The Collected Westerns of William MacLeod Raine: 21 Novels in One Volume

by Unknown

  The truth is that the yacht had become a prison to us just as it had to Bothwell. The thought of a few days on land, where we need not watch every moment to keep our throats from being slit, was an enormous relief.

  But Blythe was taking no chances with the vessel. It had been decided among us that either he, Yeager, or I should remain in charge of the Argos every minute of our stay.

  I had volunteered for the first day and Yeager was to relieve me on the second.

  All three of us were firmly resolved, though we had not yet broached the subject to Evelyn, that the ladies should remain in the canal zone while we continued down the coast to lift the treasure.

  Before Bothwell was taken ashore he had the effrontery to ask for a talk with his cousin. Blythe did not even submit his request to her. Fleming and he were removed from the vessel while the ladies were eating breakfast with Yeager, so that they did not even know until afterward that the men had been turned over to the authorities.

  None of the reconstructed mutineers asked for shore leave. Each of them knew that if he left the ship he would be liable to arrest for a capital offense and preferred to take his chance of any punishment the captain might inflict.

  The day was an endless one, but it wore away at last. The cattleman was to relieve me at breakfast time. I was up with the summer sun and had bathed, shaved, and eaten long before the city showed any sign of activity around the harbor.

  "You'll like Panama," Yeager assured me after he had clambered aboard. "It's a city of madmen, plumb daffy about the big ditch. The men can't talk anything but cuts, dams, cubic feet, steam plows, and earth slides. But, by Moses, when I see what they've done it makes me glad I'm an American. Everything is the biggest in the world--the dam, the locks, the cuts, the lake, the machinery, the whole blessed works. They've set a new mark for the rest of the earth."

  "What is Sam doing about getting a crew in place of our precious mutineers?" I asked.

  "He's picked up several fellows already. A Yankee named Stubbs is chief engineer. Sam is shipping Jamaica niggers for firemen."

  No schoolboy out for a holiday could have been half so keen to be free as I was. At the wharf I picked up a coche and was driven to the Tivoli, the hotel in the American quarter where our party was staying.

  The mud and the mosquitoes of former years were gone, though the natives were as indolent as ever. It is a town of color, due largely to the assorted population. I was told by a young engineer from Gatun that forty languages are spoken on the Isthmus at present, a condition due to the number of Caribbean islanders employed by our government.

  I found that the program for the day included a trip to Colon on the Isthmus railroad. Miss Berry preferred to rest quietly at the hotel, so her niece, Sam, and I set out to see the great canal.

  As I look back on it now Panama means to me a series of panoramic pictures. To give more than a cursory description of our impressions is impossible. The fact is that one obliterated another so swiftly as to leave a sense only of confusion.

  Take Culebra Cut, for instance, where the monsters of man's invention are biting into the mountain sides, ripping down with giant jaws loose dirt, and hauling it away on a maze of tracks.

  Great hoses, under tremendous pressure, are tearing at hills and washing them down. All the time there is a deafening noise, the crash of the continent's spine being rent by dynamite, the roar of trains, the shrieks of dirt shovels blowing off steam, the stab and hammer of drills.

  Man is making war on nature with amazing energy on a titanic scale. The disorder seemed hopeless, but one realized that these little figures moving about it in the man-made cañon were achieving the seemingly impossible none the less.

  "Isn't it wonderful?" Evelyn asked for the tenth time, as we looked down on a machine which had just seized a section of track and hoisted it up, rails and ties complete, to swing it over to another place.

  I quoted to her Damon Runyon's verses:

  We are ants upon a mountain, but we're leavin' of our dent, An' our teeth-marks bitin' scenery they will show the way we went; We're a liftin' half-creation, and we're changin' it around, Just to suit our playful purpose when we're diggin' in the ground.

  "You Americans take the cake," Blythe admitted. "You never tire of doing big things."

  His eyes had come back to a group of young engineers who had just entered the car. The grimy sweat had dried on their sooty faces and their hands were black and greasy. They wore no coats and their shirts, wet from the perspiration drawn by the hot Panama sun, stuck to the muscular shoulders.

  They looked like tramps from their attire, but Olympians could not have carried in their manner a blither confidence. These boys--I'll swear the oldest could have been no more than twenty-five--had undertaken to cut asunder what God has joined.

  It did not matter to them in the least that they looked like coal miners. The only thing of importance was the work, the big ditch. Yet I knew that these were just such splendid fellows as our technical schools are turning out by thousands.

  A few years before their thoughts had been full of cotillions and girls and the junior prom. The Isthmus had laid hold of them and hardened their muscles and bronzed their faces and given them a toughness of fiber that would last a lifetime.

  They had taken on responsibility as if they had been born to it. A glow of pride in them flushed me. I was proud of the country that could fling out by hundreds of thousands such young fellows as these.

