ON THE ROAD TO JOYALITA.
Four days had passed since Nick Carter, in the character of Prince
Marcos, had glided out of the Grand Central Terminal in New York City.
He and his three companions were traveling through a mountainous region
in Central America. The soft breath of the Caribbean Sea tempered the
tropical heat and made the atmosphere ideal.
Nick had purchased a high-powered motor car before leaving the United
States. So when he found it desirable to leave the lines of railroads
and depend upon the highways, he brought his car into use, and traveled
almost as fast--and much more comfortably--than he had in his Pullman
car.
Nick Carter drove and Patsy was by his side. As the sun went down
behind a range of rugged mountains in the west, and the road became
suddenly gloomy, Patsy looked about curiously.
“Gee! Where do we tear off our sleep to-night, chief?” he asked. “Ain’t
there some town on the map that we can get to before pajama and nightie
time? And supper? What about that?”
“Not hungry, are you?” asked Nick, smiling behind his mustache.
“Hungry?” ejaculated Patsy sarcastically. “Why, no, chief! Whatever
put that in your head? Didn’t I have breakfast, at eight o’clock this
morning, and didn’t I get rye bread, fossilized beans, and boiled mud
that they called coffee? I had almost as much breakfast as I would give
to a three-year-old girl. The coffee--gee! that coffee!--fixed me up
right away.”
“Let’s see! What did we do about lunch?” asked Nick, a merry twinkle
still in his eye. “Did we have much lunch?”
Patsy actually stood up in the car before he could express his disgust.
The occasion called for oratory.
“Lunch!” he howled. “We had a puncture for lunch, and we fed ourselves
putting on a new tire and then fixing a stripped gear. Altogether we
were three hours hung up on the road. When we got a start at last there
was no time to think of eating anything. Where do you think we are now?”
“About thirty miles from a little town I have been in before,” was Nick
Carter’s reply. “We’ll get supper and bedrooms there.”
“Thirty miles? We ought to make that in half an hour,” observed Patsy.
“Not on these roads,” corrected Nick. “Sixty miles an hour isn’t much
when you’ve got a smooth surface. But along this trail I guess twenty
miles will be enough.”
“Gee! That means an hour and a half!” grumbled Patsy. “Well, I’ll chew
on my left boot. It looks a little softer than the other. Unless you’ll
pull up a minute or two and let me scoop up a handful of sand from the
side of the road. With some gasoline to wash it down, that ought to go
all right.”
Nick Carter did not reply. He knew Patsy Garvan too well to take any
notice of his complaints. No doubt the young man was hungry. But let
any occasion arise for him to become active, and he would forget his
inner wants at once. Having nothing else to do, he grumbled.
Chick laughed in the back of the car at Patsy’s comical distress, but
sympathized with him, nevertheless.
It was true, as Patsy had intimated, that they had had nothing to eat
since breakfast, and it certainly had been an unsatisfactory meal.
They were passing through a region where the population had too little
work to do to keep them in health. Like Patsy, they grumbled, in
consequence. They cultivated a little corn and a few beans, and lived
on the fruits that grew ready to their hands for the remainder. But
always they were dissatisfied.
Occasionally a wagon, drawn by mules, would make a trip through these
mountains. Then there would be some few purchases, mostly of coffee
and tobacco, the money being wages received for farming for the
few comparatively wealthy men who had a score or so of acres under
cultivation and were too lazy to do the work themselves.
If they had not needed coffee and tobacco, nobody would have worked at
all.
At a small farmhouse Nick and his party had stopped for the night. The
sight of real money had stimulated the woman of the house, and she had
actually given up her own room and another to the four wayfarers.
There had been supper and breakfast after a sort, for which Nick Carter
had paid with a liberality that the people considered only right for a
royal personage.
They knew of Prince Marcos, they said--although this was not his
country--and they had heard that he was generous, as well as handsome.
When Nick Carter had paid them for the meals and rooms, they were
convinced that common report was correct. The husband, wife, with
four or five half-naked children, all agreed that Prince Marcos was
magnificently free-handed.
