WHEN Ramona dashed into the patio after her rescue by Jan, she found no one there. She passed on through the big house, and found it empty and deserted. But in front of the house she heard excited voices. As she burst out onto the veranda she saw most of the plantation personnel assembled on the river front. Harry Trevor and Don Fernando, having divided their available forces, were each ready to lead a search party into the jungle.
Her old duenna, Señora Soledade, was weeping hysterically, while Georgia Trevor and the doña tried to quiet her. Ramona ran up to where the three women stood, and all attempted to embrace her at once.
As soon as they had ascertained that she was unharmed, everybody, it seemed, was asking her questions at one time.
She told them of her kidnaping by Santos, her rescue by Jan, and the pursuit by Santos’s Indians, which she had just escaped at the edge of the clearing.
Within a short time the two parties that had been organized to hunt for her had united, and forming a long line started out to look for Jan.
Harry Trevor was forcing his way through the dense undergrowth when he heard a shout far over at his left. This was followed by excited talking. Hurrying over, he saw Don Fernando and two of his plantation hands bending over a man lying on the ground. As he came closer he saw that the man was Dr. Bracken. The feathered shaft of an arrow protruded from his chest. The don had opened the man’s bloodstained shirt front, and was listening for heartbeats:
“Is he dead?” asked Trevor, coming up beside him.
“His heart still beats,” replied the don. “He may pull through. The arrow seems to have pierced the upper right lobe of his lung.”
“Better get that arrow out of him, hadn’t we?” suggested Trevor.
“Have to pack the wound when we do,” replied Don Fernando, “or he may bleed to death. We’ll take him to the house just as he is.”
Under the don’s directions a litter was quickly made from two saplings with branches placed across them. On this the doctor was gently laid, and carried to the hacienda. Then a canoe was dispatched for Padre Luis, a missionary priest living with a tribe of Indians down the river. He was reputed to have great medical skill.
Some hours later the padre arrived. After extracting the arrow and dressing the wound, he announced that if no infection set in, the patient would probably recover. When he left the sick room, he took along the two pieces of the arrow he had removed. Together with the don and Trevor, he entered the library.
“A strange arrow for these parts, señores,” he said. “No Indian workmanship there. The head is of tempered, polished steel. The band behind it is pure gold. Those hieroglyphics on the band, besides, are not Indian writing.”
He handed the pieces to Don Fernando.
“Why!” exclaimed the don. “They look like the picture writing on the basket!”
“Basket?” asked the padre.
“A strange basket I found floating down the river some years ago,” replied the don, who in his excitement at sight of the characters had almost betrayed the family secret. “But wait. I have a code. Sir Henry Westgate, an archaeologist who passed through here a number of years ago, left it with me.”
He took a bulky manuscript, yellow with age, from a desk drawer, and thumbed through it. Presently he stopped, and with pad and pencil noted the characters on the gold band and compared them with those on the manuscript page. Presently he read:
“‘Warrior of the Prince, Tchan, Son of the Sun.’
“I have it! There is no letter J in the alphabet of these people, so they were forced to use Tch. The inscription means, ‘Crown Warrior Jan, Son of the Sun.’ This arrow belonged to your boy.”
“Crown Warrior,” mused Trevor. “What could that be?”
“It says here,” continued the don “that it is a title bestowed for distinguished service to the crown. I am of the opinion that your son has found the lost colony of Mu, for which Sir Henry Westgate was searching. And having reached it, he has distinguished himself in some way, earning the title of Crown Warrior. How he attained the hereditary title of ‘Sa Re,’ I cannot imagine.”
“The Indians hereabout all have traditions of an ancient warlike white race living in the interior,” said Padre Luis.
“I have listened to these tales many times, but I never believed them.”
“If this is Jan’s arrow, it follows that he shot the doctor,” said Trevor. “I wonder why.”
“I believe I can explain that,” the padre said. “After I had dressed his wound and administered a stimulant, the doctor talked a little. He said he and his men had caught a glimpse of the youth and had followed him, hopping to capture him and bring him in. Jan had suddenly turned and shot him. Bracken apparently did not know that the señorita was with Jan that she had been abducted, or that Captain Santos had been slain. I told him he must not do any more talking on account of his injured lung, but he insisted on telling me that much. No doubt he will be able to explain everything shortly.”
“In the meantime,” said Trevor, “how are we to find Jan?”
