  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:
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. |
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