“It’s the ghost,” smiled Pant.
Strange as it may seem, though Johnny in his far away jungle hut was greatly improved in health, his ghost walked nightly upon the sky above the timber that faced Daego’s camp.
Every night, too, Pant slipped across the river to join the enemy’s camp and to catch the drift of events. He found that these Central Americans, black and brown alike, had a great fear of ghosts, particularly of white ghosts. Johnny’s ghost hovering there near the clouds threw some into near hysteria and sent others hurrying down the river.
It was easy to see, they explained, why this white ghost hovered above the tree tops. The hot and humid air close to the earth in the jungle has always been hated and feared by the white man. Above the trees the air is fresh and crisp. Why, then, should any ghost descend to earth?
But despite the fact that he did not descend, his presence above them meant that in time pestilence, a death-dealing fever, a destructive storm or a flood would descend upon the camp and wipe it from the face of the earth.
One person did not believe in the ghost—Daego. He raved and stormed at his men. Day and night, as if searching for something, he haunted the banks of the river. More than once Pant barely escaped being discovered by him. In spite of all this, however, the ghost appeared promptly on schedule and Daego’s ranks grew thinner and thinner.
“Keep it up, dear ghost,” Pant whispered, “keep it up, and in time we’ll have nothing to fear from Daego. Oh!” he sighed, “if only Johnny were here to enjoy it all!”
But Johnny was far away in the palm leaf thatched cabin on a stream that was as strange to those who had battled for his life as it was to him.
And then one night Johnny’s ghost vanished into thin air.
Before that happened, however, there were many other strange doings on the upper stretches of Rio Hondo.