Poor Richard's Printshop

The Mahogany Garden

by Frank Stanton Jr.

CHAPTER I
A KNIFE IN THE DARK

HASKELL bent his head not an instant too soon, not a second too late. The steel blade of the henequen sword swept a whistling arc above him and the heavy hooked tip missed his neck an inch—perhaps two inches. His fingers itched to twitch the blue-barreled magazine revolver away from his hip and end this thing. Twice now within ten minutes some one had stooped down from the stone gallery around the patio and tried to snip his head from his shoulders, and though the soft swish of the blade spoke a malice and wickedness that sprang from some most murderous purpose, Haskell had not the remotest conjecture to offer as to why any one should wish to kill him, a stranger, in this strange land.

A month before he had left the mining camps and gone to Denver for his vacation, only to be handed a telegram from the senior member of the great engineering firm with which he had been under contract since he had left Yale, a firm that guided all the mining operations, devised all the irrigation and lumbering systems and surveyed and superintended all the railroad, tramway power-plant, dock and warehouse construction for a powerful Wall Street group with money to invest anywhere in the world that one dollar would make another. The telegram had been brief but specific:

Robert Haskell,
Hotel Oxford, Denver, Col.

Mclmery down with typhoid. Go via Mexico City, Vera Cruz, to Progresso, Yucatan, then inland to hacienda of Calderon y Ortegas family beyond Valladolid. Instructions going by Ward Line mail.

John R. Peters.

That was all. That was enough. He had caught the evening train for the land beyond the Rio Grande and, save for the days lost by missing the boat at Vera Cruz, he had traveled with the haste of a king's messenger. That was a standing rule among "Peters' Men." Up from the coast to Morida and on to Valladolid by train, slow train, the engine of which ate up cords of small wood from piles cut and assembled by Maya peons along the right of way; on from the sun-smitten cluster of stone, stucco and wattle-work houses of Valladolid he had traveled slowly and tediously by platform car.

This meant a little truck about the size of a hand-car, with a canopy over it, drawn by two galloping mules driven by a squat, brawny Maya in cotton shirt and pants, whose stubby, bare great toes turned in; whose skin was the color of an old penny; whose close-cropped wiry hair was crowned with a straw sombrero wound with green and yellow; in whose teeth was clenched a long cruel, plaited whip; at whose side hung one of the long, massive-bladed, bent-tipped henequen knives—a formidable figure who was strangely shy and gentle save to the mules—and for them he found more curses, threats and poetical phrasings of damnation and opprobrium than Haskell had ever heard before.

At the end of the last mile of the narrow rusted tram-rails the ultimate means of travel was mule-back. The last driver of the last tram had hinted that it was wise to travel by day only, but now after nightfall of the second day the white man and his Indian guide had ridden up to the gates of the Calderon y Ortegas hacienda, been admitted by a servant who had vanished without a word, and now Haskell was walking up and down the patio in the moonlight, waiting—waiting to see if some unknown assassin with the henequen knife would get him before the problematic host arrived, or vice versa.

He was not greatly alarmed, but it was not a good way to begin on a piece of Peters' work—to allow himself to be killed or wounded or to be compelled to kill in self-defense some one with whom he had no quarrel, so he kept his right hand only near the butt of his revolver. There was one advantage he had: though the duel had been going on ten minutes, at least the unknown second principal was not aware that Haskell knew of the danger.

The first thing Haskell had noticed was the fall of a bit of stucco as big as a pea. He had glanced up to the arches of the second-floor gallery in time to see a shadowy figure whisk back out of sight. A moment later, when he had crossed to the other side of the court and was directly under the gallery, he had heard the swiftly indrawn breath of some being above him and, experience having taught him that the drawing of breath precedes the deliberate blow with a knife, he had stooped, pretending to have dropped his gauntlet. Out of the tail of his eye he had seen the downward sweep of the blade. Drawing from his pocket a little round mirror from a transit, he held it in the palm of his left hand in such a way that it could not be seen from above, and though he appeared to be looking down and paying no attention to what went on over his head, he could see well enough to be in no danger so long as the unknown pursued the tactics of creeping around the galleries and striking when the marked man came within reach below.

At the time of the second blow all that Haskell had seen was an arm and head over the parapet and then the sudden swoop and the blow. It had been too quick for him to catch more than a glance in the little mirror, but from that head he had caught the gleam of two eyes that shone like the eyes of a cornered mountain cat.

Now, he walked into the middle of the patio and carefully surveyed the darkened galleries. Not a light was there in all the house. Without, the horses stamped in the dust where the Indian held them; from a distance came the crooning song of the servants in their outlying quarters; a native dog barked inquiringly in the same general direction, and overhead the moon rode the cloudless purple sky verily outpouring a torrent of radiance.

Suddenly he caught a movement in the shadows back under the arches and could scarcely refrain from putting a steel-jacketed bullet into the spot. And then forth into the moonlight there stepped a slender girl!

Haskell's heart beat faster at the sight than it had a few minutes before when he had escaped the first blow, and he dropped his hand hurriedly from the pistol-butt. The thought came—what if he had yielded to impulse and fired at the movement in the shadows?

The girl appeared in the moonlight under the arch at the head of the broad stone stairway leading down into the patio. At the top step she paused and looked down. She was taller and slighter than the sturdy Maya women Haskell had seen. There was a loose curl in her heavy hair, and from the point where she had it caught up at the crown of her head and fastened it with the familiar thorn and red flower it fell over her shoulders far below her hips. Her neck and shoulders were bare. On her little feet were the soft Maya sandals, and her dress was the simple white native tunic falling in straight Grecian lines from shoulder to ankle and broidered with a deep hem of the brilliantly colored Maya patterns.

When she turned on the stair so that the moonlight fell full on her face Haskell felt a queer little thrill in his throat—it was the type that is the boast of Leon—shadowed, slumbrous, languorous eyes, features of the delicacy of the high-caste Singalese, cream and olive coloring, with a little rich red mouth.

With simple grace she came slowly down the stair, and with his spurs jingling on the red tiling of the court Haskell crossed to meet her. He was absurdly conscious of the layers of dust that lay not only on his clothing but even in the thick yellow brown curls of his head as he swept off his hat and bowed, wondering what language she would use.

"Buenas tardes, señor," she said, solving the question by addressing him in a quaint Spanish with a curious little purl in it. Haskell was glad that he was not compelled to use the Maya, which he had begun to acquire from the time he encountered the first Yucateco on the steamer from Vera Cruz. He was sorry to note in her manner, however, not only an absence of the cordiality with which the Spanish-American greets a guest, but a little constraint, a certain chill dignity such as even a chance visiting stranger would not be accorded ordinarily. He returned her salutation:

"Good evening, señorita. I am Mr. Haskell, an engineer sent from the United States to this hacienda, where letters of instruction await me. My preliminary instructions came by telegram; I have no letters, nor do I know for whom to inquire, save some member of the family Calderon y Ortegas."

"I am Ortegas y Escalendon, señor," she said with an added touch of hauteur. Knowing the custom of a husband's following his own name with that of his wife, this told him that she was a niece, on the maternal side, of the family Calderon y Ortegas. In the recesses of the house somewhere there was a low murmur of hushed voices. The girl saw that Haskell heard them, and a little flush crept into her cheeks while a quick change came over her as she looked at him standing embarrassed and uncertain before her.

"My uncle and his sons are absent from the plantation, senor, but I bid you welcome; pray believe our house is yours."

She accompanied this many-centuries'-old conventional formula with a fleeting smile which seemed to say that though she had been sent to greet him and show him that he was unwelcome she meant to receive him regardless of all considerations. Haskell felt a warm impulse of gratitude toward her, for at the words there was a note of impatience and displeasure in the hushed voices, and then silence.

Twice she clapped her little palms together, and the servant who had admitted him reappeared, took the horses and guide in charge after laying off Haskell's bags, and a sullen old Maya woman, who had been lurking under the arches, led him away to a chamber that opened on the gallery directly at the spot where the unknown knife-wielder must have stood at the time of the delivery of the second blow. Haskell swept the shadowed spots with cautious eyes but, once within the chamber, seeing the spotlessly white pallet, the little gilt shrine, the great earthen bathing-vessel brimming with water, he breathed a sigh of relief, for he was weary from his long journey and here before him were the means to the ends of physical comfort and cleanliness at least. He stepped to the door to close it and place the heavy bar across it when the old servant had backed out. He saw that the girl was still standing on the stair.

"At the senor's pleasure will he attend in the dining-hall?" she said in her low, sweet voice that carried clearly across the broad patio.

On his acknowledgment she turned and walked slowly away toward the gate, where the shadows swallowed her. The grace with which she moved, the exquisite lines of her arms and throat caused Haskell to exclaim to himself, but nevertheless, when he had bathed and replaced his riding-clothes with white military ducks, he drew across his chest the civilian holster designed to carry the heavy pistol under the left arm and examined the weapon carefully before he put it in its resting-place.

There was a knock at the door. Cautiously he opened it, to find, a porter with a much-stamped and counter-stamped envelope addressed to him in care of Sr. Don Felipe Ramon Batista Calderon y Ortegas. He ripped it open. The firm's draft for five thousand and his letter of instructions, dictated by Peters himself:

Dear Haskell: You are permanently to supplant McIrnery in this work and are expected to carry it through to success. I am sending my nephew, John Peters, Jr., who has just finished in Berlin, to join you and I expect you to break him in. If he does not show the proper fitness, give me time enough to get another man to you and ship him back without compunction. I am sending him to the hot country to get him out of the way of one of Trainsby's girls as much as anything.

I regret to be unable to inform you in detail of your new work. McIrnery had it in hand direct from the men of the syndicate who investigated it and he is in no condition to transmit his information. However, I trust you to get along without it. Two or three months ago the syndicate acquired from Sr. Don Juan Rafelo Calderon y Ortegas the rights to all the hardwood on lands of the extreme southern part of the family estate on a royalty basis, and you are to estimate the extent of it, select the means of getting it to tide-water, prepare the specifications for the needed plant, order the same through us and install the needed equipment. When it is in operation it will be time to consider placing the work in 1 charge of a superintendent.

Now, my dear Haskell, I have given you no child's task in this mahogany garden, as Embrie calls it, and I have been opposed sufficiently in my selecting so young a man as you, despite the efficiency you displayed in Telluride and the Copper River Valley, to be more than anxious that you should allow nothing to interfere with your making a sweeping success, both for my own sake and yours. Remember that every problem you face is yours, not mine. I wish you unbounded good fortune. Yours cordially,

John J. Peters.

"And the first dash out of the box some one tries to behead me, and a pretty girl treats me as if the murder would have been justifiable!" said Haskell, puzzling over the strangeness of his reception where nothing that had gone before had conveyed any hint of unpleasantness.

CHAPTER II
DON FELIPE RETURNS

WHEN he stepped forth to the gallery he stopped a moment, scrutinized every shadow, listened for every sound and then strode along toward the stair, keeping well away from the doorways that opened on the arched passageway. The sight of a servant bearing a covered dish into a lighted doorway guided him and he followed into a spacious chamber to the right of the head of the stair.

In the center stood a great table of dark wood roughly polished and evidently hacienda made. Around it were many chairs, also of hand workmanship. The walls were bare, and on the tiled floor were some simple bright-colored mats. In heavy silver candelabra burned a number of candles, lighting the table and the earthen bowls of fruit, fresh cheese and cold fowl grouped about one end, with some bottles of liquors and an olla, on the porous sides of which showed the exuding water, the evaporation of which rendered cold the water within. The servant stood aside, steeped in the awkwardness of unaccustomed service, and the door at the farther end of the apartment opened and four women entered, one a massive woman of fifty in an unstayed black silk gown, heavy old gold bracelets and chain, and with bare feet and broad sandals; two younger women, unmistakably her daughters though of a distinctly mestizo or part Indian type, clad in the simple Maya tunics with a ribbon or bit of jewelry to give a touch of finery; and lastly the girl who had received him.

