“What do you mean by something worth while?” demanded Alex, busy with
pancakes at the electric stove.
“It probably isn’t a dog!” laughed Jule.
“You let Captain Joe alone,” commanded Alex, “or I’ll instruct him to
make a supper of you. He’s some dog!”
“Where can any cargo procured here be disposed of?” asked Clay,
hopefully, remembering the empty purse.
“There’s a little town up the river where vessels bound for Europe take
on cargoes,” Frank explained, with a knowing smile, “and we may find
something we can get rid of if we tell them we need the money.”
“We need the money, fast enough,” Case grumbled. “If someone hadn’t let
the gasoline run away we’d have plenty now! Wonder it didn’t set fire to
the boat!”
“Growl, bear, growl!” laughed Jule.
“Whose heard anything of the _Señorita_ to-day?” asked Case, as they all
lounged on the forward deck after supper.
“I think she must have gone back,” Clay answered. “I haven’t seen or
heard her for two days.”
“She hasn’t gone back,” Frank insisted. “She will follow us to the
foothills, unless something unusual stops her. We are getting into her
home territory now, and may expect trouble.”
“What is all this about?” asked Jule. “Why so mysterious?”
Frank did not answer, and the boy continued:
“I wish the _Señorita_ had blown up on the South Branch.”
“How would you like to be on the South Branch to-night?” asked Case.
“This suits me well enough,” was Jule’s answer. “If there’s any need of
a guard to-night, who’s in for it?” he added, looking about for more
dessert. Frank was on his feet in a moment.
“I will watch to-night,” he said. “On the way down from Peru, as I told
you, I stopped here for a couple of days, and I think, as I said before,
I know where we can find something that looks like money, if we watch
closely to-night.”
The boys looked over the darkling scene, over the narrow stream, over
the broad Madeira, perhaps two hundred yards away, over the forest,
crowding down to the rim of the little creek, and Case echoed the
sentiments of all the rest when he asked:
“What in the world is there in here that we can get money for?”
“If we had some of this scenery on the Chicago wood market, now,” Jule
laughed, waving a hand over the landscape, which showed trees more than
two hundred feet high, “we might be able to do business on a cash basis,
but I don’t see any sustenance in this.”
“It strikes me that you took a queer location for your resting-place on
the way out,” Alex put in.
“Over there, a few hundred yards,” Frank explained, “I found a pretty
fair hotel—in a tree! It seemed to me, at that time to be about the
neatest, coziest little hotel on earth!”
“Hotel?” repeated Clay, wondering if the strange boy was at last about
to talk of the mystery which surrounded him, after a silence of weeks.
“You see,” Frank continued, “when I came down the river I had—well, I
had something in my possession which—there was something the other
people wanted, you understand. They had followed me pretty closely from
Cloud island, and I thought I’d drop in here and let them go by.”
“And they did?” asked Clay, disappointed at the guarded tone of the boy.
“Did they go by?”
“After three days,” was the reply. “It was while I was hiding in the
tree hotel I’ve been telling you about that I saw—well, that I came
upon—or, rather, that I arranged for the cargo that we may be able to
turn into money—when we come to the ships that are going to Europe!”
“I’d like to know what you’re talking about!” exclaimed Alex. “There is
about as much coherence to your explanation as there is to a railroad
freight schedule. What was it you ‘arranged for?’”
“Where is Cloud island?” demanded Jule, not waiting for the boy to
reply.
Frank flushed, as if caught in some dishonorable evasion of the truth,
and remained silent.
“How long will it take to get this may-be cargo out?” asked Clay, as
much to break the painful silence as for any other purpose.
“Not very long,” was the reply.
“Can we do it in the night?” asked Jule. “Say, but I’d like to go into
that jungle in the night!”
“Then we’ll take Captain Joe and go,” asserted Alex.
