Strangely enough, at this moment when he crouched there, nerves tense, eyes and ears alert, watching for the mysterious unknown ones, there flashed before his mind the picture of a short stout white man standing at the foot of a dock. He had seen that man only the day before.
There was a mystery about that man. Who was he? Whence had he come and how? No steamers had arrived from the States. Yet he was unmistakably American. His clothes were well tailored. He had the air of one who is prosperous and who finds himself often in a position of authority. What could be his business in Central America?
The first time Johnny had seen him he had been standing at the foot of the dock.
“For all the world as if some strange magic had sent him, bone dry and all spick and span right up out of the sea,” the boy told himself.
This mysterious American had gone directly to the office of Diaz. When he left that office a half hour later Diaz had accompanied him as far as the door. There had been a smile on the crafty Spaniard’s face; not the sort of smile one loves to see.
“That smile,” Johnny now told himself, “should have been enough to warn me.”
There was a rumor afloat that the prosperous looking American was some high official of the Fruit Company.
“If that is true, he may be behind my defeat,” he told himself. “But one never can tell. I—”
He paused. His heart skipped a beat. From close at hand there sounded a heavy footstep.
“Diaz’s men,” he thought, slipping his machete half out of its scabbard. “They’ll find I can fight if that must be.”