With concealed interest and amusement Haskell noted that in greeting him the mother executed something resembling the courtesy of the Empire, the first daughter used the Maya straight-backed, cross-legged bow and the other faltered between the two. Plainly he read the story of the situation in its minor points. Knowing the habitual seclusion of their women by the rural gentlemen of Spanish-American lands, he saw that this appearance was prompted largely by curiosity which could be indulged in the absence of the lords and masters of the casa. He had no doubt that before him stood Senora Calderon y Ortegas and her two daughters, and he marveled at the difference between them and the niece. By reason of the hour he felt sure they had eaten the last meal of the day and appeared again to see what he was like under pretense of keeping him company at his meal.

Haskell noted that the niece did not raise her eyes, though her cheeks were flushed as if with anger and she took her place at the table as if in sufferance only. This nettled him and relieved his own embarrassment. With what savoir faire his age, experience 736 Adventure and understanding of Latin peoples permitted he took the situation in hand and led the talk to matters of the outside world, the things of which secluded women dream hungry dreams. His reward was speedy, and the stages of the change that came over them were interesting to watch. From a stiff dignity that had a strong undercurrent of dislike and enmity, they passed to a slight interest, then a frank curiosity, then questions and naive comment ending in open good-humor.

Through it all the niece sat silent and for the most part with averted eyes. Plainly she had been rebuked for her welcome to Haskell and was very resentful. Physically fortified by his excellent meal and a glass of satisfactory claret, Haskell talked on until he made the fatal mistake of a reference to his mission. A swift cloud crossed the elder woman's dark brow, the girls dropped their eyes and fell silent, and there was a little impatient movement on the part of the niece that told him he had blundered. In a moment, they rose and, bidding him an almost curt goodnight, left the room.

TAKING one of the candles, the servant lighted Haskell to his door and was backing out with his "Buenas noches, buenas noches, señor," when Haskell called him back.

"See here, muchacho, do you know what this is?"

"Twenty pesetas, señor," answered the man, looking at the coins.

"Well, I want you to take this and to understand that there is plenty more for you if you will work for it. I come to this house as a stranger, but I am an honest man and I come on honest business, with no intentions of harming any one or doing any wrong. You know, and I know, that I am looked on as an intruder, as an enemy. I do not know why. Will you tell me why?"

"Señor is a friend and guest in the casa; no harm can come to him," answered the Maya, shuffling his feet and looking anywhere but into Haskell's eyes. The engineer laid a gold piece of the largest denomition on the coins and pushed them toward the man with the tips of his fingers. The Indian shot him one furtive glance.

"You know that is not true, 'Nacion. I am not afraid, but I do not want to go on in the dark."

"My father and his father worked on this hacienda, and I shall work here, and, with the sacred mercy, my children shall work here. I can not serve the senor." The man's direct and simple expression of loyalty evoked Haskell's admiration. He slowly pocketed the money. He had heard that the Mayas, though a terrible people when roused, were brave, patient and steadfast.

"You are an honest man, 'Nacion. Good-night."

The Indian turned to go, but at the door he hesitated, fumbled at the tawdry sacred medallion at his throat, and said in a lowered tone.

"The senor should be very careful and go soon, or it may be the same things will come to him as to the other caballero."

"What other caballero? What do you mean?"

Encarnacion stepped quickly to the pallet and drew from its place of concealment a little red morocco photograph-case and gave it to Haskell. Within was the small picture of a very beautiful girl across one corner of which was written, "Semper fidelis, Gertrude Trainsby." It had come from young Peters' personal belongings! The lad was here in advance of him, thanks to the lost days at Vera Cruz! Apparently he had occupied this very room. Where was he now? What had befallen him? What did the Maya mean by "the same things" which had befallen the youngster? As these questions flashed through his mind, Haskell felt a hot anger rising within him. He whirled on the impassive Maya.

"This belongs to a young man who was to work with me in this country. I command you to tell me where he is!"

"I do not know."

"When was he here?"

"Don Felipe can tell you all—but—señor, do not wait till he comes back!"

The man was retreating toward the door as he said this, and with the last word he darted out. Haskell cursed softly under his breath, pocketed the little red case, inspected the room with the candle to be sure that there were no means of entrance save the door and, after barring this, went to bed, the revolver tied to his right wrist by a thong.

Somewhere about dawn there was a clatter of hoofs in the courtyard, and in his subconsciously alert state the noise awoke Haskell. Peering over the transom he could see several horsemen below. Three, in the habiliments of haciendados, were ascending the stair, and four others, evidently servants, were leading away the horses and mules. As nearly as he could make out in the dim light the party had been on a hard ride, and before they entered the house the three men thrashed their clothing to get off the dust. One of these was squat, massive and wore a heavy square black beard; the others were younger and slighter men—evidently the master of the house and his sons. Haskell noted that they were well armed, bearing pistols on hip and leaving three carbines leaning against the stone newel at the right of the foot of the stair.

Rapidly he dressed and, when silence had fallen over the place, he stepped from the room and reconnoitered. No one was in sight save the porter squatted by the gate asleep. Acting on impulse the engineer stepped quickly down to the carbines, threw the bolts and drew out the firing-pins; then he returned to his room and waited. Soon the songs of the peons on their way to the henequen fields rose and died away, the household servants began to appear and the two daughters came forth on the gallery from a door on the other side of the court. Next Encarnacion came to his door bringing a bowl of fruit and pieces of bread browned through and through, and a mug of milk and coffee.

"Don Felipe is home, I see," remarked Haskell as he ate.

"Si, señor," was the Indian's sole response, and, try as he would, the engineer could not draw him into conversation.

When the Maya had gone Haskell lighted a cigar and began to ponder his best course in the face of the baffling strangeness of all that had happened. The question was whether to take the bull by the horns at once or to pursue the policy he had begun the night before when he had pretended not to be aware of the knife-blows. He decided to let circumstances guide him and, leaving the middle buttons of his jacket unloosed so that he could draw with proper speed if matters came to a sudden climax, he strolled forth on the gallery.

CHAPTER III
MORE WARNINGS

JUST around the pillars of the corner he beheld a pretty sight. Holding a parrot on one forefinger, Senorita Ortegas y Escalendon stood leaning against the parapet, feeding the creature berries from the other hand. Her hair was bound in heavy braids about her little head, and her simple clinging tunic revealed the exquisite lines of her body sufficiently to complete a pose of the utmost grace. In her creamy cheeks shone a faint color, and her eyes were dancing as she teased the bird.

At the sound of his step she turned, and Haskell meant that she should read the admiration in his eyes. Her lowered lids and heightened color signified that his wish was granted.

"Buenos dias, señorita," he said cheerily.

"Good morning, señor; we hope that you rested well in our house last night."

Haskell said that he had and spoke of the beauty of the morning. Then, with his eyes on her face to catch its most vagrant expression, he asked whether the master of the house was among the men who had arrived at dawn.

Her lower lip quivered a trifle, her eyes grew shadowed and after a quick glance at him she said, as if addressing the bird:

"Don Felipe is now in the house."

"And may I see him soon to take up my business with him?"

She put her hand on his arm with a quick, detaining, protesting gesture, and as quickly withdrew it.

"Oh, señor, you must go away! I am so sorry that you came!"

"Since I have found you here, senorita, I am very, very glad I came," he answered, putting a purposeful earnestness in his tone. "I came here in all innocence and honesty, supposedly at the wish of Don Felipe and all concerned, and I do not see why I should go away until my business is finished. You surprise me by what you say. What do you mean, child?"

She shuddered and turned away without answer.

Within one of the rooms on the family side there was a peremptory hand-clap, a call in a brutal tone for a servant, followed by a savage, ill-natured oath. The girl shrank as from an imaginary blow and half pointed to the door of the room from which the sounds came. Encarnacion appeared on winged feet to answer the summons.

"Is that Don Felipe?" asked Haskell in a hardened tone.

" That is the master. I beg you, I implore you to go!" she whispered, trembling and coming close to him, her eyes on the doorway down the gallery. With an assuring, protective instinct he put his arm half about er. The color flamed into her cheeks, she threw back her head and gave him one blazing flash from her eyes as she drew herself erect, but before the look that had come on his face at the touch, the nearness of her, her glance softened, her lower lip trembled like that of a hurt child and she whirled away from him and vanished down the corridor, leaving him strangely stirred with emotions new and strange to him, but not unwelcome.

"Little girl," he said to himself, "if this were hell I would stay!"

Left alone, he leaned against one of the pillars, smoking quietly and listening. In a little while 'Nacion appeared, backing out the door, and in a moment Don Felipe followed. His heavy hair and his thick beard were still damp from his bath, but his cotton clothing was white, fresh and immaculate and there was an air about him that evoked Haskell's admiration.

"Ah, señor," he cried at sight of the American, "buenos dias, buenos dias! I regret not having been at home when you came; my house is yours, pray believe me," and he advanced to bow courteously, smiling with his lips but not with his eyes; nor did he offer his hand, for which Haskell thought the better of him.

"Don't speak of it, sir; your family received me most hospitably and if my instructions had been more definite I should have known how and to whom to send notice of my coming."

Haskell, with his right hand never far from the opening in his jacket near the butt of his revolver, watched the other narrowly.

"Did you have a pleasant journey to the peninsula? It is useless to ask farther than that, as we are so primitive here that traveling is hard for men used to the easy ways of civilization, so you must forgive our humble and comfortless methods of living, Señor Haskell."

The engineer could scarce repress a smile as he thought of the intended addition of thirty inches of henequen knife to his comforts the night before, but he said cordially:

"For years I have been living in camps in outlands and I like the life; and, contrary to what you say of your district, I have enjoyed my two days in it very much and am looking forward to a pleasant stay during the period of my work."

"It shall be our gratification to contribute in every way to your pleasure and entertainment!"

Don Felipe had a little light in his eyes as he said this that would have been envied by the devil himself.

"Of course, having lost several days, I am anxious to get on the grounds at once. Now to clear away any misunderstanding, I am here as the agent with full authority of the syndicate which has acquired from Senor Don Juan Rafelo Calderon y Ortegas the rights to cut and export the mahogany and other hard woods from certain lands close to the border of the district, and if my calculations are correct, the nearest part of the tract is not over ten miles to the south. I was ordered by telegraph to come to this hacienda and here I found a letter of instructions. Señor Don Juan Rafelo is your father?"

"My father is dead. This is a brother." There was a hidden significance in his choice of words.

"Is the forest near?"

"Yes; yonder, not a league, begins the great woodland and it extends on hundreds of miles, and there are things hidden away in it which the world never dreams of."

"Yes, I know the Central American forest is comparatively unexplored."

"And though the sun shines fiercely and the rain pours down like a river from the clouds and the trees and vines grow thick, some men may pass through parts of it, but they will come out knowing little. Even the Maya aborigines fear it."

"Well, with your help in securing provisions and a guide, I shall ride to-day to begin taking care of the part of it assigned to me."

"Ah, but not to-day, senor. You have no reason for haste. Is my hospitality falling so short——"

"No, far from it, Don Felipe; but I have lost too much time and I must push on to join young Peters, my assistant." Haskell's eyes dwelt coldly on the other's face.

"Peters? Peters? Your assistant is now in the mahogany garden?"

"He came here before me. Have you not seen him?"

