CHAPTER X
DINNER IS SERVED
Ned stepped to the mouth of the cavern and looked out. Jimmie wasmaking his way back to the machine, empty handed and evidentlydejected. Ned gave a sharp whistle and beckoned to the lad when helooked up.
He did not care to make any unnecessary noise there, for he believedthat Collins was not far away.
He was now half convinced that Lyman had been secreted in thatvicinity after being abducted from Paraguay; that he had beenclosely guarded and comfortably provided for, the idea being to keephim out of Paraguay until his concession reverted to the government.
It was his notion, too, that Lyman had inhabited this cavern untilthe appearance of the Nelson, when he had been removed by hisattendants and placed in custody in some other natural hiding place.
Whether he was still in that locality the boy could not say, but ofone thing he was certain. That was that Lyman had not been takenaway in the motor car.
And so the quest had been shifted! There would now be no need ofproceeding to Asuncion. Probably to prevent getting mixed up in thecrooked game, the plotters in Paraguay had ordered those interestedin the disappearance of Lyman to get him out of the allegedrepublic.
This would account for his being in the mountains of Peru. It mightalso account for the presence in Lima of the Vixen and Mr. Thomas Q.Collins.
The telegrams without meaning which Ned had received on his arrivalat Lima pointed out the fact that the conspirators knew that theNelson was heading for that city as a base of operations. Ned'sreceipting for the telegrams was proof positive that he had arrived.
"A very pretty plot!" Ned thought, as he waited for Jimmie to makehis way up the face of the cliff to the mouth of the cavern.
"Gee!" the little fellow cried, as his head showed above the levelof the floor of the hiding place. "I never was so hungry in meblameless life!"
Ned backed up so as to conceal the tinned food.
"What will you give for a couple of tins of pork and beans?" heasked, with a provoking smile.
"I'll sign a check for any amount!" grinned the boy.
Ned stepped aside, disclosing the food, and handed Jimmie a smallhatchet which he had found under the rubbish.
"Go to it!" he said.
Jimmie almost dropped with amazement. It was like getting water outof the desert. Like finding milk in the heart of a rock. Likeuncovering snowballs from a bed of hot coals! American tinned goodsin the mountains of Peru!
The boy examined the cans attentively. They were all correct on theoutside. Then he cut one open with the hatchet and brought out aspoonful of beans on the corner of the implement.
"Wow!" he cried, in a moment. "They're all right! Come on an' fillup!"
Both boys fell to, and the supply of tinned food was considerablydiminished before they had finished their breakfast. Then, fearfulthat the owners of the food might seek to remove it before anothermeal time came, they carried a considerable portion of the cans awayand hid them in a small cache near the Nelson.
"We won't starve for a few days," Jimmie said, when this work hadbeen finished.
"Now, tell me what it all means. I wanted to ask you before, but,somehow, I couldn't keep my mouth empty long enough to talk. Whatabout it?"
"I think," Ned replied, "that we have blundered on the countryresidence of Mr. Horace M. Lyman!"
"What does he come up here for?" asked the little fellow. "Ain't hegot no sense?"
"The decision wasn't up to him, I take it," laughed Ned. "Theschemers in that crooked little country wanted to get him out of theway, so they wouldn't be getting into a quarrel with the little oldU. S. A."
"I don't see him anywhere around," the other said.
"He doesn't seem to be on exhibition, and that's a fact," Nedreplied.
"Perhaps," Jimmie grinned, "we'd better look up this Thomas Q.Collins! I guess, he could lead us to him."
"No doubt of that," Ned admitted.
Having securely hidden the tinned food, the boys still lingered inthe vicinity of the Nelson. The machine lay shining in thesunlight, seeming to look reproachfully up at the boys, accusingthem of getting her into a very bad predicament.
"Good old girl!" Jimmie cried, stroking the motors. "We'll get youout of this mix-up, all right!"
"If we do," Ned replied, studying the ground about the machine,"we'll have to get cover somewhere and watch her night and day."He pointed to footprints close up to the motors as he spoke, andJimmie began measuring the impressions in the soft earth.
"They've been here since we landed, all right," the boy exclaimed,in a minute. "We never left these tracks. They're big enough foran elephant to make!"
"They were made by muckers," Ned continued. "You know the kind ofshoes the men who work in mines wear? Big ones, looking more like amud scow than a shoe. They have turned some of the copper workersloose on us, little man."
"Gee! How long will it take Pedro to get back?"
"Probably three days, if he has no bad luck--if they let him comeback at all," Ned answered.
"You can take it from me that they won't let him come back at all ifthey have anything to say about it!" the lad muttered. "I reckonI'll have to go an' find him."
"I think it will take both of us to prevent the Nelson being brokenup," was Ned's reply. "We shall, as I have already said, have toguard it night and day. And, besides, we've got to keep out of theway of bullets and poisoned arrows."
"This is a cute little excursion, when you look at it up one sideand down the other," Jimmie grunted. "We've left Leroy in troubleat Lima, and we've got the Nelson all banged up. Perhaps they'llhang Leroy before we get back!"
"Cheer up!" laughed Ned. "The worst is yet to come!"
"And here it comes!" cried the little fellow, as a handkerchiefwhich might once have been white fluttered above a boulder not faraway, held aloft and waved frantically back and forth by a handwhich could only faintly be seen.
"Come on out!" Ned shouted.
A figure lifted from behind the rock and stood straight up, waving adilapidated slouch hat, now, instead of a handkerchief. The fellowwore a suit of clothes which was much too small for him, so that hiswrists and ankles protruded a good six inches. The clothes weredirty and ragged too, and the man's face looked as if it had been along time since it had been brought into contact with water.
