Mystery Stories for Boys

The Red Lure

By
ROY J. SNELL

The Reilly & Lee Co.
Chicago

Printed in the United States of America

Copyright, 1926
by
The Reilly & Lee Co.
All Rights Reserved

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE [I The White Gleam] 9 [II Sudden Catastrophe] 23 [III Mysterious Sounds] 38 [IV Tree Hay and a Jaguar] 47 [V Narrow Escapes] 58 [VI Lost in the Jungle] 65 [VII Peril in the Dark] 77 [VIII Death Ahead] 87 [IX “It’s Death an’ Destruction”] 100 [X Johnny’s Ghost Walks] 114 [XI Provisioned for a Long Journey] 128 [XII A Bronze Beauty] 135 [XIII Purring Shadows] 151 [XIV Forgotten Tribes] 159 [XV The Hidden City] 169 [XVI Pant Sets a Trap] 177 [XVII The Spanish Girl Reappears] 185 [XVIII Pant Springs the Trap] 191 [XIX Capturing a Black Shadow] 199 [XX Century Old Caverns] 209 [XXI Trapped] 218 [XXII Magic Power] 228 [XXIII The Passing of the Ghost] 237 [XXIV Blind Drifting] 242 [XXV The Battle of Rio Hondo] 252

THE RED LURE

CHAPTER I
THE WHITE GLEAM

As Johnny Thompson bent over the black waters of the river he thought he heard a stealthy movement behind him. Before he could decide whether or not his eyes had deceived him he caught the reflection of a sudden white gleam on the dark surface of the water. At the same time something told him to dive, and dive he did. With the rocket-like speed that was his, he shot straight into the water, then away beneath the surface. He rose some ten yards downstream. After one deep, silent breath, he grasped a red mangrove branch for support, then paused to listen.

He did not listen long, for there came a sudden wild swirl of water close beside him.

“Alligator!” he breathed, as with a sudden and mighty tug at the mangrove branch he threw himself clear of the water and out upon the bank.

Here he paused to listen again. Catching no sound, he began creeping back toward his first position, the foot of the path that had been cut to the river.

All this time his mind was working on double-quick time. What had caused that sound behind him there on the bank—man or beast? What was the white gleam? Was it, after all, only a product of his overwrought mind? The whole day had seemed full of brooding menace.

“No,” he told himself stoutly, “it was not all imagination. The sound might have been—but the white gleam? No. I saw that. After all, though, it might have been only the reflection of a white heron in silent flight.”

Night was coming on. It would soon be dark. He did not care for that. His flashlight was in his pocket. As he crept forward through the thick tangled brush he seemed to feel the swift power of the dark old river. Rio Hondo, they called it—Black River. And black it was. Johnny had never before seen water that could so perfectly reproduce the black gleam of polish ebony. And yet, somehow, he had come to think of the river as his friend. That was how he came to be there now. Pant, his pal, was away. The thirty black and brown faces about camp had seemed singularly strange and unfriendly, so he had come to the river for comfort. And now, how had it repaid him? Had it in that white gleam given him a friendly warning, or had it tricked him into a place of great peril, into danger of being eaten by an alligator?

Suddenly his thoughts came to an end. Sooner than he expected he broke through the “bush” into the path. Starting back, he stared for a second in silence.

“No one here,” he whispered. “But wait; some one has been here.”

In astonishment he picked up a long-bladed, gleaming knife. It was a machete, the tool and weapon of the bushman of Central America.

“Looks like Petillo’s machete,” he breathed. What could it mean?

Just then he caught a sudden sound from the water. It was like a startled cry for help. He thought he caught sight of a head above the black waters. He might have been mistaken. It was growing dark. He drew his flashlight from his pocket. It was water-logged, short circuited, useless.

Again came the strange cry and at the same time a great swirl of water.

“The alligator!” he breathed.

For an instant he thought of throwing himself in the water to go to the rescue. This he knew was madness. There were other alligators. Grim, terrible, man-eating beasts were these sharp nosed alligators of British Honduras, Central America.

So, as he sat there, crowded well back in the bushes, silent, motionless, listening and thinking, darkness came and blotted out all, both good and bad, that might have been seen upon the surface of the Rio Hondo.

A deep feeling of foreboding and gloom settled down upon him as darkness hid the river.