Don Felipe shook his head as if deeply puzzled. "No, Señor Haskell, I have not seen him or heard of him."

Slowly, without taking his eyes from the Yucateco, Haskell drew out the little red case:

"You surprise me. This is his; I found it last night in the room in which I slept."

Beyond a fierce gleam in his eyes Don Felipe gave no sign of being disconcerted.

"Strange, indeed," he said suavely. "There was a young gentleman who stopped with us one night while I was away and he slept in that room, but I did not learn his name or his business. He rode on before my return and I do not know where he is."

For a moment Haskell was afraid to speak, for his blood was boiling within him, but he realized that, being single-handed against a rich and powerful haciendado, with hundreds of peons at his back, and far from communication with the outside world, his only hope of avenging anything that had befallen young Peters, and of saving his own life, was to dissemble till he could secure a position of vantage.

"This is most unfortunate, for I can not waste time in hunting for him and I need his help at once. He is certain to return here to join me, and the best that I can do is to have you send him on to my camp."

"No, senor, you must permit me to send my boys into the forest to look for his party, and you can remain here and give us the pleasure of your society meanwhile."

"Your kindness overwhelms me, but I regret to say that I must ride on to-day. Can it be arranged that I start at once?"

"If the señor will, he will," said Don Felipe with a shrug of his shoulders.

He called to the porter, ordered his own and Haskell's horses and sent an Indian maid scurrying to prepare the required provisions. He disappeared into his room, returning in a little while, booted and spurred, and by the time Haskell had assembled his belongings the horses were waiting. Looking down from the gallery Haskell saw that the party was to be made up of himself, the Indian who had ridden with him to the hacienda, Don Felipe and two burly mozos armed with the long henequen knives.

Just then 'Nacion appeared. Haskell saw something flutter from his hand to the tiling and, picking it up, he reentered his room. It was a crumpled green leaf, but inside was a tiny note:

The Senor Haskell:—Do not go. Do not go. I shall never see you again, for you go to die.

Emalia.

CHAPTER IV
AN ATTACK AND A RESCUE

HASKELL'S heart seemed to expand within him. It mattered to her whether she did see him again! Perhaps she was right, but he felt his chances were better in the open than in the hacienda, so he stood at the head of the stair and bowed low before Senora Calderon y Ortegas as he expressed his gratitude for the pleasure of having been in her house. Then he descended and mounted, keeping a careful eye on Don Felipe.

The latter seemed quite merry and, saying that they might find a spotted cat in the woods, caught up one of the carbines and threw it by the strap across his pommel. For a man accustomed to the handling of firearms, this was a strange thing to do. Any one riding up even with the muzzle was likely to be killed by an accidental discharge, but Haskell, pretending not to see, quietly and unhesitatingly took his place beside the haciendado, not a foot from the muzzle of the weapon, and so they rode away.

At the first opportunity, Haskell looked back and was sure that a certain figure he saw darting among the bushes that screened the way from the house to the little houses of the peons was that of little Emalia, and, stealing a glance now and then, in a few minutes he made out the same figure returning, and another, a little man mounted on a pony, riding swiftly off in a direction that paralleled their course, as if he meant to intercept them. If Don Felipe or the mozos noted the little rider they gave no sign.

The party was now moving straight south. Far, far distant was an uneven blue line, the higher wooded lands. To the right and left and behind them stretched uncounted miles of scrub thickets with now and then a full-grown tree, the dreary waste broken by the henequen fields, the miles of rows of the golden source of the peninsula's vast wealth.

Haskell had noted that the plants were very much like the century-plant, scores of thick, fleshy leaves averaging a yard in length growing out from one low, thick stem. Through those leaves he knew ran a fiber which, when stripped of the watery pulp, made sisal hemp, from which the world's binder twine for harvesting machines is spun. Grown and shipped to the United States at a cost of two cents a pound, and bringing ten cents a pound after the destruction of the Philippine hemp industry, the Yucatecos—white, mestizo and Maya—owning the lands, the only lands in the world on which the plant could be grown, were made millionaires in a few years' time.

Not one-twentieth of the land could be cultivated because of the scarcity of labor, and that kept up the price. After the fifth year a plant would produce for thirty years, and it required little attention, for the soil was so dry and stony that even the weeds were unenthusiastic.

Not that there was not enough rainfall. The trouble was that when the rain fell it went down through the soil at once and collected on the hard-pan floor from ten to a hundred feet below the upper level, where it formed subterranean rills, brooks, swamps and rivers called cenotes, a peculiar condition similar to that in certain districts in the Belgian Congo, the American desert and in the Jamaican cockpit country. Here and there, dotted about the level plain of the peninsula, were holes where the earth had fallen in, exposing the underground streams. Sometimes the hole was a few feet deep; sometimes one must descend a fraction of a mile to get water.

The greater part of an hour passed before the party was beyond the bounds of the last henequen field and out of sight of the last group of laboring peons. The trail led straight on into the thicket, and Haskell noted that the number of large trees was increasing, but he dared not take his eyes from matters close at hand. From the tail of his eye he must catch the first suspicious movement of Don Felipe's hands.

Once or twice Don Felipe reined up to scan some tracks in the trail, and, again, he called a halt and commanded silence while he listened as if he heard sounds ahead that alarmed him, but he rode on again until they came to a cluster of rocks. Haskell was forced to ride a little to the front. He heard the click of the bolt of the carbine as Don Felipe threw in a cartridge, and, as he turned, the muzzle was pointed full at his back. Hate and murder shone in the haciendado's eyes as he pulled the trigger, but the carbine did not speak. There was only the snap of the trigger.

"You dirty, murderous, cowardly dog!" cried Haskell, throwing the blue nose of his gun level with the Yucateco's eyes.

Charging like a dragoon came the first of the two mozos. The other could not get around Haskell's astonished guide, who had reined up squarely across the trail. Seeing the flash of the upraised henequen knife, the American swung the pistol at right angles and let three of the bullets from the magazine pour forth before he took his finger from the trigger. The terrific impact of heavy steel-jacketed missiles seemed to lift the mozo out of the saddle, and he pitched sideways among the rocks, while his pony clattered on toward the forest.

But Don Felipe had had time to draw his revolver. A shot splintered Haskell's pommel and burned his thigh. Another whirred under his ear, and then he fired. The glittering pistol whirled into the air, and Don Felipe, cursing bitterly, clapped his left hand to his right forearm, where there was a red welling of blood on the white sleeve. Rearing madly and backing from the flame of the revolver before his eyes, the Yucateco's horse threw himself and rider behind the guide and his mount.

It was a stroke of fortune for the haciendado, this confusion between the two Indians and the blocking of Haskell's line of fire. He saw it and, seizing the reins, whirled his horse and sped down the trail. The mozo followed suit, and the best that Haskell could do was to send Don Felipe's horse to his knees. The rider was off as the horse fell, up behind the mozo and out of sight untouched, though Haskell sent the last of nine shots after them.

Well back on the trail could be heard the drumming of many hoofs and many voices shouting. In advance was a lone rider approaching rapidly. Now he dashed into sight. It was the little man Haskell had seen riding away from the quarters of the peons. He was a cripple with a withered hand and a queer twisted face.

"Senor, don't wait! Come quick, senor! Follow me and ride fast!" he cried, reining up and turning under the very nose of Haskell's horse.

The engineer stooped and caught up the carbine, rode over to Don Felipe's dying horse and lifted the ammunition belts from the saddle; then set out after the newcomer and the guide, already a hundred feet ahead on the trail toward the forest.

In about ten minutes the three came to a little eminence and the cripple drew rein and pointed back. Not more than half a mile behind them was a large party of horsemen. Haskell studied them with his glasses. Don Felipe was leading all the others, his right arm bandaged roughly and bound across his chest, his two sons close behind him and a dozen mozos from the hacienda mounted on any sort of animal from an antiquated stallion to a female donkey in foal.

" Let me see if I have forgotten the trick," said Haskell, throwing open the carbine, replacing the firing-pin, throwing the bolt and taking careful aim. With the crack of the gun, the horse of the second son plunged headlong, sending his rider sprawling, and the whole column came to a halt.

"This little thing is a wonder!" said Haskell, gazing at the neglected piece with admiration, as they rode on.

The trees and the undergrowth grew suddenly more dense. They had come to the belt cf soil that retained the moisture, and the tropical forest was begun. Save for the stifling closeness of the air it was a relief from the sun to get in under the interlocking arms of the great giants woven together with festoons of creeping plants whose main stems were nearly as large as the trees themselves and whose farthest, newest tendrils would be hundreds of feet from the parent root. It is a popular idea that the tropical forest always teems with animal life. The truth is that there is far less than in the temperate zone, save in rare localities.

The section through which the riders were now passing was silent and deserted, and after half an hour the very sound of the horses' hoofs seemed to become magnified to something enormous and dreadful. The little withered man begun to scan the wayside signs carefully, for the trail was growing fainter, and at a point where it had branched he had taken the faintest of three paths. At last he halted before a veritable wall of creepers and parasitic plants at one side of the trail and, moving a part of the whole aside as a curtain, signed for Haskell to dismount and lead in his horse. To his amazement the engineer found himself in an old machete-trimmed pathway now growing shut once more.

For two hundred feet along this artificial path they made their way and came to a veritable wall of growing tree trunks matted with vines. Something in the set of it suggested to Haskell that it had been purposefully planted, like a hedge, and he said as much to the cripple, who smiled and nodded his head and said cryptically:

"When a man lives in among the trees he must build his walls with them."

Twisting around this trunk, stooping under that one and squeezing between another two, they passed the living barrier and stood in a great circular place grown up with a thicket to the height of a man's head. From the center rose a four-cornered mound at least ninety feet tall, and on the truncated top, embowered in great trees, was a broad stone building, with ruined sides, carved in beautiful, deeply cut designs. All along the face of the wall nearest to him was a row of darker stone on which Haskell made out successive figures of the Central American tiger.

"El Iglesia del Tigre!" said the little old cripple, making a curious gesticulation with his withered hand.

Haskell knew he was looking for the first time on one of tens of thousands of ruined buildings which dot the country from the Gulf of Mexico to the lakes of Nicaragua, bespeaking the life and death of a wonderful people, older than the Aztecs, even older than the Toltecs, perhaps even more ancient than the Colhuans, and some say that these stone cities, often miles in extent, were teeming with the life of a highly civilized people long before the days of Babylon or the birth of the first Pharaoh.

CHAPTER V
THE TEMPLE OF THE TIGER

THE engineer stood gazing at the strength and beauty of the architecture of the ruined building. The cripple watched him a moment with pleasure and then said:

"You see but one, and a little one, señor. The white men have found Uxmal, Chichen-Itza, Palenque, Copan and the other great cities, but the others they have not seen. There are those through which the senor must travel half the day to pass, even without looking, ah, for they are far greater. The trees have grown up to hide them since the Great Serpent took our people away, and the senor might travel through a city and be within ten steps of a thousand houses and yet see none of them. I have passed through such, and when a little boy with my father he showed me one of the greatest of all the temples and said that some day he would run away from the hacienda and we would travel to the heart of the forest where there was a city of our people that still lived."

It was the old familiar evasive legend which one hears throughout the length and breadth of the continent; the circumstantial tale that somewhere in the depths of the forest there is a city where some of the ancient race still live cut off from the world by the wilderness.

Suddenly the American realized that the cripple was taking the saddle from his pony, and he cried:

"Here, mozo, what are we going to do? This is no place to camp—no water."

