CHAPTER III

HENRY MORGAN’S STORY

They rode back to the mine property quickly. It did not take long to locate Mr. Gray, Cliff’s elderly father: he listened in silence to the eager trio as they broke in upon one another, so excited were they, and so eager to get his opinion in regard to the feasibility of starting at once for the Central American coast.

Henry Morgan had exacted from them all a promise that they would not disclose what he had told them to the mine superintendent, a rather lazy and careless man who seemed to realize that since the mine was hardly paying for its expense, his work was only a means of making a living until the mine finally “petered out” and he went elsewhere. The chums had already discovered that there were many adventurous and roving white men, from Mexico down all the Central American coast and into South America, as well as among the Virgin Islands, who eked out a living wherever and however chance offered. Henry Morgan was of that type, but much drinking and loose living had made him a very poor specimen, indeed, of the adventure-loving, roving American.

“If Mr. Morgan knew so much, why did he not come to us at once?” was Mr. Gray’s natural first question.

“I think he explains it logically,” answered Tom, “and Nicky and Cliff agree with me.” They nodded. “He is afraid that he might get ‘mixed up’ with the Mexican authorities, and that would spoil everything,” Nicky explained. “Let him tell you what he told us, won’t you, Mr. Gray?”

The elderly scholar and writer nodded. Henry Morgan cleared his throat and, in his husky, rusty voice, related the tale again.

“I’ve been a rover all my life,” he began, “from kid days on. ’Cause why? ’Cause I liked to see new places and have excitement. Sometimes I got more nor I bargained for. Sometimes I near starved. But I always come through all right.”

He sketched briefly the years he had spent roving up and down the Caribbean coast of the Central American states, and the adjacent islands, and over to Cuba during an insurrection, and in Haiti, while a revolution was in progress, and gold-prospecting in Spanish Honduras.

“It was while I was in Spanish Honduras, in the Mosquito Indian’s country,” he went on, “I met the fellow I told these lads about. He was lookin’ for gold, and there was supposed to be a gold mountain inland, but the Indians in the interior was too dangerous for us to risk gettin’ in. Well, finally, we decided to give up hunting for any mine there—at least, I did. I was down on the coast, near the sand point at Brower’s Lagoon when a sailing sloop came in over the reef one day, and when I found out they needed a hand, I shipped on her and left—this other fellow—inland, still bound he would some time locate that mine or mountain of gold and claim it.”

He explained to the interested quartet that he went into so much detail because it all had something to do with the later part of his yarn. They nodded and did not interrupt him once.

“This—other fellow—had made great friends with an old Indian, up river—oh, quite a ways up the Rio Patuca. This old Indian must have lived for centuries. ’Cause why? ’Cause he knew legends and history that his own tribe had forgot: and he knew medicines and herbs, the same as the oldest of the other medicine men couldn’t even remember. And Be—this other fellow—had got real close in his confidence and said this old Toosa—that was his name—would show him a way to find the golden mountain, so I left him there.”

He skipped quickly over the following years until the time, about six years before, when he had found himself in Mexico and, hearing of some rich mines in the sierras, had eventually reached and found employment at the mine which, in its prosperity, was called the Great Hope, but which, since, had degenerated in value until it was jokingly styled the Dead Hope.

“But whenever I get in civilized places where there is drink,” Henry continued, “I can’t do nothin’ for myself. ’Cause why? ’Cause it gets me and holds me and drags me down.” He made a gesture of rueful resignation. Then, rolling a fresh cigarette, he began to bring his story into the matters which most intensely gripped the imaginations of the chums.

“I was made assistant to the super’,” he told them, “but it wasn’t long before I got so bad and so low that they kicked me out. Well, I was sore about it and made up my mind to get even. But I didn’t. ’Cause why? Well, I struck up with B—with this other fellow, again.”

Whoever this man with the name he so mysteriously withheld might be, he was evidently of the same general type as Henry. The latter met him, he said, in a “dive” in Mexico City, and in a ribald fit of liquor stupor the friend had gabbled and raved and ranted about finding “the Golden Sun!”

“That was what we had decided we’d name our mountain, when we found it,” Henry explained. “So I was all excited. But he was too far gone to tell me anything I could pin onto. Then I got mad at him and started a fight and——” he pointed to his scarred face, “this is my souvenir! It laid me up in a dinky hospital for weeks.”

