“Yes, yes, there it is, louder!” he murmured. “Much louder. It’s up the river. It’s a gasoline motor—a motor-boat. No, it can’t be.”
Dropping his paddle straight down, he touched bottom at eighteen inches. In such a stream there were sunken logs. No motor-boat could ascend to the spot where the motor was throbbing.
Swinging his boat about, he drove its prow against the shelving bank. Leaping ashore, he bent over, and putting his ear to the ground, listened.
“It can’t be,” he muttered, “and yet it is! It’s a stationary gasoline engine going full swing up that creek. And what’s more”—his thoughts were working rapidly now—“this creek runs up into our property. That engine is on our land. What can they be doing there?”
Creeping back into his canoe he allowed it to drift downstream. He wanted to go up and investigate, but it was too late. What that engine could be doing up there he could not so much as guess.
“But I’ll find out,” he told himself stoutly. “Leave it to me!”
CHAPTER IV
TREE HAY AND A JAGUAR
Aside from slight damage done by a band of wild pigs, who in their search for food had rooted their way into the cook shack, the camp up the Rio Hondo was just as the boys had left it.
“It’s quite evident,” said Pant with a grin, “that Daego, or whoever it was that brought our work here to an end, thought there was time enough to come over and take possession.”
“Didn’t expect us back, that’s sure,” said Johnny.