  Once more it was morning on the upper reaches of Rio Hondo. The dugout was tied to the bared roots of a gnarled old mangrove. The camp of Jean and Johnny, of Rod and the Carib woman, was on the crest of a high bank that overlooked the black waters. The aged Carib woman was frying cakes made from casabas ground to powder and mixed with water. Jean was frying slices of meat from the ham of a peccary. Johnny was engaged in the business of making coffee. After his first demonstration this had been his allotted task. While the coffee was now coming to a boil, he sat alternating gazing away at the swift flowing waters and looking dreamily at the golden girl whose hair was glorified by a touch of sunrise mingled with the glow of the fire. “Fine chance she’s got of finding her way home,” he thought. They had searched all the previous day for the right creek. “There are a hundred creeks. 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, or we might go back to camp. Someone there might know the way.” He was meditating on the advisability of proposing this last course when there came a sudden excited shout from the bush. “Roderick!” exclaimed the girl. “Something has happened to him.” For a moment the camp was in commotion, then the Scotch boy came bounding out of the bush. “Jean! Jean!” he shouted, seizing her by the shoulders and waltzing her about. “I’ve found a trail, a hard-beaten trail.” “The Old Portage,” the girl cried breathlessly. “The trail that leads to home!” Suddenly crumpling up in her tracks, she sank to the ground and hid her face in her hands. Unmoved as she had been through all this strange and trying adventure, now as the end appeared at hand she was for a moment just a girl with the heart of a girl and a girl’s way of shedding tears in times of great joy or deep sorrow. And who would not like her the better for it? The Old Portage, the brother and sister informed Johnny, was a trail used alike by Mexicans and Indians. The trail led from Rio Hondo to the upper waters of their own river, the one on which their father’s camp was located. Neither had been over this trail, but their father had. He had told 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 at most, 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 a possible parting of the ways. “You’ll be going back to your camp, of course,” said Roderick. “You’re quite 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 your camp by night.” This time, to his own great stupefaction, Johnny did not pause to reason why, but simply said: “No, since I’ve come this far, I believe I’ll see you home.” He looked straight at the golden girl as he spoke. Had he but known it, he was taking a rather large contract. Roderick looked surprised. The girl looked Johnny frankly in the eye and said: “That will be very kind of you.” It was not hard to see that she had greater faith in the skill and courage of this new found friend than she had in her brother who, though educated in the way of books, was ignorant enough when it came to river lore 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 had been that had caused him to make the decision which must take him deeper into the jungle and farther from his camp. Other than a vague feeling that the girl who had saved his life might yet need his protection, he could discover no motive whatsoever. “No sense to it,” he told himself, “not a bit in the world. But what’s the 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, long thoughts,’” he repeated as he strapped his pack to his shoulders and prepared to follow his companions through the brush to the hard beaten ancient trail. It was strange, but the trail they followed that day did not seem quite like a portage trail leading from one river to another. At least it did not seem so to Johnny, not from the very start. At first his feelings on this subject were based on nothing tangible. As the day passed and still they 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 a ridge. That in itself was strange. They carried two canteens. These were soon emptied. Had it not been for Jean’s admirable knowledge of tropical vegetation they might have suffered from thirst. A vine growing close beside the trail, which Jean called Bejuco, filled their canteens while they rested. At noon they paused for a light lunch. Mid-afternoon found them plodding upward; indeed, almost the whole day had showed them a slight up-grade trail. “Should be coming to the divide,” Johnny said. “Yes, we should.” The girl’s brow was wrinkled in thought. “Father never spoke of the divide, but there must be one. That’s the place where you stop 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 it was. Circular, with moss and ferns growing to its very brink, its water clear 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 stone steps 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 other trail. But what trail can it be?” Darkness found them still plodding upward. Loath to spend the night without water, at Jean’s direction the boys sought out a tree known as the “kerosene tree.” A match applied to a piece of this wood transforms it into a torch. They had not gone far before the light of their torch was reflected by water. “Another pool,” said Roderick, settling down upon the mosses that grew beside it. “Here we camp,” said Johnny, holding out his torch that they might get a more perfect view of the pool. It was very much the same as the other, only larger. The stone steps were not lacking, and beside them was a pillar of stone on which Johnny’s sensitive fingers traced some very definite carvings of strange animals and men. “A relic of old Maya days,” he said. “What is?” asked Jean. “See this pillar beside the steps; the pool itself? Ever read about them?” “No.” “Built by Mayas, I believe. Interesting people. Hardgrave loaned me a book about them; the report of some ethnological society. It reads like one 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 red glow of a half burned out campfire, with Roderick stretched out on the mosses fast asleep and the Carib woman nodding beneath a nut palm, Johnny sat 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 the pool?” 