“This next town is called Paron, and it is in Carita, which adjoins
Joyalita,” remarked Nick, in a general way, to his companions.
“Carita is the little country that wants to swallow up Joyalita, isn’t
it?” asked Chick.
“Yes, sir,” answered Phillips, the valet, who had been silent
heretofore, although taking a lively interest in the conversation about
him. “Representatives of Carita are at Penza now. I hope we shall get
there in time to save Joyalita.”
“We shall do that, Phillips,” promised Nick Carter, without looking
around from the steering wheel. “We shall roll into Penza some time in
the morning.”
“If we don’t get there before noon, it will be too late,” Phillips
reminded him.
“We shall not be late,” said Nick shortly.
“And you can bet that when the chief says it that way, it goes,”
observed Patsy to himself.
Chick had discarded his high hat--which Phillips had bestowed carefully
in its own box--and now wore a soft cap, which shaded his eyes. He had
been staring out to one side of the road, in silence, with his hand
over the visor of the cap, to make his vision better.
“Chief!” he whispered, leaning over the back of the seat. “I think I
saw him again just now.”
“Where?”
“Riding down the hill, on the other side of that thicket of big trees.
There seems to be a road over there where horses can go.”
“There is a trail of that kind,” answered Nick, steadily driving. “It
is not bad for horses, and it is much more direct to Joyalita than this
road.”
“Then that is how this fellow keeps on cutting off corners,” suggested
Chick.
“It can easily be done,” assented Nick, still looking straight ahead,
in the light of the electric headlamps which he had just turned on.
“How many times have we seen him now?”
“Three.”
“Since when?”
“Last night. He passed the house where we slept. We saw him again while
we were fixing up the tire and gears, along the road, and now here he
is again,” replied Chick.
“You didn’t mention the time when we saw the horse standing, with his
bridle trailing, in the valley, by the side of a stream,” put in Patsy.
“We didn’t see the man, but he must have been there, all the same.”
“That’s true,” agreed Nick. “Look at him through the glass the next
time we catch him in daylight. We ought to have done that before.”
“I did do it,” announced Chick. “You were busy with the car when we
stopped about noon, and I took a good long stare at him across the
hood.”
“Well? What did he look like? Did you know him?”
“Never saw him before,” was Chick’s answer. “But I’ll know him again.
He is a dark fellow, with short hair. He is in a linen suit of light
gray, with a belt holding a sword, and a large panama hat. There is a
holster, with a pistol in it, hanging to his belt, too.”
“Soldier?”
“I don’t think so. He hasn’t a uniform, and he doesn’t carry himself
stiff enough.”
Nick Carter drove on, thinking, for ten minutes, before he spoke again.
“Sure you don’t recognize his face, Chick?” he asked suddenly.
“I couldn’t see his face at that distance. I could only make out his
general appearance.”
“Yet you know his dress is gray?”
Chick looked uncomfortable for a moment. Then he blurted out, half
defiantly, as he leaned over the back of the driving seat:
“If a man has on clothes that are not red, yellow, black, or white,
what can they be but gray?”
Nick Carter smiled, and Patsy burst into a guffaw that made Chick very
indignant.
“Say, Chick! You’re the cutest little guesser, when it comes to colors,
that ever moseyed down the pike. What was the color of the lunch we had
to-day?”
“That will do, Patsy!” gently rebuked Nick Carter. “It does not matter
much whether the man’s clothes were gray or any other color, so long as
we block his game, whatever it may be. Here’s the town of Paron that I
told you about, and right before us is the hotel.”
Nick drove the car into a courtyard and got out, glad to stretch his
limbs after his long drive. His three companions were by his side as he
looked about for some place to take his car.
It was a rambling sort of shack that Nick had dignified by the name of
hotel, but quite evidently the landlord took himself seriously.
He was a fat, greasy, long-haired individual, and he spoke in broken
English, or in Spanish, according to the preference of his guests.
Nick Carter had been to this place before, but it was several years
previously, and the landlord did not remember him.
