The Red Lure Read online

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  _Mystery Stories for Boys_

  The Red Lure

  _By_ ROY J. SNELL

  The Reilly & Lee Co. Chicago

  _Printed in the United States of America_

  Copyright, 1926 by The Reilly & Lee Co. _All Rights Reserved_

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER PAGE I The White Gleam 9 II Sudden Catastrophe 23 III Mysterious Sounds 38 IV Tree Hay and a Jaguar 47 V Narrow Escapes 58 VI Lost in the Jungle 65 VII Peril in the Dark 77 VIII Death Ahead 87 IX "It's Death an' Destruction" 100 X Johnny's Ghost Walks 114 XI Provisioned for a Long Journey 128 XII A Bronze Beauty 135 XIII Purring Shadows 151 XIV Forgotten Tribes 159 XV The Hidden City 169 XVI Pant Sets a Trap 177 XVII The Spanish Girl Reappears 185 XVIII Pant Springs the Trap 191 XIX Capturing a Black Shadow 199 XX Century Old Caverns 209 XXI Trapped 218 XXII Magic Power 228 XXIII The Passing of the Ghost 237 XXIV Blind Drifting 242 XXV The Battle of Rio Hondo 252

  THE RED LURE

  CHAPTER I THE WHITE GLEAM

  As Johnny Thompson bent over the black waters of the river he thought heheard a stealthy movement behind him. Before he could decide whether ornot his eyes had deceived him he caught the reflection of a sudden whitegleam on the dark surface of the water. At the same time something toldhim to dive, and dive he did. With the rocket-like speed that was his, heshot straight into the water, then away beneath the surface. He rose someten yards downstream. After one deep, silent breath, he grasped a redmangrove branch for support, then paused to listen.

  He did not listen long, for there came a sudden wild swirl of water closebeside him.

  "Alligator!" he breathed, as with a sudden and mighty tug at the mangrovebranch he threw himself clear of the water and out upon the bank.

  Here he paused to listen again. Catching no sound, he began creeping backtoward his first position, the foot of the path that had been cut to theriver.

  All this time his mind was working on double-quick time. What had causedthat sound behind him there on the bank--man or beast? What was the whitegleam? Was it, after all, only a product of his overwrought mind? Thewhole day had seemed full of brooding menace.

  "No," he told himself stoutly, "it was not all imagination. The soundmight have been--but the white gleam? No. I saw that. After all, though,it might have been only the reflection of a white heron in silentflight."

  Night was coming on. It would soon be dark. He did not care for that. Hisflashlight was in his pocket. As he crept forward through the thicktangled brush he seemed to feel the swift power of the dark old river.Rio Hondo, they called it--Black River. And black it was. Johnny hadnever before seen water that could so perfectly reproduce the black gleamof polish ebony. And yet, somehow, he had come to think of the river ashis friend. That was how he came to be there now. Pant, his pal, wasaway. The thirty black and brown faces about camp had seemed singularlystrange and unfriendly, so he had come to the river for comfort. And now,how had it repaid him? Had it in that white gleam given him a friendlywarning, or had it tricked him into a place of great peril, into dangerof being eaten by an alligator?

  Suddenly his thoughts came to an end. Sooner than he expected he brokethrough the "bush" into the path. Starting back, he stared for a secondin silence.

  "No one here," he whispered. "But wait; some one has been here."

  In astonishment he picked up a long-bladed, gleaming knife. It was amachete, the tool and weapon of the bushman of Central America.

  "Looks like Petillo's machete," he breathed. What could it mean?

  Just then he caught a sudden sound from the water. It was like a startledcry for help. He thought he caught sight of a head above the blackwaters. He might have been mistaken. It was growing dark. He drew hisflashlight from his pocket. It was water-logged, short circuited,useless.

  Again came the strange cry and at the same time a great swirl of water.

  "The alligator!" he breathed.

  For an instant he thought of throwing himself in the water to go to therescue. This he knew was madness. There were other alligators. Grim,terrible, man-eating beasts were these sharp nosed alligators of BritishHonduras, Central America.

  So, as he sat there, crowded well back in the bushes, silent, motionless,listening and thinking, darkness came and blotted out all, both good andbad, that might have been seen upon the surface of the Rio Hondo.

