Hearts of Three 59

Hearts of Three 59

In the end, however, the Lost Souls were outfought, thanks chiefly to

the revolvers that could kill in the thickest of the scuffling. The

survivors fled, but of the invaders half were down and down forever. The

women having in drastic fashion attended to every man who fell wounded.

The Jefe was spluttering with pain and rage at an arrow which had

perforated his arm; nor could he be appeased until Vicente cut off the

barbed head and pulled out the shaft.

 

Torres, beyond an aching shoulder where a club had hit him, was

uninjured; and he became jubilant when he saw the old priest dying on

the ground with his head resting on the little maid’s knees.

 

Since there were no wounded of their own to be attended to with rough

and ready surgery, Torres and the Jefe led the way to the lake, skirted

its shores, and came to the ruins of the Queen’s dwelling. Only charred

stumps of piles, projecting above the water, showed where it had once

stood. Torres was nonplussed, but the Jefe was furious.

 

“Here, right in this house that was, the treasure chest stood,” he

stammered.

 

“A wild goose chase!” the Jefe grunted. “Senor Torres, I always

suspected you were a fool.”

 

“How was I to know the place had been burned down?”

 

“You ought to have known, you who are so very wise in all things,” the

Jefe bickered back. “But you can’t fool me. I had my eye on you. I saw

you rob the emeralds and rubies from the eye-sockets of the Maya gods.

That much you shall divide with me, and now.”

 

“Wait, wait, be a trifle patient,” Torres begged. “Let us first

investigate. Of course, I shall divide the four gems with you——but what

are they compared with a whole chest-full? It was a light, fragile

house. The chest may have fallen into the water undamaged by fire when

the roof fell in. And water will not damage precious stones.”

 

In amongst the burnt piling the Jefe sent his men to investigate, and

they waded and swam about in the shoal water, being careful to avoid

being caught by the outlying suck of the whirlpool. Augustino, the

Silent, made the find, close in to shore.

 

“I am standing on something,” he announced, the level of the lake barely

to his knees.

 

Torres plunged in, and, reaching under till he buried his head and

shoulders, felt out the object.

 

“It is the chest, I am certain,” he declared. “—Come! All of you! Drag

this out to the dry land so that we may examine into it!”

 

But when this was accomplished, and just as he bent to open the lid, the

Jefe stopped him.

 

“Go back into the water, the lot of you,” he commanded his men. “There

are a number of chests like this, and the expedition will be a failure

if we don’t find them. One chest would not pay the expenses.”

 

Not until all the men were floundering and groping in the water, did

Torres raise the lid. The Jefe stood transfixed. He could only gaze and

mutter inarticulate mouthings.

 

“Now will you believe?” Torres queried. “It is beyond price. We are the

richest two men in Panama, in South America, in the world. This is the

Maya treasure. We heard of it when we were boys. Our fathers and our

grandfathers dreamed of it. The Conquistadores failed to find it. And it

is ours——ours!”

 

And, while the two men, almost stupefied, stood and stared, one by one

their followers crept out of the water, formed a silent semi-circle at

their backs, and likewise stared. Neither did the Jefe and Torres know

their men stood at their backs, nor did the men know of the Lost Souls

that were creeping stealthily upon them from the rear. As it was, all

were staring at the treasure with fascinated amazement when the attack

was sprung.

 

Bows and arrows, at ten yards distance, are deadly, especially when due

time is taken to make certain of aim. Two-thirds of the treasure-seekers

went down simultaneously. Through Vicente, who had chanced to be

standing directly behind Torres, no less than two spears and five arrows

had perforated. The handful of survivors had barely time to seize their

rifles and whirl, when the club attack was upon them. In this Rafael and

Ignacio, two of the gendarmes who had been on the adventure to the

Juchitan oil fields, almost immediately had their skulls cracked. And,

as usual, the Lost Souls women saw to it that the wounded did not remain

wounded long.

 

The end for Torres and the Jefe was but a matter of moments, when a loud

roar from the mountain followed by a crashing avalanche of rock, created

a diversion. The few Lost Souls that remained alive, darted back

terror-stricken into the shelter of the bushes. The Jefe and Torres, who

alone stood on their feet and breathed, cast their eyes up the cliff to

where the smoke still issued from the new-made hole, and saw Henry

Morgan and the Queen step into the sunshine on the lip of the cliff.

 

“You take the lady,” the Jefe snarled. “I shall get the Gringo Morgan if

it’s the last act of what seems a life that isn’t going to be much

longer.”

 

Both lifted their rifles and fired. Torres, never much of a shot, sent

his bullet fairly centered into the Queen’s breast. But the Jefe, master

marksman and possessor of many medals, made a clean miss of his target.

