by Roy J. Snell
CHAPTER XII A BRONZE BEAUTY
Once more it was morning on the upper reaches of Rio Hondo. The dugoutwas tied to the bared roots of a gnarled old mangrove. The camp of Jeanand Johnny, of Rod and the Carib woman, was on the crest of a high bankthat overlooked the black waters.
The aged Carib woman was frying cakes made from casabas ground to powderand mixed with water. Jean was frying slices of meat from the ham of apeccary. Johnny was engaged in the business of making coffee. After hisfirst demonstration this had been his allotted task.
While the coffee was now coming to a boil, he sat alternating gazing awayat the swift flowing waters and looking dreamily at the golden girl whosehair was glorified by a touch of sunrise mingled with the glow of thefire.
"Fine chance she's got of finding her way home," he thought. They hadsearched all the previous day for the right creek. "There are a hundredcreeks. They don't know how long they drifted nor how far. Not a chance.Have to be some other way. Some of her father's men may come upon us, orwe might go back to camp. Someone there might know the way."
He was meditating on the advisability of proposing this last course whenthere came a sudden excited shout from the bush.
"Roderick!" exclaimed the girl. "Something has happened to him." For amoment the camp was in commotion, then the Scotch boy came bounding outof the bush.
"Jean! Jean!" he shouted, seizing her by the shoulders and waltzing herabout. "I've found a trail, a hard-beaten trail."
"The Old Portage," the girl cried breathlessly. "The trail that leads tohome!"
Suddenly crumpling up in her tracks, she sank to the ground and hid herface in her hands. Unmoved as she had been through all this strange andtrying adventure, now as the end appeared at hand she was for a momentjust a girl with the heart of a girl and a girl's way of shedding tearsin times of great joy or deep sorrow. And who would not like her thebetter for it?
The Old Portage, the brother and sister informed Johnny, was a trail usedalike by Mexicans and Indians. The trail led from Rio Hondo to the upperwaters of their own river, the one on which their father's camp waslocated. Neither had been over this trail, but their father had. He hadtold them of passing over it. It was an old, old trail, he had explained,which might have been in existence at the time of the Spanish conquest.
"There can't be a bit of doubt about its being the trail," said Roderick."It's so hard-packed and old that it seems made of cement."
"It's our trail!" the girl rejoiced. "By to-night, or to-morrow noon atmost, we will be home. And you?" she said suddenly turning to Johnny.
The question startled him. It had not occurred to him that there was apossible parting of the ways.
"You'll be going back to your camp, of course," said Roderick. "You'requite welcome to our dugout. You may have an opportunity to send it back.We may pass your way. It's no matter. What's a dugout? You'll be in yourcamp by night."
This time, to his own great stupefaction, Johnny did not pause to reasonwhy, but simply said:
"No, since I've come this far, I believe I'll see you home." He lookedstraight at the golden girl as he spoke. Had he but known it, he wastaking a rather large contract.
Roderick looked surprised. The girl looked Johnny frankly in the eye andsaid: "That will be very kind of you."
It was not hard to see that she had greater faith in the skill andcourage of this new found friend than she had in her brother who, thougheducated in the way of books, was ignorant enough when it came to riverlore and the ways of the jungle.
A half hour later, after dragging the dugout to a safe place on the bank,they prepared packs for a land journey. Johnny tried to think what it hadbeen that had caused him to make the decision which must take him deeperinto the jungle and farther from his camp. Other than a vague feelingthat the girl who had saved his life might yet need his protection, hecould discover no motive whatsoever.
"No sense to it," he told himself, "not a bit in the world. But what'sthe fun of always having a reason for things, anyway?"
"'A boy's will is a wind's will, and the thoughts of youth are long, longthoughts,'" he repeated as he strapped his pack to his shoulders andprepared to follow his companions through the brush to the hard beatenancient trail.
It was strange, but the trail they followed that day did not seem quitelike a portage trail leading from one river to another. At least it didnot seem so to Johnny, not from the very start. At first his feelings onthis subject were based on nothing tangible. As the day passed and stillthey plodded onward, he could have given reasons. He did not give them.What was the use? Time would tell.
They crossed no streams, yet they were not following the backbone of aridge. That in itself was strange. They carried two canteens. These weresoon emptied. Had it not been for Jean's admirable knowledge of tropicalvegetation they might have suffered from thirst. A vine growing closebeside the trail, which Jean called Bejuco, filled their canteens whilethey rested.