Picking up the machete that lay at his feet, he felt of its edge.

“Keen as a razor,” he murmured. “Did some one try to kill me with it? If so, I wonder why? Well, he didn’t, and won’t. Providence took a hand. Must have lost his balance and fallen in. Bad swimmer. Current carried him out and a ’gator got him. That’s the way it looks. Can’t tell, though.”

He shuddered at the thought; the ’gator might have gotten him, too.

Johnny was in a strange land, the strangest he had ever seen. In other days, as you will know if you have read our other stories of the adventures of Johnny Thompson, fate had led him over the frozen trails of Alaska, down the timber roads of the Cascades and out over the sea. Now here he was far up a tropical river, in the heart of the “bush,” alone.

It is not pleasant to be alone in a tropical jungle at night. Johnny rose to go. His flashlight gone, there was nothing left but to grope his way back over the machete-hewn trail to camp. It was some distance—all of a mile.

As he took his first step, off to the right a twig snapped. His heart skipped a beat and his face felt strangely cold. Had he been watched? Now the creature was going on before him. Was it a man, or a jaguar? (Natives called them tigers.) He preferred the word “tiger.”

Gripping the keen edged machete, he struck away straight down the trail.

There came no further sound. Slowly, steadily, he advanced. Half the distance was covered. He was breathing more easily when a sudden hoarse sound brought him to a stand.

Then he laughed. Off to the right he caught the gleam of two small red balls of fire. And again that hoarse bark broke the silence of the night.

“’Gator,” he said with a chuckle. “Forgot there was one in a pool over there.”

He did not laugh five minutes later as he heard, off to the left, the pu-pu-pu of a jaguar. These great cats were dangerous. They had been known to kill a horse and swim a river with the carcass. The golden balls that now peered at him from the first branch of a great Santa Maria tree were not reassuring.

Redoubling his pace, he hurried on toward camp. Five minutes later, with a sigh of satisfaction, he broke through the brush into a clearing.

Here he paused in astonishment. The place was silent, more silent than he had known it even in the dead of night. The gleam of coals on the cooking platform and the dim bulk of cabins looming in the dark were the only signs that men lived here.

“Hello there!” he shouted.

To his utter bewilderment there came no answer.

An hour before he had left thirty men here. Now there was not one. What could it mean? Again cold dread gripped his heart.

Turning, he hurried down a logging road to the edge of a broad creek. There the white bulk of a large flat-bottomed boat greeted him.

“They didn’t take the Maria Theresa, anyway.” There was a comfort in that. “Fellow’d sure be up against it a hundred miles from the coast without a boat.”

Even as he thought this, his ears caught the steady dip-dip of pit-pan paddles.

“Hello! Hello there!” he shouted.

Again there came no answer. Even the paddles, if paddles there had been, were silent.

“Huh!”

He turned and walked slowly back to camp. There he groped about until he had found a bench. This he leaned against the side of a cabin, and burying his back in the soft cohune nut thatch, pressed his brow with both hands in an endeavor to think sanely and clearly.

Time passed. The coals on the cooking platform growing dimmer and dimmer, at last blinked out. The darkness appeared to grow more intense, the night more silent.

“They said it couldn’t be done,” he muttered at last, “and perhaps it can’t. But there was the red lure. The red lure,” he repeated softly.

The red lure! He had heard of it first in a little cabinetmaker’s shop in Chicago. In that shop an old man wrought wonders with precious woods—rosewood and ebony and mahogany. Strange tales this old man had to tell, and he told them as he worked. Tales they were of tropical isles, of green rivers and dense forests.

One day as he put the last touch to a bit of wood that gleamed red as a western sunset, he had exclaimed:

“The red lure, Johnny! The red lure! That’s what’s beckoned men on, and times enough to their death!”

Then, after laying the bit of wood down as gently as if it had been a priceless porcelain top, he had added:

“And, Johnny, I know where the lure ends. Far up a tropical river, a big black river. It’s there, Johnny, and unscarred by the hand of man.”

“Why?” Awed by the old man’s tones, Johnny had whispered the word.