“It is my opinion,” replied the don, “that in order to find him we must locate this lost colony of Mu. No doubt he is well on his way to his adopted people by this time.”
“I’ll find it,” said Trevor, “if I have to go over the entire South American continent with a fine-toothed comb.”
As Jan, naked and unarmed, sprinted toward the temple ruins with the mob of hairy men in swift pursuit, he suddenly thought of the blowgun and darts he had left in an anteroom some time before. If they were still there and he could but get to that room in time he would give these wild men a surprise.
He dashed through the portal amid a shower of sticks and stones and made straight for his cache.
On reaching it, he found, to his delight, that the weapon and missiles were still there.
Quickly catching the blowgun and the quiver of darts, he loaded the tube and stood in the hallway, waiting. But to his surprise, not one of the hairy men came near. He stood there for some time, and though he could hear the shouts of the wild men outside the temple, he saw no one.
Presently he decided to take a look. He made his way to the portal of the building, cautiously watching for an ambush.
At the portal, he paused. Standing about fifty feet away was a large group of hairy men, chattering excitedly. They seemed afraid to come any nearer. Evidently they were fearful of some danger, fancied or real, in the temple ruins. Something within the building had evidently frightened them before. Perhaps the saber-toothed tiger which had formerly laired there had slain some of their companions. Jan raised his blowgun to his lips. Then he sped a dart at a big hairy fellow who towered above the others. The wild man fell without a sound, and the others stared at him in awed amazement.
Then one of them spied Jan standing in the entrance. With a loud cry of rage he pointed the youth out to the others. Jan dodged a shower of miscellaneous missiles and brought down another hairy creature with a tiny dart. The entire pack seemed about to charge him.
Suddenly he heard a familiar sound over at his right—the clatter of armored riders and the thunderous tread of their mounts. The hairy men heard it, too, and turning, scampered for the river. But few of them reached it for a troop of the Golden Ones came charging around the side of the ruins with lances couched, pursuing them relentlessly, spitting them on their shafts and riding them down beneath the thundering hoofs.
In the midst of the party rode Mena, Emperor of Satmu, resplendent in his glittering, richly jeweled armor. He caught sight of Jan standing in the portal, and dismounting, walked toward him.
“By the long hairy nose of Anpu!” he said, coming up. “How is it that we find you going about in the costume of a new-born infant? Where are your armor and weapons, and what is that odd-looking tube you carry?”
“My armor and weapons are at the bottom of the river, majesty,” replied Jan. “I put them on a raft and went for a swim, but the hairy ones came and overturned them, chasing me into the temple where I found this weapon.” He explained the use of the blowgun to the Emperor, and pointed out the bodies of the hairy men who had been slain by the darts.
“A curious and terrible weapon,” said Mena. “I’m glad they are not used in Satmu. Leave it here, and come with me. Luckily, the mastodons carry some extra armor, arms and clothing of mine, so we can fit you out again. We’ll dress you like an emperor for your triumphal return. You had me worried, Jan. Thought we would never find you. But today we came across the gnawed skeleton of the big sloth you killed, with your broken lance still wedged between its ribs, so I imagined that if you were alive you would be somewhere hereabout.”
“Permit me to thank your majesty for coming to my rescue,” said Jan.
“It’s all right lad. You came to mine once, didn’t you?”
A big mastodon lumbered over at a sign from the monarch.
“Ho, slave!” he called to the driver perched on the woolly neck. “Make the beast kneel. We would get some wearables from that pack.”
It was not long before Jan, fully armed and armored once more, was riding beside the Emperor on one of the three-horned mounts. The cavalcade entered Satmu shortly after dark that night.
Jan’s return to Satmu was a signal for much rejoicing among its inhabitants, for he had the double distinction of being the Emperor’s favorite, and the popular idol as well. Mena held a great feast in honor of the event, which lasted far into the night.
Jan said nothing to any one of his adventures in the jungle. His secret sorrow at Ramona’s refusal to return with him was well concealed. Instead of moping about, he worked harder and played harder than ever before. By keeping busy he succeeded in covering up the longing that tugged at his heart.
But try as he would, he could not forget Ramona. He lived over and over again those hours spent in the patio, learning to speak, to write and to draw; and that one outstanding moment in his life when, with arms around his neck and warm lips close to his, she had begged him to take her away with him—to never leave her again.
Then he would wake to stern reality, and go about the business of trying to reshape his life.