As for Pant, he was worried enough by Johnny’s prolonged absence. It had been dark for fully three hours. Having returned from his gathering of tree hay and his brush with the jaguar, he had gone down to the creek landing to wait for Johnny.
Two anxious hours passed and still he did not come. For a half hour he paced the creek trail in deep and troubled thought. Over and over, as a squirrel turns his cage, questions revolved in his mind. What was keeping Johnny? Should he go for him? Had he been attacked, perhaps slain? Who could tell, if he went to Daego’s camp, what would happen? Johnny had left him in charge of the camp. If something should happen to him, should he fail to return, the Caribs would pile into their boats and go drifting down the river.
“No!” he exclaimed, “Johnny left me here to carry on in his absence, and carry on it is. If he does not appear by morning I’ll send a messenger to Daego’s camp to find out what he has to say about it.”
He did send a messenger in the morning. The millionaire half-caste received him with the greatest courtesy. Johnny, he said, had indeed had dinner with him and they had enjoyed quite a long chat when the meal was over. The boy had left his camp in quite a hurry on account of the gathering darkness. He had not seen him since that time.
Daego assumed an attitude of greatest surprise upon being told that Johnny had not returned to his own camp and expressed the hope that he might soon learn of his safety. The Rio Hondo was a treacherous river, treacherous indeed.
All of which was more or less true, and at the same time a most diabolical lie.
“He’s a crook and a scoundrel!” Pant raged to himself when the messenger had made his report. “He’s done something to Johnny, locked him up, or sent him up some river, a prisoner. Depend on that. But he’ll not get his way on our side of the river!”
After laying out the day’s work for his men, Pant sat down on a red log and indulged in some long, long thoughts.
“The way to keep a man from making trouble for you,” he told himself, “is to make as much trouble for him as you can. A fight like this is just like a game of chess. If you can keep a man busy getting his knights, bishops and castles out of danger he isn’t like to make much trouble for your king.”
For a long time he sat blinking at the little patches of sunshine that filtered down though the tropical foliage.