HENRY MORGAN’S STORY
They rode back to the mine property quickly. It did not take long to
locate Mr. Gray, Cliff’s elderly father: he listened in silence to the
eager trio as they broke in upon one another, so excited were they, and
so eager to get his opinion in regard to the feasibility of starting at
once for the Central American coast.
Henry Morgan had exacted from them all a promise that they would not
disclose what he had told them to the mine superintendent, a rather lazy
and careless man who seemed to realize that since the mine was hardly
paying for its expense, his work was only a means of making a living
until the mine finally “petered out” and he went elsewhere. The chums
had already discovered that there were many adventurous and roving white
men, from Mexico down all the Central American coast and into South
America, as well as among the Virgin Islands, who eked out a living
wherever and however chance offered. Henry Morgan was of that type, but
much drinking and loose living had made him a very poor specimen,
indeed, of the adventure-loving, roving American.
“If Mr. Morgan knew so much, why did he not come to us at once?” was Mr.
Gray’s natural first question.
“I think he explains it logically,” answered Tom, “and Nicky and Cliff
agree with me.” They nodded. “He is afraid that he might get ‘mixed up’
with the Mexican authorities, and that would spoil everything,” Nicky
explained. “Let him tell you what he told us, won’t you, Mr. Gray?”
The elderly scholar and writer nodded. Henry Morgan cleared his throat
and, in his husky, rusty voice, related the tale again.
“I’ve been a rover all my life,” he began, “from kid days on. ’Cause
why? ’Cause I liked to see new places and have excitement. Sometimes I
got more nor I bargained for. Sometimes I near starved. But I always
come through all right.”
He sketched briefly the years he had spent roving up and down the
Caribbean coast of the Central American states, and the adjacent
islands, and over to Cuba during an insurrection, and in Haiti, while a
revolution was in progress, and gold-prospecting in Spanish Honduras.
“It was while I was in Spanish Honduras, in the Mosquito Indian’s
country,” he went on, “I met the fellow I told these lads about. He was
lookin’ for gold, and there was supposed to be a gold mountain inland,
but the Indians in the interior was too dangerous for us to risk gettin’
in. Well, finally, we decided to give up hunting for any mine there—at
least, I did. I was down on the coast, near the sand point at Brower’s
Lagoon when a sailing sloop came in over the reef one day, and when I
found out they needed a hand, I shipped on her and left—this other
fellow—inland, still bound he would some time locate that mine or
mountain of gold and claim it.”
He explained to the interested quartet that he went into so much detail
because it all had something to do with the later part of his yarn. They
nodded and did not interrupt him once.
“This—other fellow—had made great friends with an old Indian, up
river—oh, quite a ways up the Rio Patuca. This old Indian must have
lived for centuries. ’Cause why? ’Cause he knew legends and history that
his own tribe had forgot: and he knew medicines and herbs, the same as
the oldest of the other medicine men couldn’t even remember. And Be—this
other fellow—had got real close in his confidence and said this old
Toosa—that was his name—would show him a way to find the golden
mountain, so I left him there.”
He skipped quickly over the following years until the time, about six
years before, when he had found himself in Mexico and, hearing of some
rich mines in the sierras, had eventually reached and found employment
at the mine which, in its prosperity, was called the Great Hope, but
which, since, had degenerated in value until it was jokingly styled the
Dead Hope.
“But whenever I get in civilized places where there is drink,” Henry
continued, “I can’t do nothin’ for myself. ’Cause why? ’Cause it gets me
and holds me and drags me down.” He made a gesture of rueful
resignation. Then, rolling a fresh cigarette, he began to bring his
story into the matters which most intensely gripped the imaginations of
the chums.
“I was made assistant to the super’,” he told them, “but it wasn’t long
before I got so bad and so low that they kicked me out. Well, I was sore
about it and made up my mind to get even. But I didn’t. ’Cause why?
Well, I struck up with B—with this other fellow, again.”
Whoever this man with the name he so mysteriously withheld might be, he
was evidently of the same general type as Henry. The latter met him, he
said, in a “dive” in Mexico City, and in a ribald fit of liquor stupor
the friend had gabbled and raved and ranted about finding “the Golden
Sun!”
“That was what we had decided we’d name our mountain, when we found it,”
Henry explained. “So I was all excited. But he was too far gone to tell
me anything I could pin onto. Then I got mad at him and started a fight
and——” he pointed to his scarred face, “this is my souvenir! It laid me
up in a dinky hospital for weeks.”
