Chapter III

But a splitting headache put a stop to Francis’ singing and made him glad to be swung’ in a cool hammock by Henry, who rowed off to the Angelique with orders from his visitor to the skipper to stay at anchor but not to permit any of his sailors to land on the Calf. Not until late in the morning of the following day, after hours of heavy sleep, did Francis get on his feet and announce that his head was clear again.

‘I know what it is got bucked off a horse once,’ his strange relative sympathized, as he poured him a huge cup of fragrant black coffee. ‘Drink that down. It will make a new man of you. Can’t offer you much for breakfast except bacon, sea biscuit, and some scrambled turtle eggs. They’re fresh. I guarantee that, for I dug them out this morning while you slept.’

‘That coffee is a meal in itself,’ Francis praised, meanwhile studying his kinsman and ever and anon glancing at the portrait of their relative.

‘You’re just like him, and in more than mere looks,’ Henry laughed, catching him in his scrutiny. ‘When you refused to share yesterday, it was old Sir Henry to the fife. He had a deep-seated antipathy against sharing, even with his own crews. It’s what caused most of his troubles. And he’s certainly never shared a penny of his treasure with any of his descendants. Now I’m different. Not only will I share the Calf with you; but I’ll present you with my half as well, lock, stock, and barrel,^[17] this grass hut, all these nice furnishings, tenements, hereditaments, and everything, and what’s left of the turtle eggs. When do you want to move in?’

‘You mean…?’ Francis asked.

‘Just that. There’s nothing here. I’ve just about dug the island upside down and all I found was the chest there full of old clothes.’

‘It must have encouraged you.’

‘Mightily. I thought I had a hammerlock on it. At any rate, it showed I’m on the right track.’

‘What’s the matter with trying the Bull?’ Francis queried.

‘That’s my idea right now,’ was the answer, ‘though I’ve got another clue for over on the mainland. Those old-timers had a way of noting down their latitude and longitude whole degrees out of the way.’

‘Ten North and Ninety East on the chart might mean Twelve North and Ninety-two East,’ Francis concurred. ‘Then again it might mean Eight North and Eighty-eight East. They carried the correction in their heads, and if they died unexpectedly, which was their custom, it seems, the secret died with them.’

‘I’ve half a notion to go over to the Bull and chase those turtle-catchers back to the mainland,’ Henry went on. ‘And then again I’d almost like to tackle the mainland clue first. I suppose you’ve got a stock of clues, too?’

‘Sure thing,’ Francis nodded. ‘But say, I’d like to take back what I said about not sharing.’

‘Say the word,’ the other encouraged.

‘Then I do say it.’

Their hands extended and gripped in ratification.

‘Morgan and Morgan strictly limited,’ chortled Francis.

‘Assets, the whole Caribbean Sea, the Spanish Main, most of Central America, one chest full of perfectly no good old clothes, and a lot of holes in the ground,’ Henry joined in the other’s humor. ‘Liabilities, snake-bite, thieving Indians, malaria, yellow fever—’

‘And pretty girls with a habit of kissing total strangers one moment, and of sticking up said total strangers with shiny silver revolvers the next moment,’ Francis cut in. ‘Let me tell you about it. Day before yesterday, I rowed ashore over on the mainland. The moment I landed, the prettiest girl in the world pounced out upon me and dragged me away into the jungle. Thought she was going to eat me or marry me. I didn’t know which. And before I could find out, what’s the pretty damsel do but pass uncomplimentary remarks on my mustache and chase me back to the boat with a revolver. Told me to beat it and never come back, or words to that effect.’

‘Whereabouts on the mainland was this?’ Henry demanded, with a tenseness which Francis, chuckling his reminiscence of the misadventure, did not notice.

‘Down’ toward the other end of Chiriqui Lagoon,’ he replied. ‘It was the stamping ground of the Solano family, I learned; and they are a red peppery family, as I found out. But I haven’t told you all. Listen. First she dragged me into the vegetation and insulted my mustache; next she chased me to the boat with a drawn revolver; and then she wanted to know why I didn’t kiss her. Can you beat that?’

