MODERN MAGIC
While the party returned to the cruiser, Jack, the beach comber, betook
himself to a land-locked lagoon where he proceeded to begin his return
to self-respect by taking his first bath for a long time. The chums,
excited and with much gusto, assembled a set of clothes to give him.
“Now, Cliff, Tom and Nicky,” said Mr. Gray, “you all know that you feel
much better if you are dressed up when you go among people. It gives you
self-respect. That is the way we will work with this man: we will build
up his idea that there is something good in him yet, and then Bill will
offer him a chance to go away from here and work his way back to
decency. Bill says he can use him on his ranch.”
“That ought to be fine,” Tom agreed. “And I guess we will let Cliff’s
father do most of the talking.”
“After we get him on board and feed him well, we will have a talk with
him,” Mr. Gray conceded. “At that time, make only what I would call
positive statements——”
“I know,” Cliff said. “‘I can,’ instead of ‘I can’t,’ and ‘We will’
instead of ‘We wish.’”
“Exactly that,” Mr. Gray nodded. “We will first substitute a picture in
his mind that will make him feel like his old self. Then we will make
him want something better than this terrible life he is living, not
offering him a reward, but letting him see that he wants it enough to
make a try for it. Then probably he will try to remember and tell us
what we want to know—he will feel that in helping us he is helping
himself.”
“We’ll do it!” declared Nicky. “I know we will!”
The trio rowed to the lagoon with the bundle of clothes and when Jack
had them on he seemed to take on a different look; and, as if he felt
already more like a man, he stood up straighter and his shoulders did
not hunch down so much.
After a good meal and his first decent shave for, perhaps, years, he
looked and acted like a different person—and declared that he felt that
way.
“You want to get away from here, of course!” Bill said, when they were
all on deck, Bob, the Colon pilot, and Andy, the engineer, watching in
the background, much interested.
“Nobody——” began Jack.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Mr. Gray stated quietly. “You might find somebody
who would help you along. Certainly, in such a case, you want to——”
“Indeed, I do!” declared Jack—and the voluntary change from indecision
to assertion showed that the experiment was succeeding.
“Then I’ll see that you get to my ranch, in Colorado,” Bill said, and
they all showed some surprise at the sudden movement Jack made.
“Colorado!” he almost yelled. “I was there once—a long time—I can’t
remember—it was before I got down and out——”
“You’ll remember it all when you see Colorado, with its ranges and its
painted rocks and its wonderful, soft sunshine, and its fine people,”
Mr. Gray broke in, quickly taking advantage of this recollection, and
using it to stimulate memories. “When you get there you will remember
some of your old friends and you will find a lot to enjoy!”
Jack nodded, and his face took on a reflective look. Bill, and the
chums, watching Mr. Gray as well as Jack, saw a slight shake of the
scholar’s head and decided not to interrupt the flow of old Jack’s
thought. They wanted Jack to think of the past.
Finally he asked Bill several questions about old range locations and
Bill answered as well as he could, about a rather strange, and to him
unfamiliar, part of the state.
Then, gently, by suggesting ideas to Jack, Mr. Gray got him to tell some
incidents of range life that he recollected, and then went on from that,
letting Jack talk as much as he would, to get from him the story of the
past. It seemed to become even more clear as he talked.
“That is natural,” Mr. Gray explained later. “We never forget anything.
It’s all hidden somewhere in our minds. But we keep track of things that
interest us most and ‘forget’ or bury, the others. But if we try hard
enough, and practice and keep at it, we can recall anything we want to.”
Finally—and it took time!—they got Jack to talk about his life in Porto
Bello, not insisting on knowing how he came there, for he had “gone to
the dogs” at that time and his brain was so befuddled by lust and bad
habits that he had simply fallen into a state of indolence and drifted
there.
They worked hard to get him to recall when Mort Beecher arrived, and
after a time, Tom, by a fortunate remark, opened the gates of memory.
“Did he get shipwrecked?” he suggested.
“Now I recall,” Jack said, accepting a fresh smoke. “Yes, sir—my lad, I
recall it plain. There was a great storm.”
Getting into the spirit of excitement as his story unfolded, he related
the broad details of a great storm during which a boat had been, by the
whim of tide and wind, swept over the barrier reefs and into calmer
water. Of her occupants, three men, one alone swam to shore through the
shark-ridden waters. It was Mort Beecher.
“He and me, we got chummy,” Mort’s acquaintance told them, while they
listened with avidity. “But we took to using liquor too free, and I know
he talked a heap to me, but only when he was ‘fired up’ with this native
poison we have to use. I wasn’t in condition to listen and so I can’t
tell you nothing. I don’t remember. But we stayed here, going from bad
to worse, till a few days since—I don’t recall just what day, but
another man come here from a sloop that lay-to off the reef, and he
looked for a man named Mort Beecher—that’s how I recall his name, come
to think, I heard him ask.