When, without money, weak and rather sobered in mind as well as physically, he came out of the hospital, Henry Morgan decided to drift back to the mine, see if he could be reinstated, and live a better life, he told the chums.

“I do not like to interrupt,” began Mr. Gray, “but I fail to see——”

“Just wait, Dad,” begged his son, Cliff, “he’s coming to it, now.”

Mr. Gray leaned back and studied the bleared eyes while Henry Morgan resumed his story and the chums almost held their breath.

“I had to tell all that. ’Cause why? ’Cause it counts in the finish—or will, if you see it the way I do,” declared the rover. “I won’t waste time sayin’ how I got back, what I went through. But get back to Dead Hope I did.

“And it was on the night of the bandits’ raid!”

Then Mr. Gray saw why the boys were so absorbed. They knew what was coming.

“That dark night I come a-stumblin’ up the path, yonder, weak and hungry and staggerin’—I hadn’t eat no food for a day. All of a sudden there was a yelling and a shouting and guns a-popping!”

“What did you do?” gasped Nicky, thrilled anew by the recital.

“I stopped,” said Henry, matter-of-factly, “I stopped. There was flashes of guns and people running around and the men on horses shooting and riding after people in their night-clothes—the ones that was on the ground, I mean, not the bandits. They was dressed, of course! One o’ the men a-horseback rode right close to where I had dropped back behind the rock, and he saw me. ‘Here, grab this rein,’ he snapped at me—and you can believe it or not—it was B—it was my old pal I had last seen in Mexico City, drunk, and he had give me this slash with a broken bottle!”

“B—who’s Be—?” asked Tom quickly, trying a clever way to surprise the man into revealing the name they sought, without having to wait.

“Be—oh, he’s the man I’ve been talkin’ of,” said Henry, favoring Tom with a steady stare and then, suddenly, breaking into his high chuckle. Then he sobered down and went on.

“Little boys what asks questions finds out just what they wants to know—he-he-he!” he reproved Tom who apologized for interrupting.

“All right,” Henry said. “Well, I yelled after him, but he was runnin’ towards the excitement, hollering and shouting, and I was too busy with that horse of his to run after him. I was scared to let the critter loose for fear o’ what he’d do to me. I guessed he’d fell in with a rough gang and had decided to lead them or be with them on this raid. I judged there must be a lot of gold laid up in the mine house, waiting for burros and guards to carry it to the railroad. If I let the horse go, this fellow would maybe give me a dose of lead. So I hung on.”

“The horse was excited and scared, wasn’t he?” asked Tom.

“He was, and no mistake! He began to drag me and I hung on, yellin’ at him to quit, and him draggin’ and rearing up. First thing I knew, I was bein’ dragged over to that pass we rode in this afternoon. The bandits must o’ come out of it earlier and the horse wanted to get home, maybe. Anyhow, towards that he was draggin’ me. And then—I saw a couple of Mex. desperadoes, so they looked with their tall straw hats and dirty, raggedy clo’es, and they was drivin’ about six burros with heavy sacks tied over their backs, all they could carry!”

“Gold!” gasped Nicky.

“Gold it most likely was. Anyhow, here come that friend of mine—he was my friend once, I mean, before—” he touched his scar. “He had a rifle and was runnin’. There was still shootin’ going on, and a horse was down one place and a bandit another, and men stretched out yonder and hither. This fellow he run to me and pushed me to one side and pushed a rifle in my hand, and he said, ‘Hold this pass for ten minutes with this rifle, and then retreat up it about fifty feet, and I’ll be in ambush and I’ll surprise the guys, and what you can’t stop—I will! Then we’ll divvy the gold!’ So I grabbed the rifle and took a place. At the same minute I hear a screech and yonder, out of the sleepin’ quarters, comes a little girl, a-runnin’ as tight as she could run, with a big ruffian a-chasin’ her!”

“Oh!” cried Tom, aghast and almost shaking in his excitement, “Oh—my sis—little Margery!”

“Little girl with bright hair!” agreed Henry. “Well, before I scarcely knowed what was what that—er, friend—had shot down the ‘greasers’ with the burros, stopped the fellow chasin’ the little girl, scooped her in his arms and set her onto the saddle of his horse and was up behind her.”

