A BRONZE BEAUTY
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.