“Easy. There’s a tree up here that raises grass on its branches instead of leaves—bread-nut tree, they call it. I saw one up the river two days ago. Burros and cattle get fat on it. We’ll get a native to climb a few trees and gather a ton of this hay.”
“Natives?” said Johnny slowly. “That reminds me—there aren’t any.”
“What!” exclaimed Pant, setting down his bananas so suddenly that many of them broke from the stem.
“Skipped. Vamoosed. All gone.” Johnny threw out his arms in a wide gesture.
Johnny shrugged his shoulders. “You tell me. All I know is they’re gone. They told us in New Orleans that this red lure was a hoodoo. They told us the same thing in Belize. Maybe it is. Who knows?”
“It isn’t!” Pant sprang to his feet. “We’ll go to Belize and get another crew!”
“Pant,” said Johnny slowly, “I think one of them tried to kill me. I—I think it was Petillo.”
Johnny seated himself on a log and told of his night’s experiences, from his narrow escape on the bank and in the river to his discovery of the mysterious Spanish girl in the trail.
“What do you make of it?” he asked at the end.
“Of course, there’s that man-eating jaguar they’ve been talking about. They may have run away because they were afraid. They may have—”
“But what of that fellow down by the river!” exclaimed Pant. “No! I tell you what, Johnny, someone is plotting against us, someone with money and power. We’ll not spend a night here alone. We’ll get right back to Belize. And we must not come back unless we find a real, fearless crew.”
“I’m afraid that last is a big contract.”
“Maybe so. But let’s hope it’s not impossible.”
“What’ll we do with that?” said Johnny, pointing to the burro.
“Take him along in the power boat. I tell you what, Johnny, I always feel lucky when I’m saving some poor dumb creature from suffering. I shouldn’t wonder if Rip would do us a mighty good turn sometime.”
In this Pant was more nearly right than he knew. Also, this sad-looking quadruped was destined to be the cause of bringing him into great peril. But that was all in the future.
Pant had been down the river in a dory for bananas, cocoanuts and casabas. As soon as they had unloaded these stores and had eaten a hasty breakfast, they turned the prow of their motor-boat downstream and went pop-popping away.