"The señor does not know." said the cripple gently. "From a hole in the stone seat of El Tigre Grande runs fine water. Our horses are tired and no one at the hacienda can find the way here but me. Let Don Felipe ride on—let him ride to purgatory—he can not come here!"

Out of the door of the old temple ran a little stream and it cascaded in a deeply worn channel down to the level on which they stood. The freed pony was even now wending his way to the little pool formed at the base of the mound. How, without a hidden pump, could that water be made to flow from that high point? Within miles there was no land that was as high. It could not be a spring.

"All right, my man," said Haskell, yielding. " By the way, what is your name, how did you happen to come to my help and what is the meaning—-"

"The señor serves himself best by the single question that calls for the single answer," said the little man with a queer bow. "I am Juan and my father was Pedro Juan and my grandfather was Juan Ramon. We have been of the hacienda since the coming of the true religion and the days of the old wars. But my mother was from the hacienda Ortegas and when their lands were taken away by the Governor my mother bade me see to the mother of the Little One."

"The mother of Senorita Emalia?" inquired Haskell.

"Si, señor. Now I lose all things for her."

"How?"

"Your friend comes here to take away from the Mayas their forest, and Don Felipe and his sons ride out with him as they rode out with you."

"Is he dead? Do you know anything, Juan?"

"They rode out; they rode back this morning, and he is dead or they would not have come back. It is as it should be. You should have been killed also."

Haskell looked at him aghast.

"I should be killed! Why?"

"Don Felipe had the papers to say that you would take away our forest."

"No, Juan, not your forest; just some of the trees. And Don Felipe has been paid tens of thousands of pesetas to allow me to do it."

"Then he lied to us!"

It seemed queer to Haskell that Don Felipe, having the absolute power, even to life and death, over the peons of his remote hacienda should have taken the trouble to explain or lie to them; but he put it among the other mysteries of this strange adventure.

"Tell me who tried to kill me from the gallery of the house, Juan."

"Ernesto. You shot him a while ago."

"And why, if you think, or did think, I should be killed, did you ride out to-day and help to save my life?"

"Because the Little One came to me and said the Ortegas needed that I should ride ahead of you, that I should kill Don Felipe if necessary and take you to the runaway Mayas in the forest whence no man ever comes back to the hacienda even though he starves."

"The señorita told you to kill Don Felipe if you had to do so to save me?"

"Si, señor."

"Would you have done it?"

From where he lay on the grass, Juan turned so that he displayed his withered arm, drawn face, misshapen leg.

"When I was in the woods with my father, he had run away with me, but when I and my brothers were starving we went back and Don Felipe's father beat my father to death before all the hacienda. Me they tied up and let little Don Felipe beat me till he was so weary that he wept. Since that day I have been like this."

Haskell could not repress a shudder and he found himself looking forward to the next time Don Felipe Calderon y Ortegas was within whip-range.

"So you are going to take me to the runaways in the woods, eh, Juan? Since I have business to which to attend, suppose I will not go?"

"Then I will bring them and we will take you."

Haskell laughed outright at the cool finality of the assertion.

"All right, Juan, we will wait and see."

Taking his observation instruments from his bags, Haskell parceled them between the three of them and led the way up the steep slope of the mound, saying he wanted to make sure of their exact location. The red men looked on the lensed brass things as the appurtenances of witchery and handled them with fear.

The ruined temple Haskell found to be far less ruined than he had imagined. The walls were of solid masonry about eight feet thick and twenty-five feet high. The space they enclosed was about eighty by one hundred. All around the walls were the niches in which the wooden beams, rotted and gone thousands of years ago, had once reposed when they supported the roof. There were no rooms, but on either side of an altar, on which perched a huge stone tiger, were the remains of foundations that showed there had been wooden structures within the square. From just beneath the tiger ran a two-inch stream of pure cold water—a complete mystery to him, an insoluble problem in hydrostatics.

On both the outer walls and inner panels were inset single stones about a foot square, on the face of each of which was carved a different design of curves and dots, the indecipherable hieroglyphics of the so-called Maya language, the written, stone-treasured narratives of a people which Le Plonjeon says will add ten thousand years to the history of humanity when the man is found who can read them aright.

In the enclosure were a number of large trees, one a gigantic hardwood tree, at least eight or nine hundred years old and reaching up one hundred and fifty feet in the air. Buckling on steel climbers, Haskell spiked his way up the great trunk, clinging to the huge ridges of the bark and, perching in a crotch near the top, looked out over the scene. To the north lay the reaches of the wild scrub thicket, broken by the white cultivated expanse of the hacienda; east, west and south swept the forest.

To the eastward there seemed to be a dip in the horizon. At first he thought it was a low-lying cloud-field there, but, leveling his glasses, he saw that the forest stopped short off—in fact, seemed to have a sort of bay in it, and that at the outer edge of this was the sea.

If it was swamp through which a channel could be forced and logs floated to tidewater, he knew that it meant much to him.

HE WAS about to descend, thinking what a fort the temple would make, when he noticed some moving spots between him and the far hacienda. By careful work he made out that it was Don Felipe's party returning. Not all of them, however. One son and five men had been left behind in the forest. The haciendado had left a sort of patrol while he hurried home to have his wound dressed, lay his plans and get reenforcements, not to effect a capture once the fugitives were overtaken, but to locate them.

None of them had seen Juan at the time of the shooting and Haskell realized that the two sons and the other men had ridden after Don Felipe, not when they had discovered Juan's departure, but when they had found the two carbines left behind to be minus their firing-pins. That had told them that Don Felipe was armed with a useless weapon and that Haskell was on his guard. The natural thing had been to set out post-haste. It was a relief to the engineer to think that Emalia's part in the affair was not discovered, to lay her open to abuse, perhaps real danger, at the hands of her brutal uncle.

Juan had built a fire of dry sticks when Haskell descended after making a rough topographical map of the country, and was preparing the evening meal, careful that no smoke should rise from the cooking. The blaze was screened within the temple and they kept it alight till long after dark. The Indian Haskell had brought with him was very silent and apparently dejected all evening, while the American sat by the fire, listening to the tales of the old Mayas which Juan had to tell. But neither of the others thought anything of the lad's behavior, and all three lay down to rest, confident that where no enemy could find his way in daylight none could come by dark.

When Haskell awoke at daybreak the first thing he noticed was that the Indian's place was empty. Calling to Juan, he ran to the door of the temple. The lad was gone and had taken his horse; not only that, but he had taken so much of the food that there was not enough left for more than two meals. It was plain that he had noted carefully the path through the labyrinth of tree-trunks and, filled with fears of the forest, being a plantation-bred Indian pure and simple, he had deserted. If he had left early he might have reached the hacienda by midnight. If so, then Don Felipe and his men might be at the very door of their hiding-place this minute!

Mounting the tree quickly, while Juan prepared breakfast, Haskell surveyed the country. Nowhere was there a sign of the pursuit, but as he studied the trail from the hacienda his heart gave a great leap. In an opening a big white horse showed for a moment; then came a mule bearing a mozo. But the rider of the white horse? At the next opening Haskell saw it was Emalia, riding toward the forest in desperate haste.

CHAPTER VI
NUNEZ PAOLA

TAKING a reflector, he tried to throw a ray of the rising sun in her direction as the signal-corps man heliographs. If the rays reached her she did not make them out, for she rode on without heeding. Some of Don Felipe's men descried him, though. A half-spent bullet whined through the air below him and a report among the trees to the west located the marksman. There was another and closer shot from less than two hundred yards beyond the labyrinth and, taking the sheltered side of the tree, Haskell hurried down. Not only was their hiding-place discovered, but they were surrounded!

Juan was painfully indifferent about the matter. "Every man must die some time," said he with a toss of his head, but he agreed with Haskell that they could stand siege so long as the food held out, and that forty men could not take the mound even by assault, save in the hours between sunset and moonrise. The temple had but the one entrance and they need defend that and no more. As for evacuating and taking flight, there was no path except the one by which they had entered and this must be known to the enemy.

With a heavy heart Haskell went about inspecting the outside of the temple from the top of the wall. That Emalia should imperil herself for his sake was the depressing, painful thought, though it brought him a great joy to know that her heart had prompted her to make what was plainly a useless attempt. Having made certain that the temple could be approached only by the front slope of the mound, he descended and helped Juan make a barricade for the entrance. By great effort they got one of the horses half way up the slope, intending to use them for food if need be, when a shot from the forest dropped the animal and a sharp fire that followed compelled them to retreat to the temple walls.

The morning grew on slowly, and at last the sun was at the meridian. All was still and peaceful. A vagrant troop of monkeys passed in the tree-tops at some distance, and during the afternoon they heard now and then the deep, solemn note of a distant bell.

"El Campanero!" whispered Juan, crossing himself.

"And what is El Campanero?"

"He is a bird of size and his voice is the voice of a bell. When the bell rings by day it is for souls that are to pass!"

Haskell laughed, but a little shiver crept about the back of his neck.

As the evening drew on, there fell a great stillness broken only by a little burst of outcries among some vagrant paroquets in the forest and the dismal sounds of the vultures, descended from their vigilant circling aloft to their night's perch in the vicinity of the bones of the horse and man killed the day before. The sun dropped slowly to the horizon and then, as is the way in those latitudes, seemed to shoot down in haste before the onrushing darkness.

In fifteen minutes it was a transition from broad daylight to velvety black gloom intensified by a miasmatic mist wafted inland from the seaboard. Haskell took a sheltered position behind the barricade. Juan crept down the gully worn by the water from the altar of the tiger, first fastening in his hair two of the big glow-beetles of the region so that Haskell should not mistake him for one of the enemy. The keen eyes of the old Indian were to be counted upon to detect the first signs of attack.

Gradually his eyes, marred by the uses of civilization, became accustomed to the gloom and Haskell found he could make out the trunks of trees and other objects at the base of the mound. Suddenly there was the scratch of a match in the stillness. A point of flame burst out down the slope. Juan had lighted a clump of dried twigs and was hurrying up the gully. As he darted across the open space before the barricade and climbed the front of it to enter, a dozen points of flame cut the darkness from the edge of the labyrinth.

Don Felipe's men had wasted no time. The attack was on. By the growing light of the fire Haskell made out several darting figures among the trees, and he fired. A howl of pain was the sign of his success. Their bullets had pattered about the front of the temple. Juan had not had a close call even. Again Haskell pulled trigger, and every human form vanished from sight. For a few minutes all was still.

Then came a murmur of voices off to the right, in the direction from which the wind was coming. A light broke out there. They, too, were lighting a fire! Now they kindled a second and a third, and the terrible truth burst upon the two defenders. By firing the dry undergrowth on the windward slope of the mound they meant to shroud the temple in a pillar of fire and either drive out their quarry or cook them alive.

With an oath Haskell ran to the eastern wall and scrambled up the broken stones. Lying flat, he crawled to the edge. Two of Don Felipe's men were just lighting another blaze and, as he fired, they darted for cover, one of them falling, but rising and dragging a wounded leg.

From the avidity of the flames it was plain that in five minutes a wall of fire would be beating against the temple; that the parasitic plants on the stonework would catch and the interior would follow. There was nothing to do but escape down the darkened side. Sliding back, he began to descend, but exposed himself for an instant and a shower of bullets cut the smoky air about him. A blaze shot up from the other side of the mound. They were trapped—completely, fully trapped!

"Señor!"

The voice came from close at hand as he touched the ground. It was not Juan speaking—Juan was kneeling behind the barricade.

"Señor!" said the voice again.

Haskell whirled. It came from the wall within ten feet of him. Slowly one of the big stones there turned as if on a nicely adjusted pivot, and in the narrow opening Haskell beheld the dim figure of a beardless old man of powerful frame.

