The Clue in the Embers (14 page)

The chanting ceased. The circle closed even smaller. The leader extended his arms a second time and the murmuring began again, a little louder than before. Now, with his stick, the man scraped some of the warm ashes into a wooden bowl.

“Kai-ee! Kai-ee!”
The chant picked up volume and the leader turned from the fire to face the Hardys and Chet. Holding the bowl out stiffly, chest high, he stopped directly in front of the boys. Inwardly quaking, the captives tried to appear unperturbed.

Murmuring the chant himself, the old Indian sprinkled the hot ashes on the foreheads of the trio. The boys winced but did not cry out.

There was a sudden commotion at the entrance. Then came a booming, commanding voice over the heads of the people. The leader, lowering the bowl, cried out:

“Tecum-Uman!”

The man for whom the boys had been searching! What would happen now?

 

 

 

 

A handsome elderly Indian, taller than the other tribesmen, walked with stately steps toward the Hardys and Chet. He motioned to a native that they be unbound at once.

After this was done, the tall Indian addressed Frank in Spanish. “Do you speak this language?”

“A little,” Frank replied, then hastened to ask, “Where is our friend? Is he all right?”

For the first time a faint smile played around the Indian's mouth. “He is quite safe. He is changing his clothes and will be brought here shortly. Your mules, also, are unharmed.”

Frank told the boys this news, then said, “I don't understand what has happened, Tecum-Uman. We were advised to ask your aid by Señor Montero.”

“Yes,” the elderly man nodded. “The señor is an old friend of mine. I am sorry you have been poorly treated here.”

Mystified, Frank asked him to explain the reasons for the odd happenings. Tecum-Uman motioned for the boys to follow him outside. Reaching a secluded spot, the man began to speak.

“I am chief of the three Kulkul villages,” he said. “This is one of them but not where I live. I came here because certain men have been causing much trouble. They are the ones who captured young Prito and took you into the ceremonial hall.”

Tecum-Uman explained that he was sure a certain dishonest Ladino in the area was responsible for the recent unrest in the village. “I believe he was the man who told my tribesmen that your friend was disguised as a shaman. This thing is regarded as a great evil by my people,” he concluded. “The fire dance you witnessed is an old custom performed to break such a curse.”

Frank said he regretted the misunderstanding. “Our reason for coming here,” he told the chief, “is to find Texichapi. Do you know where it is?”

If the Kulkul chief was surprised by the question, he did not show it.

“Texichapi is reputed to be a day's journey west of the place where Prito said you were to get fresh mules and supplies.” Tecum-Uman gave no further information. “You will be free to go with your friend when he arrives here. My loyal tribesmen wish you no harm.”

As the old man concluded his statement, Tony was led toward them. Dressed in a blue cotton shirt and a pair of nondescript brown trousers, he rushed up to the boys.

“Am I glad to see you!” he cried. “I thought all of us were goners.”

“So did we!” Chet exclaimed.

“Wait till you hear what happened to me,” Tony whispered. “Tell you later.”

There was no sign of the unfriendly natives as Tecum-Uman accompanied the boys to their mules. As a gesture of good will, he handed them a sack of food.

“You will arrive at the village where you change mules within one hour,” Tecum-Uman said. “If you do not leave this trail, you cannot miss it.”

The four travelers expressed hearty thanks for his help, and the elderly man waved good-by to them. As they rode away, the boys told Tony about their ordeal and about Tecum-Uman's explanation.

“He sure arrived in the nick of time,” Joe said. “Now tell us what happened to you.”

Tony sobered. “This shaman business was a fake,” he said. “They knew right away I wasn't an Indian. What they wanted was to find out why we're here. They tried several torture tricks. I guess I can thank Tecum-Uman that things weren't any worse. He arrived in the midst of it.

But the guys that were holding me warned that if I told the chief anything, it would go badly with me later.”

The Hardys were afraid that the group might be followed and urged their mules forward at a faster pace. Several times Frank dismounted and put his ear to the ground to detect any sounds of horsemen trailing them, but he heard nothing.

“I guess we're safe,” he concluded.

Exactly as the old man had predicted, the boys arrived at the next village in one hour. They sought out the shopkeeper's relative who rented mules. He made arrangements for the group to remain overnight, and promised to have their mounts ready for an early-morning start. Frank told the man about Senor Montero's workers coming for the borrowed mules, and he promised to care for the animals until they arrived.

After buying fresh supplies, the boys were shown to the cabin where they were to sleep. The four agreed that they would ask no questions.

“We can't tell friend from foe in these mountains,” Frank said, “so we'd better just be mum about the treasure.”

Before the sun went down, the boys took a short walk around the trading post, inspecting the various supplies that were bought by traders, explorers, and settling farmers. Chet picked up a short-handled miner's shovel.

“Say, here's a tool we might need in Texichapi!” he exclaimed, breaking the silence concerning their destination.

An Indian standing nearby flashed a strange look at Chet. The boys expected him to vanish in the next instant and bring back reinforcements to harm them. But instead the man walked closer and spoke to them in broken Spanish.

“Texichapi?” he asked. “You going there?”

Since Chet had already given away their destination, the boys admitted that they were.

“Bad place,” the Indian told them. “Stay away. It is valley of evil.”