At a motion from Ned he advanced toward the machine. Ned thought hehad never seen a sadder face on a human being.
"Looks like Calamity!" Jimmie muttered
"Have you boys got anything to eat?" asked the stranger, rubbing hispalms over the waist band of his ill-fitting trousers.
"You look like you needed something to eat!" Jimmie put in. "Howlong you been sleuthin' at us from that rock?"
"Not long," was the reply, in a slow, sober tone. "Just a minute.I fell down a mountain not so very long ago."
"Then," said Jimmie, pointing to the wound on his head, "you haven'tgot anything on me. I'm quite a hand at fallin' down precipices,myself!"
"You didn't say if you had anything to eat," insisted the stranger."I'm so hungry that I could eat a fried griddle."
"Well," replied Ned, "we're just out of fried griddles, but we'vegot a tin of beans we might give you."
"Slave for life if you do!" drawled the other. "I've been wanderingin the mountains for more than a week, and am so empty that it willrequire several tins to fill me up, but if one is the limit, why--"
Jimmie uncovered the cache and brought out a can of beans, which heopened with the hatchet and presented to the other, with a gravebow.
"Dinner is served, me lud!" he said.
The stranger did not wait for formalities. He had no knife, fork,or spoon, but he managed to remove the beans from the can and conveythem to his mouth without the aid of such artificial aids to thehungry. He sighed when the can was empty, and wiped his hands onthe grass at his feet.
"How did you get in here?" asked Ned, then, curious to know how
anyone could have the nerve to face a mountain journey in the conditionthis man was in.
"I came after the mother lode," was the reply.
"Have you got it in your pocket?" asked the little fellow.
"I didn't say I found it," was the grave reply. "I said I came inhere looking for it. There was a party left Sicuani, over to theeast, two weeks ago, and I trailed in behind. You see, I had a foolidea that these people were on the track of a big gold find, and sojust naturally sneaked along. They had an automobile. I walked.They had plenty of provisions. I had no one to grub-stake me. Theyfeasted while I starved, but the way is rough and slow, especiallywhen tires break, and I managed to keep up with them until two daysago. Then they got away from me."
"Did you find gold?" asked Ned.
The stranger shook his head.
"Nothing doing!" he said. "I've been grubstaked all over Australia,and up the Yukon, and over Death Valley, but I have never found aspot where there's so little gold as there is in these hills."
"So, you are an American tourist?" asked Ned.
"I am," was the grave reply. "I stowed away on a ship bound forAsuncion and got a job shoveling coal to pay for the rottenest grubI ever ate. When we got up the river to Asuncion I hired out to aman to herd cattle. That was worse, only the air was not soconfining."
"So you left and went to Sicuani?" asked Ned.
"Exactly, after many days. I liked the cattle business all right,but I had to move on. Horace M. Lyman is a good chap to--"
"Wait!" Ned said. "It was Horace M. Lyman you worked for, eh?"
"Sure. He's an American, and a fine fellow."
"Well," Jimmie cut in, "you're likely to see him if you stick aroundhere. They geezled him, so another gazabo could get hisconcession."
"And marooned him off here? Is that it?" asked the stranger."Well, there's a pair of us, then, that don't find anythingnourishing in the scenery. Where is he?"
"We haven't found him yet," Ned answered, "but we're on the trail.If you had one more can of beans, do you think you could help ushunt him up?"
"Certainly. Of course. I'll do that without the beans, but--"
"I see," Ned answered. "You haven't the strength, just now, to domuch looking. All right, we'll fat you up, and then--"
Ned did not complete the sentence, for a long, wavering call camefrom the west, and the stranger started off in that directionwithout a word of explanation. Ned wondered for a moment whetherthis fellow wasn't another hypocrite of the Collins stripe.
"Wait a minute!" he exclaimed. "Suppose you tell us something aboutthat call?"
"I'm agreeable," replied the other. "Don't you know what thatcoo-coo-ee-ee is? Then you've never lived in the cattle country.That is a cowboy salute, pard, and my private opinion is that HoraceM. Lyman is the party that uttered it."
"Then he's not far away," Jimmie said.
"Suppose I answer him?" asked the stranger.
"Go on an' do it," the little fellow advised, and Ned nodded.
The cod-coo-ee-ee which the ex-cowboy emitted rang through thevalley and came back in weird echoes from the crags around.
"Now he knows there's some one here looking after him," the strangerexplained. "He knows that Old Mose Jackson is right on the job.What might your name be, pard?" he added, turning to Ned.
"Nestor," was the reply.
"Ned Nestor, of course!" Jackson exclaimed. "I read about you beingin Mexico, and in the Canal Zone. Strange I should bump into youaway off here! And I'll bet this is Jimmie? What?"
"The same!" the little fellow replied. "Ned can't lose me!"
Hardly had the words left the boy's mouth when a bullet came zippingthrough the air. It struck a metal section of the Nelson andflattened out.
"Before now," Jackson said, coolly, "when I've found myself on theopen plain with redskins popping away at me I've dug a hole in theground and stowed myself away in it. What do you think of thenotion, pard?"
"It looks good to me!" Jimmie cried. "But," he went on, "We've gotnothing to dig with, so we'll just have to move back to that gully,an' take the grub with us."
The change was soon made, the Nelson being run back to the edge ofthe trench-like depression, and then the three awaited the next moveon the part of the enemy.
Presently a shout was heard, and then the flashily-dressed figure ofMr. Thomas Q. Collins appeared on the shelf of rock.
"Don't shoot!" he cried, swinging both hands aloft. "I want to comedown and talk with you."
"There's some trick in that!" Jimmie said.