“That’s it, Johnny.” The old man had half closed his eyes. “That’s what the owner of that land would like to know. Three times he has sent men in boats up the Rio Hondo. Three times they came back empty handed; that is, the ones that came back at all. Why? Who knows. Who can solve all the mysteries of the tropics? Who can guess the trickery and intrigue that lies hidden in a Spaniard’s mind? The red lure is still there. Men have died for it; but there it stands. The red lure, Johnny. The red lure!”

He had turned once more to his work, but Johnny had not forgotten. Something within him had been stirred to the depths. He had heard the call of the wilderness, had felt the challenge of the impossible.

In time, having sought out his partner of many adventures, “Panther Eye,” or “Pant” as he was called, he had gone in search of the owner of the red lure. He had found him to be a rich business man.

At first this capitalist, Roderick Grayson, had merely laughed at the proposition which the two boys made—that they be given a try at the red lure. In time he had come to take them more seriously.

At last he had made them a proposition.

“I’m tired of having you about,” he growled good-naturedly. “I’ll give you a chance. You go to Belize, the Capitol of Honduras. That’s a city of twelve thousand. Plenty of men and boats there. I’ll instruct my agent there to furnish you with motor boats and pay for thirty men. You may have them a hundred days, not a day more. At the end of that time you must show me a profit from your expedition or you lose this concession. Is that plain? And satisfactory?”

“Quite.”

“Then good-bye.”

The rich man had bowed them out, and that is how it happened that on this particular night Johnny was far up the Rio Hondo.

“And now this!” Johnny said to himself. “A bolt out of the blue! An apparent attempt at my life. My men vanish. What is to be the end of it all?”

Suddenly he realized that he was alone in the dark; that perils lurked in every corner of the jungle.

“Well enough to have some sort of light,” he told himself.

There was a flashlight on a beam in the very cabin against which his bench rested. To secure that and to try it out by a flash on the floor was but the work of a moment.

Upon returning to the bench he felt a little more secure. As he sat down his foot struck something and sent it to the ground with a thud.

“The machete,” he thought.

Picking it up, he examined it curiously. On the horn handle of this bushman’s sword he discovered the initials, S. P.

“Seperino Petillo,” he said with a start. “So it was Petillo. I was not mistaken.”

His mind was in a whirl. Petillo, a half-caste Spaniard, had been his foreman. Surely, this was a strange land. The very man to whom he had given position and standing among his people had, apparently, tried to kill him.

For some time he sat there thinking and his thoughts were long, long thoughts.

The red lure was all about him. The smell of it was in his nostrils.

Yet, less than a third of their work was done. To establish a camp, to build cabins from the trunks and leaves of the cohune nut tree, to cut paths and roads, all this had taken time. A few weeks more and they would have been drifting silently downstream with their red treasure.

“And now this has happened!” he groaned.

And yet, what had happened? He could not tell—could only guess.

Hearing a sound to the right, he turned to listen. Catching it again, he threw his powerful flashlight on the spot.

To his astonishment the light fell full upon the face and figure of a girl.

She was a short, brown-eyed, bare-footed, Spanish girl, about sixteen years of age. Too startled to move, she stood there for an instant, blinking in the light. Then she turned and fled down the path.

Too much surprised to follow at once, Johnny sat in his place, wondering.

“There’s not such a girl within fifty miles. I am sure of that,” he told himself. “Must have come over from Quintanaroo.”

Beyond the Rio Hondo lay Quintanaroo, a land of many mysteries.

Rising, he followed down the path to the creek’s edge. There he sent the gleam of his flashlight shooting down the creek. He was just in time to see a slender canoe disappear round a clump of red mangrove.

“That’s where she came from,” he assured himself. “I wonder why?”

As he turned to retrace his steps he caught the long drawn, hoarse call of a jaguar. There were empty, palm thatched cottages up the river. Rumors were afloat of a man-eating “tiger” who had carried away the former owners of these cabins. Could it be that he had been mistaken about the plot? Had he misjudged the action of the unfortunate one at the river bank? Had his men become frightened by tales of the man-eater, and fled? Who could tell?

“Oh, well,” he sighed, “morning will come, and with it the light.”

CHAPTER II
SUDDEN CATASTROPHE

As if loath to disturb the perfect silence of a night, dawn lingers in the tropical jungle. Off somewhere in the distance a wild parrot screams; nearer at hand a long tailed tropical black-bird begins for the thousandth time to practice the song he will never learn. Swinging from limb to limb, a monkey chatters at a snake. Faint and from far away, like a young puppy calling for his breakfast, an alligator barks. Trunks of trees, gray bulks of cabins, green clusters of ferns take shape and then, with a sudden burst of light, day arrives.

