’ve heard that white people are not at all welcome.
“Roderick,” he said suddenly, “what sort of god would you prefer to be sacrificed to—a black one, a green one or one of pure gold?”
Roderick shuddered, but did not reply.
“Surely you are romancing!” exclaimed Jean.
“Indeed I’m not. Never was more in earnest in my life. Men have disappeared into the jungle. Many have never come back. Do you think all have perished of hunger and fever? Not much. I read it all in a book. Besides, Hardgrave has told me.”
It was the girl’s turn to shudder.
“I’ll put the question more picturesquely,” Johnny said, turning to Jean. “Would you prefer to be sacrificed to the god of the rising sun, the noon-day sun, or the setting sun?”
“The rising sun,” she answered quickly. “The morning is so full of promise. Surely that would be the god to choose if there really were such gods, and one were to be sacrificed.”
All this talk came to a sudden end as the chief, stepping forward, took first the hand of the white girl, then that of her companion. After that, nodding to Roderick and the Mayas, he led them into his house.
There, seated on mats, with a cool breeze floating in from open windows, they were soon being served to a refreshing drink and to food that was familiar, but that seemed passing strange in these weird surroundings.
“Hot tamales!” Johnny exclaimed as a great mahogany tray of tamales was set before them.
“Mm-m!” murmured Jean as she tasted hers. “Wild turkey tamale. How delicious!”
“They should understand the making of them,” said Johnny as he took a generous mouthful. “Unless I am mistaken the Mayas invented them. They probably served them on plates of gold before Columbus discovered America; yes, or even Solomon found his mines.”
“How—how picturesque! How romantic!” murmured the girl.
Johnny agreed with her, but in his mind many questions were constantly bobbing up demanding an answer.
That night as he lay alone on a comfortable bed of mats with a heavy home woven blanket for protection from the night chill of this higher altitude, he thought of many things.
As he heard the steady pat-pat of a sentry’s feet as he paced before the door of that long, low house, he realized that they were virtually prisoners. They were being treated very well, and would be in the future, he hoped. But would the Mayas allow them to return home? He doubted it. The trails to this hidden city of the wild Mayas—it was truly a city and already Johnny had seen thousands of the little brown people—were secret trails. How Roderick had come to stumble upon the trail they had followed, he could not tell. Well enough the native chief knew that to allow these uninvited guests to depart was to throw away the key to his castle and city.
What, then, would happen? Would they be detained there indefinitely, be given the privilege of becoming members of the tribe, of learning the secrets of their ceremonies and initiated into hidden mysteries?
“And in the end perhaps marry the princess,” Johnny chuckled. “Grand little old fairy story, this.”
Strangely enough, at this moment he felt the call of the red lure as never before. As he closed his eyes he could see great trees come crashing down, see little tractors dragging massive logs through the bush, see those logs splash into the water to form a raft to at last go drifting silently down the river. This was to have been his great venture. He was to have tapped a primeval forest of priceless wood. That wood was to have been brought to enrich the world. The richest lady of the land might not disdain to have her boudoir furnished with rich appointments made from this wood. A king or president might be proud to lay his most important documents upon its shiny surface. There was to have come from this success, riches, and a consciousness of fine achievement.
“And I gave it up for what?” he asked himself soberly. “For adventure, for the joy of discovery. And for a pal, a golden-haired girl. The girl; I owe all to her. She gave me back life when it was all but gone. But I was not the only one who chose. She chose as well. Together we chose adventure, discovery. The lure of the unknown beckoned and we came. If we escape will we win renown? Will they say we have added a chapter to the world’s golden store of knowledge? Hardly. We are not great scholars. We cannot bring back a detailed report; don’t know how. We can only say, ‘we have been, we have seen,’ and that is all. And yet, what adventure, what lure of discovery!”
With that he fell asleep.