‘And did you?’ Henry demanded, his hand unconsciously clinching by his side.

‘What could a poor stranger in a strange land do? It was some armful of pretty girl—’

The next fraction of a second Francis had sprung to his feet and blocked before his jaw a crushing blow of Henry’s fist.

‘I… I beg your pardon,’ Henry mumbled, and slumped down on the ancient sea chest. I’m a fool, I know, but I’ll be hanged if I can stand for—’

‘There you go again,’ Francis interrupted resentfully. ‘As crazy as everybody else in this crazy country. One moment you bandage up my cracked head, and the next moment you want to knock that same head clean of me. As bad as the girl taking turns at kissing me and shoving a gun into my midriff.’

‘That’s right, fire away, I deserve it,’ Henry admitted ruefully, but involuntarily began to fire up as he continued with: ‘Confound you, that was Leoncia.’

‘What if it was Leoncia? Or Mercedes? Or Dolores? Can’t a fellow kiss a pretty girl at a revolver’s point without having his head knocked off by the next ruffian he meets in dirty canvas pants on a notorious sand-heap of an island?’

‘When the pretty girl is engaged to marry the ruffian in the dirty canvas pants.’

‘You don’t mean to tell me,’ the other broke in excitedly.

‘It isn’t particularly amusing to said ruffian to be told that his sweetheart has been kissing a ruffian she never saw before from off a disreputable Jamaica nigger’s schooner,’ Henry completed his sentence.

‘And she took me for you,’ Francis mused, glimpsing the situation. ‘I don’t blame you for losing your temper, though you must admit it’s a nasty one. Wanted to cut off my ears yesterday, didn’t you?’

‘Yours is just as nasty, Francis, my boy. The way you insisted that I cut them off when I had you down ha! ha!’ Both young men laughed in hearty amity.

‘It’s the old Morgan temper,’ Henry said. ‘He was by all the accounts a peppery old cuss.’

‘No more peppery than those Solanos you’re marrying into. Why, most of the family came down on the beach and peppered me with rifles on my departing way. And your Leoncia pulled her little popgun on a long-bearded old fellow who might have been her father and gave him to understand she’d shoot him full of holes if he didn’t stop plugging away at me.’

‘It was her father, I’ll wager, old Enrico himself,’ Henry exclaimed. ‘And the other chaps were her brothers.’

‘Lovely lizards!’ ejaculated Francis. ‘Say, don’t you think life is liable to become a trifle monotonous when you’re married into such a peaceful, dove-like family as that!’ He broke off, struck by a new idea. ‘By the way, Henry, since they all thought it was you, and not I, why in thunderation did they want to kill you? Some more of your crusty Morgan temper that peeved your prospective wife’s relatives?’

Henry looked at him a moment, as if debating with himself, and then answered.

‘I don’t mind telling you. It is a nasty mess, and I suppose my temper was to blame. I quarreled with her uncle. He was her father’s youngest brother.’

‘Was?’ interrupted Francis with significant stress on the past tense.

‘Was, I said,’ Henry nodded. ‘He isn’t now. His name was Alfaro Solano, and he had some temper himself. They claim to be descended from the Spanish conquistadores, and they are prouder than hornets. He’d made money in logwood, and he had just got a big henequen plantation started farther down the coast. And then we quarreled. It was in the little town over there San Antonio. It may have been a misunderstanding, though I still maintain he was wrong. He always was looking for trouble with me, didn’t want me to marry Leoncia, you see.

‘Well, it was a hot time. It started in a pulquería^[18] where Alfaro had been drinking more mescal than was good for him. He insulted me all right. They had to hold us apart and take our guns away, and we separated swearing death and destruction. That was the trouble our quarrel and our threats were heard by a score of witnesses.

‘Within two hours the Comisario himself and two gendarmes found me bending over Alfaro’s body in a back street in the town. He’d been knifed in the back, and I’d stumbled over him on the way to the beach. Explain? No such thing. There were the quarrel and the threats of vengeance, and there I was, not two hours afterward, caught dead to right with his warm corpse. I haven’t been back in San Antonio since, and I didn’t waste any time in getting away. Alfaro was very popular, you know the dashing type that catches the rabble’s fancy. Why, they couldn’t have been persuaded to give me even the semblance of a trial. Wanted my blood there and then, and I departed very pronto.

