Hardly had he reached this observation post and spread his crude map out before him, than the smoke of a score of campfires rose lazily up from the jungle valley some ten miles away.
“That’s well within our territory,” he said with a start and an exclamation of anger. “That’s Diaz. He has already begun operations on our trees. He is very bold. He takes too much for granted. But we—we’ll show him!” He clenched his fists hard.
But what was this? Off to the right, scarcely three miles distant, a second smoke rose above the tree tops.
“Who can that be?” he asked himself. At once his mind was in a whirl. That it was not a second group of Diaz’s men he knew well enough. Men in the jungle always huddle in one group. Perhaps it is fear of that unknown peril that lurks in the jungle that causes them to do this. Who can say? Enough that this is a custom of the land.
“Can it be that the Central Chicle Company is also poaching on our ground?” he asked himself. “It does not seem possible. And yet, who else can it be?
“I must know,” he resolved. “I will see.” At that, following the bed of a stream, he struck boldly down through the jungle toward the spot where the first camp site smoke still rose.
For two hours he fought the jungle. Scrambling down a water drenched ledge, battling the clinging bramble, creeping low beneath a growth of palms, and racing down the trunk of a massive fallen mahogany tree, he forced his way forward until he found himself on a steep ledge looking upon the winding sweep of the river.
Here he paused to stare in astonishment. Less than a year before a mahogany company had logged a wide strip next to the river. The jungle had not yet retaken the clearing. In the midst of this cleared space, some hundreds of yards apart, stood two bands of men. Axes flashed from their shoulders. Here and there the two foot blade of a machete gleamed.
“It—why it’s as if they were lined up for battle! Who can they be?” The boy’s breath came short and quick. He took the old field glass from his pack and focused it upon the two groups of men.
The band over to the right were of mixed lineage, some Spaniards, some half-castes, some blacks. He could guess this from their postures and the garments they wore.