When, without money, weak and rather sobered in mind as well as
physically, he came out of the hospital, Henry Morgan decided to drift
back to the mine, see if he could be reinstated, and live a better life,
he told the chums.
“I do not like to interrupt,” began Mr. Gray, “but I fail to see——”
“Just wait, Dad,” begged his son, Cliff, “he’s coming to it, now.”
Mr. Gray leaned back and studied the bleared eyes while Henry Morgan
resumed his story and the chums almost held their breath.
“I had to tell all that. ’Cause why? ’Cause it counts in the finish—or
will, if you see it the way I do,” declared the rover. “I won’t waste
time sayin’ how I got back, what I went through. But get back to Dead
Hope I did.
“And it was on the night of the bandits’ raid!”
Then Mr. Gray saw why the boys were so absorbed. They knew what was
coming.
“That dark night I come a-stumblin’ up the path, yonder, weak and hungry
and staggerin’—I hadn’t eat no food for a day. All of a sudden there was
a yelling and a shouting and guns a-popping!”
“What did you do?” gasped Nicky, thrilled anew by the recital.
“I stopped,” said Henry, matter-of-factly, “I stopped. There was flashes
of guns and people running around and the men on horses shooting and
riding after people in their night-clothes—the ones that was on the
ground, I mean, not the bandits. They was dressed, of course! One o’ the
men a-horseback rode right close to where I had dropped back behind the
rock, and he saw me. ‘Here, grab this rein,’ he snapped at me—and you
can believe it or not—it was B—it was my old pal I had last seen in
Mexico City, drunk, and he had give me this slash with a broken bottle!”
“B—who’s Be—?” asked Tom quickly, trying a clever way to surprise the
man into revealing the name they sought, without having to wait.
“Be—oh, he’s the man I’ve been talkin’ of,” said Henry, favoring Tom
with a steady stare and then, suddenly, breaking into his high chuckle.
Then he sobered down and went on.
“Little boys what asks questions finds out just what they wants to
know—he-he-he!” he reproved Tom who apologized for interrupting.
“All right,” Henry said. “Well, I yelled after him, but he was runnin’
towards the excitement, hollering and shouting, and I was too busy with
that horse of his to run after him. I was scared to let the critter
loose for fear o’ what he’d do to me. I guessed he’d fell in with a
rough gang and had decided to lead them or be with them on this raid. I
judged there must be a lot of gold laid up in the mine house, waiting
for burros and guards to carry it to the railroad. If I let the horse
go, this fellow would maybe give me a dose of lead. So I hung on.”
“The horse was excited and scared, wasn’t he?” asked Tom.
“He was, and no mistake! He began to drag me and I hung on, yellin’ at
him to quit, and him draggin’ and rearing up. First thing I knew, I was
bein’ dragged over to that pass we rode in this afternoon. The bandits
must o’ come out of it earlier and the horse wanted to get home, maybe.
Anyhow, towards that he was draggin’ me. And then—I saw a couple of Mex.
desperadoes, so they looked with their tall straw hats and dirty,
raggedy clo’es, and they was drivin’ about six burros with heavy sacks
tied over their backs, all they could carry!”
“Gold!” gasped Nicky.
“Gold it most likely was. Anyhow, here come that friend of mine—he was
my friend once, I mean, before—” he touched his scar. “He had a rifle
and was runnin’. There was still shootin’ going on, and a horse was down
one place and a bandit another, and men stretched out yonder and hither.
This fellow he run to me and pushed me to one side and pushed a rifle in
my hand, and he said, ‘Hold this pass for ten minutes with this rifle,
and then retreat up it about fifty feet, and I’ll be in ambush and I’ll
surprise the guys, and what you can’t stop—I will! Then we’ll divvy the
gold!’ So I grabbed the rifle and took a place. At the same minute I
hear a screech and yonder, out of the sleepin’ quarters, comes a little
girl, a-runnin’ as tight as she could run, with a big ruffian a-chasin’
her!”
“Oh!” cried Tom, aghast and almost shaking in his excitement, “Oh—my
sis—little Margery!”
“Little girl with bright hair!” agreed Henry. “Well, before I scarcely
knowed what was what that—er, friend—had shot down the ‘greasers’ with
the burros, stopped the fellow chasin’ the little girl, scooped her in
his arms and set her onto the saddle of his horse and was up behind
her.”
