CREEPING SHADOWS
Pant’s wonderings about Johnny were not misplaced. To dismiss one’s good
pal from his mind is impossible. Johnny did not wish to forget Pant. He
had discovered his note and found himself deeply concerned about it.
After leaving Don del Valle in Guatemala City, he took a train to the
coast. There he caught a fruit boat to Stann Creek, and armed with a note
from Don del Valle to his plantation manager ordering him to deliver
twenty thousand bunches of bananas to the bearer, he reached Stann Creek
just one hour before the train was to start up the narrow gauge railway
to the Kennedy grapefruit plantation.
His first task was that of getting off a wireless message to Captain
Jorgensen offering him a combined cargo of bananas and grapefruit for his
return trip to the United States. With what feelings of hopes and fears
he then awaited the good skipper’s reply. Now he was elated by the hope
that the _North Star_ was still at his service, and now cast down by the
fear that she was already loading mahogany, dyewood or cocoanuts.
He was not idle, however. Having gotten off his message, he hurried over
to the office which Pant had left some hours before. It was with a deep
feeling of unrest and disappointment that he found the place deserted.
Colonel Longstreet had put the scattered papers to rights and repaired
the damaged safe as best he could and he, too, had left. But on the
table, weighted down by a polished square of ebony, was the curious note
Pant had left. Scrawled across the top by the trembling hand of the old
Colonel was Johnny’s name.
“That was evidently intended for me,” said Johnny, “but what in the name
of all that’s sane does it mean?”
“Some of Pant’s doings,” he grumbled as with wrinkled brow he studied the
miscellaneous jumble of figures, question marks and trade signs. “Oh
well, there’s no time for working puzzles now. I must get up the railway
to Kennedy’s fruit farm. Won’t they be joyous!” With that he thrust the
paper in his pocket, but it was not entirely forgotten.
He was in the curious day coach with its seats along the sides and its
broad open spaces in lieu of windows, waiting for the train to start,
when he opened Captain Jorgensen’s wireless message.
His fingers trembled, his face grew sober as he unfolded the bit of
yellow paper.
“What if—
“But no!” With a quick exclamation of joy, he read:
“_Congratulations. The North Star awaits your order._”
“Couldn’t be better,” was the way the boy expressed it as he walked among
the gold laden fruit trees two hours later. He was talking to Madge
Kennedy. No wall flower, this girl. Sun-browned arms, honest freckles,
strong and healthy muscles, that was Madge Kennedy. Though only nineteen
years of age, she had taken over the largest share of the task of keeping
the orchard in order.
Underbrush and creepers grow fast in this warm, moist land. A constant
war must be waged against them. Johnny had found her doing her bit by
swinging a short stout brush scythe. Two husky Carib Indians were working
with her, but Johnny noted with no little pleasure that she was the best
worker of the three.
After taking the scythe and finishing the swath, he dropped beside her in
the evening shade, and told her of his success.
“It’s your grandfather’s chance, and yours,” he said with enthusiasm.
“Think of it! Five thousand boxes of grapefruit. That many at least. And
we’ll get the top price. America has never tasted such fruit. Your
grandfather has the boxes ready to set up?”
She nodded.
“Then there’s nothing to stop us. Your grandfather can find men to pick
and pack the fruit?”
“Carib Indians,” she said in quiet confidence, “hundreds of them,
thousands if necessary. They love grandfather, every last one of them.
“Do you know, my friend,” her voice was husky, “my grandfather is a sort
of second Livingston. Livingston went to Africa. Grandfather came to
Central America. He has been all over it. There is no dark little spot in
any tiny republic where he has not been. He has visited Maya Indians who
were supposed to kill a white man at sight. They did not touch him. Love,
sympathy and a simple modesty are the charms that protect him. There’s
not a family within the district he has not helped in time of trouble.
There is always plenty of trouble. Oh yes, he can find the men; without
pay if necessary.”
“It won’t be necessary. Do you know how much five thousand acres of the
finest grapefruit in the world will bring in New York?”
She shook her head.
“Neither do I. Thousands of dollars, there’s no question. Then your
grandfather and you can leave this wilderness.”
“Leave—leave it?”
The girl’s eyes swept the scene before her. In the immediate foreground
all green and gold was the orchard; beyond that a broad stretch of green
where an occasional cohune nut palm with leaves thirty feet long broke
the even green. Back of all that, nestling against the vast, impenetrable
jungle, was the long, low house.
“Leave it?” she repeated. “Grandfather would not leave it. He loves the
land and his black Caribs too well.
“He left it once.” Her voice grew husky again. “War. He left then. He was
gone three years. They made him a captain. They say it was uncanny the
way he led his men, his black Caribs from Central America, and how in
every bloody battle he escaped unharmed.” She was silent for a moment.
The shadows deepened.
“Do you know,” she went on softly, “he never speaks of it now. And he
never allows anyone to call him Captain Kennedy. That’s what he was, you
know. But somehow I love him a lot more for it.”
“He’s got company!” she exclaimed, springing up and shaking herself as if
to break a spell that had come over her. “One of those dark Spaniards. I
don’t like him. Br-r-r-r! He makes me think of the wolf in Little Red
Riding Hood. But we must go in. It isn’t respectable not to. He’s been
talking some sort of business, but must be through by now.”
“Business?” Johnny had the question on his lips, but did not ask it. He
was destined in good time to know what sort of business that was, and to
get little enough comfort from the knowledge.
They found Kennedy sitting alone on the veranda.
“How do you do, Mr. Kennedy,” said Johnny, putting out his hand.
“Congratulate me. I have my cargo completed. Bananas. You may begin
packing your fruit to-morrow. It will be in New York within ten days if
we have luck. We—”
He broke short off. A tall Spaniard had emerged from the shadows. He had
heard all, and the black cloud on his face was not all due to his dark
Spanish skin.
He did not speak to the boy, but turning to Kennedy bade him good-night,
then strode rapidly away to the spot where his saddle horse was tethered.
It was astonishing, the effect of this man upon Johnny’s spirits. It was
as if threatening shadows had begun to crawl upon him.
“Bah!” he whispered to himself. “Probably never see him again.”
In this he was wrong. He was destined to see him many times, in fact to
see him the very next day, and to get a decided shock from the encounter.
“Business,” he whispered to himself.
“What sort of business?” He thought of Madge Kennedy and the Spaniard,
then dismissed them from his mind.
“Sit here with grandfather,” he heard the girl saying. “I’ll have some
food ready in a jiffy.”
Mechanically he sat down, and as he did so, discovered that the sudden
night of the jungle had blotted out every track of the orchard, the wide
spreading green and the dark forest that lay beyond.