  Empire, Gorgona, Gatun. From one to another we were hurried, passing through jungles such as we of the North never dream exist. In that humid climate vegetation is prodigal beyond belief, gorgeous with spattered greens and yellows and crimsons bizarre enough to take the breath.

  We ate luncheon at Colon and were back across the Isthmus at Panama a few hours later. After dinner we strolled around the city and saw the Parque de la Catedral, the Plaza Santa Ana, and the old sea wall.

  It did my heart good to see broad-shouldered, alert young Americans walking with wholesome girls from home and making love to them in the same fashion their friends were doing up in "God's country."

  Bothwell and his bunch of pirates began to lose themselves in the background of my mind. There was a dance at the hotel that evening. Before I had waltzed twice with Evelyn her buccaneer cousin had dissolved into a myth.

  When Yeager came ashore next morning he brought a piece of news. Henry Fleming had taken a boat during the night and escaped.

  "If I run across him I'll curl his hair for him," Tom promised with a look that made me think he would keep his word.

  But I was not sorry Fleming had taken French leave. Neidlinger could be trusted now, and neither Higgins nor Gallagher would go far astray without a leader.

  But both the engineers had known of Bothwell's plans from the first. If I could have foreseen what effect the desertion of our second engineer was to have upon the expedition I would not have taken his disappearance so easily.

  Our stay on the canal zone was a delightful one, though we were busy every minute of the time enjoying ourselves or making preparations for departure. With some difficulty Blythe picked up two engineers and a couple of firemen from Barbados and Jamaica, the latter of whom were natives. Philips was to stay at Panama until our return.

  I had my share of duty aboard the Argos to do, but every minute that was my own I spent in the old city or on the works.

  Evelyn surprised us by making no objection to our decree that she should remain at Panama while we took the Argos down to San Miguel Bay to lift the doubloons. In spite of her courage she was a woman. She confessed to me that she had seen bloodshed enough on the way down from California to last her a lifetime. The thought of returning so soon to the yacht had been a dreadful one to her.

  On the afternoon of our last day at Panama, Evelyn and I went out to the old sea wall for an hour together. The tide was in and from the parapet we watched the waves beat against the foot of the wall.

  Away to our right was Balboa, abov
e which rested a smoke pall from tugs, dredges, and tramp west coasters. Taboga we could just make out, and closer in a group of smaller islands the names of which I have forgotten. Beyond them all stretched the endless Pacific.

  Evelyn was quieter than usual, but I had never seen her look so lovely. The poise of my dear girl's burnished head, the untutored grace of her delicate youth, the gleam of tears behind the tremulous smile, all made mighty appeal to me.

  "I'm afraid for you, Jack. That's the truth of it. We've just found each other--after all these years. I don't want to run the risk of losing you again." Ever so slightly her voice broke.

  "You'll not lose me. Do you think anything could keep me away--with the sweetest girl in the world waiting for me here?"

  "I know," she smiled, a little drearily. "It sounds foolish, but I think of that dreadful man."

  We had been following the cement promenade on top of the wall. I led her across it to the landward side, from which we could look down into the yard of a prison. Under the eyes of an armed guard some prisoners were crossing to their cells. Two of them were in stripes, the third was not.

  "Look," I told her. "Bothwell is down there, locked up and guarded. He can't escape."

  The little group below came closer. I had noticed that the prisoner not in uniform was a white man and not a native. He carried himself with a distinction one could not miss. Even before he looked up both of us knew the man was Boris Bothwell.

  He stopped in his tracks, white-lipped, a devil of hatred and rage burning out of his deep-set eyes. A dullard could not have missed his thoughts. He was a prisoner in this vile hole, while I had brought the woman he loved to mock at him. The girl and the treasure would both be mine. Before him lay no hope.

  I felt a sense of shame at being an unexpected witness of his degradation. As I started to draw Evelyn back a guard prodded the Slav with his bayonet point. Bothwell whirled like a tiger and sprang for the throat of the fellow. They went down together. Other guards rushed to the rescue of their companion.

  We waited to see no more.

  It must have been a minute before either of us spoke.

  "Bad as he is, I can't help being sorry for him. It's as if a splendid lion were being worried to death by a pack of coyotes," Evelyn said with a shudder.

  "Yes, there's something big even in his villainy. But you may take one bit of comfort: He can't get free to interfere with us--and he deserves all he'll get."

  "I know. My reason tells me that all will be well now, but I have a feeling as if the worst were not yet over."

  I tried to joke her out of it.

  "It hasn't begun. You're not married to Jack Sedgwick yet."

  "No; but, dear, I can't get away from the thought that you are going into danger again," she went on seriously.

  "Tis dangerous to take a cold, to sleep, to drink," I quoted lightly.

  "I dare say I'm a goose," she admitted.

  "You are. My opinion is that you're in as much danger as we shall be."

  "Is that why you are leaving me here?" she flashed back.