“But he wouldn’t have nothing to do with me—who would——?”
“We would, so forget that sort of talk!” commanded Bill. “Well, he only
wanted Mort—for some private business, maybe?”
“It must be, but I don’t recall. I didn’t hear him. He gave Mort some
money and Mort gave me a lot of—you know—” he lifted a hand as if it
held a bottle, tilting back his hand, “and I went off and didn’t care,
so long as I got what I come to crave for.”
“But they went away, back to the boat, I suppose,” Mr. Gray asserted.
Jack nodded.
“Well, we want to find out where they went,” began Bill.
“Mort was my pal while he was here,” Jack said. “I don’t remember
nothing, but if it’s account of the law, or anything, I won’t help you
to track down a pal.”
“No decent man would, unless his pal had done wrong!” agreed Mr. Gray.
“We aren’t after him. We don’t know of anything he has done that is
wrong. But we think he can help us to locate the sister of our Tom,
here—” he related briefly the circumstances of her disappearance. “As a
decent, self-respecting man, you want to help us all you can, of
course!”
Jack nodded sturdily. The appeal had its effect.
“I do,” he agreed. “But I wasn’t in condition to pay ’tention and I
can’t remember——”
“You recall him talking about Mexico—” suggested Mr. Gray.
“Mexico—Mexico—I can’t just seem to—maybe he did, but I don’t recollect
what he said.”
“Something about the Golden Sun—” suggested Bill.
“The—Golden—the Golden Sun—” Jack said, trying to screw up his forehead
in his effort to rebuild the old story.
“Golden Sun—he used to talk about it a lot,” said Mr. Gray.
“Golden Sun—was it, maybe—I don’t just—let me think—I was too fuddled to
notice when he used to brag and boast,” Jack said.
“I suppose he bragged how he had found some money that he had hidden,”
Bill broke in, referring to his supposition that Mort had hidden the
loot from the mine, gone back to get it, taken it to Colon and wasted it
in riotous living.
“He did brag—I recall that well,” Jack acknowledged. “Seems to me——”
“Just let it come to you—it will! You may have been ‘under the weather’
but you heard it all—it made an impression on you. You do remember it.
It will all come back!” Mr. Gray was making suggestions almost in the
way a hypnotist does when he is putting someone to sleep, only he was
using the principle rightly, to awaken a man’s memories.
“Oh—yes! There was a Golden Sun,” Jack declared. “It was a—wasn’t it a
mine——”
“No!” cried Nicky incautiously. “Remember, Bill, Toosa said it wasn’t—”
He stopped, feeling the glare of Tom’s and Cliff’s warning eyes. He
subsided, crimson with disgust at his carelessness, for Jack turned with
a blank face.
“Wasn’t it?” he asked. “You see; I don’t re—I can’t be sure——”
Mr. Gray did not change his expression.
“Well, let’s not worry about it,” he said. “He must have told you it was
the Golden Sun mine—and that might be true. Nicky referred to something
an old Indian said—the Indian thought the Golden Sun might be a girl, a
name applied to a girl.”
“A girl?” said Jack, a blank look on his face. “Was it a girl? I don’t
recall—I’ve tried. I want to help you—”
“Of course you do,” declared Mr. Gray, “and you will. As soon as it
comes to you clearly—and it will!—you can tell us. Now, go and lie down
and have your afternoon siesta.”
“Siesta!” Jack said. “On cushions! In good clo’es! With my stomach full!
And yesterday I laid under a palm tree and roasted and sweat and
starved.”
Bill rose to show him where he could take his nap.
“I want to remember!” said Jack, rather pitifully and huskily. “I don’t
know what it may mean for you—but you’ve been decent and more than I
deserve——”
“Oh, no,” Tom declared. “You’d do as much for us, if it was the other
way ’round.”
“I hope so,” agreed Jack. “Anyhow, I’ll try to think——”
“Now I’ve done it!” said Nicky ruefully, when Jack was out of hearing.
“Maybe not,” said Tom. “You didn’t remember what Mr. Gray said about
being positive—and you denied what he said and shook his confidence, but
he’s trying, and he will succeed.”
“Everybody succeeds if they keep trying on a certain line,” Cliff
stated, and then they waited—but not long. Suddenly Jack came on his
shaky legs, almost babbling in his excitement.
“It’s just come to me!” he said eagerly. “Listen——”
And they soon saw that “it” had “come to him” in full.