The evening following his trip down the river to Daego’s stationary engine, during the twilight hour Pant might have been found in the largest bunk house of the camp. A tropical wilderness seemed a queer place for one to be teaching bayonet practice, yet that was exactly what he was doing. He had learned these tactics in a summer military camp. Now, with five-foot mahogany clubs in lieu of guns and bayonets, his Caribs were being taught to stab and fend, to dodge and swing, and to perform all those tricks that saved many a Yankee boy at Chateau Thierry and Belleau Wood.
Why was he doing this? Had you asked him why, he would perhaps have told you that Johnny had asked him to do it before he went away. Johnny would be coming back. He would expect to have it done. Besides, the big battle was coming some of these days, the fight to a finish with Daego’s men. It was well to be prepared in every way for that fight. Daego’s band still outnumbered them. He might get further reinforcements.
“If only we could reduce their number somehow,” the boy sighed as, stepping from the bunk room into the gathering darkness, he left his men to finish their practice alone.
“We may do it, too,” he chuckled, throwing a glance toward the little shack which had been Johnny’s office, and from which at this moment there came strange noises and a mysterious glow of light.
Hardgrave’s laboratory, however, was not Pant’s destination. He was going much farther that night.
Recent reports of fresh ravages committed by the man-eating jaguar had thrown his men into a panic. One man had left camp. Others were threatening to do so. Something must be done about it, and that at once.
Lowering a mysterious burden into the bottom of the dugout, and leaning a heavy rifle across it, Pant paddled away down the creek.
Having located the end of the rough trail which Johnny had cut to the foot of the bread-nut tree, he bent down and began creeping cat-like through the brush. Half way to the tree he stumbled and all but fell. Like a flash he was on his feet and three yards from the spot. Something moving beneath his feet had caused him to stumble. His breath came quick. Had he stepped on one of those great, poisonous snakes that infest the tropical jungle? He would hazard a flash of his pocket light.
For a second an oblong circle of light appeared on the back trail, then the boy laughed a low laugh. An armadillo, one of those strange, harmless, turtle-like creatures, had lain asleep in the trail. It was this he had stepped on, and not a snake.
Greatly relieved, he resumed his stealthy journey down the trail. Some forty feet from the bread-nut tree he paused to peer about him in the darkness. Having found one of those low palms whose leaves, three or four feet across, are quite solid save for their ragged edges, he began silently slashing off leaves until he had quite a pile. Some of these he spread three or four deep on the damp earth. Then, lying flat down, he drew others over him until he was almost covered.
“Wouldn’t want an elephant to come down this trail,” he chuckled to himself.
A few moments later there sounded from that mass of green palm leaves such a long-drawn-out whistle as the little deer of these forests uses to call his mate.
Pant was not hunting deer, but jaguars. In fact, he was hunting one jaguar, the killer. Once in the jungles of India he had used an exceedingly powerful red light to frighten a tiger. Now, with the aid of dry batteries from the power boat, he had arranged a bright red light. He hoped with his deer call to entice the killer to enter the trail, then to hold him at bay with the red light until he had a fair shot at him.
It was, he knew right well, a hazardous undertaking. Jaguars might not fear a red light. Who could tell about that? The killer might scent him and, turning hunter, leap upon him from the low boughs of the black tamarind trees that grew near. This he must risk. Pant had an interest in Johnny’s quest for the red lure. He had an interest in the Caribs. He had a still wider interest in all humanity. If all reports were true, if this great cat with the mark above his eye had done the killing he was credited with, he should be killed. Pant felt it his duty to attempt this hard and dangerous task.
So his whistle sounded on through the night. Now there was a movement off to the left. At once Pant was all attention. At last he discovered that this noise was caused by a large lizard hunting among decaying vegetation for bugs.
Again the whistle. Again a movement, this time among the branches of a tamarind tree. Pant’s heart beat loudly. Was the great cat above him? Was he at this moment preparing for a spring? Could the cat know that under those palm leaves was a tempting supper?
But no, Pant caught the flap-flap of wings. “An owl or a parrot,” he breathed in disgust.
But what was this? Before him in the path there had come a sudden thump. Ah, this was it, the very thing he had hoped for. The jaguar, in answer to his call, had leaped to the ground in the very center of the trail.
