Mr. Neale objected. Brownie, also, said that he had better do it.
“You’re too stout,” Nicky urged, “and Mr. Neale is not a woodsman. I’ve spent two summers in the woods, one up in Maine and one out in the Sierras. I can go quietly and come back without letting anyone know I’m around.”
He pleaded so eagerly and the danger seemed so slight, if he kept his head, as he promised to do, that they finally agreed, and he was allowed to land on the damp, matted growth at the nose of the dory as she swung close to the tender. Nicky listened carefully to instructions from Brownie and warning from Mr. Neale.
“And be especially watchful about snakes,” Brownie said. “There aren’t so many in the ’Glades, but in the heavy growth there are plenty. But if you keep your eyes open—and here!—take this pistol, in case of need!—you can generally avoid them. If you fire three times, quickly, we will come to help you. If you fire at a snake, we’ll come, too, of course, but the three shots is to show that it is help you need, of any kind.”
The trail was almost blind, being little used, and Nicky was hard put to it to discover his way sometimes; but Brownie had told him where to look for Indian signs on the trees and lower tangle, and what sort of ground to avoid, and he made a fairly quiet and very slow progress.
Almost so suddenly as to be a total surprise, he came to the end of the trail. Thick brush and heavy tangle of every sort of vine and creeper was just ahead; but through it his quick eyes discerned the glint of sun on rippled water, and the white reflection of a boat’s bow!
There, moored close to shore, so that one could step from it to the heavy roots at the edge, lay the Libertad!
Nicky stayed where he was and looked and strained his ears. He moved cautiously to one side and got a better view. He could see the forward deck, and there crouched the two Ortiga brothers, the one they called the Senor and the other, the Don.
Their voices were low, but they came clearly to Nicky.
“Let’s call a truce,” Senor Ortiga was saying. “You and I have fought and won, back and forth, times without number. Now there is enough gold in this boat to make us rich—and more back in the islands. Let’s bury the hatchet!”