A shower of sparks and burning fragments fell within the enclosure, lighting up the ancient carved walls and setting fire to the undergrowth in many places.

"Call your mozo and come quickly!" said the old man.

Juan had no need to be called. He had seen the seeming apparition and appeared to understand its exact meaning, for he came on a hobbling run, and, as the stranger stepped aside, was the first to dart into the opening in the masonry. Haskell handed the old man his carbine and, darting across the enclosure, caught up his bags and belongings and hurried back. The barricade was now on fire and the heat was so intense that it was a great relief to gain the cool shelter of the narrow passage in the wall. Once within, the old man followed him and closed the door of stone, taking care that it should rest in exact position and thus keep its own secret.

Feeling his way past the fugitives, their unknown rescuer took the lead in conducting them along a short level passage, then down a flight of steps. Haskell counted one hundred and sixty of these, with two turns to the right. He could touch both walls at all times. Now they appeared to have come to a small subterranean chamber and, asking Haskell to take hold of his bandero de stomacho, he began to feel his way across, apparently guiding himself by the jointures of the flagging under foot, which he followed with his bare toes. Haskell heard a sudden rush of water close at hand and was conscious that everything about him was dripping wet.

"May we stop?" he said, his engineering instincts getting the better of him. The old man came to a halt, and, lighting a match, Haskell held it above his head. The dim light disclosed the four walls of a square chamber and at one side was a hewn-stone tank from which came the sound of the water. Lighting another match, the American stepped to the side of it and looked in. The mystery of the Fountain of the Tiger was solved!

At one end of the tank was the entrance for a stream of water of at least a two-foot volume—doubtless one of the underground brooks. At the other end was the exit, with a thin slab of slate that slid up and down to open and close it. In the tank floated a sealed earthen vessel. As the tank filled it rose, and when it reached a certain height the lever to which it was tethered raised the slate slab and let out the water in the tank. At the same time the rising water bore up another float that was held in place by two upright guides. This float was large enough to carry a stone weighing at least two hundred pounds. When the water was let out the weight of the descending stone bore on a rude stone piston in a stone cylinder, and the water in the cylinder was driven up through a set of stone piles like tiles to the top of the mound.

Haskell stood dumfounded before this visible evidence of the mechanical ingenuity of the priests of a civilization so long dead that there even is no certain name that it may bear.

"Come, señor, there is no time to spare!" urged the old man, and Haskell turned reluctantly away.

Across the chamber was a low doorway and another passage that ran less than three hundred feet due east, when it suddenly narrowed, the roof lowered and, on hands and knees, they proceeded a short distance to emerge in the center of a thicket.

The light of the fire was very strong all about them, and now and then they could get glimpses of the besiegers behind them. Slowly and carefully they made their way from shadow to shadow until they came to an almost impenetrable growth among the trees. The old man took Juan's henequen knife and began to hew the vines, the small branches and the entwining parasites. Haskell marveled at the ease and certainty of stroke from every conceivable angle. Also, they were nearly noiseless, and though the three proceeded very slowly and the old man cut incessantly for an hour his arm seemed never to tire or his aim to waver.

The moon was up, and where it filtered through the branches the light was of great help as they drew away from the red glow of the conflagration. At last they broke into a sort of glade, and across this was an old path which made the way easier. Some time after midnight they came to another group of ruins in the forest, the shapeless remains of three large buildings not raised on mounds, and, seeking a shelter among the dilapidated walls, the old man commanded Juan to light a fire, sat down, and drew from his girdle a cigar of excellent appearance. Haskell had been waiting for him to speak or offer some explanation for his strange appearance at the critical moment, but as he did not seem to be inclined to communicativeness, the American asked:

"Will you accept my gratitude for your sorely needed help to-night, and will you tell me how it happened that you knew of our dilemma?"

"There are many of us who would never have left the haciendas had they continued to be Ortegas. My older brother is by birth a cacique, and when a daughter of the Ortegas comes to the forest, asking shelter from the cruelty of a Calderon and seeking help for her friends, no one among us would refuse her. I was sent to get you away through the passage of which only the caciques know, as they know of other things that the oppressors never have learned and never will learn."

"And it was Senorita Ortegas y Escalendon that sent you?"

"She has forfeited her life in causing this man's flight from the hacienda, and her uncle struck her and planned to beat her strung up in the patio when he returned, so she persuaded my nephew to run away from the hacienda and bring her to us."

A queer, softened feeling seemed to smother Haskell's heart and becloud his eyes.

"Are we on our way to where she is?"

"Why should you ask us to show to a stranger the retreats which are our only hope of life until the time when we are strong enough to rise and drive the oppressors from our lands?"

Haskell saw the force of the argument and was silent a moment.

"But the señorita?—she can not go back. What is to become of her?"

"She is welcome to our poor houses in the forest as long as she lives."

A sudden resolution possessed the American, but he did not speak of it. Instead, he asked: "Where are we going now?"

"We shall rest till daylight and then I will lead you to the coast and to a village I know of there. A fisherman with a boat can take you to Cozumel and you can go home to your own country and not come back to steal our forests. We will kill you and all you bring with you if you do!"

Haskell stared hard at the stern features illuminated by the glow of the twig fire. The snores of Juan, already asleep, forgetful of the day's danger and bloodshed, were the only sounds for a minute.

"I am not a thief, amigo. The men who sent me are not thieves. We pay the rightful owners their own price for what we take, or we do not take it. We have paid Calderon y Ortegas much money and will pay very much more."

The old man seemed about to speak, but checked himself and, after gazing at the fire a moment, sadly said:

"The words of Nuñez Paola have been spoken. They are true and shall stand!"

Then he bowed himself by the fire, drawing one arm under him across his abdomen, and was soon asleep.

CHAPTER VII
TWO AMERICANS SHAKE HANDS

AT DAYBREAK the trio was astir and, though weak from lack of food, pushed on through the dense growth. When he was not watching the marvelous woodcraft of the old man in places that seemed impassable, Haskell was studying the trees about him—mahogany, dyewood, the several hard gum-bearing trees, the tropical cousins of the oak and the beech—hundreds of millions of feet of lumber, millions of dollars' worth of wealth.

At last, toward noon, the way before them began to lighten, and they emerged at the edge of the tract which the American had seen from the tree the day before. It was a dried salt marsh with a most peculiar consistency of soil, the very material that under former conditions would have been turned into bituminous coal. It was free from creeping vines but rich in timber, especially in mahogany and dyewood. Around the edge was a path that was traveled with some frequency apparently, and in the middle of the afternoon they came within sound of the sea.

Passing over a hummock of rotten trap at one point, Haskell used the elevation to survey the marsh, and he saw what was the occasion for its peculiar nature. It was lower than the mean sea-level, and in the rainy season would turn into a fresh lake which would force a channel through the sand ridge that separated it from the sea. The tide, invading the marsh, would make it salt until such time as the wind and waves would pack the channel with sand and debris in the beginning of the dry season, and the sun would dry up the enclosure for the six months to follow. When he had determined this he begged for a halt, and, taking an observation, figured out the position and compared it with his maps. This thirty square miles of sublevel timber land was part of his huge task. He felt his heart tighten within him.

When they reached the beach their guide turned northward, and after about two miles of tramping over the dunes they came to a cove in which an Indian fishing village nestled, embowered in palms and plantains. Within the bar rode a half-dozen fishingboats, of the size in which the daring natives go to sea hundreds of miles. As they neared the hamlet they were descried by a swarm of naked children who ran like young partridges. Haskell was deeply absorbed in some new plans and left Juan and Nunez Paola to make all arrangements with the villagers who gathered to see the strangers. He came to with a start just as they were entering the wattle-work hut that was to shelter them.

"Haskell! For heaven's sake! Haskell!"

On a rude settee reclined the figure of a pale, fever-burnt young man, his neglected beard and matted hair giving his face the look of one insane. The engineer turned and stood staring at the unknown under the coiba before the door.

"I don't expect you to know me, old chap. I'm Jack Peters!"

In an instant Haskell was grasping the thin extended hand.

"Honestly I feel as if I were talking to a dead man! Great guns, boy! how did you get here? What does this mean?"

Then Jack told him the story of which he already had glimmerings. He had reached the hacienda only three days before Haskell, having come by a different route, and when he told Don Felipe his mission, the haciendado had laughed and refused to credit him. Jack had shown him the papers which the brother had signed in New York and Don Felipe had gone into a terrific rage. He declared that his brother had had no right to dispose of the timber-rights—that they were the joint property of the whole family. Peters, however, was in possession of the search papers obtained from Merida, which showed that the brother was the sole trustee of the estate and the bargain legal.

Don Felipe then said that none of the interested parties would ever live to see it executed, and the following morning had inveigled the youth on the ride of which Haskell had heard, had shot him through and left him for dead in the forest. All he remembered was being borne on the shoulders of Indian bearers. He came to consciousness in the hamlet, under the care of an herb-doctor and was getting well.

When Jack had heard Haskell's story to the end he sat looking at the little red case which Haskell had given him and, after a moment's silence, put out his hand.

"Haskell, will you shake on our getting that fellow?"

"I'm with you and we will get him good!" said the engineer, gripping the thin palm. "But I tell you, boy, I feel there is something more behind all this than a mere quarrel between brothers over a trustee's rights."

"Señor," said a grave voice behind them, "your words are the words of the wise in some things, but of the foolish in others. Take warning and return to your own country."

It was Nuñez Paola. There was a serious gentleness in his tone that gave his utterance unusual importance.

"I—I did not know you understood English!" exclaimed Haskell.

The old man shrugged his shoulders as he turned away and said: "I was General Hernando Ortegas' body-servant at Oxford, fifty years ago—and I wrote his lessons for him."

Silently they watched him as he strode away.

"Say, Haskell," said the convalescent in a lowered tone, "we think we are a smart people up home, but I will bet that a lot of these old Mayas could give us cards and spades!"

WHEN Haskell awoke the next morning after restful slumber and attacked the steaming breakfast Juan placed before him, he missed the old Maya and asked for him. Juan shook his head:

"He struck inland at daybreak, some cakes inside his jacket, and he bade me say to you, senor, that you are commanded finally to take the young senor and go back to your own country and come here no more."

The little withered man nearly dropped the leaf on which he was serving the fried plantains when Haskell made his comment, but in a moment the big American laughed, ate his breakfast and, lighting a cigar, said:

"Juan, go out and tell every able-bodied man you see that I want him to work for me, and I will give him five dollars silver a day for a month."

"Oh, señor, señor, ask me not this thing! They will lash me for lying to them!"

" Why, hang it! I mean it. Go do as I tell you. Also, if you will stay with me, that is your wage-rate from this time on, but let me tell you there is going to be more work and fewer fiestas in this corner of the republic than there has ever been before!"

In ten minutes' time there was a wildly excited mob of a hundred men before the hut, and in the background were the women and children. Haskell, with Jack leaning on his arm, walked out under the coiba and told them what he wanted. He picked out twenty men who could handle axes and sent them into the forest to cut young trees for piles. He picked out eight men who were boat-builders and set them to constructing four ten-foot barges. Half of the others were to get the piles out of the woods to the beach, and the other half were detailed as shovelers, with the exception of two men who understood carpentry and masonry. These he held for further orders.

In an hour's time the ordered work was under way and he was showing the carpenters how to build a pile-driver, using a block of granite for the hammer, with guiding grooves chiseled in the sides and a big drum windlass on which to draw it up. Not being ready to use the shovelers yet, he led them down the beach to the point where the three had come to tide-water the day before, and set them to building a working camp. That evening he wrote a long cablegram to the firm and at dawn one of the boats put to sea to carry it to Cozumel.