Captain Joe wagged his stumpy tail as if seconding the proposition, and
Alex began telling him what a fine gentleman of a dog he was. Captain
Joe had already begun to fill out, he having been half starved at the
time Alex rescued him, and was now a powerful fellow and as playful as a
kitten. The boys were teaching him to do all sorts of tricks.
“You’d better keep the dog on the boat,” Frank warned. “He’ll only bark
and attract attention to us.”
“In that wilderness!” ejaculated Case. “Who is there in that bunch of
tall timber to hear a dog bark?”
The boys talked over the proposed night visit to the jungle while they
finished supper and washed and set away the dishes. Frank seemed to be
of the opinion that he could best do what was to be done alone, though
the others scoffed at the notion of his bringing out, single handed,
anything that might be traded for gasoline and tinned goods!
It was finally decided that Case should go with Frank, and that the
other boys should remain on the boat and listen for such signals as the
shore party might send out. If help was needed in moving what Frank
vaguely referred to as “his cargo,” one long call was to be the signal;
if there was danger, three long calls.
The waters of the creek would carry the motor boat only in the middle of
the current, for the shores, besides sloping over shallows, were here
and there lined with fallen tree-trunks.
“It looks like ruination!” Alex commented, as the row-boat was made
ready, and from that moment the stream was known as “Ruination Creek.”
Clay rowed the two boys ashore, saw that they were provided with
automatic revolvers and flashlights, and then took the boat back to the
_Rambler_. It was left ready for instant use, however, with weapons and
flashlights on the stern seat.
“There’s something strange about that boy Frank,” Jule commented, as the
two boys disappeared in what seemed from the boat to be a solid wall of
green foliage, their flashlights showing only dimly through the heavy
undergrowth. “I don’t understand him at all. What kind of a cargo can he
get in there in the darkness? And what is keeping him from telling us
all about it?”
“I don’t quite understand why he should make a mystery of the proposed
cargo, as we are all equally interested with himself in the matter,”
Clay admitted. “I don’t see why he shouldn’t be as confidential with us
as we have always been with him. He has never explained to my
satisfaction why he was hanging around the warehouse in the rain that
night on the South Branch.”
“Why, he was lonesome, and homesick, and anxious to go along with us,
yet afraid to ask,” interposed Alex. “Anyway, he’ll tell us when he gets
good and ready. Don’t let’s knock!”
“That’s slang!” Jule shouted. “You wash dishes!”
“Is that slang, Clay?” asked Alex.
“Well, it’s a short and vigorous way of expressing a sensible
admonition, so we may as well let it go,” Clay replied.
“Sensible admonition! I’ll write that down!” laughed Jule.
“And the finding of the diamonds! And the newspaper with the penciled
hand pointing to the advertisement offering the $500 reward for the
return of the gems,” Clay went on, “is another strange thing. Who could
have placed the marked newspaper where it was found? You remember, Jule,
that the lawyer who paid over the reward asked me how the newspaper came
to be there, and I couldn’t tell him!”
“No one had been ashore that morning except Frank,” Jule said, “and he
went away early, and might have sneaked back with the paper. It wasn’t
there the night before. It sure was either Frank or Captain Joe who put
the paper there.”
Captain Joe, the dog, worthy representative of a staunch old friend, put
his chin on Alex’s knee, at mention of his name, and wagged his tail as
if promising to unravel the whole mystery as soon as he got time!
“I wish someone would offer a reward now that we could get,” Jule
grinned. “I think we could use a little old reward about now. Anyway, I
don’t see where all our $200 and the $500 reward went to. We must have
been tossing money to the birds!”
Clay and Alex looked at each other with glances of understanding. Jule
had never been told of the loss of the money.
“Funny about that reward coming just at the time it did, and just as it
did,” began Alex, but here a great chattering in the jungle cut the
conversation short. There was such a rustling in the foliage, now
invisible in the blackness of the night, and such a medley of
whisperings and shrill cries that the boys involuntarily reached for
their weapons. Then Jule laughed and turned on the prow light, for they
had been sitting in the darkness.