‘Next, up at Bocas del Toro, a messenger from Leoncia delivered back the engagement ring. And there you are. I developed a real big disgust, and, since I didn’t dare go back with all the Solanos and the rest of the population thirsting for my life, I came over here to play hermit for a while and dig for Morgan’s treasure… Just the same, I wonder who did stick that knife into Alfaro. If ever I find him, then I clear myself with Leoncia and the rest of the Solanos and there isn’t a doubt in the world that there’ll be a wedding. And now that it’s all over I don’t mind admitting that Alfaro was a good scout, even if his temper did go off at half-cock.’

‘Clear as print,’ Francis murmured. ‘No wonder her father and brothers wanted to perforate me. Why, the more I look at you, the more I see we’re as like as two peas, except for my mustache-’

‘And for this…’ Henry rolled up his sleeve, and on the left forearm showed a long, thin white scar. ‘Got that when I was a boy. Fell oft a windmill and through the glass roof of a hothouse.’

‘Now listen to me,’ Francis said, his face beginning to light with the project forming in his mind. ‘Somebody’s got to straighten you out of this mess, and the chap’s name is Francis, partner in the firm of Morgan and Morgan. You stick around here, or go over and begin prospecting on the Bull, while I go back and explain things to Leoncia and her people.’

‘If only they don’t shoot you first before you can explain you are not I,’ Henry muttered bitterly. ‘That’s the trouble with those Solanos. They shoot first and talk afterward. They won’t listen to reason unless it’s post mortem.’

‘Guess I’ll take a chance, old man,’ Francis assured the other, himself all fire with the plan of clearing up the distressing situation between Henry and the girl.

But the thought of her perplexed him. He experienced more than a twinge of regret that the lovely creature belonged of right to the man who looked so much like him, and he saw again the vision of her on the beach, when, with conflicting emotions, she had alternately loved him and yearned toward him and blazed her scorn and contempt on him. He sighed involuntarily.

‘What’s that for?’ Henry demanded quizzically.

‘Leoncia is an exceedingly pretty girl,’ Francis answered with transparent frankness. ‘Just the same, she’s yours, and I’m going to make it my business to see that you get her. Where’s that ring she returned? If I don’t put it on her finger for you and be back here in a week with the good news, you can cut off my mustache along with my ears.’

An hour later, Captain Trefethen having sent a boat to the beach from the Angelique in response to signal, the two young men were saying good-bye.

‘Just two things more, Francis. First, and I forgot to tell you, Leoncia is not a Solano at all, though she thinks she is. Alfaro told me himself. She is an adopted child, and old Enrico fairly worships her, though neither his blood nor his race runs in her veins. Alfaro never told me the ins and outs of it, though he did say she wasn’t Spanish at all. I don’t even know whether she’s English or American. She talks good enough English, though she got that at convent. You see, she was adopted when she was a wee thing, and she’s never known anything else than that Enrico is her father.’

‘And no wonder she scorned and hated me for you,’ Francis laughed, ‘believing, as she did, as she still does, that you knifed her full blood-uncle in the back.’

Henry nodded, and went on.

‘The other thing is fairly important. And that’s the law. Or the absence of it, rather. They make it whatever they want it, down in this out-of-the-way hole. It’s a long way to Panama, and the gobernador of this state, or district, or whatever they call it, is a sleepy old Silenus.^[19] The Jefe Politico^[20] at San Antonio is the man to keep an eye on. He’s the little czar of that neck of the woods, and he’s some crooked hombre,^[21] take it from yours truly. Graft is too weak a word to apply to some of his deals, and he’s as cruel and blood-thirsty as a weasel. And his one crowning delight is an execution. He dotes on a hanging. Keep your weather eye on him, whatever you do… And, well, so long. And half of whatever I find on the Bull is yours: and see you get that ring back on Leoncia’s finger.’