Now was the time to act. With trembling fingers he adjusted his light, drew his rifle into position, then threw on the catch.
At once a glare of red light, streaming down the trail, brought out every leaf and twig with startling clearness.
Imagine the boy’s surprise at seeing not a crouching jaguar with fiery eyes gleaming, but a small, timid, short-horned deer, who blinked blindly at the light.
“Huh!” Pant breathed. “Call worked too well.”
But wait; what was this? There came a movement from farther down the trail. Pant looked. One look froze him cold. Behind the deer, tail lashing madly, ready for a spring, was the killer.
As Pant saw, the deer saw, too. For ten seconds the frightened creature hesitated. Beside him, to right and left, was impenetrable bush; behind him a jaguar, his mortal enemy; before him the great unknown, the glare of red light. Ten seconds, and then with a bound he was away; dashing straight at the red light. And after him, in great swinging leaps, came the terrible cat.
There are times when the drama of life moves so rapidly that we can do little more than get out of the way and let things pass. When Pant saw the jaguar and the deer there was not even time for that. The best he could do was to flatten himself against his couch of leaves.
On they came. The deer decided to brave the terrifying light. On came the deer and on came the jaguar. Pant dared not breathe. Now they were upon him. Then came the cutting dig of hoofs in the boy’s back, followed by a whirl of air.
What of the killer? Was that breath of air the sign of his passing? Had he cleared the green heap that was Pant, at a leap? Pant could not tell. For a long time he dared not move. Even after he had caught a distant splash which told that the deer had taken to the water, he did not move at once.
At last, cautiously snapping off his light and gripping his rifle, he sprang to his feet.
He listened intently. There was no sound. He tried to pierce the darkness but could see nothing.
At last, after throwing his lighting apparatus over his shoulder and adjusting his rifle for a quick shot, he made his way back over the trail to the boat. Even here nothing moved. What had happened? Had the killer followed the deer into the river? Had he given up the trail to go prowling back into the forest? One thing was certain; the hunt was ended for that night. Pant’s nerves were too unsteady to give the red flash a second trial. Besides, he was not at all sure it would work; in fact, he felt reasonably certain it wouldn’t.
“I’ll get you yet,” he said stoutly with the shake of a clenched fist in the general direction of the jungle. With that he took to his dugout and paddled home.
For three nights Pant had not visited Daego’s camp. Nor had he in all this time seen Johnny’s ghost walking out upon the air. That it had walked, he felt quite sure. The night before, a large dugout, loaded with the half-caste’s men, had been seen to go slipping down the river.
“Just go gliding about up there in my dugout,” Pant told himself an hour after darkness set in.
He pushed his boat some distance up the river, then, lying flat down in it, allowed it to drift downstream.
“Might see that ghost again to-night,” he said, chuckling.
In this position it was impossible for him to see perils ahead. A slanting snag caught his drifting boat and set it tilting. Before he could realize what was happening he found himself struggling in the black waters.
Striking out with both hands, he made a grab for the overturned boat. To his dismay he heard it give forth a sucking sound, then saw it sink, prow first, in ten feet of water.
“Darn!” he muttered. “Old dugout. Waterlogged. What now?”
There was only one answer to this: shore as quickly as possible. What if it were the enemy’s shore? There were alligators in these waters, great scaly creatures ten feet long. He had heard one barking not three rods from him but a moment before.
“Here for the night,” he groaned, as he reached a leaning tree trunk and climbed upon it.
This seemed true enough. The tree grew at the edge of a marsh. There were alligators in the marsh. To travel that marsh in the dark was to court death.
Imagine his relief when, just as he had resigned himself to this hard fate, he saw the dark form of a canoe drift into the shadows.
So surprised and overjoyed was he that, casting caution to the winds, he hailed the solitary boatman.
To his surprise, the answer that came back was in the high-pitched notes of a girl.
“Who—who are you?” came in the same girlish voice as the canoe halted, twice its length from the tree.
“Pant—Panther Eye,” replied the boy, not knowing what else to say.
