The Boy Aviators in Nicaragua; or, In League with the Insurgents

“You don’t think it possible that it could be a trick to scare us?” asked Harry.

Frank laughed.

“I considered that too,” he replied, “I hardly think that it could be that. Anyhow it will take a good deal more than that to frighten us away. Seriously though I would like to solve the mystery.”

“Maybe the monkeys hold prayer-meetings,” laughed Harry.

“What’s the matter with forming the Chester Exploration Expedition and taking a climb up the mountain after breakfast,” he broke out suddenly.

“You’re on,” rejoined Frank, “I think it will be perfectly safe to leave camp for a while anyhow and we may make some important discoveries.”

Accordingly an hour later the boys were making their first plunge into the practically unknown fastnesses of the Cordilleras of Nicaragua. Each carried a canteen full of water, a supply of roasted bread-fruit and several soup tablets besides matches in waterproof boxes and their revolvers and rifles. Of course a pair of field-glasses, and the axe also formed a part of their traveling equipment.

With all this paraphernalia it was hard work clambering up the rugged mountain-side more particularly as when their course required them to plunge into the jungle, they found their way impeded by huge snake-like creepers that hung from the trees and crawled over the ground in every direction. They had been climbing steadily for about an hour when Harry uttered an exclamation of delightful surprise.

“Look, Frank,” he cried, pointing to a magnificent bird that flashed through the jungle ahead of them. Both boys gazed admiringly at the marvelous splendor of its plumage. It was about the size of an eagle and its back was covered with a shimmering glossy mantle, so to speak, of emerald green. Its waistcoat was of a deep rich carmine and its long curved beak a bright yellow.

“Why,” cried Frank as, with a harsh unmusical cry, the bird vanished, “that’s a quesal.”

“A quesal?” demanded Harry much mystified.

“Yes, I was reading about them in that book on Nicaragua I got to read on our voyage down here,” rejoined Frank.

“They were the sacred birds of the ancient Toltecs who decorated their temples and religious houses with pictures of them,” he went on. “To lay hands on them meant death to the sacrilegious person so doing and the priests used to have great colonies of them in the groves round their temples.”

“You are as good as an encyclopedia, Frank,” laughed Harry, “I’d like to get a shot at one of them, Toltecs or no Toltecs. Or better still to have one alive. Just think what they’d say at home if we brought one back in a cage.”

Frank smiled.

“I’m afraid, Harry,” he said, “that even if we did catch one we could do nothing like you propose with it. A peculiarity of the quesal is that it will not live in captivity. Not even an hour it is said. The human touch kills them immediately.”

The boys steadily pushed forward, although as the sun climbed higher the heat of the dense tropical forest that covered the mountain-side at the point they had now reached became most oppressive. Suddenly there was a loud grunting sound from a few feet ahead and a herd of small brown animals dashed away. Not before Harry, however, had got his rifle to his shoulder and brought one of them down with a skilful shot.

“A wild pig,” he announced triumphantly, turning over the animal he had brought down with his foot. Compared to a domestic porker the wild swine didn’t look much bigger than rabbits, but the boys hailed the one Harry had shot as a welcome addition to their larder.

“If we only had some apple sauce,” sighed the epicurean Harry.

“Why don’t you wish for mustard?” laughed Frank.

Harry’s pig weighed about thirty-five pounds, and so he carried it without much effort over his shoulder till they reached a clear space on the mountain-side, where they could cache it and easily find it on their way down.

“Now, if only no ocelots or jaguars come around we’ll have roast pork for supper to-night,” he remarked as he laid down his burden.

“I’ll show you how to fix that,” said Frank. With a few blows of his axe he lopped off some low branches from a near-by tree, and placed them in a circle round the carcass.

“That’s a dodge, Blakely told me about,” he announced when he had finished. “Any animal thief that happens along wouldn’t touch that pig now for the world. They see the branches and figure out that it is some kind of a trap.”

From time to time as the boys mounted higher, they stopped and carefully turned their glasses on the valley below. Somewhere in its apparently uninhabited sweep they knew that Rogero and his army and Estrada’s troops were maneuvering, but nothing that they could see gave them any inkling as to the exact whereabouts of the troops.

“We shall have to make a scouting trip in the Golden Eagle,” said Frank with determination, as after they had scoured the valley for the twentieth time, they admitted that it was hardly worth the trouble.

“Yes,” agreed Harry eagerly, “and the sooner the better.”

They stopped for lunch shortly after noon, without having made any progress in discovering anything about the mysterious bell or who its ringer could have been. Although Frank’s pedometer showed that they had covered several miles, they had not even come across the semblance of a footpath or any other indication that they were not the first human beings to explore the mountain-side. Lunch despatched they agreed to proceed as far as a battlemented cliff that shot sheer up ahead of them for two hundred feet or more, cutting off any view of the mountain-top, and then turn back. If they had found nothing by that time to throw any light on the bell-ringer or the instrument on which he performed, they decided that it would be waste of time to keep on.