“Didn’t the bandits see it?” asked Cliff.
“They had been so busy finishin’ off the engineer and the other white
men—and they made a good stand, let me say it!—they was occupied too
much to notice the actions goin’ on up by the pass. But they saw what
was what about then, and come a-yellin’. I took cover, and begun to use
that rifle. There was a full clip in it and I had another one shoved
into my hands, and while that wild pal of mine rode up the pass, drivin’
the burros, I stood off about four of the bandits that wasn’t wounded.”
Henry Morgan wiped his dry lips and cleared his roughened throat. Tom
hurried him along.
“When you backed down the trail—what?”
“Nothing!” said Henry.
“Nothing?” Mr. Gray exclaimed, adding to the chorus of the younger
voices, for they had not heard the details before.
“Nothing!” Henry repeated. “Not a sign of help. That fellow was gone,
slicker’n grease, with the little girl and the burros and the gold. I
was caught, of course. The bandits tried to get out of me what I knew
and I told them exact facts like you’ve just heard. I was mad at being
made to help him ‘double-cross’ his gang and they saw I was telling the
truth. Well——” he broke off.
“But he got a letter, a couple of months ago, he says,” Tom took up the
recital. “Another adventurer Mr. Morgan knows, wrote him, and—what did
you say he wrote?”
“He wrote me that he had run onto—this fellow we been talking about,
down in Colon—Panama, you know! Said he was livin’ like a millionaire,
and was talkin’ that he was gettin’ gold off of——” ‘from’ he meant, of
course—“off of some Indians. I guess it’s out of the Golden Sun. So,
now, gent, my proposal is this:
“I know how to get where that Toosa, the old Indian, is. He will know
about—this fellow—if he’s located that Golden Sun. But I couldn’t pay
the fare from here to the coast, let alone get to Spanish Honduras.
That’s where you come in. You finance me, while I try to find—that man.
Then we’ll all learn what we want—you, where he took the little girl,
what happened to her. Me, where that mine is. I staked him plenty of
times, I have right to a share in it.”
“How would we get there?” asked Tom.
“Have to hire a boat to coast along to the outer reefs and the mouth o’
the Rio Patuca, then we’d have to get them Mosquito Indians to take us
up the river in canoes. It’s rough country. What say if I go alone?”
The three young fellows shook their heads violently, thus indicating how
much they trusted him.
Mr. Gray, also, shook his head.
“I will have to take time to think this over very seriously,” he said.
“I am too old and weak to brave the dangers of such a trip. I can’t let
you lads go alone, or with Mr. Morgan——”
“Just call me ‘Hen’—the ‘Hen that lays the golden eggs!’”
“Or with ‘Hen,’” smiled Mr. Gray, “but——” And there he stopped.
Their mounts were unsaddled and they stayed on overnight because of the
new development. But after an evening of eager discussion, with urgent
pleas for action by the youths and hesitancy on the part of Mr. Gray,
their course of action was still undecided. Leaving Morgan with a
promise to “get in touch” the minute they made a plan, they rode slowly
away down the trail the next day.
“I wish Mr. Gray would let us go ‘on our own,’” Nicky said wistfully.
“He feels that there are a lot of holes in Henry’s story,” said Cliff.
“We looked at the trail, and how any half dozen burros and their load of
gold could get away in ten minutes is more than he can understand. And,
if he was ‘fired’ from the mine, why is he there?”
“Those things are easy to explain, I think,” Tom stated. “About the
burros—I asked him and he said he guessed his former friend must have
unloaded them and dropped the gold sacks over the cliffs or into some
hole and covered it up and turned the burros loose, or drove them into
the chasm up the trail. He came to work at the mine again when the new
superintendent was employed there, and that was natural because the new
man did not know him or his record.”
“That makes it sound better, but there are still funny points,” Cliff
replied.
“Well,” said Tom, suddenly squaring his shoulders, “Cliff, you know how
anxious you were to leave no stone unturned when you were trying to
learn about your father!”
“I don’t want to leave any stone unturned in this case, either,” agreed
his chum, and Nicky nodded emphatically.
“Nor I,” said Tom. “And there is one stone I know about that I am going
to turn as soon as we reach Mexico City again!”
What it was he kept to himself.