“You’ll see ’em in a second,” he told the others, winking the light on
and off to attract more attention. “There’s a brigade of Brazilian
monkeys in there, and the boys have stirred them up with their lights
and noise.”
“I doubt if we’ll get a look at them,” Clay corrected, “for the
Brazilian monkeys are shy little chaps. Even Captain Joe seems to
understand that they will not be at home to callers to-night,” he added,
as the dog wagged his tail and lay down again.
As the two explorers in the forest passed farther from the creek the
protests of the monkeys died out, and all was reasonably still again.
Clay moved over by the light switch so that Jule could not turn it on
again, as he considered it safer to sit in the darkness. The bright prow
light made too good a mark for a hostile gun, he thought.
While Clay, Alex, and Jule waited on the forward deck of the _Rambler_,
still discussing the incomprehensible actions and silences of Frank,
that young man, accompanied by Case, was plunging through the thickets
lying south of Ruination Creek. Back of them rolled the Amazon, only a
short distance away. To the east lay the Madeira, to the west the level
plain ending only at the Andes.
They had proceeded perhaps half a mile when Frank stopped in a little
opening and looked about with expectant eyes. The noises of the forest
were all about them. Birds, suddenly awakened from sleep, cried out to
each other from treetops, and hidden things scurried along under the
dense foliage which everywhere concealed the rich black earth.
“It was right here somewhere,” Frank said, “that I found the tree hotel,
and it is right about here that we’ll get the cargo if we get it at all.
Do you smell anything unusual?” he added, sniffing the air.
“Only wood burning.”
“Well, that means a campfire!”
“But who would be building a campfire in this wilderness?” demanded
Case. “Perhaps the chimney of your hotel smokes!” he added, laughingly.
“That is for us to find out!” Frank replied, and Case detected a tone of
anxiety in his voice. “If anyone has been in here, looking around, why,
my cargo——”
“What about your cargo?” asked Case, as the other stopped suddenly.
“Why, it will be gone,” Frank admitted, in a moment.
Directly Case caught his companion by the arm and pointed straight ahead
into the jungle.
“There is where the smoke comes from,” he explained. “There’s a fire in
the thicket yonder, and men moving around it.”
Frank followed the direction of the pointing hand and grasped his
companion by the arm.
“We may as well go back,” he whispered. “Those men are here because they
know about my cargo. If we move silently, they will not know that we are
here. Come along! They must not see me to-night!”
“I’ve got to know something more about this cargo before I give up hope
of getting it,” Case declared, stubbornly. “I’m not going to miss a
chance of getting the money we need for any little interruption like
this. Who are those men? Why are you afraid to let them see you here? Do
you know why they are here? Ever see them before?”
“Why, it is too dark to see their faces,” Frank explained, hesitatingly,
“and we couldn’t tell friend from foe at that distance, anyway,” he
added. “But the fact that they are here is enough for me to know! Come
along! We’re going back to the _Rambler_ now, we can come again in the
morning.”
“That’s the trouble with you!” Case whispered, reprovingly. “You are too
much of a quitter!
You were afraid to come on board the _Rambler_, that night on the South
Branch. Now you’re afraid to go on, because you see two men standing by
a campfire! Well, I don’t know where your cargo is, or what it is, and
you all say I’m a kicker and a prophet of evil, but I’m going on in and
find out why those men are camping in this jungle.”
“I’m sorry you’ve got such a bad opinion of me,” Frank said, slowly.
“Perhaps you may change your mind, in time. As for going in there, I’ll
go, if you insist upon it, but I’m telling you now that you will regret
it if you do.”
The fire died down a bit, and the figures which had stood before it were
no longer in sight. The boys shut off their lights, took firmer hold of
their weapons, and stood considering.
But the decision was not with them, for while they pondered two forms
rose up behind them and they were thrown to the ground.