At the foot of the cliff its beetling height was even more impressive than when seen at a distance. It shot up, naked of tree or bush, like a huge wall. There was not foothold for even a mountain goat on its smooth gleaming surface.

“Well,” said Frank, as the boys gazed up to where its summit seemed to touch the blue sky, “here is where we stop short. Not even a fly could get up that.”

As he spoke, Harry who had been poking at the smooth surface of the obstruction with the axe, gave a sharp exclamation.

“Did you say that the quesal was the sacred bird of the Toltecs?” he demanded in a tone of suppressed excitement.

“Yes,” replied Frank. “Why?”

“Why?” repeated Harry, “just look up there and tell me what you make of that?”

He pointed to some half-obliterated markings on the surface of the cliff about thirty feet above where the boys stood. There was no doubt about it – the markings, though dimmed by time and in places almost obliterated altogether, unquestionably formed a rude exaggerated outline of the bird they had seen that morning.

“Well, what do you think of it, Frank?” demanded Harry impatiently, after his elder brother had gazed at the spot for some time.

“Simply this,” replied Frank calmly, though his heart beat faster, “that we are very near some sort of Toltec temple, or ruin or even the lost mines themselves!”

CHAPTER XI.

BILLY BARNES IS TRAPPED

Billy Barnes, impulsive as the dash he had made seemed, had not taken the step without duly balancing the dangers and difficulties that would attend it. True, he had come to his decision with what appeared to be careless haste, but the truth was that he was a young man who was by training quick to arrive at conclusions and just as speedy to execute them. He knew perfectly well that if he had talked over his meditated course with the boys, that they would have vetoed his undertaking, and since the adventure of the jaguar, in which he felt he had not shown up to very good advantage, he was eager to distinguish himself in some way.

Moreover, he was urged forward by his newspaper pride, which counseled him to attempt, at any rate, to accomplish what would be the biggest “scoop” of years and make a story that would be talked about for many days, even by the short memoried denizens of Park Row. So Billy plunged forward into the jungle with a light heart. He knew nothing whatever of woodcraft, but that fact did not daunt him in the least. He was well provided with money, and so felt no particular apprehension that he would starve, or suffer any serious discomforts. He figured on reaching Rogero’s camp in at least two days’ time. What action he would take after he arrived there he had decided to leave according to the way things shaped themselves.

The first day of his journey nothing of note occurred. At Amagana, a village on the San Juan river, he had hired a horse, a decrepit, antiquated animal with plenty of “fine points,” its owner averred, – “you could hang your hat on some of them,” remarked Billy to himself. The steed, however, came up to his simple requirements and his owner assured him that there wasn’t a kick in the beast. The young reporter also stocked up his food bags with such portable provender as he could obtain and struck out in the direction in which the last reports had placed Rogero’s forces.

He made camp the first night out with a number of wild-looking Nicaraguans from the interior on their way to the coast with a shaggy herd of small cattle. They were in a big hurry, as either Rogero or Estrada would undoubtedly have levied on their cattle if they had encountered them. From them Billy learned that they had heard heavy firing the day before at a place about twenty-five miles from where they were then encamped, and by signs and such English as he could command the leader of the herders indicated to Billy that by following up the river he would undoubtedly get within the line of the government troops which were following its course on their way to Greytown.

Bright and early the next morning Billy saddled his disreputable-looking steed, amid much merriment from the graziers, and jogged off along a trail that led through the jungle along the river bank. He rode hard all that day and at nightfall was rewarded for his progress by a number of uniformed men suddenly appearing from the jungle at his horse’s head and pointing their rifles at him.

“Americano – me Americano!” shouted Billy in all the Spanish he knew, “take me to General Rogero.”

All that the soldiers of Zelaya could make of this speech was Billy’s explanation of his nationality and the name of their General. One man, who seemed to be their leader, motioned to Billy to dismount, and then briefly ordered one of the privates to take charge of the reporter’s horse. This done, the man who had given the order signed to Billy to follow him and struck off into a path that wound in a direction away from the river bank.

Now, Billy had as stout a heart as most of his craft, and he had been in tight places before, – most reporters have, – but to say that it did not beat a little faster as he stepped out after his guide, would not be true. It was a bold bit of bluff that he had decided on – a plan that if it made good, would result in the complete discomfiture of Rogero – but, on the other hand, there was more than a chance that it might fail, in which case, as Billy fully realized, he would find himself in a mighty tight place.

He had an unpleasant consciousness also that the soldiers, one of whom was leading his horse, had closed in about him so that even if he had changed his mind at the eleventh hour and decided not to risk putting his head in the lion’s mouth, escape was now impossible.

“You’re in this thing for fair now,” he remarked to himself, “so go through with it with a good front.”

After about half-an-hour of threading the winding path they emerged suddenly on a sloping hillside bare of trees, and here was camped Rogero’s army. Billy had seen the Greytown contingent on the day that they marched away from the coast, and the men that he saw scattered about the camp now engaged in cooking the evening meal, gambling or strumming guitars differed in nowise, except in degrees of raggedness, from the soldiers he and the boys had been so amused at.