"Watch the stairs," he said suddenly. "I"ve an idea." And the boy hurried back to the little parapet that overhung the trail that ran a thousand feet below.
Beyond and above him, the rim of the setting sun was coming nearer and nearer to the snow-capped mountains that cut the sky-line of the west.
Already their white crests were gleaming crimson in the dimming light.
As he went, Will fumbled in his belt and pulled out a tiny round pocket-mirror, which, with a tooth-brush, a comb, and a few other light articles, he had carried all through the trip in a rubber pocket fastened to his belt.
During these happenings, miles away, concealed by the intervening range, Hen and Joe were riding at the head of a troop of hard-bitten, hard-faced vaqueros, the cow-boys of the South, whom they had met at the end of their first day"s journey. Armed with Mauser rifles, and with revolvers and knives in their belts, these riders of the pampas backed their wiry little South American horses with the same ease which their brethren of the Northern prairies showed.
The leader of the troop had turned out to be an old friend of Professor Ditson, who had been with him on an expedition years before. He readily agreed to journey with Joe and Hen over the mountains to the Lost City.
The men had been rounding up half a dozen hardy, tiny burros, those diminutive donkeys which can carry their own weight of freight all day long up and down steep mountain trails. It was decided to take these along for the use of the travelers. With the obstinacy of their breed, however, there was never a time throughout the day when one or more and sometimes all of the burros were not balking at this long trip away from the ranch where food and rest were awaiting them. Accordingly, it was late in the afternoon when the party reached the range behind which was hidden Machu Pichu.
Suddenly Joe, who with Hen, mounted on spare horses, was piloting the little troop, caught sight of a flicker of light across the crest of the highest peak of the range ahead of them. At first he thought that it came from the rays of the setting sun reflected from a bit of polished quartz. Suddenly he noticed, with a sudden plunge of his heart, that the light was flickering in s.p.a.ced, irregular intervals. With Will and several of the other boys of his patrol, Joe had won a merit badge for signaling in his Boy Scout troop, and his tenacious Indian mind had learned forever the Morse code. As he watched now he saw the sun-rays flash the fatal S O S. Again and again came the same flashes, carrying the same silent appeal, which he knew could come from none other than Will behind the range, heliographing with the last of the sun to the chum who had stood back of him in many a desperate pinch.
As Joe glanced at the setting sun he realized how short a time was left in which to save his friends. With an inarticulate cry, he turned to Hen, who was jogging lazily beside him, and in a few quick words told him what he had read in the sky. With a shout Hen gave the alarm to the troop behind in the rolling Spanish of the pampas, and in an instant, hobbling the burros, every man was spurring his horse desperately up the steep trail. With the very last rays of the disappearing sun the message changed, and the Indian boy sobbed in his throat as he read the words.
"Good-by, dear old Joe," flickered in the sky.
As the golden rim of the sun rolled beneath the horizon, Will strained his eyes desperately, hoping against hope to see a rescue-party appear against the trail which showed like a white thread against the mountain-side. Suddenly, in the dimming light, he saw a few black dots moving against the crest of the opposite mountain. They increased in number, and, once over the ridge, grew larger and larger until Will could plainly make out a far-away troop of riders and glimpse the rush of straining horses and the stress and hurry of grim-faced men. With a shout he leaned far out over the parapet until in the distance the drumming beat of galloping hoofs sounded loud and louder.
Ten minutes later a long line of men with rifles in their hands were hurrying up the steep path that led to Sacsahuaman.
The besieged were not the only ones who knew of their coming. Outside of the walls of the fort, the Miranha band had understood Will"s shout when he first saw the distant hors.e.m.e.n. They too had heard the hoofbeats, which sounded louder and nearer every minute, and, although the path up the precipice could be seen only from the fort, yet from without the besiegers could hear the clink of steel against the rocks and the murmur of the voices of the climbing men. Just before the rescue-party reached the fort, Jud"s quick ear caught the sound of muttered commands, the quick patter of feet, and through a loop-hole he saw a black band hurrying toward the other entrance to the city, carrying with them the bodies of their dead and wounded comrades.
Even as he looked there was a shout, and into the little fortress burst the rescue-party, headed by Hen, and Joe. In another minute they swarmed through the streets of the city; but the enemy was gone. At the foot of the other path the last of them were even then slipping into the darkening valley.
