“Caramba! I should hope so!” his friend ejaculated.
“But,” interposed Josè, anxious to direct the conversation into other channels, “may I ask how and where you have occupied yourself since I left the boat at Badillo?”
“Ah, Dios!” said Don Jorge, shaking his head, although his eyes twinkled. “I have wandered ever since––and am poorer now than when I started. I left our boat at Puerto Nacional, to go to Medellin; and from there to Remedios and Guamocó. But while in the river town I met another guaquero––grave hunter, you know––who was preparing to go to Honda, to investigate the ‘castles’ at that place. There is a strange legend––you may have heard it––hanging over those rocks. It appears that a lone hermit lived in one of the many caverns in the great limestone deposits rising abruptly from the river near the town of Honda. How he came there, no one knew. Day after day, year after year, he labored in his cave, extending it further into the hillside. People laughed at him for tunneling in that barren rock, for gold has never been found anywhere in it. But the fellow paid them no attention; and gradually he was accepted as a harmless fanatic, and was left unmolested to dig his way into the hill as far as he would. Years passed. No one knew how the fellow lived, for he held no human intercourse. Kind people often brought food and left it at the mouth of his cavern, but he would have none of it. They brought clothes, but they rotted where they were left. What he ate, no one could discover. At last some good soul 188 planted a fig tree near the cave, hoping that the fruit in time would prove acceptable to him. One day they found the tree cut down. Bien, time passed, and he was forgotten. One day some men, passing the cave, found his body, pale and thin, with long, white hair, lying at the entrance. But––Caramba! when they buried the body they found it was that of a woman!”
He paused to draw some leaves of tobacco from his wallet and roll a thick cigar. The sudden turn of his story drew an expression of amazement from the priest.
“Bien,” he resumed, “where the woman came from, and who she was, never was learned. Nor how she lived. But of course some one must have supplied her with food and clothes all these years. Perhaps she was some grand dame, with a dramatic past, who had come there to escape the world and do penance for her sins. What sorrow, what black tragedy that cave concealed, no one may ever know! Nor am I at all interested in that. The point is, either she found gold there, or had a quantity of it that she brought with her––at least so I thought at the time. So, when the guaquero at Puerto Nacional told me the story, nothing would do but I must go with him to search the cave. Caramba! We wasted three full months prying around there––and had our labor for our pains!”
He tilted his chair back and puffed savagely at his cigar.
“Well, then I got on the windy side of another legend, a wild tale of buried treasure in the vicinity of Mompox. Of course I hurried after it. Spent six months pawing the hot dirt around that old town. Fell in with your estimable citizen, Don Felipe, who swindled me out of a hundred good pesos oro on a fraudulent location and a forged map. Then I cursed him and the place and went up to Banco.”
“Banco!” Josè’s heart began beating rapidly. Don Jorge went on:
“Your genial friend Diego is back there. Told me about his trip to Simití to see his little daughter.”
“What did he say about her, amigo?” asked Josè in a controlled voice.