“Mightily. I thought I had a hammerlock on it. At any rate, it showed I’m on the right track.”
“What’s the matter with trying the Bull?” Francis queried.
“That’s my idea right now,” was the answer, “though I’ve got another clue for over on the mainland. Those old-timers had a way of noting down their latitude and longitude whole degrees out of the way.”
“Ten North and Ninety East on the chart might mean Twelve North and Ninety-two East,” Francis concurred. “Then again it might mean Eight North and Eighty-eight East. They carried the correction in their heads, and if they died unexpectedly, which was their custom, it seems, the secret died with them.”
“I’ve half a notion to go over to the Bull and chase those turtle-catchers back to the mainland,” Henry went on. “And then again I’d almost like to tackle the mainland clue first. I suppose you’ve got a stock of clues, too?”
“Sure thing,” Francis nodded. “But say, I’d like to take back what I said about not sharing.”
“Say the word,” the other encouraged.
“Then I do say it.”
Their hands extended and gripped in ratification.
“Morgan and Morgan strictly limited,” chortled Francis.
“Assets, the whole Caribbean Sea, the Spanish Main, most of Central America, one chest full of perfectly no good old clothes, and a lot of holes in the ground,” Henry joined in the other’s humor. “Liabilities, snake-bite, thieving Indians, malaria, yellow fever——”
“And pretty girls with a habit of kissing total strangers one moment, and of sticking up said total strangers with shiny silver revolvers the next moment,” Francis cut in. “Let me tell you about it. Day before yesterday, I rowed ashore over on the mainland. The moment I landed, the prettiest girl in the world pounced out upon me and dragged me away into the jungle. Thought she was going to eat me or marry me. I didn’t know which. And before I could find out, what’s the pretty damsel do but pass uncomplimentary remarks on my mustache and chase me back to the boat with a revolver. Told me to beat it and never come back, or words to that effect.”
“Whereabouts on the mainland was this?” Henry demanded, with a tenseness which Francis, chuckling his reminiscence of the misadventure, did not notice.
“Down toward the other end of Chiriqui Lagoon,” he replied. “It was the stamping ground of the Solano family, I learned; and they are a red peppery family, as I found out. But I haven’t told you all. Listen. First she dragged me into the vegetation and insulted my mustache; next she chased me to the boat with a drawn revolver; and then she wanted to know why I didn’t kiss her. Can you beat that?”
“And did you?” Henry demanded, his hand unconsciously clinching by his side.
“What could a poor stranger in a strange land do? It was some armful of pretty girl——”
The next fraction of a second Francis had sprung to his feet and blocked before his jaw a crushing blow of Henry’s fist.
“I ... I beg your pardon,” Henry mumbled, and slumped down on the ancient sea chest. “I’m a fool, I know, but I’ll be hanged if I can stand for——”
“There you go again,” Francis interrupted resentfully. “As crazy as everybody else in this crazy country. One moment you bandage up my cracked head, and the next moment you want to knock that same head clean off of me. As bad as the girl taking turns at kissing me and shoving a gun into my midrif.”
“That’s right, fire away, I deserve it,” Henry admitted ruefully, but involuntarily began to fire up as he continued with: “Confound you, that was Leoncia.”
“What if it was Leoncia? Or Mercedes? Or Dolores? Can’t a fellow kiss a pretty girl at a revolver’s point without having his head knocked off by the next ruffian he meets in dirty canvas pants on a notorious sand-heap of an island?”
“When the pretty girl is engaged to marry the ruffian in the dirty canvas pants——”
“You don’t mean to tell me——” the other broke in excitedly.
“It isn’t particularly amusing to said ruffian to be told that his sweetheart has been kissing a ruffian she never saw before from off a disreputable Jamaica nigger’s schooner,” Henry completed his sentence.
“And she took me for you,” Francis mused, glimpsing the situation. “I don’t blame you for losing your temper, though you must admit it’s a nasty one. Wanted to cut off my ears yesterday, didn’t you?”
“Yours is just as nasty, Francis, my boy. The way you insisted that I cut them off when I had you down—ha! ha!”
Both young men laughed in hearty amity.
“It’s the old Morgan temper,” Henry said. “He was by all the accounts a peppery old cuss.”
“No more peppery than those Solanos you’re marrying into. Why, most of the family came down on the beach and peppered me with rifles on my departing way. And your Leoncia pulled her little popgun on a long-bearded old fellow who might have been her father and gave him to understand she’d shoot him full of holes if he didn’t stop plugging away at me.”
“It was her father, I’ll wager, old Enrico himself,” Henry exclaimed. “And the other chaps were her brothers.”
“Lovely lizards!” ejaculated Francis. “Say, don’t you think life is liable to become a trifle monotonous when you’re married into such a peaceful, dove-like family as that!” He broke off, struck by a new idea. “By the way, Henry, since they all thought it was you, and not I, why in thunderation did they want to kill you? Some more of your crusty Morgan temper that peeved your prospective wife’s relatives?”
Henry looked at him a moment, as if debating with himself, and then answered.
“I don’t mind telling you. It is a nasty mess, and I suppose my temper was to blame. I quarreled with her uncle. He was her father’s youngest brother——”
“Was?” interrupted Francis with significant stress on the past tense.
“Was, I said,” Henry nodded. “He isn’t now. His name was Alfaro Solano, and he had some temper himself. They claim to be descended from the Spanish conquistadores, and they are prouder than hornets. He’d made money in logwood, and he had just got a big henequen plantation started farther down the coast. And then we quarreled. It was in the little town over there—San Antonio. It may have been a misunderstanding, though I still maintain he was wrong. He always was looking for trouble with me—didn’t want me to marry Leoncia, you see.
“Well, it was a hot time. It started in a pulqueria where Alfaro had been drinking more mescal than was good for him. He insulted me all right. They had to hold us apart and take our guns away, and we separated swearing death and destruction. That was the trouble—our quarrel and our threats were heard by a score of witnesses.
“Within two hours the Comisario himself and two gendarmes found me bending over Alfaro’s body in a back street in the town. He’d been knifed in the back, and I’d stumbled over him on the way to the beach. Explain? No such thing. There were the quarrel and the threats of vengeance, and there I was, not two hours afterward, caught dead to right with his warm corpse. I haven’t been back in San Antonio since, and I didn’t waste any time in getting away. Alfaro was very popular,—you know the dashing type that catches the rabble’s fancy. Why, they couldn’t have been persuaded to give me even the semblance of a trial. Wanted my blood there and then, and I departed very pronto.
“Next, up at Bocas del Toro, a messenger from Leoncia delivered back the engagement ring. And there you are. I developed a real big disgust, and, since I didn’t dare go back with all the Solanos and the rest of the population thirsting for my life, I came over here to play hermit for a while and dig for Morgan’s treasure.... Just the same, I wonder who did stick that knife into Alfaro. If ever I find him, then I clear myself with Leoncia and the rest of the Solanos and there isn’t a doubt in the world that there’ll be a wedding. And now that it’s all over I don’t mind admitting that Alfaro was a good scout, even if his temper did go off at half-cock.”
“Clear as print,” Francis murmured. “No wonder her father and brothers wanted to perforate me.—Why, the more I look at you, the more I see we’re as like as two peas, except for my mustache——”
“And for this....” Henry rolled up his sleeve, and on the left forearm showed a long, thin white scar. “Got that when I was a boy. Fell off a windmill and through the glass roof of a hothouse.”