The sound that awakened Johnny Thompson to dull reality of a hapless yesterday was the braying of a burro. He had remained seated on his bench all night. At first he had not dared to sleep. At last, overcome by fatigue, he had fallen asleep.

At first, only half awake, he imagined himself in Belize. Burros were common enough there.

“No,” he declared, shaking himself, “I am not in Belize. This is the jungle. There are no burros. I was dreaming.”

Leaping to his feet, he shook himself free of the last vestige of sleep.

As if to deny his last assertion, there struck his ears, clear and defiant, a loud, laughing “He-haw!”

“Well, I’ll be a donkey myself!” he exclaimed, turning and racing down the path that led to the creek. The sound appeared to come from there.

When he had covered two-thirds of the distance, he paused in astonishment. Before him in the path was the skinniest, boniest, most dilapidated and dejected specimen of animal kind it had ever been his privilege to meet. Yet, it was unmistakably a burro.

At that moment, as if to proclaim his species, the creature stuck his nose in the air and brayed once again.

In spite of his great dilemma, Johnny sat down on a fallen mahogany tree trunk and rocked with laughter.

“Well now,” he exclaimed, his fit of laughter over, “where did you come from, and how? Did you walk or swim, or both?”

Without an attempt at an answer, the creature paused in the path, hung his head and put on such a droll and mournful look as set the boy off into another fit of laughter.

Johnny was once more regaining control of himself when he caught a yellow gleam through the branches. The next moment a huge bunch of bananas appeared, and beneath them was Pant.

“Johnny, meet my new friend Rip Van Winkle,” smiled Pant. “Call him Rip for short. He’s just slept twenty years down there by a deserted cabin. I woke him up and brought him along.”

“What a pity! Why didn’t you let him sleep?” grinned Johnny.

“Why should I? He was bound to wake up sooner or later. He’d been lonesome if there’d been no one around.

“But honest, Johnny,” Pant’s tone became serious, “what would you think of a native who would leave a poor old fellow like that to starve!”

“I’d think he was a pig of a dog. But how much better can we do? What’ll we feed him on? Bananas?”

“Easy. There’s a tree up here that raises grass on its branches instead of leaves—bread-nut tree, they call it. I saw one up the river two days ago. Burros and cattle get fat on it. We’ll get a native to climb a few trees and gather a ton of this hay.”

“Natives?” said Johnny slowly. “That reminds me—there aren’t any.”

“What!” exclaimed Pant, setting down his bananas so suddenly that many of them broke from the stem.

“Skipped. Vamoosed. All gone.” Johnny threw out his arms in a wide gesture.

“No!”

“Yes, I tell you.”

“Why?”

Johnny shrugged his shoulders. “You tell me. All I know is they’re gone. They told us in New Orleans that this red lure was a hoodoo. They told us the same thing in Belize. Maybe it is. Who knows?”

“It isn’t!” Pant sprang to his feet. “We’ll go to Belize and get another crew!”

“And if they leave us?”

“There are a thousand men in Belize.”

“Pant,” said Johnny slowly, “I think one of them tried to kill me. I—I think it was Petillo.”

Johnny seated himself on a log and told of his night’s experiences, from his narrow escape on the bank and in the river to his discovery of the mysterious Spanish girl in the trail.

“What do you make of it?” he asked at the end.

“Don’t make much.”

“Of course, there’s that man-eating jaguar they’ve been talking about. They may have run away because they were afraid. They may have—”

“But what of that fellow down by the river!” exclaimed Pant. “No! I tell you what, Johnny, someone is plotting against us, someone with money and power. We’ll not spend a night here alone. We’ll get right back to Belize. And we must not come back unless we find a real, fearless crew.”

“I’m afraid that last is a big contract.”

“Maybe so. But let’s hope it’s not impossible.”

“What’ll we do with that?” said Johnny, pointing to the burro.

“Take him along in the power boat. I tell you what, Johnny, I always feel lucky when I’m saving some poor dumb creature from suffering. I shouldn’t wonder if Rip would do us a mighty good turn sometime.”

In this Pant was more nearly right than he knew. Also, this sad-looking quadruped was destined to be the cause of bringing him into great peril. But that was all in the future.

Pant had been down the river in a dory for bananas, cocoanuts and casabas. As soon as they had unloaded these stores and had eaten a hasty breakfast, they turned the prow of their motor-boat downstream and went pop-popping away.

* * * * * * * *

Belize, the city to which the boys returned, is one of matchless beauty. Built on a point of land reaching out into the sea, with its red-roofed, white-walled houses, gnarled old mahogany trees by its governor’s palace and stately royal palms at the back of the Bishop’s house, bathed in the tropical sun, it is a city to dream of.

Johnny Thompson dreamed of it very little. His mind was occupied with but one thought—getting back to the red lure.

He was making his way up from the dock to the hotel when someone called his name. Turning, he saw Hardgrave. Hardgrave was an old man. He hailed from the States and had been twenty-five years in the tropics. A natural student, he had learned much in that time and had already been of service to this boy from the land of his birth.

“Back so soon!” he asked in surprise.

“We did get back rather soon,” said Johnny. “At least our crew did. But we’re going back.” He said this last in such a tone as Sheridan must have used when he said: “Turn, boys, turn; we’re going back.” He had been given a task to do, and like any red-blooded American boy, he meant to go through with it.

“Want to tell me about it?” said the old man.

“I’d like to.”

“Come over to the hotel yard. We’ll find shade there.”

So, beneath a low-spreading cocoanut palm, Johnny told his story.

“Johnny,” said the old man impressively, when the boy had finished his story, “get up from your chair and walk over to the cooler for a drink of water. As you come back, without appearing interested, look at the man over there in the far corner of the veranda.”

Three minutes later Johnny resumed his seat.

“See him?” the old man leaned forward eagerly.

“Saw two men; a tall, thin, dark-skinned one, and a heavy-set one.”

“The thin one, a half-caste Spaniard, is the one. That’s Daego.”

“Daego? Who is he?”

“Is it possible you have not heard of him?” Hardgrave asked. “He’s the richest, most unscrupulous man of our city. He bought you out.”

“Bought us out?”

“Hired your men to quit, and to attempt killing you, like as not. He’d do that.”

“But—but why?” Johnny licked his dry lips.

“He has his eye on that red lure of yours, has had for a long time. Strange you haven’t heard of him, haven’t seen his boats. But then, of course, they pass in the night. Black boats, they are. You don’t see much of them. You wouldn’t, I’d bet on that.”

Johnny wanted to ask about those boats, but he wanted still more to learn of Daego’s desire for his treasure.

“You see,” said Hardgrave, “Daego’s built up an immense fortune working the Rio Hondo territory. He’s worked all the land up to your tract. There he was obliged to stop. It was owned by a man who would not sell; at least not at his beggar’s price.

“As you know, British Honduras is one side of the Rio Hondo, and Quintanaroo, a state of Mexico, on the other. Daego went across the river and obtained concessions in Quintanaroo. He’s working there now. His camp can’t be a dozen miles from your own. I’m surprised that you haven’t seen his boats but of course you wouldn’t. They’re black, and mostly pass by night.”

The old man paused as if in thought. Then, of a sudden, he exclaimed:

“It’s Caribs you want!”

“What’s a Carib?” Johnny asked. “Some sort of native fruit?”

“No,” smiled Hardgrave, “they’re men. Real men, too. Indians. Columbus called them the sturdiest, most warlike men of America. They’ve been that ever since. They’ve mixed with the whites and the blacks, but they’ve never lost their language nor their courage, either. They are supposed to have been head-hunters at one time or another, though that can’t be proven. They’re the bravest sailors, the most daring hunters of our coast; the best workers, too, and if they enter into a contract they’re mighty likely to go through with it. What’s more, they hate Daego. He’s cheated and underpaid them. There’s not one that will work for him. Yes, you want Caribs.

“And son,” the man leaned forward eagerly, “you’re in luck for once! There’s two boat loads of them over from Stann Creek now. You’d better see them. They’ll be down at the storeroom of the Tidewater Company.”

“I’ll go see them,” said Johnny. “What’s the best time?”

“Along about sunset.”

“I’ll be there.”

