"How, how, Jo Darlington?"
I stopped and sat down in absolute and unbounded amazement. It was Juarez Hopkins.
"Hurry, boys," I yelled, "it"s Juarez."
We gathered around him in an excited state, slapping him on the back, wringing his hand, and executing a war dance upon the deck of "The Captain." In reply to our numerous questions he told us simply of his trip in search of us with an occasional gleam of his white teeth.
He had met the captain and found out our plans, but not knowing exactly where we would start, he had determined to intercept us below, at the crossing of The Fathers.
He had worn out two bronchos, but was in good condition himself. It was by a curious accident that he had found us in the Temple canyon. I will explain how this was later.
CHAPTER XXVI
JUAREZ BRINGS US NEWS
"You look very much as you used to," said Jim, "only you have your hair cut. How were your father and mother?"
"Father and mother are very well," he said, speaking slowly and very distinctly in a low voice; there was only the slightest trace of an accent. "They grew younger when Juanita and I came home."
"How is Juanita?" inquired Tom with a deep and courteous interest.
Juarez smiled with a flash of his strong, white teeth.
"Ah, Juanita, she too is well. Very pretty girl. Tall and very strong, but no more than that like an Indian. Her eyes are blue and hair black, and her skin it is not bad either. Juanita she likewise is a child. She sent her love and thanks to the three boys who rescued her. How is that for high?"
We laughed. His grafting of a slang phrase on his precise English was amusing.
"My mother love Juanita very much. She is much comfortable for her. I tell father and mother I stay for awhile on the farm, but by and by leave and go with Jim and Tom and Jo. Out in the mountains, over the plains, follow the trail once more. See?"
"Yes, perfectly, Juarez," I said.
"I tell my own people I cannot sleep under a roof. I die, no air. I cannot drive fat, slow horses to town. I cannot pitch hay into a wagon or dig up the potato from the ground. No, No! They understand. I have one letter for you all from father and mother."
He extracted it from the inside of his shirt where it was fastened. We read it, sitting on the top of our ship"s cabin. It contained many messages of good will for us and of affection.
They said that they were perfectly reconciled to having their son Juarez traveling with us. That they realized that he could not be contented on a farm after having spent nearly all his life among the Indians. Also we must be sure to visit them before we returned East.
It was a good letter and we appreciated every word of it. We seemed united with the outside world once more, and we felt doubly fortified to have our tried comrade, Juarez, with us. There had been, as you remember, a natural friendship between Juarez and Jim. But now, Juarez accepted both Tom and me as comrades, something he had not done before, which we remembered, if you do not.
In appearance, Juarez was no longer the Indian, except for the lithe grace of his movements and his tireless endurance. There was also a certain dignity of reticence that he had derived from them. His dark hair was neatly cut and he wore a grey flannel shirt and blue trousers.
The greatest change was in his eyes. They were of a mild brown and had lost that black fierceness of expression and sullen distrust that had haunted them when we had first met him on the captain"s plateau, when his sister Juanita was still a captive in the power of Eagle Feather.
"What do you think of our boat, Juarez?"
"You make her?" he inquired.
"Sure," we replied.
He looked "The Captain" over from stem to stern, missing no part of its construction under Jim"s careful explanation.
"Ah," he said finally, with a smile. "She is a Jim Dandy."
We grinned our appreciation of his pun.
"You are a real American," said Tom, "or you would have never thought of that."
"How did you happen to strike us here?" asked Jim, "instead of at the crossing of The Fathers as you had first planned."
"I wanted to make a search for some treasure that lies in this canyon,"
he replied. "I have often heard of it through the captives we took from the southern tribe, the Pai Ute, who in turn had got it from some of these Indians who build houses in the cliffs.
"I have it down in paper as much as I remember. We will look together if you agree."
"There will be no trouble about that, Juarez," we said.
He took out a worn piece of paper and studied it carefully.
"It is gold nuggets, bracelets and gems and one gold cross taken from the early priests by the Indians.
"By tradition it was left hidden in the canyon.
"It is three curves in the river below a great cavern."
"There"s the cavern, Juarez, up there," said Jim. "It is five hundred feet in width and two hundred feet high."
"So far, so well," he replied. "At the third curve you land on the west bank, you follow up a narrow slit in the wall of the canyon. Beyond it upon a rock, there is a natural formation like this sign O. That is a symbol for the Indians of this region. It means a great deal to them, but nothing to me." There was a note of contempt in his voice.
"It is in the locality of this marked rock that the Indian treasure is hidden. There you have it."
"But not the treasure, not yet," I said. "I suppose that it is guarded by some dragon or some evil spell."
"They say so. If the treasure is not removed and we get near it, we will be struck by blue lightning from red clouds and our bones will be crushed by some terrible beast or devil; I know not which."
"There is the dragon that guards this treasure," said Jim, pointing to the river, "and it is certainly a terrible one."
"How much is it all worth?" asked the calculating Tom.
"How can I tell?" replied Juarez. "Many men have sold their lives for it. How much is a man worth, eh? Count it that way. The many strange jewels, three big handfuls, are thousands and thousands of money, besides the gold. The box itself is a richness--beaten gold with gems all over it, so they say."
Tom stood with his mouth open and his eyes shining. Jim laughed at him.
"I bet you will make a regular old shylock when you grow up. You are money hungry like all those eastern grubs. I tell you now that you and Jo only have a third of our share between you, as you happen to be twins. You see, I"m the oldest, therefore I get two-thirds."
I grinned, because I knew that Jim cared as little for money as it was possible to. In fact, he was entirely indifferent to it. Tom should have known this. But money was, with him, too sacred and serious a matter to be taken lightly.