This was just as well, since Nick had come now in another character
than his own, and he stood quietly by, while Phillips informed the
landlord that this was his highness, Prince Marcos, of Joyalita, on his
way to Penza.
Phillips spoke Spanish, and instantly there was a voluble conversation
between the two, with the landlord protesting that everything in this
house, as well as in the whole town, was at the disposal of Prince
Marcos.
“He’s a liar, your highness,” whispered Phillips to Nick Carter, as he
drew a little aside. “His name is Mala. He hates Joyalita and everybody
in it. We must watch him.”
“That’s cheerful information,” returned Nick. “I remember seeing the
fellow when I motored through here a few years ago. But I had very
little to do with him then.”
“He would be all right to an American coming through in a car,” was
Phillips’ response. “It is the motor cars that have made this village
what it is. Many automobiles pass along every week. Before that nothing
was here. Bicycles--that’s all.”
Phillips referred to the useful “bike” in a contemptuous tone.
Evidently he regarded it as not worth any consideration.
Mala came forward, rubbing his hands, and asking, in Spanish, if his
highness would condescend to honor his humble house till the morning,
and what his highness would be graciously pleased to like for supper.
“In the first place, Mala,” broke in Phillips sternly, “you know that
in Joyalita the speech is English----”
“Ah! Yes!” interrupted Mala, with an apologetic upward sweep of his
palms. “I am stupid. I am a mule.”
“A jackass, I should say,” remarked Patsy, in an inaudible tone. “I
don’t like that guy.”
“In the next place,” went on Phillips, disregarding all interruptions,
“you will set forth the best of everything you have, with some good
wine in a sealed bottle. Understand?”
“I will open the wine for his highness,” protested Mala. “He must not
have the trouble----”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” snapped Phillips. “I’ll open the
bottle. Bring it sealed, or I will not take it from you.”
Mala shrugged his shoulders, and pointed to a large open room, in which
three lamps, illuminated with American kerosene, were burning. The
room had several fairly comfortable chairs, including two rockers and
a sofa, with a large mahogany table in the center. It was a curious
combination of American civilization and mountain savagery.
Nick Carter saw that Chick and Patsy were looking after the car,
putting it under the cover of a tumble-down old shack.
Then he turned toward the room into which the bowing Mala was anxious
to usher him.
Nick sat down near a wide-open window, which commanded the road, while
Mala went to look after the preparations for supper and to get the
sealed bottle of wine for which Phillips had so urgently stipulated.
For five minutes Nick Carter reclined in one of the two comfortable
American rockers, his hand before his face, but his eyes peering out
between the fingers.
Suddenly he jumped from the chair, ran out of the front door, and
crossed the dusty road.
Behind a huge bowlder, one of several which had rolled down from the
mountains at different periods, he came across a man, who had been
peeping out slyly, watching the detective in the hotel room.
He wore a panama hat and he had a ridiculous sword in his belt.
Nick Carter seized this man by the throat in so strong a grip that he
could only gurgle incoherently, as he struggled vainly to escape.
“So you didn’t die, after all!” said Nick, with a grim smile.
“Die? Of course not. Who do you think I am?” demanded the man, as the
detective slightly released his grip to allow the words to come.
“Who do I _think_ you are, my friend?” rejoined Nick Carter. “I _know_
who you are, in spite of the mustache you have stuck on your lip to
deceive me. You are Jason, the rascal who was in the employ of Prince
Marcos, now trying to get back to his own country in time to save it
from ruin.”
“My name is not Jason, and I don’t know what you are talking about,”
was the surly response. “I never heard of Prince Marcos. Who are you?”
Before Nick could say anything more, the fellow, realizing that the
hold upon him was not so strong as it had been, made a sudden dive and
got away.
A mocking laugh came back to the detective. But it was too dark to
pursue the man, and Nick went back to the hotel.
“It looks as if I shall have some little work to do before I land in
Penza to put my veto on that annexation resolution in the name of
Prince Marcos,” he murmured, as he lighted a cigar.