The Red Lure

As Johnny Thompson bent over the black waters of the river he thought he heard a stealthy movement behind him. Before he could decide whether or not his eyes had deceived him he...

As if loath to disturb the perfect silence of a night, dawn lingers in the tropical jungle. Off somewhere in the distance a wild parrot screams; nearer at hand a long tailed tro...

It was a down-hearted Johnny who bent over the fallen Carib champion and strove as best he could to bring him back to consciousness. He had hoped much. His interview with this m...

Aside from slight damage done by a band of wild pigs, who in their search for food had rooted their way into the cook shack, the camp up the Rio Hondo was just as the boys had l...

To say that Pant was surprised at sight of the jaguar, the well-known “killer” above him in the bread-nut tree, would poorly express it. For once in his young life he was withou...

Could Johnny have witnessed the dismay and confusion caused by his sudden escape he would have felt far less concerned over his present plight. The first eager pursuers crashed...

As for Pant, he was worried enough by Johnny’s prolonged absence. It had been dark for fully three hours. Having returned from his gathering of tree hay and his brush with the j...

Peccary meat was Johnny’s supper. A dry supper it was, and old Father Gloom sat across the fire from him while he ate. To have wasted a whole day; to face a second night of vigi...

Having barely escaped dropping into the jaws of an alligator, Johnny Thompson wound his leg about his vine rope at a spot where a knotty projection would give him partial suppor...

Palms that hung over the silent, swiftly flowing stream murmured and sighed. Their murmuring and sighing was as sad as the voice of pines and hemlocks in a graveyard on a winter...

“It will not be long,” he assured Jean, “before I will be able to do my bit with the paddle, to assist you in going wherever you wish to go.” Where that might be he had not the...

Once more it was morning on the upper reaches of Rio Hondo. The dugout was tied to the bared roots of a gnarled old mangrove. The camp of Jean and Johnny, of Rod and the Carib w...

As Johnny’s interest in the red lure lost much of its intensity, Pant’s seemed to grow stronger. He left no stone unturned if its turning would in any way hinder the treacherous...

Johnny Thompson and Jean found it strangely fascinating to be marching straight on over the beaten trail that led to the great unknown. It was exciting, entrancing, this sharing...

It was strange, weird, fascinating, this march of the Mayas. The rhythmic chant, the all but inaudible pat-pat of their bare feet, the sighing wind in the palms that waved like...

The evening following his trip down the river to Daego’s stationary engine, during the twilight hour Pant might have been found in the largest bunk house of the camp. A tropical...

For three nights Pant had not visited Daego’s camp. Nor had he in all this time seen Johnny’s ghost walking out upon the air. That it had walked, he felt quite sure. The night b...

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 coc...

The black shadow which Pant had seen making its way up the river under cover of night, was a pit-pan, electrically driven. In his conclusions regarding this he had not been mist...

Johnny was still in the land of the lost Mayas. The city he and Jean had discovered was not the city of Jean’s dreams, the golden metropolis of long ago, yet there were signs of...

The thing that had happened to Johnny Thompson was absurdly simple; at least part of it was. Unconsciously, as he moved forward in the dimly lighted room, he had continued to fu...

For a long time after that they waited in breathless silence. All the time the person, who now halted, now moved a few steps forward, was coming closer and closer. Who could it...

The night following the capture of Daego’s pit-pans, Johnny’s ghost behaved very strangely. On this night, as on many other nights, Pant crossed the river to discover, if possib...

A few moments later, in the privacy of Johnny’s room, lighted only by a flickering taper, the brother and sister stood before a mysterious something which stood upon a stool and...

The battle of Rio Hondo will probably never be recorded on the printed pages of the history of Honduras or Mexico, but to the last day of his life it will remain indelibly stamp...