“Maybe it isn’t easy,” Bill nodded, “but it can be done if we stick to it. I always wanted to have a ranch in Uncle Sam’s good old West. I was down in Peru. Had no money. Just got enough to live on; but I stuck to my ideas and kept saying to myself that if I wanted it long enough and hard enough, and worked for it, I’d get what I had a desire for.”
“And you did,” admitted Nicky, for he had been with Bill during the adventure among the Incas in which Bill had been able to save Cliff’s father and eventually realize his desire for a ranch. “But it was a good deal by good luck, Bill.”
“Why, Nicky!” chided Tom, while they waited for Mr. Gray to make some arrangement with the “alcalde,” or head man, a sort of governor of the town. “You always say ‘there is something that looks out for us!’ and I’m surprised to hear you talk about luck.”
“That’s so,” Nicky agreed. “I didn’t stop to think. It looked like luck, that Bill, in Peru, found the eaglet that had Cliff’s father’s note tied to its leg.”
“But if you are sure that there is something, besides just chance,” Bill argued, “you’d see that sort of something could bring the bird to where I’d find it, and all the rest would come around through the same sort of purpose, instead of by pure chance.”
They all agreed to that, and Mr. Gray brought the alcalde to meet them. He was an elderly man, very sober and impressed with his dignity, though what he had to be dignified about Tom and his chums failed to see. However, with all the show of authority that he could put into what was really laziness and vanity, he pretended that he could not give them the information they sought until he prepared for an “audience” in the shabby old shack which served as his home and office.
“He makes me think of the little frog in the puddle,” Tom commented, as they stood about the beach, trying to be patient while Bill and Mr. Gray argued and asked questions. “He’s so swelled up because he has a little authority that he forgets to be decent or helpful.”
However, if the alcalde chose to be slow in his help, they found what they wanted in another way. They had come to Porto Bello to get information about Mort Beecher. This they secured through rather strange channels.
“Look what’s coming!” whispered Tom, nodding his head toward a figure slowly hobbling along the beach from a decrepit old lean-to among the palms and the bush.
They all looked, and stared!