“Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you,” she hesitated, “but I guess it’s right I should. My father is deputy for this territory. It is his duty to see that the laws are obeyed. Someone is breaking our laws and we cannot catch them. Not little things that do not matter much, but big things that mean certain death to many.” She paused for a moment. To their ears came the silent rush of water. There is something dreadfully solemn about the rush of black waters through the dark.
“These laws-breakers,” the girl continued, “are smuggling two things to our people—rifles and rum. You know what that means in Mexico. Rifles and rum mean revolution; cruel, senseless revolution! The Governor of the state of Quintanaroo is a good, kind man. Revolution could never bring a better government. But the people are simple-minded. Rum maddens their hearts. Rifles make them want to fight. Someone is selling them both at a great price, and we cannot catch them. One man is suspected, and that one is——”
“Daego. But we can prove nothing. Every motor boat is searched, but each one brings only food, clothing and tools for his camp.”
All at once, as Pant sat there listening to this girl, so earnest, yet so young, so eager to help her people, he realized that a Divine will, higher than his own, had sent him here and that his greatest mission, a moral mission, was just before him.
“I—I think I can help you,” he whispered. “I know I can.”
Before his mind’s eye a black shadow crept up the river and in his memory there echoed still the pop-pop of that stationary engine away in the bush.
“Give me a day, two days,” he said. “Come back here day after to-morrow, two hours after dark.”
“All right, my friend, and may God prosper you! We are your friends. Good-bye!”
Pant stepped upon the shore and the canoe shot silently away in the night.
“We are your friends.” How sweet were those words spoken to a lonely boy in the heart of a wilderness!
Pant’s conference with the girl at the creek landing on the appointed night was short and to the point. The girl’s father was to station a company of his men in a cluster of cocoanut palms at a certain point on the river’s brink an hour after dark on the following night.
“Daego’s pit-pans may not come that night,” said Pant. “We have no means of telling. But we will watch, one night, two, three if necessary.”