  Ten days after his discovery there in the abandoned cabin, Johnny Thompson was ready to travel. He was ready to embark in the dugout of his new found friends. “It will not be long,” he assured Jean, “before I will be able to do my bit 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 dugout was loaded fore and aft with food supplies. In the prow, carefully wrapped in green palm leaves, were the carcasses of two young peccaries, killed that very morning. Piled on top of these were three or four dozen ripe cocoanuts. In the stem were casabas (great potato-like vegetables), tree melons, breadfruit, and a basket filled with strange little red tomatoes. “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 the stem as steersman, been pushed from the shore and allowed to take a downstream course, than the girl, turning upon Johnny one of her most wonderful smiles, said: “I suppose you think we know where we’re going; but we don’t. We only know 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 it together.” For a second their hands met Then, as a swirling eddy set the boat whirling, the girl seized a paddle. “You see,” she said quietly as they reached more placid water, “we didn’t tell 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 spoke out 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 of priceless woods. If you’ve ever seen the mirror-like gleam of its polished surface, if you’ve seen how like a fire on the hearth at sunset it 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 a sample, one boom full, a hundred thousand feet or so of that matchless wood from a forest the value of which can scarcely be estimated. I had made a fine start, too, when I was suddenly driven into the bush. I promptly got myself lost, and here I am.” Reading intense interest in her eyes, he told her the whole story of his adventure thus far. “And now,” he ended with an uncertain smile, “it seems that we—you, your brother 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 me here when I was five. My brother, who is three years older, was left behind 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 was quite 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’s forgot 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 on and 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 get lost. We did. One night we slept in the bottom of our dugout—Rod, old Midge and I. When morning came we found ourselves drifting in the center of a great river. What do you think of that? Go to sleep in a stream you can all but reach across, and wake in a broad river. Magic, wouldn’t you call it?” “I might.” “No magic about it, though. A thing had happened to our tie rope. Some creature had gnawed it square off. And there we were, drifting down a great 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 I had drifted.” “That was just what we attempted. That’s how we found you. The mouth of every stream looked alike to us, so all we could do was to go up each one a short way until we knew it was the wrong stream. We had about decided that this was the wrong stream, too, when I discovered your hand print in the 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 find our way home sooner or later. When we do I’ll say: ‘Hello, Dad. I’m back,’ and Dad will say, ‘So I see, daughter, so I see.’” So lightly did these words come tripping from her lips, so rippling was the laughter following, that for a moment Johnny was deceived. “She means it, too,” he told himself. “So this is the way of the tropics.” The deception lasted for but one moment. The wrinkle across her brow, the far away look in her eyes, the irregular dip of her paddle, all told plainer than words that she had been playing a part; that she was concealing homesickness and hunger for friends; that they might be days, even weeks, finding their way back, and that in the meantime all her father’s men would be searching the streams and bush for her and her brother. In the midst of all this fresh revelation, their boat suddenly shot from the 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 take you there at once.” For a moment Johnny was tempted. He had been away for more than two weeks. 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 mahogany forest, his own or Daego’s? He did so want to know the answer to all these 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 a girl. I’m a boy. I can’t let them take me first.” “No,” he exclaimed, snatching the paddle from her hands, “there is time enough 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 it speeding upstream. So, once more, Johnny’s back was turned on the red lure. That night Johnny dreamed once more of little golden brown women grinding and spinning, of hunters returning with deer and wild pigs slung across their backs, and of the three gods,—one black, one green and one of pure gold. Strangely enough, when he awoke from this dream he felt nearer the fabled Indian village; the dream seemed more real than ever before. |
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