Had he known the full truth, he must have been much more surprised for it was not alone the same trail that Johnny had been taken over but the same group of natives had taken him, and, at the very moment when Curlie found the trail, the same natives were breaking camp on the identical spot at which Johnny, with the aid of a ferocious wild boar, had made good his escape only a few days previous.
It is said that lightning never strikes twice in the same place. Something very like lightning had struck Johnny twice. A second time as he walked on the Citadel wall a group of bronze natives had silently formed about him and had spirited him away.
“This time,” he had told himself, as he recalled the strange words of the short, broad man, “I will see the thing through.”
And well he might say this for now he was caught quite helpless and unarmed. And no wild boar had as yet come to his aid.
As before, the group of bronze natives taking Johnny with them from the Citadel had traveled all night without the aid of a light. As morning dawned, they had sought out a secluded spot and had breakfasted, without building a fire, on fruits, nuts and cold cooked meats. With one member of the band detailed to watch, they had sprawled out among the ferns and had fallen asleep. Not one of them slept better than Johnny, for having once committed himself to a course of action, he never allowed the strangeness of the course nor the wildness of the land about him to rob him of his rest.
As night fell they resumed their journey. The general direction of their course was not changed. Once more they plodded steadily onward over the narrow trail that now rose at an abrupt angle, now ran on the level and now dipped a trifle downward, as a mountain trail will, but in the main bore steadily upward.
“It’s the strangest thing I ever heard of,” Johnny told himself. “I am not treated as a prisoner. Yet they take me with them, nor do they as much as say, ‘By your leave.’”
Once more the old resolve surged through his being; he would see the thing through, come what might.
What he saw and heard after three hours of steady plodding caused him to start and wonder. Having rounded a dark clump of southern pines, they came quite suddenly upon a low burning camp fire. And seated crosslegged before the fire, smiling like some elfin king, was the short, broad man who had already played so considerable a part in the boy’s life.
“So you came?” he exclaimed in quite a genial tone.