  I laughed. In truth I did not quite believe what I had said. For I could see no danger at all that lay in wait for her. But the events proved that I had erred only in not putting the case strongly enough. Before we returned to civilization she was to be in deadly peril.

  CHAPTER XXI

  A MESSAGE FROM BUCKS

  In the forenoon we drew out from the harbor and followed the shore line toward the southwest, bound for that neck of the Isthmus which is known loosely as The Darien.

  Before night had fallen we were rounding Brava Point into the Gulf of San Miguel, so named by Balboa because it was upon St. Michael's Day, 1513, that his eyes here first fell upon the blue waters of the Pacific.

  We followed the north shore, along precipitous banks that grew higher the farther inland we went. The dense jungle came down to the water's edge and was unbroken by any sign of human habitation.

  In the brilliant moonlight we passed the South and the North bays, pushing straight into the Darien Harbor by way of the Boco Chico. The tides here have a rise and fall of nearly twenty feet, but we found a little inlet close to a mangrove swamp that offered a good harborage for the night.

  The warm sun was pouring over the hill when I reached the deck next morning. We were steaming slowly past the village of La Palma along a precipitous shore heavily timbered. One could not have asked a pleasanter trip than that to the head of the harbor, at which point the Rio Tuyra pours its waters into the bay. Between La Palma and the river mouth we did not see a sign of human life.

  At the distance of a rifle shot from the head of the harbor we rounded a point and saw before us a long tongue of sand running into the water.

  Blythe and I spoke almost together:

  "Doubloon Spit."

  There could be no mistake about it. We had reached the place where Bully Evans and Nat Quinn had buried the gold ingots they had sold their souls to get. We came to anchor a couple of hundred yards from the end of the sand spit.

  Neither Blythe nor I had said a word to any of the crew to indicate that we were near our journey's end, but all morning there had been an unusual excitement aboard. Now we could almost see the word run from man to man that the spot where the treasure was buried lay before us.

  "You'll command the shore party to-day, Jack," Blythe announced.

  "Do I draw shore duty?" Yeager asked eagerly.

  "You do. I'll stay with the ship. Jack, you'll have with you, too, Alderson, Smith, Gallagher, and one of the stokers."

  "Also James A. Garfield Welch," I added.

  "Also Jimmie," he nodded.

  We had no reason to expect any trouble, but we went ashore armed, with the exception of Gallagher and Barbados, as we called our white-toothed, black-faced fireman.

  I had our boat beached at the neck of the peninsula. While the men were drawing it up on the sand beyond reach of the tide I called to Jimmie.

  "Yes, Mr. Sedgwick."

  "Take off your coat."

  "Are youse going to give me that licking now?" he asked, eyes big with surprise.

  "How often have I told you not to ask questions? Shuck the coat."

  He twisted out of it like an eel. I took it from him, turned it inside out, and opened my pocket knife. Carefully I ripped the lining at the seams. From a kind of pocket I drew an envelope. Out of the envelope I took the map that had been so closely connected with the history of Doubloon Spit.

  When I say the men were surprised, I do them less than justice. One could have knocked their eyes off with a stick.

  "Crikey! I didn't know that was there," Jimmie cried.

  It had been Evelyn's idea to sew the map in Jimmie's coat, since that was the last place the mutineers would think of looking for it. While he had been peacefully sleeping Miss Wallace had done so neat a piece of tailoring that Jimmie did not suspect the garment had been tampered with.

  We had, however, taken the precaution to take a copy of the map. During all the desperate fighting it had been lying in a shell snugly fitted into one of the chambers of a revolver in Yeager's room.

  "Beg pardon, sir. Did the boy have the map with him while he was Mr. Bothwell's prisoner?" asked Gallagher.

  "He did; but he didn't know it."

  "Glad he didn't, sir, because if he had that devil would have got it out of him."

  "Which no doubt would have distressed you greatly," I answered dryly.

  "I'm on the honest side now, sir," the sailor said quietly.

  "Let's hope you stay there."

  "I intend to, sir," he said, flushing at my words.

  [Illustration: "CRIKEY! I DIDN'T KNOW THAT WAS THERE," JIMMIE CRIED. p. 240]

  The chart that Tom and I looked at was a contour map of the spit and the territory adjacent to it. No doubt it had in the old days been roughly accurate, but now the tongue of sand was wider than it had been by nearly a hundred years of sand deposits washed up by the tide.

  Both on the map a
nd the spit a salient feature was the grove of palms that stood on the hill just beyond the neck of the peninsula. Here plainly was the starting point of our quest. With Yeager I led the way to the clump, followed by my men carrying spades and shovels.

  "Ye Grove" the clump of palms was labeled, and the great drooping tree to one side some fifty yards farther down the hill must be "Ye Umbrela Tree."

  Beneath the map were the directions for finding the treasure, written in the angular hand of Nat Quinn. In order that you may understand I give these just as he had written them.

  HOW TO FIND ITTE: