by Roy J. Snell
CHAPTER XI PROVISIONED FOR A LONG JOURNEY
Ten days after his discovery there in the abandoned cabin, JohnnyThompson was ready to travel. He was ready to embark in the dugout of hisnew found friends.
"It will not be long," he assured Jean, "before I will be able to do mybit with the paddle, to assist you in going wherever you wish to go."Where that might be he had not the slightest notion.
One thing puzzled him. As they prepared to leave the cabin, the dugoutwas loaded fore and aft with food supplies. In the prow, carefullywrapped in green palm leaves, were the carcasses of two young peccaries,killed that very morning. Piled on top of these were three or four dozenripe cocoanuts. In the stem were casabas (great potato-like vegetables),tree melons, breadfruit, and a basket filled with strange little redtomatoes.
"Rations for a week," he mused. "How far from home are these people,anyway?"
He was soon enough to know. Hardly had the dugout, with Roderick in thestem as steersman, been pushed from the shore and allowed to take adownstream course, than the girl, turning upon Johnny one of her mostwonderful smiles, said:
"I suppose you think we know where we're going; but we don't. We onlyknow we're on our way."
"Don--don't know where you're going!" Johnny gasped in astonishment."Then you're--"
"Lost!" The girl's brow wrinkled for a second, then the smile came back.
"Shake," said Johnny, solemnly stretching forth a hand. "We'll go ittogether."
For a second their hands met Then, as a swirling eddy set the boatwhirling, the girl seized a paddle.
"You see," she said quietly as they reached more placid water, "we didn'ttell you while you were ill; afraid it would disturb you."
"It would have," said Johnny. Quite suddenly something had come to him."The red lure!" he murmured, quite unconscious of the fact that he spokeout loud. "When will I ever get back to it?"
"What is the red lure?" the girl asked in surprise.
"The red lure? Why, that's my pet name for mahogany, the prince ofpriceless woods. If you've ever seen the mirror-like gleam of itspolished surface, if you've seen how like a fire on the hearth at sunsetit is, you know what it means."
"I have. I do," she said simply.
"Well," he went on, "I've been given an opportunity to bring down asample, one boom full, a hundred thousand feet or so of that matchlesswood from a forest the value of which can scarcely be estimated. I hadmade a fine start, too, when I was suddenly driven into the bush. Ipromptly got myself lost, and here I am."
Reading intense interest in her eyes, he told her the whole story of hisadventure thus far.
"And now," he ended with an uncertain smile, "it seems that we--you, yourbrother and I--are all babes in the woods, so to speak."
"Perhaps it's not quite as bad as that," said Jean. "Bad enough, though.You see, I've always lived in the tropics with my father. He brought mehere when I was five. My brother, who is three years older, was leftbehind in England.
"He's done a lot of things, my father has,--bananas, cocoanuts,grapefruit. Just now he is gathering chicle up a lost river.
"Four months ago Rod came to us. The jungle is all new to him. He wasquite wild about it. So we went on little exploring trips. I love it,don't you?"
"Nothing like it," said Johnny.
"It's all new up in this country. If ever a white man set foot on it he'sforgot it long ago. You cut your way through a jungle, you find a stream,you launch your dugout, which you've dragged after you, and you drift onand on through a land that white men have never seen. It's wonderful!Wonderful!" She closed her eyes as if in a dream.
"It's dangerous, too," she exclaimed, suddenly starting up. "You may getlost. We did. One night we slept in the bottom of our dugout--Rod, oldMidge and I. When morning came we found ourselves drifting in the centerof a great river. What do you think of that? Go to sleep in a stream youcan all but reach across, and wake in a broad river. Magic, wouldn't youcall it?"
"I might."
"No magic about it, though. A thing had happened to our tie rope. Somecreature had gnawed it square off. And there we were, drifting down agreat black silent river we had never seen before. What were we to do?What would you have done?"
"Try to find my way back to the mouth of the little stream from which Ihad drifted."
"That was just what we attempted. That's how we found you. The mouth ofevery stream looked alike to us, so all we could do was to go up each onea short way until we knew it was the wrong stream. We had about decidedthat this was the wrong stream, too, when I discovered your hand print inthe mud."
"And you've spent all this time--"
"Getting you well."
"That's wonderfully kind. That's--"
"Not so much in the tropics. Down here time doesn't matter. We'll findour way home sooner or later. When we do I'll say: 'Hello, Dad. I'mback,' and Dad will say, 'So I see, daughter, so I see.'"
So lightly did these words come tripping from her lips, so rippling wasthe laughter following, that for a moment Johnny was deceived.
"She means it, too," he told himself. "So this is the way of thetropics."
The deception lasted for but one moment. The wrinkle across her brow, thefar away look in her eyes, the irregular dip of her paddle, all toldplainer than words that she had been playing a part; that she wasconcealing homesickness and hunger for friends; that they might be days,even weeks, finding their way back, and that in the meantime all herfather's men would be searching the streams and bush for her and herbrother.
In the midst of all this fresh revelation, their boat suddenly shot fromthe creek into a mighty stream of black and sullen waters.
"The Rio Hondo!" exclaimed Johnny.
"And down this river is your camp," the girl said quietly. "We will takeyou there at once."
For a moment Johnny was tempted. He had been away for more than twoweeks. What had happened in that time? What of Pant? What of his Caribs?What of Daego and his men? Had there been a battle? If so, who had won?Whose camp fires gleamed there in the heart of that magic mahoganyforest, his own or Daego's? He did so want to know the answer to allthese questions.
But suddenly there flashed through his mind the worried face of the girl.
"Brave girl!" he breathed as a lump in his throat all but choked him."She saved my life. It cost her many days. She must go home. She's agirl. I'm a boy. I can't let them take me first."
"No," he exclaimed, snatching the paddle from her hands, "there is timeenough for me."
With the paddle he deftly turned the boat about. Then, nothing loath,Roderick and the black woman joined him in the stroke that sent itspeeding upstream. So, once more, Johnny's back was turned on the redlure.
That night Johnny dreamed once more of little golden brown women grindingand spinning, of hunters returning with deer and wild pigs slung acrosstheir backs, and of the three gods,--one black, one green and one of puregold.
Strangely enough, when he awoke from this dream he felt nearer the fabledIndian village; the dream seemed more real than ever before.