At noon they paused for a light lunch. Mid-afternoon found them ploddingupward; indeed, almost the whole day had showed them a slight up-gradetrail.
"Should be coming to the divide," Johnny said.
"Yes, we should." The girl's brow was wrinkled in thought. "Father neverspoke of the divide, but there must be one. That's the place where youstop going up, and start going down?"
"Yes."
"We must come to it soon."
But they did not.
Four o'clock found them resting beside a pool. A very strange pool itwas. Circular, with moss and ferns growing to its very brink, its waterclear as air, it seemed like a great funnel set in the earth.
"As if there had been a sudden cave-in," said Jean.
Stranger still, they found on the side next to the trail four crude stonesteps leading down to the brink of the pool.
"Did you never hear your father speak of this pool?" asked Johnny.
Neither Jean nor her brother had heard of it before.
"This," thought Johnny to himself, "is not the portage. It is some othertrail. But what trail can it be?"
Darkness found them still plodding upward. Loath to spend the nightwithout water, at Jean's direction the boys sought out a tree known asthe "kerosene tree." A match applied to a piece of this wood transformsit into a torch.
They had not gone far before the light of their torch was reflected bywater.
"Another pool," said Roderick, settling down upon the mosses that grewbeside it.
"Here we camp," said Johnny, holding out his torch that they might get amore perfect view of the pool.
It was very much the same as the other, only larger. The stone steps werenot lacking, and beside them was a pillar of stone on which Johnny'ssensitive fingers traced some very definite carvings of strange animalsand men.
"A relic of old Maya days," he said.
"What is?" asked Jean.
"See this pillar beside the steps; the pool itself? Ever read aboutthem?"
"No."
"Built by Mayas, I believe. Interesting people. Hardgrave loaned me abook about them; the report of some ethnological society. It reads likeone of Dumas' novels. Tell you about them later."
They were soon busy preparing camp for the night.
Two hours later, with the still waters of the pool reflecting the redglow of a half burned out campfire, with Roderick stretched out on themosses fast asleep and the Carib woman nodding beneath a nut palm, Johnnysat beside the girl and told of the wonders of this land in the long ago.
"Do you see the cocoanut palm in the shadows at the far side of thepool?" he asked.
The girl nodded.
"We think it grew there wild. So it did. But how did it come there?Scholars say that its great, great, great grandfather, centuries back,must have been planted there, and that it may have grown beside apalace."
"Whose palace?" the girl's voice was low.
"The palace of a Maya prince."
"Were there princes?"
/> "Princes and great rulers; a mighty people once lived here. Where thisjungle now rules were cornfields, cocoanut plantations, farms, homes,cities and great temples, temples of stone, fifteen hundred feet long,two hundred wide, two or three stories high. That is the land of longago, and now here is only the jungle and this pool."
"Do you suppose this pool was here then?" The girl's hand was on his arm.
"Why not? There are pools in Palestine to-day that were there twothousands years ago."
"Then, if it could talk, what tales it could tell!"
For some time they sat there in silence, each dreaming the magic story inthe fire and the deep, dark pool.
Long after the girl and the Carib woman had gone to sleep in the shadows,Johnny sat there. In his mind was a problem. They were on the wrongtrail, he was sure of that now. What trail? It was a secret trail of somewild people, perhaps Mayas. Whatever people they were, there was a city.Such a hard beaten trail told of many travelers. What should he do? Allhis life he had dreamed of discovering a city, a city of lost people insome hidden corner of the world. This, perhaps, was his chance. For oncethe call of the red lure seemed faint and far away.
"Three gods," he whispered, "one black, one green and one of pure gold."
But there was Jean and her brother. They had not guessed, at leastRoderick had not. He was not sure about Jean. They would discover thetruth; too late perhaps to turn back. Had he the right not to warn them?
Long he pondered the problem. To go on alone was out of the question. Hisrecent experience had given him an unconquerable fear of being alone inthe bush. Was it selfishness that in the end counciled silence? Who cantell? At any rate, this was his decision: they would go ahead until Jeanor her brother called a halt; when that would be he could not guess.
Johnny spent that night beside the dying embers of the camp fire. Withlegs doubled up beneath him, arms stretched out before him, head hanginglow, he slept and sleeping dreamed again of golden brown natives, and ofblack, green and gold gods.
In the midst of this dream he awoke. Or did he awake? Did he but halfawake? Was it reality or dream? Whatever it was, he saw by the light ofthe dying fire, on the opposite side of the pool where the palm leavesparted, the face of a little brown man, and above his head gleamed aspear. For an instant he saw, or at least seemed to see him, then thepalm leaves silently swept together.