  A deep feeling of foreboding and gloom settled down upon him as darknesshid the river.

  Picking up the machete that lay at his feet, he felt of its edge.

  "Keen as a razor," he murmured. "Did some one try to kill me with it? Ifso, I wonder why? Well, he didn't, and won't. Providence took a hand.Must have lost his balance and fallen in. Bad swimmer. Current carriedhim out and a 'gator got him. That's the way it looks. Can't tell,though."

  He shuddered at the thought; the 'gator might have gotten him, too.

  Johnny was in a strange land, the strangest he had ever seen. In otherdays, as you will know if you have read our other stories of theadventures of Johnny Thompson, fate had led him over the frozen trails ofAlaska, down the timber roads of the Cascades and out over the sea. Nowhere he was far up a tropical river, in the heart of the "bush," alone.

  It is not pleasant to be alone in a tropical jungle at night. Johnny roseto go. His flashlight gone, there was nothing left but to grope his wayback over the machete-hewn trail to camp. It was some distance--all of amile.

  As he took his first step, off to the right a twig snapped. His heartskipped a beat and his face felt strangely cold. Had he been watched? Nowthe creature was going on before him. Was it a man, or a jaguar? (Nativescalled them tigers.) He preferred the word "tiger."

  Gripping the keen edged machete, he struck away straight down the trail.

  There came no further sound. Slowly, steadily, he advanced. Half thedistance was covered. He was breathing more easily when a sudden hoarsesound brought him to a stand.

  Then he laughed. Off to the right he caught the gleam of two small redballs of fire. And again that hoarse bark broke the silence of the night.

  "'Gator," he said with a chuckle. "Forgot there was one in a pool overthere."

  He did not laugh five minutes later as he heard, off to the left, thepu-pu-pu of a jag
uar. These great cats were dangerous. They had beenknown to kill a horse and swim a river with the carcass. The golden ballsthat now peered at him from the first branch of a great Santa Maria treewere not reassuring.

  Redoubling his pace, he hurried on toward camp. Five minutes later, witha sigh of satisfaction, he broke through the brush into a clearing.

  Here he paused in astonishment. The place was silent, more silent than hehad known it even in the dead of night. The gleam of coals on the cookingplatform and the dim bulk of cabins looming in the dark were the onlysigns that men lived here.

  "Hello there!" he shouted.

  To his utter bewilderment there came no answer.

  An hour before he had left thirty men here. Now there was not one. Whatcould it mean? Again cold dread gripped his heart.

  Turning, he hurried down a logging road to the edge of a broad creek.There the white bulk of a large flat-bottomed boat greeted him.

  "They didn't take the _Maria Theresa_, anyway." There was a comfort inthat. "Fellow'd sure be up against it a hundred miles from the coastwithout a boat."

  Even as he thought this, his ears caught the steady dip-dip of pit-panpaddles.

  "Hello! Hello there!" he shouted.

  Again there came no answer. Even the paddles, if paddles there had been,were silent.

  "Huh!"

  He turned and walked slowly back to camp. There he groped about until hehad found a bench. This he leaned against the side of a cabin, andburying his back in the soft cohune nut thatch, pressed his brow withboth hands in an endeavor to think sanely and clearly.

  Time passed. The coals on the cooking platform growing dimmer and dimmer,at last blinked out. The darkness appeared to grow more intense, thenight more silent.

  "They said it couldn't be done," he muttered at last, "and perhaps itcan't. But there was the red lure. The red lure," he repeated softly.

  The red lure! He had heard of it first in a little cabinetmaker's shop inChicago. In that shop an old man wrought wonders with preciouswoods--rosewood and ebony and mahogany. Strange tales this old man had totell, and he told them as he worked. Tales they were of tropical isles,of green rivers and dense forests.

  One day as he put the last touch to a bit of wood that gleamed red as awestern sunset, he had exclaimed:

  "The red lure, Johnny! The red lure! That's what's beckoned men on, andtimes enough to their death!"

  Then, after laying the bit of wood down as gently as if it had been apriceless porcelain top, he had added:

  "And, Johnny, I know where the lure ends. Far up a tropical river, a bigblack river. It's there, Johnny, and unscarred by the hand of man."

  "Why?" Awed by the old man's tones, Johnny had whispered the word.