“Didn’t the bandits see it?” asked Cliff.

“They had been so busy finishin’ off the engineer and the other white men—and they made a good stand, let me say it!—they was occupied too much to notice the actions goin’ on up by the pass. But they saw what was what about then, and come a-yellin’. I took cover, and begun to use that rifle. There was a full clip in it and I had another one shoved into my hands, and while that wild pal of mine rode up the pass, drivin’ the burros, I stood off about four of the bandits that wasn’t wounded.”

Henry Morgan wiped his dry lips and cleared his roughened throat. Tom hurried him along.

“When you backed down the trail—what?”

“Nothing!” said Henry.

“Nothing?” Mr. Gray exclaimed, adding to the chorus of the younger voices, for they had not heard the details before.

“Nothing!” Henry repeated. “Not a sign of help. That fellow was gone, slicker’n grease, with the little girl and the burros and the gold. I was caught, of course. The bandits tried to get out of me what I knew and I told them exact facts like you’ve just heard. I was mad at being made to help him ‘double-cross’ his gang and they saw I was telling the truth. Well——” he broke off.

“But he got a letter, a couple of months ago, he says,” Tom took up the recital. “Another adventurer Mr. Morgan knows, wrote him, and—what did you say he wrote?”

“He wrote me that he had run onto—this fellow we been talking about, down in Colon—Panama, you know! Said he was livin’ like a millionaire, and was talkin’ that he was gettin’ gold off of——” ‘from’ he meant, of course—“off of some Indians. I guess it’s out of the Golden Sun. So, now, gent, my proposal is this:

“I know how to get where that Toosa, the old Indian, is. He will know about—this fellow—if he’s located that Golden Sun. But I couldn’t pay the fare from here to the coast, let alone get to Spanish Honduras. That’s where you come in. You finance me, while I try to find—that man. Then we’ll all learn what we want—you, where he took the little girl, what happened to her. Me, where that mine is. I staked him plenty of times, I have right to a share in it.”

“How would we get there?” asked Tom.

“Have to hire a boat to coast along to the outer reefs and the mouth o’ the Rio Patuca, then we’d have to get them Mosquito Indians to take us up the river in canoes. It’s rough country. What say if I go alone?”

The three young fellows shook their heads violently, thus indicating how much they trusted him.

Mr. Gray, also, shook his head.

“I will have to take time to think this over very seriously,” he said. “I am too old and weak to brave the dangers of such a trip. I can’t let you lads go alone, or with Mr. Morgan——”

“Just call me ‘Hen’—the ‘Hen that lays the golden eggs!’”

“Or with ‘Hen,’” smiled Mr. Gray, “but——” And there he stopped.

Their mounts were unsaddled and they stayed on overnight because of the new development. But after an evening of eager discussion, with urgent pleas for action by the youths and hesitancy on the part of Mr. Gray, their course of action was still undecided. Leaving Morgan with a promise to “get in touch” the minute they made a plan, they rode slowly away down the trail the next day.

“I wish Mr. Gray would let us go ‘on our own,’” Nicky said wistfully.

“He feels that there are a lot of holes in Henry’s story,” said Cliff. “We looked at the trail, and how any half dozen burros and their load of gold could get away in ten minutes is more than he can understand. And, if he was ‘fired’ from the mine, why is he there?”

“Those things are easy to explain, I think,” Tom stated. “About the burros—I asked him and he said he guessed his former friend must have unloaded them and dropped the gold sacks over the cliffs or into some hole and covered it up and turned the burros loose, or drove them into the chasm up the trail. He came to work at the mine again when the new superintendent was employed there, and that was natural because the new man did not know him or his record.”

“That makes it sound better, but there are still funny points,” Cliff replied.

“Well,” said Tom, suddenly squaring his shoulders, “Cliff, you know how anxious you were to leave no stone unturned when you were trying to learn about your father!”

“I don’t want to leave any stone unturned in this case, either,” agreed his chum, and Nicky nodded emphatically.

“Nor I,” said Tom. “And there is one stone I know about that I am going to turn as soon as we reach Mexico City again!”

What it was he kept to himself.