"Gone!" he whispered, starting up.
He was wide awake now. Had he been awake before? He dropped back into hisplace, but not to sleep again. Now the rustle of palm leaves or the snapof a twig aroused him, and now the long drawn call of some beast of thejungle sent a thrill through his being. But at last he slept, to dream nomore that night.
Morning found him the first one stirring. Jean was his close second.
"Looks like a rocky ridge just up the trail," he said. "Might be wildturkey up there."
"Might."
"Want to try it?"
Jean nodded.
The next moment, with Roderick's light rifle, Johnny was leading the way.After ten minutes' walking they came to a rocky ridge that led into thejungle. Here the vegetation was thin. By climbing a boulder, and creepingbeneath a low-hanging palm, they were able to make their way forward.
They had just crept forward for some distance when, of a sudden, Johnnyheld up a finger of warning. From somewhere ahead of them came a drummingsound accompanied by a beating of wings.
"Turkey strut," Johnny whispered. "C'mon."
Together, scarcely breathing, they crept forward. Suddenly rounding apile of moss-grown rocks, they saw the turkey.
It was a magnificent sight. Mounted upon a boulder that served as apedestal, the sun turning the touch of bronze on his back to a plate ofburnished gold and his red comb to a fiery torch, was the mostmagnificent wild gobbler Johnny had ever seen.
With a quick intake of breath, the girl touched Johnny's arm. Without theslightest sound he moved the rifle toward her. A shake of the head, afinger pointed at the bird, told him to shoot.
His hand trembled slightly, but his aim was true. A crack of the riflewas followed for a moment by a mad beating of wings, then all was still.
"You--you got him," the girl exulted.
Leaping to her feet she sprang over the rocks to at last find a seat uponthe throne from which the winged monarch had so lately fallen.
"This," she exclaimed, "is what I call life. I've always lived in thewilds. I will always want to. I've always wanted to go back, back, backinto the wilderness, to discover something magnificent there. I neverknew exactly what that would be until last night. When you told me lastnight of the Mayas and their wonderful cities, I knew; a city, amagnificent city filled with rare silks, jewels and gold."
Johnny started. What was this? Did she know? Would she follow the traileven though she knew it to be the wrong one? Was she following a rainbowto find the pot of gold?
"All that happened long ago," he said, speaking of the Mayas. "Theriches, glory, beauty and power of their civilization perished centuriesago."
"Oh," she whispered as her head drooped with disappointment. "But then,"she exclaimed, "who knows what is back of this wilderness? On the map itis marked 'unexplored.' It is unexplored. No white man has ever beenover--over--" she caught herself to stammer on, "has been--been acrossthis great bush to the beyond. There may be--there must be just one city,one gorgeous city left." Standing upon the rock, she threw her arms wideas she exclaimed: "There must be! There must!"
Would they go on over that trail to the great beyond? What call could bestronger? What fear could hinder? In vain Johnny told himself he must goback, back to Pant and the red lure, back to fight the treacherous Daego.All in vain. He owed it to this magnificent girl's father to take herback. In vain he recalled old Hardgrave's words: "They killed all whitemen who came to their camp except me." They must go on. They would go on.
"Johnny," said the girl suddenly, "we ought to have some sort of--ofsignal."
"Signal?" Johnny was puzzled.
"Yes. Something one could shout or sing, if lost from the other."
"I have it!" she exclaimed suddenly. "I read a story a short time ago. Inthat story the heroine taught the hero a strange sort of song. I believeit was called 'An Indian Love Song.' Anyhow, the first part, or prelude,went something like this:
'Whoo-hoo-hoo, Whoo-hoo-hoo, Whoo-hoo-hoo.'"
Her clear voice rose high as she sang the notes. A distant cliff caughtthem and threw them back to her.
"Sing it!" she commanded.
As best he could, Johnny repeated:
"Whoo-hoo-hoo, Whoo-hoo-hoo, Whoo-hoo-hoo."
Then they had a good laugh over the broken echoes that came back to them.
It all seemed very melodramatic and unreal to Johnny then, but the timewas to come when he would cling to those notes as a drowning man to aspar.
By the light of the early morning sun they ate their breakfast; by thatsame light resumed the trail that led to the great unknown.
Roderick, who had lived his life on streets and in houses, suspectednothing. The black woman, like a slave, did not think. But the girl? Sheknew. Every glance she sent back to Johnny told him that she knew, and hegloried in her courage.