CHAPTER VIII
WAR AND ENGINEERING

ONE week later Jack Peters was strong enough to transfer himself down to the working camp, and there he found a work under way that made him yell and whoop. Beginning at low-water mark a double line of piles was being driven inland entirely across the beach ridge that barricaded the sea from the dried marsh. The rows were twenty feet apart. In the firmest part of the ridge the masons and carpenters were building a wooden sluice-gate, set in stone blocks. Its lowest level was low-water mark. The shovelers were at work taking out the sand on the landward side of the. gate, as they had taken out all but a small part on the seaward side, to a level three feet below high-water mark.

"Do you mean you are really going to try to do a thing like that, Haskell?"

"Wait just half an hour and see. The tide is coming up now." And he left the enthusiastic youngster to marshal more men on the landward work. Peters watched the tide creep up to near the three-foot sublevel and then he saw Haskell coming back, taking a shovel from a workman as he came.

"Open the gates and lash them!" cried the engineer, and he watched the water narrowly as the gates were made ready. Then, wading in at the edge of the water, he threw a narrow channel through the slender sand barrier and saw the first rush of the sea-water through the canal, which was still two-thirds choked with sand. Steadily the speed and volume of the rivulet grew as the tide increased. One foot wide, two feet wide, four feet wide—more and more the sea-water, rushing inland, dug down and sideways into the sand, and a yellow, sand-laden, boiling flood tumbled into the nearest reaches of the marsh, spreading the sand ripped out from between the piling over a wide area.

Then at last the tide was at maximum and began to ebb. In half an hour the water that had flowed in with a mad rush came out with decreased volume, and by the middle of the afternoon the canal stood revealed, two rows of glistening piling with every grain of sand and soil washed out down to low-water level. Now Haskell ordered the gates closed and all cracks sealed for the time being. Inland the floor of the marsh, as far as could be seen, was covered with a coating of wet sand that would not interfere with the lumbering in the least when dried, but would make a far cleaner and better foundation than the salt peat of the bog. When he understood the whole thing, the younger man clapped an arm around the elder and said:

"How I would like to see Uncle John watching this! He would have four joy-spasms a minute. It is great, Haskell, it is great!"

"He is wondering just about now what I want with twenty saws to work from barges, twenty donkey-engines to run them, three tow-boats and everything needed to get the lumber in the water, trim the logs, get them through the canal and tow them in rafts to steamer-side to be heaved inboard."

"Didn't you explain how you were going to do it?"

"No. John Peters doesn't want explanations before or after."

"Great guns, Haskell, that must mean a forty per cent, saving, F.O.B.!"

"Nearer sixty, Jack!"

"On thirty miles—let me see—" his voice trailed off to a murmured following of his mental calculation, till suddenly he clutched Haskell by the arm and said almost aghast, "Why, man alive, that means thirty million dollars!"

"About forty million, lad, when we figure the saving in getting out the timber farther inland by dredging a five-foot canal on from the inland water-mark. But we are not through yet, lad. I thought it wise to put an order for one hundred rifles, with three hundred rounds each, in the requisition, and I am sorry, from something I saw last night, that I did not order them shipped by special steamer from Kingston."

"You saw something last night?"

"Yes, some time about midnight Juan waked me and I ran to the window just in time to see two men drop into the dry side of the canal, after inspecting the gate, and sneak off inland."

"Two white men?"

"No, two Mayas, and both were armed—rifle, pistol and knife."

Peters whistled significantly and then asked: "Well, what are you going to do about it?"

"Just this. I am going to leave you in camp to-morrow, and I want you to trench both sides of the ridge to defend the gate, and to start a timber stockade north side of the camp—timbers that wall stop high-velocity, subcaliber bullets. Have the masons build a tank that will hold a thousand gallons of water and put it under cover; then dig a cellar in the sand, lined with masonry, that will hold three or four boatloads of provisions. I am going upshore for provisions, all the arms in the village and all the fresh water I can float back."

"Why don't you send a messenger to telegraph the Governor, if there is going to be any trouble?"

"It would take ten days to get a detachment of regionales here, and I would rather have twenty of these fishermen than five hundred of those poor convicts, half-dead from fever and homesickness. Also, if it is Don Felipe that is threatening us, his cousin is the Governor. If it is the Mayas from the woods—well, the Government never has been able to get the best of them and I believe I would rather handle the situation myself."

IT WAS late the next afternoon when Haskell had his boats loaded and the sun was creeping down in the west. The dozen men he had taken with him were waiting at the water's edge to put off and, as he stood talking to the aged headman of the village, he called out to the boats to proceed, with the exception of the lighter and swifter one.

The sound of horses' hoofs at the rear of the village! A party of horsemen riding through the gardens scattering the chickens and children!

"Don Felipe! The mercy of heaven!" cried the old man.

Haskell threw his hand to his hip. His gun was in the boat! They had not seen him yet. He stepped within the doorway, saying:

"Lie for me, father, till I can get to the boat!"

"Oya, you old beggar!" cried Calderon y Ortegas, riding up and taking a playful slash at the patriarch of the village with a freshly cut withe. "How does it happen that the vultures have not got you yet? Where are the boys?"

"All are working down the shore with the Señor Haskell, Don Felipe."

"Where are those boats going?"

"They are taking my children food and water, Don Felipe."

"Call them back, before I brain you!"

The old man pretended to call in his cracked voice, but it was too feeble to carry to the beach, so Don Felipe roared his own mandates. The two were already beyond the reach of his voice, and the men in the third that waited for Haskell showed signs of fear and gave no indication of putting out. The haciendado cursed and threatened dire vengeance, stopping only to ask:

" Is there a girl here, or down there with this——American?"

"No, Don Felipe. I have seen no women this year but my own children."

"I hear they are cutting down my timber and are digging in my land. What is he trying to do?"

"I do not know, Don Felipe, but he is building things on the sands by the water."

"I shall go down to see."

Evidently the two spies were not Don Felipe's men, thought Haskell.

"The Senor Peters says they will soon have ships here loading timber."

"Senor Peters! Do I hear your words? A lad of little more than twenty?"

"The same, Don Felipe. He came to my house wounded and grew well here."

The haciendado ground his teeth in his rage and, turning to his elder son, said:

"Now, do you see what we must do, and do at once?"

Plainly he feared that, his attempt to kill young Peters having been open and indefensible, if Peters or Haskell were left alive long enough to get in touch with the American consul at Merida, the Governor would be forced to act. Peering through the wattle-work, Haskell could see the son nodding his head in acquiescence.

"It seems that we rode over none too soon. Now bring us the best you have, you old dog, for we are hungry, and then we will go down where these gringo scoundrels are playing in my sand!"

The party dismounted and Haskell counted them quickly—Don Felipe, the son and four mozos. The mozos had no firearms, and the two white men left their carbines slung in rurale fashion on their horses. The son carried his heavy pistol in a saddle holster, and Don Felipe had his holster flap buttoned over the pistol at his belt. One of the mozos led the horses under a tree and stood them with their heads together, untethered. The old man, seeing they were about to enter the house, and knowing that there was no hiding-place within for Haskell, was trying to divert them by asking Don Felipe to choose his fowls from those about.

Haskell determined on a desperate course of action. Don Felipe was within three feet of the doorway with his back turned. Stepping quickly to his side, Haskell snatched both holster and pistol from his belt and, as the bulky haciendado wheeled to face the attack, drove his fist with terrific force squarely in the center of the repulsive face, hurling him back on the son so that both staggered into the midst of the mozos. Don Felipe slipped to the ground, bathed in blood.

Trying to get out the pistol as he ran, Haskell made for the nearest horse, the mozos now close on his heels, and, through surprise, he had gained enough lead to leap into the saddle, strike the other horses right and left and send them stampeding. He galloped through the village, shouting to the third boat to put away and make haste to the camp.

Relieved from the fear of Don Felipe's carbine, the men pulled away with a will, and Haskell turned to note the stage of the pursuit. One of the mozos was ahorse and another was coming on with speed afoot. Drawing the carbine and making sure of the charge, he checked his horse and fired once—twice—thrice. The first shot stopped the runner in a pile in the dust. At the third the mounted mozo reeled in the saddle and the American rode on.

He could not go down the beach to the camp. He could only follow the road toward the hacienda until he found a good spot to enter for a detour that would bring him out on the northern edge of the dried marsh, which he could follow back to camp.

CHAPTER IX
A PRISONER

IT WAS very nearly dark when he reached the path he had followed with Juan and Nunez Paola the previous month, and as he turned toward the sea he moved with care. Twice the horse shied and Haskell thought he saw dim blurs of white off among the trees. Once he drew rein and thought of tethering his horse and proceeding on foot on account of the sound of the horse's hoofs, but, laughing at himself for fearing any enemy in this quarter, he started to ride on. From out the growth on every hand appeared a dozen white shapes, two steel rifle-barrels were thrust in his face and strong hands were laid on his horse's bits! Haskell laughed bitterly.

"Good evening, amigos. What does this mean?" he asked.

"Buenas tardes, Señor Haskell," said a familiar voice. "We were told not to shoot you, but you are riding one of Don Felipe's horses, and in the dark many things might happen."

The speaker felt carefully as he spoke for arms other than the pistol and carbine and then turned the horse in the trail.

"Who are you?" cried Haskell. "Why do you hold me up this way if you are enemies of Don Felipe? I have just escaped from him in the village. He nearly got me. Where are you taking me?"

"The fool seeks information of the ignorant, senor; the wise man takes counsel with his own eyes and ears."

The triteness of the proverb struck an odd note. It precipitated Haskell's own philosophical resignation to this new and astounding development and he drew out a cigar, lighted it and in silence allowed himself to be led inland without further protest. For a half-hour they marched with surprisingly little noise, and then encountered another body of men, at least twenty in number, moving in the opposite direction and apparently well armed. A signal word was exchanged and the two parties passed.

Another hour of silence, then the man leading the horse turned aside by a certain white, barkless tree, and after a few minutes difficult passage through the dense growth, two men parting the way before the horse, they came into an open space and Haskell smelled fresh wood-smoke but could see no fire. There was also the sound of running water, but there was no stream nor a depressed channel for one.

The man in advance sounded the peculiar note of the canillan bird twice, and it seemed to be answered from directly below them. A flaming torch appeared, almost under their feet. A naked Maya boy carried it, and Haskell saw they were on the edge of a great hole forty feet deep and at least one hundred across. The boy had stepped forth from a sort of cave at the bottom. By the light of the torch the horse was led down a winding trail from shelf to shelf of the sides and when the lower level was reached, Haskell was asked to dismount and saw the horse led away to a second hole in the earth.

"Enter, señor," said the familiar voice, and now by the light of the torch the engineer saw that the leader of his captors was 'Nacion from the hacienda. His heart sank within until he noted that the other men were of a far wilder type than the mozos of the hacienda.

Haskell stepped into the cave and saw that it was a water-worn causeway into the earth.

"You can not pass out this door," said 'Nacion, pointing to the two men who guarded it. Haskell made the mental reservation that he certainly would do so the first opportunity that was half-way healthful. The old channel turned and a strong blast of wood-smoke struck him just as a great sight was revealed.

Before him opened a huge oblong enclosure more than three hundred feet in its greatest dimension, the roof of limestone supported in many places by natural pillars of rock, and in the light of the fires that glowed here and there moved hundreds of men, women, children and dogs. Close at hand was a chasm, and at the bottom roared the underground river. Plainly this had once been its channel on this level, but it had broken through to a new one some fifty feet lower, leaving an ideal place of concealment for such a band as this—a band of the wild Mayas of the forest and their runaway peon recruits. Most of them had only rudimentary clothes and no weapons but the crooked henequen knives and the straight woodman's machetes, and all of these seemed worn.