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 a palace.” “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 this jungle 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 long ago, 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 two thousands 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 in the 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 wrong trail, he was sure of that now. What trail? It was a secret trail of some wild people, perhaps Mayas. Whatever people they were, there was a city. Such a hard beaten trail told of many travelers. What should he do? All his life he had dreamed of discovering a city, a city of lost people in some hidden corner of the world. This, perhaps, was his chance. For once the 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 least Roderick had not. He was not sure about Jean. They would discover the truth; 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. His recent experience had given him an unconquerable fear of being alone in the bush. Was it selfishness that in the end counciled silence? Who can tell? At any rate, this was his decision: they would go ahead until Jean or 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. With legs doubled up beneath him, arms stretched out before him, head hanging low, he slept and sleeping dreamed again of golden brown natives, and of black, green and gold gods. In the midst of this dream he awoke. Or did he awake? Did he but half awake? Was it reality or dream? Whatever it was, he saw by the light of the dying fire, on the opposite side of the pool where the palm leaves parted, the face of a little brown man, and above his head gleamed a spear. For an instant he saw, or at least seemed to see him, then the palm leaves silently swept together. “Gone!” he whispered, starting up. He was wide awake now. Had he been awake before? He dropped back into his place, but not to sleep again. Now the rustle of palm leaves or the snap of a twig aroused him, and now the long drawn call of some beast of the jungle sent a thrill through his being. But at last he slept, to dream no more 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 wild turkey 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 the jungle. Here the vegetation was thin. By climbing a boulder, and creeping beneath a low-hanging palm, they were able to make their way forward. They had just crept forward for some distance when, of a sudden, Johnny held up a finger of warning. From somewhere ahead of them came a drumming sound accompanied by a beating of wings. “Turkey strut,” Johnny whispered. “C’mon.” Together, scarcely breathing, they crept forward. Suddenly rounding a pile of moss-grown rocks, they saw the turkey. It was a magnificent sight. Mounted upon a boulder that served as a pedestal, the sun turning the touch of bronze on his back to a plate of burnished gold and his red comb to a fiery torch, was the most magnificent wild gobbler Johnny had ever seen. With a quick intake of breath, the girl touched Johnny’s arm. Without the slightest sound he moved the rifle toward her. A shake of the head, a finger pointed at the bird, told him to shoot. His hand trembled slightly, but his aim was true. A crack of the rifle was 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 upon the throne from which the winged monarch had so lately fallen. “This,” she exclaimed, “is what I call life. I’ve always lived in the wilds. I will always want to. I’ve always wanted to go back, back, back into the wilderness, to discover something magnificent there. I never knew exactly what that would be until last night. When you told me last night of the Mayas and their wonderful cities, I knew; a city, a magnificent city filled with rare silks, jewels and gold.” Johnny started. What was this? Did she know? Would she follow the trail even though she knew it to be the wrong one? Was she following a rainbow to find the pot of gold? “All that happened long ago,” he said, speaking of the Mayas. “The riches, glory, beauty and power of their civilization perished centuries ago.” “Oh,” she whispered as her head drooped with disappointment. “But then,” she exclaimed, “who knows what is back of this wilderness? On the map it is marked ‘unexplored.’ It is unexplored. No white man has ever been over—over—” she caught herself to stammer on, “has been—been across this 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 wide as she exclaimed: “There must be! There must!” Would they go on over that trail to the great beyond? What call could be stronger? What fear could hinder? In vain Johnny told himself he must go back, 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 her back. In vain he recalled old Hardgrave’s words: “They killed all white men 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—of signal.” “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. In that story the heroine taught the hero a strange sort of song. I believe it 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 caught them 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 time was to come when he would cling to those notes as a drowning man to a spar. By the light of the early morning sun they ate their breakfast; by that same light resumed the trail that led to the great unknown. Roderick, who had lived his life on streets and in houses, suspected nothing. The black woman, like a slave, did not think. But the girl? She knew. Every glance she sent back to Johnny told him that she knew, and he gloried in her courage. |
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