The man said that Texichapi was hard on a man physically because of its sudden and extreme changes in temperature. At times, the place was hot and damp. At other times the area was cold and swept by winds.

“And besides,” he went on, “there are many mahogany trees in Texichapi which are protected by spirits. When someone not wanted tries to enter that section, a curse is put on him!”

The boys looked at one another, dismayed. But the part about the curse did not seem to ring true.

“Where did you learn about the curse?” Frank asked the Indian. But it seemed the man did not understand his stilted high school Spanish.

The Hardys and their friends tried to get the native to tell them whether this tale of the curse and the place being called the valley of evil was an old legend of the Indians or whether it was a recent one. It might be another stratagem of the boys' enemies, the patriotic society, to frighten away the quartet.

“No, sorry,” the Indian replied.

Either he was pretending not to understand, or finding the language barrier between them was just too great.

The Indian drifted away and the boys returned to their cabin. All were uneasy about going to sleep, not knowing what might happen. But nothing disturbed them except the howling of wild animals in the nearby forest.

At the crack of dawn the group headed west as Tecum-Uman had instructed them. There was no indication that they were being followed. The boys pushed on and did not take a break in their difficult journey until the sun was directly overhead. Then they lunched briefly and set off again.

Much of the way seemed to be along dry river-beds and across streams which appeared to have left their former course to flow in adjacent ravines.

“There sure are a lot of crisscrossing trails,” observed Frank, who was leading the cavalcade. “The trail to Texichapi would be mighty tough to follow if Tecum-Uman had not insisted that we keep heading straight west all the time.”

Suddenly he stopped, and as the others waited, dismounted and picked up a stick. With it Frank scratched several marks in the dirt. Finishing the last line, he asked the others to look at what he had drawn. “Do these seem familiar?” he asked.

The boys studied the lines for only a few moments, then Joe exclaimed, “Of course. They're the ones on the medallions!”

Frank explained that he had traced the curves of the streams that they had just passed. “They exactly match the lines that we memorized! We must be in the middle of the Texichapi country!”

Joe looked around excitedly. “I wonder what the opal really meant—should we look for a certain tree, a cave, or maybe a particular hill?”

No one knew the answer. Taking their bearings on the curve of the last stream, the boys changed course slightly. For half a mile they made their way through swampy ground until they saw, sparkling like a jewel, a small lake at the base of a distant cliff.

“Do you think this lake corresponds to the location of the opal on the medallion?” asked Tony.

“I doubt that the treasure would be buried underwater,” replied Frank. “Besides, we have to travel a little farther if my memory is correct.”

The riders broke into a jog as the wooded countryside became more open. Within a few minutes they arrived at the lake.

“Look up there!” Joe cried suddenly.

Two figures stood at the top of a sheer wall of rock that dropped seventy or eighty feet straight down to the water. The sight of people in this apparently uninhabited area startled the boys. Could they be spies for the so-called patriotic society sent out to intercept them? But surely no spies would show themselves so plainly.

As the figures moved close to the rim of the cliff, the watchers could see that they were an Indian man and a small boy.

Frank was about to shout to the Indian when they saw the little boy break away from the man and run along the cliff's edge. They could hear the man give a warning shout. Abruptly the little boy turned to face the man, but lost his balance and hurtled toward the water.

The four gasped in horror as the small form struck the lake surface and disappeared. They realized that even if the youngster knew how to swim, a fall from such a height would knock the wind out of him and he would drown. The same would be true of the child's companion if he should dive in and attempt a rescue.

“I'm going after that boy!” Joe cried, slipping off his moccasins and jacket.

 

 

 

 

As Joe dived into the lake, his friends watched apprehensively from the water's edge. There was still no sign of the boy who had fallen from the cliff.

“Perhaps it's already too late,” Joe thought fearfully as he swam underwater.

Suddenly he saw the boy. His limp body was entangled in the branches of a sunken tree trunk. Relieved, but with the air in his lungs almost gone, Joe swam over and tried to release the unconscious boy. Just as he felt his lungs would burst, the branches gave way, and grasping the child firmly, he quickly rose to the surface.

As Joe emerged into the brilliant sunlight and inhaled great gulps of air, Frank cried out, “Great! Over here, Joe!”

His brother, still clutching the helpless child, headed for shore. As he drew near, Frank jumped into the water and said, “I'll take him!”

He reached for the little boy and carried him ashore. Joe followed. Frank laid the child on the ground and began to give him artificial respiration to force the water from his lungs. A few minutes later Chet took a turn, then Tony.

Presently the Indian who had been on the cliff appeared, tears streaming from his eyes. Jabbering in a language unintelligible to the boys and gesticulating, he indicated that the youngster was his son.

“He'll be all right,” Frank said, noting that the child's pulse, though feeble, was picking up.

As water spewed from the little boy's mouth, his limbs began to twitch, and his breathing became more regular. Soon the child's eyes opened. Through gestures, Frank indicated to the Indian that his son was definitely out of danger, but should be put to bed for the rest of the day.

When the child was ready to travel, his father gently picked him up. The man, his face beaming with gratitude, nodded to each boy, then started homeward.

“That was a great rescue you made, Joe,” Chet praised. “You've made a real friend of that Indian.”