When Duran appeared, after one look toward the huts, he plunged into that brush we had just come out of. In twenty minutes he appeared again, and again he stooped under a heavy pack. He but repeated that journey down the path that he had made so many times before. Carlos had continued on down the vale, Ray said, to discover where Duran went to set afloat the gold-laden bamboo.
I have forgotten how many trips Duran made this day, transporting that gold. As often as we sought to discover whence he took his freight, we came no nearer a solution of that mystery than on that first search in the back of that jungle. Once, when Duran climbed out by his ladder, to go to that cavern where he made temporary storage of the treasure, Norris took Andy Hawkins' place at the diggings, while that gesticulating individual went to act as guide to the rest of us in the search. But he proved as helpless as the rest. So when night found us all gathered together in our cheerless camp, we were conscious of a day passed with meager progress.
"Wherever that hiding place is," Norris was saying, "I'll bet there's a big heap of the stuff there."
"But he's been toting a lot of it away," suggested Ray.
"Toting it away!" burst out Norris. "Ask Captain Marat, here, what that nigger told him about the lot of stuff that's been mined all these years."
"Yes," agreed Jean Marat, "thad boy say ver' ver' much gold have come out of thee creek. I theenk not one ten' part have Duran take away."
It was not long till Andy Hawkins appeared. And true to his word, he brought a roast chicken.
"The boss was a bit dumpish tonight," he said. "'Ee was bloomin' tired, an' 'ee's sleepin' sixty mile to the minute right now."
While we feasted on the bird, Norris pumped Hawkins for details of Duran's doings; and it was indeed little that was enlightening that he got out of the fellow. But he got loquacious with reminiscences of his own past life as a pickpocket; and while Norris pretended to get much amusement out of that poor, misguided human's escapades in crime, we were not sorry when he made his way off to the huts to seek his bed.
On the morrow we began the day with much the same employment. But the day was not far gone when things suddenly took on a changed aspect.