CHAPTER VI
A STARTLING DISCOVERY
Night was fast approaching when Curlie Carson, weary from a long day’s tramping, threw himself down at the foot of a tamarind tree that shadowed a narrow dried-up stream. He needed rest and time to think. That day he had spent in following the trail of Johnny and the band of natives. Two hours before he had lost the trail. Now he was far, far away from the camp at the Citadel and from his improvised laboratory in the heart of the crumbling old fortress.
Thoughts of his laboratory there all unguarded disturbed him. “He’s almost finished,” he grumbled to himself. “Be a pity if some natives would get in and wreck him.
“Poor old Mike,” he sighed. “All alone in that gloomy old dungeon. But I guess it’s safe enough for all that.” He chuckled. He was thinking of the fright he had given that native on the rope ladder.
“Same natives that spirited Johnny away.” A frown formed on his brow. “Wonder what they’ve done to him by now? Why couldn’t I have followed that trail? Why—”
He broke short off to stare down at the sandy bed of the dried up stream. Did he see the print of a bare foot there! He bent over to look more closely.
“Yes,” he told himself, at once alive with fresh hope. “It is a footprint. And there’s another, and yet another. They came this way. Hurray! I am on the trail again!”
His joy was short lived. He had not followed the bed of the stream that had been used as a trail a dozen yards before he made a startling discovery. Johnny was no longer with the group of natives. That this was the same group of natives, he did not doubt. Two of these men had peculiar feet, one was nearly clubfooted, the other had lost a big toe. Their footprints in a damp spot registered these peculiarities quite perfectly.
“Can’t be mistaken,” he told himself. “Question is, what have they done with Johnny?”
To this question he could form no satisfactory answer. One fact stood out plainly: since he had come in search of his friend Johnny Thompson, and since he no longer traveled with this band, there was no longer any reason for following this trail.