Jack’s eyes began to shine. Then his father explained that he had received an urgent invitation from Senor de Avilar to cast in his fortunes with him on an expedition into the fastnesses of the Bolivian mountains in search of a horde reputed buried by the ancient Incas.
“I don’t know whether anything will come of it, Jack, in the way of fortune,” his father had said, “but at least we will have plenty of adventurous travel. As you know, I am wealthy. The lure of gold does not draw me for itself. But, Jack, I’m very much afraid that in some respects I have never grown up. Buried treasure has a magical appeal; it captivates my imagination.
“When I was in South America last, in connection with the mining interests developing a new district on the borders of Peru and Bolivia, I heard many tales of Inca treasure. Those old Indians had a great civilization, and if the Spanish conquerors under Pizarro, Almagro and others had treated the Incas decently, who knows what they would have given the world. But the conquistadores were rapacious for gold, of which there are vast stores in the mountains of South America, and they slew merely to rob and thus wiped out one of the fairest races the world has ever seen. The Incas undoubtedly hid much of their golden treasures to keep it from falling into the clutches of the conquerors.
“Senor de Avilar is the head of the syndicate using my services at that time. And many a legend of Inca treasure did he tell me, for he, too, has felt the thrill. His imagination, like mine, is stirred by these departures from a workaday world. Now he writes me that he has come into possession of an ancient manuscript which he believes genuine. It purports to be the diary of a conquistadore who was captured by a band of Inca noblemen who fled far to the southward when the Spaniards invaded their country, and carried him captive with them. There is much of treasure buried in the Bolivian Andes because of the difficulties of transportation, and more of a magical city which the Incas founded in the south. This latter may have been the Enchanted City of the Caesars, the story of which I shall tell you some later day.
“At any rate, my good friend says he wants to be a boy again and to hunt for buried treasure. And he knows that I feel as he does, and offers me the chance to go along. Many men might consider me foolish, Jack, to engage in such a fantastic expedition. But your mother has been dead these many years; you and I are alone in the world; I have made a fortune big enough to take care of you for life, even if I do not add another cent to it. And I am a young man yet. Jack, I want to go. How about it?”
“How about it?” Jack gulped. He and this tall man with the twinkling eyes, and the figure as slender and hard as a boy’s, called each other father and son. But in reality they were pals. Jack stared a moment, his eyes alight, then emitted a little gasp of pure joy, and jumping up from his chair, he threw an arm over his father’s shoulders.
“Dad,” he gulped, “I’d never forgive you if you didn’t take the chance.”
A hard squeeze of his hand was his father’s reply.
“You said something about Frank and Bob?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Hampton. “They have finished their Freshman year at Yale, and they are strong, capable fellows, able to think rapidly and clearly in an emergency, as they have demonstrated many times. I am thinking of asking Mr. Temple to let them go with me.”