The Red Lure

As Johnny Thompson bent over the black waters of the river he thought he heard a stealthy movement behind him. Before he could decide whether or not his eyes had deceived him he caught the reflection of a sudden white gleam on the dark surface of the water. At the same time something told him to dive, and dive he did. With the rocket-like speed that was his, he shot straight into the water, then away beneath the surface. He rose some ten yards downstream. After one deep, silent breath, he grasped a red mangrove branch for support, then paused to listen.

He did not listen long, for there came a sudden wild swirl of water close beside him.

“Alligator!” he breathed, as with a sudden and mighty tug at the mangrove branch he threw himself clear of the water and out upon the bank.

Here he paused to listen again. Catching no sound, he began creeping back toward his first position, the foot of the path that had been cut to the river.

All this time his mind was working on double-quick time. What had caused that sound behind him there on the bank—man or beast? What was the white gleam? Was it, after all, only a product of his overwrought mind? The whole day had seemed full of brooding menace.

“No,” he told himself stoutly, “it was not all imagination. The sound might have been—but the white gleam? No. I saw that. After all, though, it might have been only the reflection of a white heron in silent flight.”

Night was coming on. It would soon be dark. He did not care for that. His flashlight was in his pocket. As he crept forward through the thick tangled brush he seemed to feel the swift power of the dark old river. Rio Hondo, they called it—Black River. And black it was. Johnny had never before seen water that could so perfectly reproduce the black gleam of polish ebony. And yet, somehow, he had come to think of the river as his friend. That was how he came to be there now. Pant, his pal, was away. The thirty black and brown faces about camp had seemed singularly strange and unfriendly, so he had come to the river for comfort. And now, how had it repaid him? Had it in that white gleam given him a friendly warning, or had it tricked him into a place of great peril, into danger of being eaten by an alligator?

Suddenly his thoughts came to an end. Sooner than he expected he broke through the “bush” into the path. Starting back, he stared for a second in silence.

“No one here,” he whispered. “But wait; some one has been here.”

In astonishment he picked up a long-bladed, gleaming knife. It was a machete, the tool and weapon of the bushman of Central America.

“Looks like Petillo’s machete,” he breathed. What could it mean?

Just then he caught a sudden sound from the water. It was like a startled cry for help. He thought he caught sight of a head above the black waters. He might have been mistaken. It was growing dark. He drew his flashlight from his pocket. It was water-logged, short circuited, useless.

Again came the strange cry and at the same time a great swirl of water.

“The alligator!” he breathed.

For an instant he thought of throwing himself in the water to go to the rescue. This he knew was madness. There were other alligators. Grim, terrible, man-eating beasts were these sharp nosed alligators of British Honduras, Central America.

So, as he sat there, crowded well back in the bushes, silent, motionless, listening and thinking, darkness came and blotted out all, both good and bad, that might have been seen upon the surface of the Rio Hondo.

A deep feeling of foreboding and gloom settled down upon him as darkness hid the river.

Picking up the machete that lay at his feet, he felt of its edge.

“Keen as a razor,” he murmured. “Did some one try to kill me with it? If so, I wonder why? Well, he didn’t, and won’t. Providence took a hand. Must have lost his balance and fallen in. Bad swimmer. Current carried him out and a ’gator got him. That’s the way it looks. Can’t tell, though.”

He shuddered at the thought; the ’gator might have gotten him, too.

Johnny was in a strange land, the strangest he had ever seen. In other days, as you will know if you have read our other stories of the adventures of Johnny Thompson, fate had led him over the frozen trails of Alaska, down the timber roads of the Cascades and out over the sea. Now here he was far up a tropical river, in the heart of the “bush,” alone.

It is not pleasant to be alone in a tropical jungle at night. Johnny rose to go. His flashlight gone, there was nothing left but to grope his way back over the machete-hewn trail to camp. It was some distance—all of a mile.

As he took his first step, off to the right a twig snapped. His heart skipped a beat and his face felt strangely cold. Had he been watched? Now the creature was going on before him. Was it a man, or a jaguar? (Natives called them tigers.) He preferred the word “tiger.”

Gripping the keen edged machete, he struck away straight down the trail.

There came no further sound. Slowly, steadily, he advanced. Half the distance was covered. He was breathing more easily when a sudden hoarse sound brought him to a stand.

Then he laughed. Off to the right he caught the gleam of two small red balls of fire. And again that hoarse bark broke the silence of the night.

“’Gator,” he said with a chuckle. “Forgot there was one in a pool over there.”

He did not laugh five minutes later as he heard, off to the left, the pu-pu-pu of a jaguar. These great cats were dangerous. They had been known to kill a horse and swim a river with the carcass. The golden balls that now peered at him from the first branch of a great Santa Maria tree were not reassuring.

Redoubling his pace, he hurried on toward camp. Five minutes later, with a sigh of satisfaction, he broke through the brush into a clearing.

Here he paused in astonishment. The place was silent, more silent than he had known it even in the dead of night. The gleam of coals on the cooking platform and the dim bulk of cabins looming in the dark were the only signs that men lived here.

“Hello there!” he shouted.

To his utter bewilderment there came no answer.

An hour before he had left thirty men here. Now there was not one. What could it mean? Again cold dread gripped his heart.

Turning, he hurried down a logging road to the edge of a broad creek. There the white bulk of a large flat-bottomed boat greeted him.

“They didn’t take the Maria Theresa, anyway.” There was a comfort in that. “Fellow’d sure be up against it a hundred miles from the coast without a boat.”

Even as he thought this, his ears caught the steady dip-dip of pit-pan paddles.

“Hello! Hello there!” he shouted.

Again there came no answer. Even the paddles, if paddles there had been, were silent.

“Huh!”

He turned and walked slowly back to camp. There he groped about until he had found a bench. This he leaned against the side of a cabin, and burying his back in the soft cohune nut thatch, pressed his brow with both hands in an endeavor to think sanely and clearly.