  "That's it, Johnny." The old man had half closed his eyes. "That's whatthe owner of that land would like to know. Three times he has sent men inboats up the Rio Hondo. Three times they came back empty handed; that is,the ones that came back at all. Why? Who knows. Who can solve all themysteries of the tropics? Who can guess the trickery and intrigue thatlies hidden in a Spaniard's mind? The red lure is still there. Men havedied for it; but there it stands. The red lure, Johnny. The red lure!"

  He had turned once more to his work, but Johnny had not forgotten.Something within him had been stirred to the depths. He had heard thecall of the wilderness, had felt the challenge of the impossible.

  In time, having sought out his partner of many adventures, "Panther Eye,"or "Pant" as he was called, he had gone in search of the owner of the redlure. He had found him to be a rich business man.

  At first this capitalist, Roderick Grayson, had merely laughed at theproposition which the two boys made--that they be given a try at the redlure. In time he had come to take them more seriously.

  At last he had made them a proposition.

  "I'm tired of having you about," he growled good-naturedly. "I'll giveyou a chance. You go to Belize, the Capitol of Honduras. That's a city oftwelve thousand. Plenty of men and boats there. I'll instruct my agentthere to furnish you with motor boats and pay for thirty men. You mayhave them a hundred days, not a day more. At the end of that time youmust show me a profit from your expedition or you lose this concession.Is that plain? And satisfactory?"

  "Quite."

  "Then good-bye."

  The rich man had bowed them out, and that is how it happened that on thisparticular night Johnny was far up the Rio Hondo.

  "And now this!" Johnny said to himself. "A bolt out of the blue! Anapparent attempt at my life. My men vanish. What is to be the end of itall?"

  Suddenly he realized that he was alone in the dark; that perils lurked inevery corner of the jungle.

  "Well enough to have some sort of light," he told himself.

  There was a flashlight on a beam in the very cabin against which hisbench rested. To secure that and to try it out by a flash on the floorwas but the work of a moment.

  Upon returning to the bench he felt a little more secure. As he sat downhis foot struck something and sent it to the ground with a thud.

  "The machete," he thought.

  Picking it up, he examined it curiously. On the horn handle of thisbushman's sword he discovered the initials, S. P.

  "Seperino Petillo," he said with a start. "So it was Petillo. I was notmistaken."

  His mind was in a whirl. Petillo, a half-caste Spaniard, had been hisforeman. Surely, this was a strange land. The very man to whom he hadgiven position and standing among his people had, apparently, tried tokill him.

  For some time he sat there thinking and his thoughts were long, longthoughts.

  The red lure was all about him. The smell of it was in his nostrils.

  Yet, less than a third of their work was done. To establish a camp, tobuild cabins from the trunks and leaves of the cohune nut tree, to cutpaths and roads, all this had taken time. A few weeks more and they wouldhave been drifting silently downstream with their red treasure.

  "And now this has happened!" he groaned.

  And yet, what had happened? He could not tell--could only guess.

  Hearing a sound to the right, he turned to listen. Catching it again, hethrew his powerful flashlight on the spot.

  To his astonishment the light fell full upon the face and figure of agirl.

  She was a short, brown-eyed, bare-footed, Spanish girl, about sixteenyears of age. Too startled to move, she stood there for an instant,blinking in the light. Then she turned and fled down the path.

  Too much surprised to follow at once, Johnny sat in his place, wondering.

  "There's not such a girl within fifty miles. I am sure of that," he toldhimself. "Must have come over from Quintanaroo."

  Beyond the Rio Hondo lay Quintanaroo, a land of many mysteries.

  Rising, he followed down the path to the creek's edge. There he sent thegleam of his flashlight shooting down the creek. He was just in time tosee a slender canoe disappear round a clump of red mangrove.

  "That's where she came from," he assured himself. "I wonder why?"

  As he turned to retrace his steps he caught the long drawn, hoarse callof a jaguar. There were empty, palm thatched cottages up the river.Rumors were afloat of a man-eating "tiger" who had carried away theformer owners of these cabins. Could it be that he had been mistakenabout the plot? Had he misjudged the action of the unfortunate one at theriver bank? Had his men become frightened by tales of the man-eater, andfled? Who could tell?

  "Oh, well," he sighed, "morning will come, and with it the light."