“You should.”

They parted at the gate. Johnny went to the market and bought the ham of a young peccary (wild pig) and took it to the hotel to be baked for a late supper. After that he sat for a full hour under the shade of a cohune-nut tree, thinking—thinking hard about many things, of the little brown girl who had appeared in the path by his camp in the night, and of Daego’s dark boats that passed in the night.

Just at dusk Johnny met Hardgrave at the bridge, and together they walked in silence toward the Tidewater storeroom.

As they approached the door they caught the sound of laughter. To Johnny’s well-trained ears there came old familiar sounds, a quick shuffle of feet, the slap-slap of leather.

“Boxing,” he told himself. His pulse quickened at the thought.

Johnny Thompson, young and vigorous, belonged to that ever-increasing army of American boys who realize that no person can fight his best in the battle of life unless he is physically fit. A strong swimmer, fast on his feet and limber as a hickory limb, Johnny was not the least skillful of boxers. So his heart was made glad by the sound that greeted his ears.

Silently he and Hardgrave entered the long low room to join the little company of watchers.

The instant Johnny’s eyes fell upon the dark, gleaming, strong and well-moulded forms of the Caribs, he felt himself admiring them.

“Black faces,” he told himself, “but real men.”

“See that big fellow over in the corner,” whispered Hardgrave, “the one with the sprinkle of gray in his hair?”

Johnny nodded.

“That’s Tivoli, the chief Carib of them all.”

A half hour later Johnny Thompson found himself facing this chief and champion of the Caribs. How had it come about? Why ask? When two devotees of an art meet, how long a time passes before they begin displaying their skill?

That he was facing no mean boxer, Johnny realized quite well. He had seen Tivoli in a sparring match with one of his own men. Tivoli thought of this bout with a white boy, who could easily have walked under his arm, as something of a joke. This was shown quite plainly by the smile that overspread his face as he seized Johnny’s hand in a friendly grasp.

As for Johnny, he had two purposes in entering the match. He wished to promote friendly relations with the Caribs and he wished to prove to Tivoli that, though still a boy, he was possessed of such physical prowess as even a grown man might respect.

So the match began. That the Caribs took more than a passing interest in the affair was shown by the hush that fell upon the place as the first swinging blows fanned the air. Even the river that swept by the wide open port-side door seemed strangely silent.

The shadows, cast by the single small lamp, were deceiving. Twice, in stepping back from the whirling arms of his giant opponent, Johnny barely missed a blow that, however well meant, would have sent him to a land of wild dreams.

Though much smaller than his opponent, Johnny was quick on his feet. This, combined with the clock-like working of his trained mind, made him quite a match for the Carib.

Across the shining mahogany floor, back again, criss-cross, to right, to left, they battled. The Carib drove the white boy into a corner. Johnny feinted with his left, dodged to the right, and was free.

Crouching low, Tivoli sprang square at him, but he was gone. Not so soon, however, but that he left a sting on the giant’s ear.

Grinning still, Tivoli squared away for a second rush. This time he approached more cautiously and won applause by a neatly placed blow on Johnny’s left cheek.

The contestants warmed to the sport. Caribs know nothing of rounds and breathing spells. The contest goes to the man of greatest skill and longest endurance.

They had battled royally for ten minutes. Johnny felt the warm ring of approval in the cheers of the Caribs as he scored a point.

Then, swift as the wind, came the end. Since his opponent was so much taller than he, Johnny was often obliged to leap off the floor to so much as score a light tap on Tivoli’s chin. In the wild excitement of the contest he had perhaps grown a trifle reckless. Intent upon winning one more point, Johnny leaped a full foot from the floor and aimed a swift blow at his opponent’s chin. The Carib, with a sudden quick movement, bent low for a blow at his chest.

The impact of Johnny’s gloved fist with the giant’s chin was startlingly quick and sure. The report was like a muffled explosion. Tivoli’s hands shot out and up, then he crumpled down like an empty sack.

Johnny’s head was in a whirl. An instant of time, one unfortunate move had undone all. At least, so he thought as, throwing his gloves from his hands, he bent over the prostrate Carib.

