The air in the valley was growing warmer every minute. By noon, when the sun would look almost vertically down, it promised to be very hot, as the mountains shut out the breeze.
“I don’t think it will be necessary to look for game,” Sam went on in a moment, “for the reason that the _Louise_ and _Bertha_, ought to be here soon after sunset. It may possibly take them a little longer than that to cover the distance, as they do not sail so fast as the _Ann_, but at least they should be here before to-morrow morning. Then you’ll see the savages scatter!” he added with a smile. “And you’ll see Jimmie eat, too!”
“Yes,” Carl suggested, “but won’t Mr. Havens and the boys remain in Quito two or three days waiting for us to come back?”
“I think not,” was the reply. “I arranged with Mr. Havens to pick us up somewhere between Quito and Lake Titicaca in case we did not return before morning. I have an idea that they’ll start out sometime during the forenoon—say ten o’clock—and reach this point, at the latest, by midnight.”
“They can’t begin to sail as fast as we did!” suggested Carl.
“If they make forty miles an hour,” Sam explained, “and stop only three or four times to rest, they can get here before midnight, all right!”
“Gee! That’s a long time to go without eating!” cried Jimmie. “And, even at that,” he went on in a moment, “they may shoot over us like a couple of express trains, and go on south without ever knowing we are here.”
Sam turned to Pedro with an inquiring look on his face.
“Well, then,” Sam went on, “what about the red and blue lights? Can you stage that little drama for us to-night?”
“What is stage?” demanded Pedro. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Chestnuts!” exclaimed Jimmie impatiently. “He wants to know if you can work the lights as Miguel did. He wants to know if you can keep the lights burning to-night in order to attract the attention of people who are coming to drive the Indians away. Do you get it?”
“Coming to drive the Indians away?” he repeated. “Yes, I can burn the lights. They shall burn from the going down of the sun. Also,” he added with a hopeful expression on his face, “the Indians may see the lights and disappear again in the forest.”
“Let him think so if he wants to,” cautioned Jimmie. “He’ll take better care of the lights if he thinks that will in any way add to the possibility of release. But midnight!” the boy went on. “Think of all that time without anything to eat! Say,” he whispered to Carl, in a soft aside, “if you can get Sam asleep sometime during the day and get the gun away from him, I’m going to make a break for the tall timber and bring in a deer, or a brace of rabbits, or something of that kind. There’s plenty of cooking utensils in that other chamber and plenty of dishes, so we can have a mountain stew with very little trouble if we can only get the meat to put into it.”