Cries heralded the arrival of the party, and there was a rush from all sides; a wall of gleaming bronze bodies, serried rows of curious dark eyes, formed on either hand in a twinkling and Haskell found himself noting the difference between this reception and that which would have been accorded in the village of American blanket Indians.

On the far side of the big chamber some matted vines and cloths had been combined to make screened chambers and to one of these the engineer was conducted, to find himself in the presence of an old but erect and virile man sitting on a tiger-skin, a flat earthen dish of fat by his side with a lighted wick thrust in it. He was smoking a thick black cheroot and removed it to bow gravely as Haskell entered and his captors retired.

"I am Nuñez José, Señor Haskell, chief of the Itzchen-Maya. I grieve to see you here. My brother was sent to save you from one of our oppressors and lead you to the sea, that you might leave our country, where you have no right. You were told to go, and told that you could not despoil our forest, our last retreat, and yet you would not be warned. Now we must deal with you—not to punish you, for we have no right to do so, but to protect ourselves against you and all men from your country.

"You are a prisoner and you can not escape. Because of the bravery you have shown, because of the good heart you have shown to our people, you are to be a prisoner until we leave this spot, and then you must die. We can not let you go free. We can not be burdened with guarding you. You have brought this on your own head, for you were fully warned. These are the words of a chief. You will go now, and food will be given you."

While the old man had been speaking, calmly and without feeling, Haskell had thought of a number of things to say, but when he heard his sentence and saw the logic of it from the tribe's point of view he realized that it would be hopeless to enter into any argument or to make any appeal. The chances were a thousand to one against him, but he must take his respite to find that one chance and, with the words of dismissal, he bowed gravely and turned to leave the chamber almost as if in a dream, the whole situation seemed so unreal.

The curious crowd without had turned away to its own pursuits, it being the time of the preparation of the evening meal, and Haskell stopped to note a woman rolling some beans in a shallow stone mortar with a stone pestle the size of a large grapefruit.

"Señor," said 'Nacion's voice, "it is prayed that you follow me."

Threading their way among the merry family groups, the two passed, leaving the illuminated portion of the enclosure behind, until Haskell saw before him against the farther wall more of the screening mats and cloths.

Lifting aside the green curtain of one more or less isolated, the mozo bowed in the engineer. In an earthen vessel used as a brazier glowed fresh coals, and on a flat stone at one side were some fresh cakes, the odor of which came pleasantly to his nostrils. Beside them lay some dried meat, and near by a leaf laden with fruit and a cool dripping olla. Carelessly Haskell noted that at one side was a rude pallet of boughs and twigs woven so as to make an excellent bed, and over it was thrown what seemed a scrape in soft colors.

Encarnacion stood to attend him and, thrusting aside all thoughts of the evil lines in which he had fallen, he ate heartily. Almost completed was his meal when a gleam of something among the twigs of the narrow pallet caught his eye and, reaching over, he drew it forth—a little coral and silver beaded rosary with a medallion engraved with "Emalia Rosanna Ortegas y Escalendon."

The rosary she had worn as she rode to his help!

"'Nacion," he said breathlessly, "is this the Senorita Emalia's chamber?"

"It is now for you, señor."

"And she?"

"The señorita will be with my sister."

On the cake in his hands he now saw the unmistakable print of her little fingers! It seemed that the mouthful he had been about to swallow would choke him, and sudden, surprising hot tears sprang to his eyes. He bent his head lest the mozo should see.

"Will you bring her, 'Nacion?" he said huskily, and when the Indian had gone, he stared at the coals, while between them and his eyes rose the vision of a queenly, haughty slip of a girl poised proudly on the steps of the ancient hacienda stair, the stair at the portal of her ancestral home.

A rustle of the vines!

Springing to his feet he faced her and noted, beyond her, the sister of 'Nacion standing with crossed hands and dropped eyes as becomes the duenna. The two approached, his eyes bent intently on her face in which the color rose and fled in quick alternation, her eyes wavering away but coming back constantly to his as if compelled, while her fingers tugged childishly at the seams of the sides of her native riding-garb. More than two arms' length apart they paused, and there was a little silence.

CHAPTER X
LOVE AND A PLEA FOR LIFE

"SENORITA, it is strange that we meet here, but it is the blessing of heaven that I see you again at all. It is not enough that I twice owe you my life; that you have suffered cruelly at the hands of your own flesh and blood to save a stranger; that you have even cut yourself off from your home and come to a life among savages? Is all that not enough, that you should seek to thrust on me your poor little comforts, and—and with your own hands do for me what there was no one else to do?"

"And you are angry, señor?" she quavered, the hurt tears in her eyes.

"Angry! No, you beloved child, no!—only my heart melted within me. You were angry with me. Do you remember? I could not help loving you at once, angry as you were, and now——-"

She had pressed her hands palm to palm on her breast. A look of amazed, half-incredulous rapture stole over her face at his words, and a slow smile of incomparable sweetness dwelt on her parted lips.

He faltered and moved toward her, his hands outstretched, eager inquiry and the adoration of a strong man blended in his face.

"Why—why, little Emalia, did you do this for me?"

She yielded herself into his arms with a little sigh that caught in her throat almost like a sob, and presently she answered:

"Because I, too, have loved you since I first saw you, and it was sweeter than anything I have ever done in my whole life to work for you!"

IN A LITTLE while some flash of remembrance of conventions cut into the dream of her love, and she drew away from him shamefacedly, glancing at the patient figure by the door, then she laughed merrily.

"I forgot that I had no one to reprove me but myself. Now I am yours and I may love you as much as I can love, and it is all without wrong or your reproof—is it not wholly good?"

The sweet phrases made his heart thrill. "It is—it is wholly good!" he answered with reverent earnestness.

In the light of fresh twigs placed on the brazier they sat and talked of the present situation. He took counsel with her as the American does with his wife and true love, and she was amazed and proud beyond utterance, but when the whole matter had been reviewed she said:

"You should have gone when I told you. You should have gone when 'Nacion told you. You should have obeyed Nuñez Paola. Your compania has no right to take these trees, and I am sure of it, because I know that whoever gave them to my father, my grandfather and his father had no right to do so. They belong to the Itzchen-Maya."

"This forest was your father's. How did it come into the hands of the Calderon y Ortegas?"

"I do not know. My uncles told me that it did—that is all I know. But it was not right. It belongs to these people here in this cenote. There is no way for you or no help for you, beloved; you must die. They will soon move on—and I will die with you!"

She smiled as if glad that she might. Haskell shuddered and thought desperately.

"You say that they will move on? Where are they going?" he asked.

"They will soon be insurrecto again," she answered almost blithely. "Twice since the great war they have risen, and each time they were beaten because they did not have enough arms. But now all Yucatan is with them except a few rich haciendados, and when the Mexicans are driven out Yucatan will be free again. All good Yucatecos admire the Mayas, but they are not so brave as the men of the forest or they would give them the money for arms. They have surrounded your camp to drive you out, take you and Senor Peters captive and kill you because you are going to take the forests, and then they will march on Valladolid, killing the Maya-hating haciendados and taking their arms and horses, but not harming the haciendas of the others. They will wipe out Calderon y Ortegas first of all."

A great light broke on Haskell. Fear of provoking the Mayas was what had caused the cunning Don Felipe, who knew the imminence of a rising, to repudiate his brother's contract and to discourage the syndicate, as he imagined, by doing away with its agents, as fast as they came, in such a way that the murders could not be laid at his door but would be blamed on the Mayas. Rising with sudden resolve, he gathered the girl once more in his arms and said:

"You must remain here. I am going to talk of this thing to Nunez Jose, and perhaps—well, when I come back we shall talk more."

All but a few of the Mayas were asleep and, studying them with interest' as he picked his way among them, Haskell reached the chamber in which he had confronted Nunez Jose, and encountered the old chief sitting before the door. Hardly had the American begun to state his extraordinary mission before the chief raised his hand, stopped him and sent two boys scurrying to summon his brother Nuñez Paola and all the elders of the tribe not away stirring up the Mayas on the plantations.

It was an hour, perhaps, before all were assembled in the chamber, seated on the ground around the grease-lamp. Haskell cast his eyes around the circle, and with admiration noted the fine features of many, the size and intelligence of their eyes, and the wisdom written on their brows. What a race their forefathers must have been in their heyday! At last Nuñez José commanded him to speak, saying:

"Son of strangers, speak to the fathers of my children; tell the poor remnant of the family of the Great Serpent the thoughts of thy white man's mind and the wishes of a heart that we know to be brave and strong."

There is a certain sort of training which encourages the man trained to use a map or to draw as he speaks or thinks, and following this impulse Haskell stepped to a smooth spot on the white limestone wall and with a piece of rotten yellow stone began to draw. While they watched they saw him create an accurate outline of "The Hook" of the North American continent, marking in the wilderness and dotting in the towns in the developed and cultivated region. The only words spoken while he worked were little exclamations of comment.

When it was complete, he turned and spoke to them, clearly pointing out their location, showing how they were cut off naturally, leading on to the conclusion that by the designs of nature the peninsula and the lands east of the mountains were a region unto themselves—the natural heritage of the Maya people. At this there was approval from every side. He passed to the natural wealth of this region and showed how its greatest wealth, the hardwoods and the chicle of the forest, could be drawn on forever by careful use, if the users did not destroy the forest.

He then entered into the question of territorial rights, of the oppression of the Mexicans and the pro-Mexican haciendados, and of the fate of the Maya people if they continued to allow themselves to be forced back into the forest or if they submitted to the peonage system and became absorbed in the great body of Mexican economic serfs. Then he spoke of the Aztecs, the Toltecs, the Tehuantepecs, now crushed forever, and of the Yaquis' brave fight for three hundred years. The thing to do, however, was not to fight the Mexican and his civilization, but to return all Mayas to the plane of civilization which they once enjoyed and to make the peninsula a Maya land once more. Guerrilla warfare would not do this; ravage and pillage would lead to no good ends. There was great wealth in the forest and in the uncleared lands that would grow henequen to raise the whole Maya people to eminence—if Yucatan were all Maya.

"I came to your country believing that I had a right to take these trees, that right having come through Calderon y Ortegas, and the right is one which the Government would enforce with its troops against Don Felipe and against you. But have I sent for troops to come to fight you? On the other hand, do you not see that if you take my life the Government must take extreme measures, or my own more powerful country will do so? Must I explain to you that the men who sent me may not learn the rights and wrongs of things as I have learned them?

"Listen to my plan. You are not averse to toil, if you are well paid. I will provide labor and pay for every Maya man who will have it. We will work together and from the profits a share shall go to the chiefs of the Mayas that will soon make a fund that will allow the Mayas to come again to their own. There is wealth enough for me to keep faith at the same time with Calderon y Ortegas. In a few days my ships will arrive off the coast. Even now the first may be there, and they will have aboard the arms which you need to carry out your plans of driving back the haciendados who have encroached on your lands without rights. Those arms you may have, but if you kill me you can not get them. With all this in mind, I ask you: Will you delay your revolution till you are fitted for it—perhaps many years from this time? Will you confine your insurrection to the punishment of haciendados who deserve it? Will you work with me in getting out the wealth of these trees without destroying your forest? Will you enrich yourselves, and will you spare my life?"

There was no question but that the gathering was greatly impressed. There was an uncertain silence and then Nunez Jose signed to Haskell that he had better withdraw while they deliberated. Just before the engineer reached the door, a middle-aged man whose face bore a strong resemblance to that of Cromwell said:

"We have heard the words of a white man, of a stranger, one who is not any part of us and has no interest in this land except to despoil it—will he tell us why we should trust him, what sympathy he has with this land?"