CHAPTER III
MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS

It was a down-hearted Johnny who bent over the fallen Carib champion and strove as best he could to bring him back to consciousness. He had hoped much. His interview with this man was to pave the way to certain success. With this fearless chief as the leader of his men, with a faithful Carib band behind him, he was to have gone triumphantly back up Rio Hondo and, in spite of perils that lurk in the jungle, in spite of unscrupulous Daego’s trickery and cunning, was to have brought back the richest treasure that had ever floated upon the ebony waters of the Black River. And now it had come to this.

What would the man do, once he was brought back from the world of strange dreams where Johnny’s unintended and unfortunate blow had sent him. Johnny’s heart skipped a beat at the thought. He might be obliged to flee for his life. He had heard wild stories of these primitive people of Honduras; how, when slightly wounded in play with machetes, a man flew into a rage and at a single blow severed the offender’s head from his body. These were simple people, men of the tropics, quick in love and sudden in hate.

Since there was no answer to this, Johnny could but fan his victim and await results.

He did not wait long. The man’s eyes opened and he sat up unsteadily, staring wildly.

“Who—who did that?” he demanded. “Who—hi—hit me?”

“Unc-a,” the men grunted, pointing at Johnny.

Johnny put on as brave and friendly a face as he could command. Though friendly enough, it was far from brave. His heart was in his toes.

“You—” the chief looked incredulous, “you hit me like that?”

Johnny nodded. He dared not trust his voice.

“Why! You—you little hammer!” exclaimed the chief.

At that there was a roaring burst of laughter. From that day on Johnny was known among the Caribs as “Little Hammer.”

Tivoli joined heartily in the laugh and as it subsided, to Johnny’s great surprise and joy, he exclaimed:

“You want men? I got men. All the men you want. How many men, you think? Sixty men? Half work, half watch and fight? What you think? All right?”

At this sudden turn of fortune’s wheel, Johnny’s head was too much in a whirl to permit of much clear thinking. He merely nodded. Then, seized by a sudden inspiration, he invited Tivoli to join him in his feast of roast peccary—an invitation which was promptly accepted.

“Hardgrave,” said Johnny, as the two sat in the hotel court after the feast and Tivoli’s departure, “do these creatures, these jaguars which the natives call ‘tigers,’ ever become man-eaters?”

“Once in a blue moon they do. I knew of one that did. That was on the island of Riotan. And, by the way, it was only a month ago that an Englishman, a chicle buyer, told me of actually seeing one stalking a man—up the Rio Hondo, too. By all that’s good! Right up in your country! It must have been!”

Johnny leaned forward in unconcealed interest.

“This ‘man-eater’ as they call him,” Hardgrave continued, “has a bad reputation. You’ll see little settlements, two or three palm thatched cabins along the river, deserted because of him. That’s what the chicle buyer said.”

“Dead? The people dead?” the words stuck in Johnny’s throat.

“Probably not. The jaguar might have carried off a child, or even a man. Those cats can kill an ox. They’re bad when they get old. And this tiger is old, fairly gray bearded, the chicle buyer said. Said it made his blood run cold to see him stalking that native. Of course he was armed; all those Englishmen go armed. Only a pistol, but enough to scare that spotted fury away.

“‘Just as I shot,’ that’s what he told me, ‘the creature turned its head and I saw its marking. I had heard of it before. There was a broad white stripe above the left eye. Someone had creased him with a bullet years before. Pity it hadn’t killed him. Didn’t, though.’”

Hardgrave paused to look away at the moon that was just rising above the cocoanut palms in the churchyard across the way. Wind stirred the branches noisily. Johnny started. The story of that “tiger” had affected his imagination strangely.

“So you’ll know if you see him,” Hardgrave concluded dryly. “A white strip above his left ear. Guess I’ll turn in. You’re leaving before dawn? Here’s luck!” He pressed the boy’s hand, and was gone.

It was a brave company that Johnny assembled at the postoffice dock next day—sixty Caribs, all from Stann Creek. There had been no need that these men go home for luggage. All that they had was on their boats. It was little enough, too. The two most important items were the great long-bladed machetes that hung at their belts and the cooking platforms on the decks of their sailing crafts.

To the mouth of the Rio Hondo they would sail. After that Johnny would give them a tow up the river.

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!”

CHAPTER IV
TREE HAY AND A JAGUAR

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.

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.

CHAPTER V
NARROW ESCAPES

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?