Of all the band, alive or dead, one only had been left behind. Just outside the thick wall of the fort lay a huge motionless form. As Jud and Professor Ditson approached it they recognized Scar Dawson, deserted by the men whom he had so recently led. As they came close they saw that he lay helpless. Only his staring eyes were fixed upon them with an expression of awful appeal; yet there seemed to be no wound any where on his great body. As they bent over him, Pinto pointed silently to a tiny red spot showing at the front of the outlaw"s right shoulder--the mark made by one of the Indian"s fatal little arrows. Jud stared sternly down at the helpless man.
"You"ve only got what was comin" to you," he said. "You"d have tortured every one of us to death if you could," he went on but there was an uncertain note in his voice. "He"s a bad actor if ever there was one,"
he bl.u.s.tered, turning to the others. "Still, though, I"d hate to see any man die without tryin" to help him," he finished weakly.
"He deserves death if any man ever did," said Professor Ditson grimly; "yet it does not seem right to let a man die without help."
"Yes," chimed in Will, looking down at the dying man pityingly; "do save him if you can."
The professor hesitated.
"Well," he said at last, "I can and I will; but I am not at all sure that I ought."
Beckoning to one of the vaqueros, he took from his pouch a handful of the brown salt that is part of the equipment of every South American cattle-man. Reaching down, he forced open the stiffening jaws of the outlaw and pressed between them a ma.s.s of salt until Dawson"s mouth was completely filled with it.
"Swallow that as fast as you can," he commanded.
Even as he spoke, the muscles of the man"s great body relaxed as little by little the antidote for the urari poison began to work. Fifteen minutes later, tottering and white, but out of danger, the outlaw stood before them.
"I have saved your life," said Professor Ditson, "and I hope that you will make some better use of it than you have done. Your friends went down that way," he continued precisely, pointing to the path along which the Indians had retreated. "I would suggest that you follow them."
The outlaw stared scowlingly for a moment at the ring of armed men who stood around him. Then he turned to Professor Ditson.
"For saving my life I"ll give you a tip which may save yours," he said thickly. "Don"t treasure-hunt in Eldorado--_it"s guarded_!" Without another word he disappeared down the steep trail.
"I hope I haven"t made a mistake," murmured Professor Ditson to himself, as he watched Scar Dawson disappear in the distance.
CHAPTER XII
ELDORADO
A day and a night on burro-back brought the treasure-seekers through the mountains to Yuca, the loveliest valley in the world, where nine thousand feet above the sea it is always spring. There, half a thousand years ago, the Incas built their country houses, as of old the kings of Israel built in the mountain-valley of Jezreel, and among the ruins of stone buildings, beautiful as Ahab"s house of ivory, several hundred whites and half-breed Indians had made their homes. In Yuca Professor Ditson found many old friends and acquaintances, and the party rested there for a week and, thanks to Jim Donegan"s generous letter of credit, which had survived the shipwreck, thoroughly equipped themselves for the last lap of the dash to Eldorado.
One morning, before the dawn of what felt like a mid-May day, the expedition headed back along the trail mounted on mules, the best and surest-footed animals for mountain work. In order to prevent any unwelcome followers, the professor allowed it to be supposed that they were going back for a further exploration of the sacred city of Machu Pichu. When at last they were clear of the valley, with no one in sight, he called a halt, and carefully consulted his map at a point where the trail led in and out among slopes and hillocks of wind-driven sand.
"Here is where we turn off," he said finally.
Jud suddenly produced two large, supple ox-hides which he had carried rolled up back of his saddle.
"So long as we"re goin" treasure-huntin"," he remarked "an" Scar Dawson is still above ground, I calculate to tangle our trail before we start."
Under his direction, the whole party rode on for a mile farther, and then doubled back and turned off at right angles from the trail, Jud spreading rawhides for each mule to step on. Their progress was slow, but at the end of half a mile they were out of sight of the original trail and had left no tracks behind except hollows in the sand, which the wind through the day would cover and level.
For the next three days Professor Ditson guided them by the map among a tangle of wild mountains and through canons so deep that they were dark at midday. At night their camp-fire showed at times like a beacon on the top of unvisited peaks, and again like a lantern in the depths of a well, as they camped at the bottom of some gorge. Here and there they came upon traces of an old trail half-effaced by the centuries which had pa.s.sed since it had been used in the far-away days when the Incas and their followers would journey once a year to the sacred lake with their annual offerings. Even although Professor Ditson had been to Eldorado before, yet he found it necessary continually to refer to the map, so concealed and winding was the way.