The next instant, a bullet from Henry’s rifle struck his wrist and

traveled up the forearm to the elbow, whence it escaped and passed on.

And as his rifle clattered to the ground he knew that never again would

that right arm, its bone pulped from wrist to elbow, have use for a

rifle.

 

But Henry was not shooting well. Just emerged from twenty-four hours of

darkness in the cave, not at once could his eyes adjust themselves to

the blinding dazzle of the sun. His first shot had been lucky. His

succeeding shots merely struck in the immediate neighbourhood of the

Jefe and Torres as they turned and fled madly for the brush.

 

* * * * *

 

Ten minutes later, the wounded Jefe in the lead, Torres saw a woman of

the Lost Souls spring out from behind a tree and brain him with a huge

stone wielded in both her hands. Torres shot her first, then crossed

himself with horror, and stumbled on. From behind arose distant calls of

Henry and the Solano brothers in pursuit, and he remembered the vision

of his end he had glimpsed but refused to see in the Mirror of the World

and wondered if this end was near upon him. Yet it had not resembled

this place of trees and ferns and jungle. From the glimpse he remembered

nothing of vegetation——only solid rock and blazing sun and bones of

animals. Hope sprang up afresh at the thought. Perhaps that end was not

for this day, maybe not for this year. Who knew? Twenty years might yet

pass ere that end came.

 

Emerging from the jungle, he came upon a queer ridge of what looked like

long disintegrated lava rock. Here he left no trail, and he proceeded

carefully on beyond it through further jungle, believing once again in

his star that would enable him to elude pursuit. His plan of escape took

shape. He would find a safe hiding place until after dark. Then he would

circle back to the lake and the whirl of waters. That gained, nothing

and nobody could stop him. He had but to leap in. The subterranean

journey had no terrors for him because he had done it before. And in his

fancy he saw once more the pleasant picture of the Gualaca River

flashing under the open sky on its way to the sea. Besides, did he not

carry with him the two great emeralds and two great rubies that had been

the eyes of Chia and Hzatzl? Fortune enough, and vast good fortune, were

they for any man. What if he had failed by the Maya Treasure to become

the richest man in the world? He was satisfied. All he wanted now was

darkness and one last dive into the heart of the mountain and through

the heart of the mountain to the Gualaca flowing to the sea.

 

And just then, the assured vision of his escape so vividly filling his

eyes that he failed to observe the way of his feet, he dived. Nor was it

a dive into swirling waters. It was a head-foremost, dry-land dive down

a slope of rock. So slippery was it that he continued to slide down,

although he managed to turn around, with face and stomach to the

surface, and to claw wildly up with hands and feet. Such effort merely

slowed his descent, but could not stop it.

 

For a while, at the bottom, he lay breathless and dazed. When his senses

came back to him, he became aware first of all of something unusual upon

which his hand rested. He could have sworn that he felt teeth. At

length, opening his eyes with a shudder and summoning his resolution, he

dared to look at the object. And relief was immediate. Teeth they were,

in an indubitable, weather-white jaw-bone; but they were pig’s teeth and

the jaw was a pig’s jaw. Other bones lay about, on which his body

rested, which, on examination, proved to be the bones of pigs and of

smaller animals.

 

Where had he glimpsed such an arrangement of bones? He thought, and

remembered the Queen’s great golden bowl. He looked up. Ah! Mother of

God! The very place! He knew it at first sight, as he gazed up what was

a funnel at the far spectacle of day. Fully two hundred feet above him

was the rim of the funnel. The sides of hard, smooth rock sloped steeply

in and down to him, and his eyes and judgment told him that no man born

of woman could ever scale that slope.

 

The fancy that came to his mind caused him to spring to his feet in

sudden panic and look hastily round about him. Only on a more colossal

scale, the funnel in which he was trapped had reminded him of the

funnel-pits dug in the sand by hunting spiders that lurked at the bottom

for such prey that tumbled in upon them. And, his vivid fancy leaping,

he had been frightened by the thought that some spider monster, as

colossal as the funnel-pit, might possibly be lurking there to devour

him. But no such denizen occurred. The bottom of the pit, circular in

form, was a good ten feet across and carpeted, he knew not how deep, by

a debris of small animals’ bones. Now for what had the Mayas of old time

made so tremendous an excavation? he questioned; for he was more than

half-convinced that the funnel was no natural phenomenon.

 

Before nightfall he made sure, by a dozen attempts, that the funnel was

unscalable. Between attempts, he crouched in the growing shadow of the

descendin