Haskell turned in the doorway:

"Fathers of the Itzchen-Maya, as soon as I may, I shall wed the Senorita Ortegas y Escalendon!"

A look of surprise, one of pleasure, apparently, passed around the circle, and Haskell stepped out. He had been pacing up and down before the door but a few minutes when he was summoned within.

"My son," said Nuñez José, "return tonight to your camp by the sea. To-morrow messengers will start to our people in the west and we will await the fulfilment of your promises. Encarnacion and ten men will go outside and remain with you till you can give us such arms as you do not need."

It seemed to Haskell that a sudden load had been lifted from his heart, and when he left the place and crossed to the chamber where he had left Emalia he repressed a boyish desire to run.

She was sitting by the brazier, her wealth of hair about her shoulders, and she was just beginning to braid it. The vessels in which the meal had been cooked and served were cleaned and set in a neat row, and there was such a little air of domestication about the almost bare room that he marveled till he saw that it was the visible expression of the spirit that pervaded her.

Brightly as she smiled at the sight of him, there was anxious inquiry in her eyes which his very manner answered as he caught her to him, and when he told her the outcome of the conference she merely pressed her face close to him and said:

"Almost would I rather that you were to remain here and die than that you were to leave me!"

IN KEEPING with the other new emotions that had come to him, Haskell was surprised to feel the great tug at his heart-strings when he said good-by to her. It was not to be for long—only till he could have a fit abode erected for them, and until a boat could be sent to Cozumel for a priest.

She went with him to the entrance of the cenote and watched as far as she could see, and Haskell called back to her that he would soon return, little knowing of all that must intervene.

CHAPTER XI
THE SIEGE

THE moon was up. and riding was not difficult. About an hour before dawn they were within the sound of the sea, after having passed two bodies of the Mayas making their way back to the cenote. Suddenly, from the locality of the camp, a dozen quick shots sounded, one or two wild yells and then silence. With, a word to 'Nacion, Haskell put spurs to his horse and the entire party dashed ahead at reckless speed.

When they came into the open, firing broke out again from the ridge to the north of the camp, and bullets whistled around them. One of the men gave a cry and his bridle-arm fell limp. The fire was returned from the camp and, to be sure that the men there did not mistake his arrival for an attack, Haskell began calling to Peters and Juan, galloping madly ahead as he did so. Soon they were under shelter among the buildings and saw about them in the moonlight a half dozen men crouched under cover at points of vantage armed with a variety of nondescript weapons. Haskell noted one horse-pistol of the period of Maximilian.

"By George, Haskell!" cried Peters, springing up from behind a log. "Where did you come from? I thought you were done for, sure!"

Briefly Haskell told him what had happened. He spoke in Spanish so that the men might hear.

"Well, we have been having a ——— of a time here. Old Bluebeard did not come around from that punch you gave him till about midnight, I suppose, but they had sent at once to the hacienda and to two others up the coast for reenforcements, and they are just starting in to clean us out, with the first arrivals, I suppose. We are using all the arms we have, and I kept two men to every weapon, telling the others to sneak back to the village, as they would be no good as targets here, and if they were in the village as neutrals and vowed they were unfriendly to us, Don Felipe might not burn their houses or hurt their women and children. The scheme must have worked, for Juan, who sneaked in with them and then back with the news I have told you, says that the hacienda people did not molest them. I believe we are going to have a regular devil-party as soon as it gets daylight."

"I wish I had had sense enough to foresee this before I left the Mayas," was Haskell's comment as he turned away to inspect the defenses. "To think of this going on here and me letting forty armed men pass me, bound inland, five miles away!"

There had not been time to get the food and water properly stowed and two of the big water-jars were shattered and another pair were pierced with bullets. By the time dawn had begun to show, Haskell was sure of the plan of his defense, and three of the men who had come with him were in the growth at the foot of the ridge with the useless horses, ready to ride back to the cenote as soon as the moon passed under a cloudbank rising in the south. Now the moment was come and, with a faint rustle of the undergrowth and a noise of hoofs that seemed to Haskell far louder than it should have been, they were off.

They had reached the point from which Haskell first saw the sea, when a sheet of flame burst out of the piles of trap-rock. Don Felipe's forces had been sufficiently augmented for him to throw a line completely around the camp! Down went two of the riderless horses and in a moment the cavalcade had wheeled and come careering back. When half way one of the men reeled in the saddle and fell into a bush, where he lay like a rag spread out to dry. The loose horses were running free over the upland and the marsh. The two Mayas bent low and, riding hard, made for the camp, covered by the fire of Haskell's men. One went down with his horse on top of him and the other fell into Encarnacion's arms. The man in the bush was struggling to rise, but fell back.

The engineer, throwing down his carbine and ripping off his pistol, and belt, leaped over the low defenses and, running bent and zigzagging, reached the bush, lifted the man out and came staggering in with him, while from right and left on the ridge and from the posts inland at least fifty rifles and pistols crackled merrily. When he was safe inside with his burden the Mayas sent up a wild yell of pride and exultation, and there was an answer from the line of the enemy, three round cheers and a "Viva Haskell!"

"Maybe they don't know a good thing when they see it!" said Peters, refilling his magazine.

"But I would rather they had yelled loud enough to reach the ears of Nunez Jose!" panted Haskell. "It is getting too bright for any man to try to get through on foot, Jack, and there must be a hundred of them out there. We have eighteen men, seven rifles and nine pistols. And will you look up there!"

In the first light two sailboats could be seen coming down the coast, the reflected flash of arms showing among the scores of men that crowded them.

"But see here, Haskell, suppose they do kill us off; you know there is such a thing as law in this country after all. This will make a big muss."

"No, Jack, I have learned that Yucateco haciendados stand by each other. All that Don Felipe will have to prove is that I assaulted him, disarmed him and nearly killed him and then that I and my men resisted arrest from an entrenched camp. The American State Department is accustomed to swallowing tales like that. If we were British subjects there would have been a gunboat flying the flag of St. George in the offing this very minute."

"Well, what are we going to do about it?"

"Fight!"

All day long under the burning sun the little band, keeping close under cover, fired at every movement of the enemy in the bush, and every time a rifle spoke after a half-hour's stillness a veritable shower of bullets would hurtle over the camp, spat against the defenses and throw up little spurts of sand about. Only three found human targets. One of the men from the village had a wound in the shoulder; Jack Peters had the back of his left hand seared, and once, when the Maya who had ridden back wounded raised from his couch in his delirium, a bullet, coming through the wattle-work, had struck him fairly and he fell back, his suffering at an end.

In the early part of the day it was plain that the attacking party was interested in perfecting the investiture, but when they attempted to advance they were driven off the bare ridge to the north and south, and gradually the main body massed in the thick cover to landward, the low bushes of the dried marsh affording excellent cover.

Utilizing the first darkness, two swimmers struck out from camp and, assembling driftwood up the beach, simultaneously started two chains of fire and then swam back safely. This was in accordance with a plan of Haskell's. About two hours after sunset he saw that what he had foreseen was coming to pass. The increasing fire from the landward, though it was doing no harm, signified an added activity there and an effort to cover some movement.

"Direct all your fire to the right!" was his order.

"Gee!" responded Jack Peters insubordinately. " Are you going to lei those fellows down there do as they please?"

"Wait and see, Jack, wait and see," replied Haskell.

A little after midnight there were whistles and signal-calls from the bush, then some shouted orders, and with wild yells the mass of the enemy now assembled in the marsh broke into the open, dashing forward for a grand assault.

Here they come!" cried Peters with a green. "I guess it's good-by, old man!"

He was pumping away with his carbine, and suddenly stopped short at the sight of Haskell dashing to the sluice-gate and throwing his weight against the levers. The tide was nearly at its full height and with a roar the water poured in on the very ground over which the attack was advancing—great yellow overwhelming waves.

There were wild shouts of triumph and derision from the defenders, cries of fear from the hacienda men. Those in the rear had time to withdraw, but the van was caught among the bushes, and their own confusion militated against their escape. It was not likely that there would be much loss of life, save among those who could not swim, but their arms went down out of sight in the water. By the light of the fires men could be seen struggling in the yellow swirl in the undergrowth, and the two Americans forebore to fire on them in their helplessness.

Suddenly little old withered Juan gave a shriek of joy. He had descried something the others had not seen—a bearded man tangled in some vines, with the water rising about him. Into the water up to his armpits went the little man, breasting his way toward the struggler, shouting as he went:

"Your cripple is coming, Don Felipe! Your cripple is coming, Don Felipe!"

Don Felipe heard and struggled the harder, tearing free and striking out for the ridge below the gate as the nearest dryland. Close after him came the little red demon of vengeance, and as the haciendado found a footing and turned to face his erstwhile peon, Juan struck with his henequen blade, and the heavy steel sank deep in the neck of Calderon y Ortegas. Now they clinched in a death-struggle and rolled over and over together into deeper and deeper water, and neither reappeared. The cripple's debt was paid.

From far inland came several long blasts as if from a horn and then a burst of shots.

"The Itzchen-Maya! The ItzchenMaya" cried Encarnacion and the men with him, and in a few minutes, with a roar of hoofs, the crackle of rifles and yells of victory, they came into view. In every direction the hacienda men were in flight, and by moonrise the battle was over. As the tide receded the joyous defenders flocked to the canal to catch the hats by the dozen that came floating out, evidences of the completeness of the rout.

AT DAWN Haskell put his men to work to assemble the wounded and transport them to the village. He found pleasure in the small loss of life, and turned away with a shudder when the men brought in two bodies—that of a massive bearded man locked tight in the arms of a little withered one, the latter with his thin lips drawn back in a fixed smile.

"Look, señor, look!" cried 'Nacion, pointing up the shore.

Haskell turned and beheld a steamer flying a signal and steaming swiftly down the shore. At her peak floated the flag of the syndicate's shipping lines, and when she dropped anchor and a boat put off from her he was overcome with surprise to see standing in the bow, scanning the shore and the signs of battle through binoculars—John J. Peters, Sr.!

An hour later, as they sat over their camp breakfast and Haskell had finished his relation of events, with Jack Peters now and then interposing credit where credit was due, Peters, Sr., said:

"Haskell, you remember that I told you I was banking on you personally. Well, I guess I win. I knew when I got your requisitions that I would, and I made a bet with the president. I bet ten per cent, of the costs against ten per cent, of the net on this deal and, since I win, I turn it over to you. Clean this up right now, and you will be ahead close to two million. Stay right here on the job."

"I want a day or two to attend to a little personal matter——"

"Uncle John, don't you understand that there is a wedding due?"

"Oh, yes, of course, of course, and while I am about it I may as wrell tell you this land properly belongs to the Ortegas heirs anyhow—the Calderon brothers flim-flammed them when Ortegas died, and the future Mrs. Haskell, being the last of the family, why, I shall want to make a new contract with her as soon as she comes to camp. You had better send for her at once."

IT WAS dusk when Nuñez Paola rode down with Emalia and the sister of Encarnacion, and that evening John J. Peters, Sr., strolled over to the spot where the two stood looking out at the steamer swinging at anchor.

"Miss Ortegas," he said "it just struck me that sea captains have power to perform marriage ceremonies. How would you like to go aboard to-morrow morning and have it over with and then spend your honeymoon on the Colleen Bawn while she lies out there this month? You see, I need Haskell here every day now. What do you say?"

She blushed rose-red and turned her face away to hide it against Haskell's arm.