“Did find their way home. The girls.”
“Yes, yes. To be sure.”
Had he seen what at that moment was happening at his home he would have been not a little startled. Curlie Carson, Dot and the aged native woman were at the gate prepared to follow the sound of the drums in search of the secret meeting of the would-be rebels, when there sounded on the flagstone walk outside the rattle of a donkey’s hoofs.
“It is Doris,” Dot exclaimed. “Doris and Nieta. I am glad. We have been worried about them. Of course, we thought they might have stayed at your camp two nights, but that they did not intend to do. The storm must have delayed them. But now here they are. They—
“Who—what?” She stared as the donkey came into view. His baskets were empty. He was riderless and alone.
“What can have happened?” She looked at Curlie as if expecting an answer. But Curlie had no answer for her. When he had reached his camp that day the girls were already gone. This he told her in the kindliest tone he knew.
At once there was commotion in the household. Doris and Nieta were lost; lost alone in the night and the jungle, perhaps kidnapped, robbed, killed. Who could say? Curlie thought of Johnny’s disappearance and of the strange camp on the mountain; thought too of the plotted rebellion.
“We can do nothing to-night,” said Dot. “We must be up and away on the search at dawn.”
“In the meantime?” said Curlie.
As if in answer to his question, to their ears there came once more the distant tum—tum—tum of native drums.