George Fenn - Real Gold - A Story of Adventure

“Why? What became of them?”

“I tell you they went up into the mountains and never came back. The Indians know what became of them.”

“But was no search made for them – no examination made of the Indians?” cried Perry, looking aghast.

“Search! Where? Indians! What Indians?” said Cyril sharply. “You forget how big the place is, and what great forests and wilds there are over the other side.”

“But it sounds so horrible for a party like that to disappear, and no more to be heard of them,” said Perry.

“Yes, but the Indians are savages, and, as father said, they think they are doing their duty against people who have no right in the country, so your father will have to look out. I wish I were going with you, all the same.”

“You’re safer in San Geronimo, if it’s as bad as you say,” cried Perry.

“Oh, it’s bad enough, but I shouldn’t mind.”

There was silence for a few minutes, during which time both lads sat gazing dreamily up at the vast range of mountains before them, with its glittering peaks, dark cavernous valleys, and mysterious shades, towards where the high tablelands lay which had been the seat and home of the barbaric civilisation of the Incas, before ruin and destruction came in the train of the Spanish adventurers who swept the land in search for El Dorado, the City of Gold.

Perry Campion was the first to break the silence.

“How long have you been out here, Cyril? – Cil, I say, I shall call you Cil.”

“All right, I don’t mind, only it won’t be for long. You go next week, don’t you?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” said Perry, glancing again at the mountains.

“Wish I were going with you. What did you say? – how long have I been out here? Nearly four years. Father sent me over to England to be educated when I was six, and I was at a big school at Worksop till I was twelve, and then he sent for me to come out here again.”

“Weren’t you glad?”

“Of course. It was very jolly at school; but school isn’t home, is it?”

“Of course not.”

“Father said I could go on reading with him, and it would brush up his classics, which had grown rusty since he turned merchant.”

“Wasn’t he always a merchant, then?”

“My father?” cried Cyril. “No, he was a captain in the army, and had to give up on account of his health. The doctors said he was dying. That was twelve years ago; but he doesn’t look like dying now, does he?”

“No, he looks wonderfully strong and well.”

“Yes. This place suited him and mother because it was so dry.”

“And then he took to being a merchant?”

“Yes; and ships off drugs, and minerals, and guano, and bark.”

“What! for tanning?”

“Tanning! Ha! ha! No, no; Peruvian bark, that they make quinine of. Physic for fevers.”

“Oh! I see.”

“It’s very jolly, and he makes plenty of money; but I do get so tired sometimes. I should like to go to sea, or to travel, or something. I hate being always either at studies or keeping accounts. I wish I were going along with you.”

“To be killed by the Indians,” said Perry drily.

“I should like to catch ’em at it,” cried Cyril. “But I’d risk it. What an adventure, to go with your father to hunt out the places where the Indians buried the Incas’ gold!”

“My father did not say he was going in search of that,” said Perry.

“No; he’s too close. But that’s it, safe enough; you see if it isn’t. Only think of it – right up in the grand valleys, where it’s almost dark at mid-day, and you walk along shelves over the torrents where there isn’t room for two mules to pass, and there are storms that are quite awful sometimes. I say, I’d give anything to go.”

“I wish you were going, Cil.”

“You do?” cried the boy excitedly. “I say: do you mean that?”

“Of course I do,” said Perry, looking amused at his companion’s eagerness. “We’ve got on right enough together since we have been staying at your house.”

“Got on? I should think we have,” cried Cyril. “Why, it has been no end of a treat to me for you to be at our place. I can’t get on very well with the half-Spanish chaps about here. They’re gentlemen, of course, with tremendously grand descents from Don this and Don that; but they’re not English boys, and you can’t make English boys of them.”

“Of course not.”

“Ah, you may laugh,” continued Cyril, “but would you believe it? I tried to get up a cricket club, and took no end of pains to show them the game, and they all laughed at it, and said I must be half mad. That’s being Spanish, that is! It’s no wonder their country’s left all behind.”

“Then the cricket was a failure?” said Perry.

“Failure? It ended in a fight, and I went home and burned the stumps, bats, and balls.”

“What a pity!” cried Perry.

“That’s what father said, and it did seem too bad, after he’d had the tackle brought out from England on purpose. I was sorry afterwards; but I was so jolly wild then, I couldn’t help it.”

“How came there to be a fight?” said Perry after a pause, during which he watched the frank, handsome face of his companion, who was looking at the great peak again.

“Oh, it was all about nothing. These Spanish chaps are so cocky and bumptious, and ready to take everything as being meant as an insult. Little stupid things, too, which an English boy wouldn’t notice. I was bowling one evening, and young Mariniaz was batting. Of course he’d got his bat and his wits, and he ought to have taken care of himself. I never thought of hitting him, but I sent in a shooter that would have taken off the bail on his side, and instead of blocking it, he stepped right before the wicket.”

“What for?” said Perry.

“Ah, that’s more than I know,” said Cyril; “and the next moment he caught it right in the centre of his – er – middle.”

“Ha! ha!” laughed Perry merrily.

“It knocked all the wind out of him for a minute, and then, as soon as he could speak, he was furious, and said I did it on purpose – in Spanish – and I said it was an accident that all people were liable to in cricket, and that they ought to be able to defend themselves. Then he said he was able to defend himself.”

“That meant fighting,” cried Perry, growing more interested.

“Of course it did, but I wasn’t going to notice it, for the mater said I was to be very careful not to get into any quarrel with the Spanish fellows, because they are none too friendly about my father being here. They’re jealous because he’s a foreigner, when all the time there isn’t a more splendid fellow living than my father,” cried the boy warmly. “You don’t half know him yet.”

“Well, what happened then?” said Perry, as he noted the warm glow in the boy’s cheeks and the flash of his eyes.

“Oh, Mariniaz appealed to three or four of the others, and they sided with him, and said that they saw me take a long breath and gather myself up and take a deadly aim at his chest, and then hurl the ball with all my might, as if I meant to kill him.”

“What rubbish!” cried Perry.

“Wasn’t it? You couldn’t teach chaps like that to play cricket, could you?”

“Of course not. They didn’t want to learn.”

“That was it; and they egged Mariniaz on till he called me an English beast, and that upset me and made my tongue loose.”

“Well?”

“He said he knew from the first I had a spite against him, and had been trying to knock him over with the ball; and, feeling what a lie it was, I grew pepper, and told him it wasn’t the first time an English ball had knocked over a Spaniard, for I got thinking about our old chaps playing bowls when the news came about the Armada.”