“Oh!”
To the boy’s immense surprise, there was something in the girl’s tone that told plainer than words that to her his name was not strange. More surprising still was the manner in which, at sound of this name, she threw all reserve aside and paddled quickly to the tree and invited him to drop into the stern.
Once he was aboard, she sent her boat shooting away across the river. Ignoring the entrance to the river trail, she drove on down the river and entered the creek, at last bringing her canoe up with a bump at the entrance of the creek trail.
Pant remembered Johnny’s story of the strange Spanish girl who had visited their camp. Something seemed to tell him that this was the same girl. He did not have long to wait.
During all their journey the girl had remained silent. Now she spoke:
“I was here before.”
“I—I thought so,” said Pant. “Why?”
“I wanted to speak to you, or your friend. You had been deserted by your crew. We knew why. We—we might have helped you.”
“Who are ‘we’?”
“Father and I. What brought you up to the Rio Hondo?” the girl asked quickly.
“The red lure.”
“The red——”
“Mahogany.”
“And is that all?” There was a searching note in her words.
“Quite all. Believe me, it is quite enough. Perhaps you’ve never felt the charm of it. Precious, priceless, perfect wood—mahogany, the red lure. That’s Johnny’s name for it.”
“I know,” said the girl, “I, too, have felt it. I told father that was all. He was not sure. My friend,” the girl’s voice dropped to a whisper, “I have helped you a little to-night.”
“A lot.”
“A little. You may be able to help us a great deal, father and me. We’re in trouble, not our trouble, but our country’s trouble.
“Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you,” she hesitated, “but I guess it’s right I should. My father is deputy for this territory. It is his duty to see that the laws are obeyed. Someone is breaking our laws and we cannot catch them. Not little things that do not matter much, but big things that mean certain death to many.” She paused for a moment. To their ears came the silent rush of water. There is something dreadfully solemn about the rush of black waters through the dark.
“These laws-breakers,” the girl continued, “are smuggling two things to our people—rifles and rum. You know what that means in Mexico. Rifles and rum mean revolution; cruel, senseless revolution! The Governor of the state of Quintanaroo is a good, kind man. Revolution could never bring a better government. But the people are simple-minded. Rum maddens their hearts. Rifles make them want to fight. Someone is selling them both at a great price, and we cannot catch them. One man is suspected, and that one is——”
“Daego?”
“Daego. But we can prove nothing. Every motor boat is searched, but each one brings only food, clothing and tools for his camp.”
All at once, as Pant sat there listening to this girl, so earnest, yet so young, so eager to help her people, he realized that a Divine will, higher than his own, had sent him here and that his greatest mission, a moral mission, was just before him.
“I—I think I can help you,” he whispered. “I know I can.”
Before his mind’s eye a black shadow crept up the river and in his memory there echoed still the pop-pop of that stationary engine away in the bush.
“Give me a day, two days,” he said. “Come back here day after to-morrow, two hours after dark.”
“All right, my friend, and may God prosper you! We are your friends. Good-bye!”
Pant stepped upon the shore and the canoe shot silently away in the night.
“We are your friends.” How sweet were those words spoken to a lonely boy in the heart of a wilderness!
Pant’s conference with the girl at the creek landing on the appointed night was short and to the point. The girl’s father was to station a company of his men in a cluster of cocoanut palms at a certain point on the river’s brink an hour after dark on the following night.
“Daego’s pit-pans may not come that night,” said Pant. “We have no means of telling. But we will watch, one night, two, three if necessary.”
“Yes, a month,” said the girl.
“And your father’s men will be there?”
“Yes.”
“Depend upon it, the trap will be set.”
“Thank you, so much. And my father thanks you. The best and truest of our people thank you.”
Once more the girl vanished into the night.
Next evening, just after nightfall, three strange dories might have been seen stealing from the mouth of the creek. Behind them, wriggling and twisting with the ripple and flow of the water, came a serpent-like affair hundreds of feet in length. The dories came from the Carib sail boats. They were strongly manned by Carib crews.