On the third day they reached a wide plateau which ranged just above the tropical jungles of the eastern lowlands. At first they crossed bare, burned slopes of rock, with here and there patches of scanty vegetation; but as they came to the lower levels they found themselves in a forest of vast cacti which seemed to stretch away for an immeasurable distance. Some of the larger specimens towered like immense candelabras sixty and seventy feet high, and there were clumps of p.r.i.c.kly-pears as big as barrels and covered with long, dark-red fruit which tasted like pomegranates. Underfoot were trailing varieties which hugged the earth and through which the mules had to pick their way warily because of the fierce spines with which they were covered. Some of the club-cacti were covered with downy, round, red fruit fully two inches in diameter, luscious, sweet and tasting much like huge strawberries. Jud, who firmly believed that eating was one of the most important duties and pleasures of life, nearly foundered before they reached the pampas beyond the th.o.r.n.y forest. There they had another adventure in South American foods. As they were crossing a stretch of level plain, suddenly a grotesque long-legged bird started up from the tangled gra.s.s and, with long bare neck stretched out horizontally and outspread wings, charged the little troop, hissing like a goose as he came.
"Don"t shoot!" called out Professor Ditson to the startled Jud, who was the nearest one to the charging bird. "It"s only a rhea, the South American ostrich. He"ll run in a minute."
Sure enough, the old c.o.c.k rhea, finding that he could not frighten away the intruders by his tactics, suddenly turned and shot away across the level plain, his powerful legs working like piston-rods and carrying him toward the horizon at a rate of speed that few horses could have equaled. In the deep gra.s.s they found the nest, a wide circular depression containing thirty great cream-colored eggs, the contents of each one being equal to about a dozen hen"s eggs. The Professor explained that the female rheas of each flock take turns laying eggs in the nest, which, as a fair division of labor, the c.o.c.k bird broods and guards. After incubation starts the sh.e.l.l turns a pale ashy gray. The party levied on the rhea"s treasure-horde to the extent of a dozen glossy, thick-sh.e.l.led eggs, and for two days thereafter they had them boiled, fried, roasted, and made into omlets, until Jud declared that he would be ashamed ever to look a rhea in the face again.
At last, about noon of the fifth day after leaving Yuca, the trail seemed to end in a great wall of rock high up among the mountains. When they reached the face of this cliff it appeared again, zigzagging up a great precipice, and so narrow that the party had to ride in single file. On one side of the path the mountain dropped off into a chasm so deep that the great trees which grew along its floor seemed as small as ferns. Finally the trail ended in a long, dark tunnel, larger and higher than the one through which they had pa.s.sed on the way to Yuca. For nearly a hundred feet they rode through its echoing depths, and came out on the sh.o.r.e of an inky little lake not a quarter of a mile across, and so hidden in the very heart of the mountain that it was a mystery how any one had ever discovered it. Although it sloped off sharply from its bare white beach, Professor Ditson told them that it was only about twenty feet deep in the center. A cloud of steam drifting lazily from the opposite sh.o.r.e betokened the presence of a boiling spring, and the water, in spite of the lat.i.tude, was as warm as the sun-heated surface of the Amazon itself.
Leading the way, Professor Ditson showed them, hidden around a bend, a raft which he and his party had built on their earlier visit, from logs hauled up from the lower slopes with infinite pains. Apparently no one had visited the lost lake since he had been there, and a few minutes later the whole party were paddling their way to the center of Eldorado, where lay hidden the untold wealth of centuries of offerings.
"If I could have dived myself, or if any of the Indians who were with me could have done so," remarked the professor regretfully, "we need not have wasted a year"s time."
"Well," returned Jud, already much excited over the prospect of hidden treasure, "I used to do over forty feet in my twenties, when I was pearl-divin", an" now, though I"m gettin" toward fifty, I certainly ought to be able to get down twenty feet."
"Fifty!" exclaimed Will.
"Fifty!" echoed Joe.
"Fifty!" chimed in Professor Ditson.
"That"s what I said," returned Jud, looking defiantly at his grinning friends, "fifty or thereabouts. I"ll show you," he went on grimly, stripping off his clothes as they reached the very center of the little lake, and poising his lean, wiry body on the edge of the raft. Suddenly he turned to Professor Ditson. "There ain"t nothin" hostile livin" here in this lake, is there?" he questioned.
"I don"t think so," returned the professor, rea.s.suringly. "Piranhas are never found at this height, and we saw no traces of any other dangerous fish or reptiles when we were here last year."
"Here goes then, for a fortune!" exclaimed Jud, throwing his hands over his head and leaping high into the air with a beautiful jack-knife dive.