“A little. You may be able to help us a great deal, father and me. We’re in trouble, not our trouble, but our country’s trouble.
“Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you,” she hesitated, “but I guess it’s right I should. My father is deputy for this territory. It is his duty to see that the laws are obeyed. Someone is breaking our laws and we cannot catch them. Not little things that do not matter much, but big things that mean certain death to many.” She paused for a moment. To their ears came the silent rush of water. There is something dreadfully solemn about the rush of black waters through the dark.
“These laws-breakers,” the girl continued, “are smuggling two things to our people—rifles and rum. You know what that means in Mexico. Rifles and rum mean revolution; cruel, senseless revolution! The Governor of the state of Quintanaroo is a good, kind man. Revolution could never bring a better government. But the people are simple-minded. Rum maddens their hearts. Rifles make them want to fight. Someone is selling them both at a great price, and we cannot catch them. One man is suspected, and that one is——”
“Daego?”
“Daego. But we can prove nothing. Every motor boat is searched, but each one brings only food, clothing and tools for his camp.”
All at once, as Pant sat there listening to this girl, so earnest, yet so young, so eager to help her people, he realized that a Divine will, higher than his own, had sent him here and that his greatest mission, a moral mission, was just before him.
“I—I think I can help you,” he whispered. “I know I can.”
Before his mind’s eye a black shadow crept up the river and in his memory there echoed still the pop-pop of that stationary engine away in the bush.
“Give me a day, two days,” he said. “Come back here day after to-morrow, two hours after dark.”
“All right, my friend, and may God prosper you! We are your friends. Good-bye!”