Leaving the creek, they moved slowly up the river. When they had reached a point a mile above the mouth of the creek, they turned their prows toward shore. Once there, they tied the long trailer to a Yamra tree.
This accomplished, they paddled rapidly back to the spot where the other end of the trailer was bumping the shore. Having attached this end solidly to a group of overhanging trees, they returned again to the other end. After unfastening this end, aided by the current and their own sturdy rowing, they brought this end to the opposite bank. There they anchored it.
“The trap is set.” Pant said this with a sigh of relief. “The night is ideal. No moon. Clouds drifting over the stars. It will be very dark. If they come, their very fear of light will be their undoing.” At that he ordered his men to row him back to the other shore. There for some time he busied himself with the fastenings of that end of the “trap.”
“There!” he breathed. “A single stroke of the axe, and it is done.”
“They will come very late at night if they come at all,” he told his men. “Time for another thing. Doesn’t really matter whether I’m here or not. The trap will spring.”
He was eager to be away after the big cat whose tracks, freshly made the night before, had been seen in the mud of a small stream that crossed the trail to the river. At realization that he was so near, the Caribs had been thrown into panic. Some of them had been for manning their crafts and drifting down stream at once. But upon receiving Pant’s promise that within forty-eight hours the skin of the killer should be drying against the wall of the cook shack, they had gone back to work.
It was a rash promise, but Pant resolved that he would make good. So this night, armed only with his rifle and a common flashlight, he made his way over the river trail to a place of hiding he had prepared.
He had covered half the distance, when on pausing to listen, he caught the faint sound of footsteps on the moss covered trail.
His heart skipped a beat. Someone was following! Who could it be? Was it a curious Carib? Hardly. They were too much afraid of the killer. Was it an enemy from across the river? Such a thing was possible.
Stepping noiselessly to one side, Pant waited. Straight on came the one who followed.
“Sounds like two,” Pant said to himself.
“Sounds——” he hesitated a moment. “It don’t sound like—it sounds—yes, it is! It’s old Rip himself!”
And so it was. Rip, the burro, once a bag of bones, now well fed on bread-nut hay, sleek and fat, had chosen to follow his young master on his hunt for a killer.
“Now, why did you follow?” Pant said with a chuckle. “What am I to do with you? If I tie you up here the killer may get you. I can’t spare time to take you back. I know what I’ll do; I’ll take you along. We’ll fight it out together with the big cat.”
For this resolve Pant will always have cause to be grateful; and yet, in a way, the affair was to end rather sadly.
With the burro standing patiently beside him, he had remained in hiding for a full half hour when, without warning, there had appeared in the trail not five yards before him the very creature he had come to seek. There stood the killer!
So sudden was his appearance that Pant had little time to prepare for the attack. He had only seized his rifle and had no time to aim and fire, when, with a scream that was blood-curdling, the big cat launched himself through the air.
Expecting nothing so much as to be torn to bits by the claws and fangs of the beast, the boy dropped his rifle and threw himself back into the bushes. As he did this, unconsciously his right hand reached for his machete and drew it from its scabbard.
Surprise followed. The death dealing compact of the flying cat did not come. For an instant Pant’s senses reeled. Then, like a flash, it came to him. The tiger had launched himself against the burro. Feeling the machete in his grasp, without reasoning as to the outcome, Pant sprang to battle.
It was well that he did. A strange thing had occurred. As the tiger sprang, the burro had reared upon his hind feet. In this way he had struck the great cat squarely in the head with his sharp hoofs. The blow had been a stunning one and as Pant entered the battle he found the jaguar just returning to consciousness. This task he never quite completed, for Pant’s machete, coming down with savage force, all but severed his head from his body.
“That settles you,” he muttered. “I’ve kept my promise.”
Then, overcome by nervous exhaustion, he settled down upon the damp earth.
As strength slowly returned he thought of his companion, the burro.
Creeping over to where he lay, he put a hand upon him. Then he lifted the animal’s head, to allow it to drop limply back.