OCR Text |
Show GRANVILLE CHURCH the Job he stayed in camp over-night over-night He got me off by myself and began flingin' questions at me" "What kind of questions?" "About the freight comin' up riv-er. riv-er. Curt, I dunno nothin' about the tuff comin' in. But Mitch was especially espe-cially interested in a lot that passed through Tempujo a coupla weeks ago. I did see that I was in Tempujo Tem-pujo for the week-end and Mitch was at San Alejo. These were big, heavy boxes that came to Cabeza orl a Jap tramp. Like oversize coffins they were. Eight of 'em, marked pump machinery. They brought 'em up river that Sunday and hustled 'em on to San Alejo right away." "Well?" "Well, it seemed like Mitch was mighty burned up about it, like they was sneakin' stuff in behind his back. You know how Mitch was. He hated most foreign goods and was death on the Japs and Germans especially. Nothin' would do him but good old U. S. A. stuff. But. Curt if Montaya wants to buy equipment equip-ment without Mitch's okay, even cheap Jap pumps, I reckon he's got the right. It's his money" "Stick to Mitch." "Well, Mitch asked a lotta ques-tions ques-tions about Lannestock and Ryden. They're the two Swedes" "I know. What about them?" "I dunno, Curt. I've played pinochle pi-nochle with them at Tempujo once ,. jo FAR: Jeff Cnrtii and 1 irt aire ady on their way to " 1 rten receives Bote SA UeD "Ilin ttem Bot w be chief enilneer for a er"i la fruit company. They lo , " (jbfj to find both Zora "ksl nd ,eff MBeet : ',ttti. conversations with ' stnor Montaya, and with Mrlnnls "" Hen-11 Hen-11 ! bis splclona that there TC litrsngf goto 00 nd that I zort w-re killed because I 1 much. Now on a tour of 21 II rtiiaonta.-a he has met an--- jjt, M mahan. He Is troo-j troo-j .Monahan, like Bill Header-I Header-I a frieneV as Jeff expected 1 4 tINTE WITH THE STORY CHAPTER VI 'ious feeling about Mona- !e I '.d all evening. It was ;, 1 i what the man said as ' , ' i it. Restraint in this ' S lff was odd. Again the ' of something lacking in j :Son's manner came to it .er Bill nor Slats Mona- ;k .cordial as Curt might 4 himself paired off with v.1 ir the night in a canvas were comfortable cot Vj rsised wooden platform, 'j jars-essential here, a Pi : 1 small table on which l. a jug and glass, jr sis musette bag to pre-L pre-L Curt's hand came in stretched into dim haze. At the end of the river section of levee the two men urged their mules up the steep embankment. Here was half a kilometer or so of open space between the river and the Quebrado Mountains. Across this open stretch the levee made a wide tlbow, reach-ing reach-ing all the way from the river to the hills, which insured the upper end of the valley against future flooding. From the ridge they had a clear view south and east from the Negro, where the planting was progressing rapidly. Montaya by some unknown un-known magic as fresh and clean as when he left San Alejo yesterday-waved yesterday-waved his arm in a vast arc. "We have planted about four hundred hun-dred acres weekly," he proclaimed proudly. "When once this levee is complete we shall step that up to eight hundred! This section here before be-fore us will be bearing by the timt the rains come this year." The banana plants, set 20 feet' apart, were now from ten to fourteen four-teen feet high. Healthy, vigorous plants, as fine a new stand as Curt had ever seen. Maybe Dr. Toenjes really had a secret worth guarding! In the distance Curt saw a plane flying back and forth, back and forth over the land, maintaining an even low height. Bringing his field glasses into play he saw that the plane was dropping from its tail a white something some-thing which formed a rapidly settling set-tling cloud. Ah, he thought, Dr. Toenjes precious pre-cious formula. I could bet a month's pay it's straight lime in spite of all he says about his "zegred" ingredients. ingre-dients. The soil among the present planting plant-ing showed traces of the treatment The ground was faintly leprous with lime not yet entirely soaked into the toil by rain. Curt had a moment's thought of getting, unknown to Montaya, a sample of the white stuff to be analyzed ana-lyzed for his own satisfaction. But he didn't know enough of chemistry to do it himself, and there was certainly cer-tainly no one here of whom he could ask the favor; nor would it be right to sneak a sample over to Mc-Innis Mc-Innis and ask him to get it down. He dropped the idea. Noon found Curt and Montaya back at the point of operations. Curt pulled his mule to a stop, Montaya followed suit. The dragline was operating op-erating at a steady pace, dropping its giant clawed bucket, hauling, lifting, lift-ing, swinging, releasing its load with precision, and repeating. It made the efforts of the small army of natives seem puny and ant-like by comparison, yet Curt appreciated ap-preciated their fine co-ordination as they trimmed and finished, and placed the mats for the forward march of the big machine. As he sat there on his patient beast watching the operations, the bucket-cable snapped. Curt nudged his mount through the muck to the machine. Monahan was already rolling roll-ing out another cable from the cab. Evidently this was a regular occurrence. occur-rence. "What size rope you using?" called Curt. "Inch." "Have many breaks?" "Too many." "Why don't you use heavier?" "Mitch thought it might jam." "Let's see that break." Curt was now at the machine. Monahan picked up the broken cable, ca-ble, hauled hard on it, lifted the end to Curt. This brought him close enough for Curt to say, under cover cov-er of the running Diesel: "Slats, you used to visit with the Mitchells over in Soledad." "Yeh, that's right Once in a while." "Was Zora Mitchell left-handed?" "Huh? That's a funny question. No, course not Why? And what d'you mean 'was'?" Curt stared. "She committed suicide. sui-cide. Didn't you know?" "No!" "Three days ago. Night before I arrived. Shot herself in the left temple." "Shot herself? Zora Mitchell? No!" "With a Luger." "Hey! Where'd she get a Luger? Mitch" "I know. Don't you get news out here at camp?" "Only when we go to Tempujo on t" 4 the sharp corner of a . Jed paper, apparently :er the flap without open-1 open-1 j. Curt pulled it out, un-i un-i ; the light of the lantern ' 1 -m the ridge pole. "Curt, watch yourself." e , rinted with pencil, in lr-ers, lr-ers, as though hurriedly. . :.?ned. v ;d Montaya's steps. He i paper, rummaged in the ' : i bottle of quinine cap-;s cap-;s u Montaya entered was k , t down. offi ! j pet phobia," Curt said I ood one. It is my rule T rkers in exposed areas vx iaily doses." I a sleep wasn't easy. Curt i ! in the dark. Who had I :rtunity to slip that note f j! Here at this camp at , during the evening each J :p had had occasion to 4 mess tent where they'd I l and downing cold J i dinner. y and Monahan, of all knew that musette bag I iad been a familiar piece J :eld equipment, swinging I Soulder or hanging over i a chair in camp. So :i me from one of the two. jourself." It tied in with I Mi's "Don't cornel" i 4 string of suppositions I rfi mind again, circled, if one shot off on a tan- f ghts raced. The Chief i the Compania Agricola i ,, v the key figure in their it a production. L -der of Mitchell was it I iMan Moore to hire the Big business has few J en it comes to protect- acing its interests, espe-t' espe-t' atier work such as this. f this idea, there was an-I an-I oility. Perhaps Montaya " al enemies who would r w up the planting. w theme was it Mitch- a, or Mitchell the Chief - ho was killed? Curt , asleep. ' " ;shes our minds. When . ! in the morning he did rber at once the note '0 his musette bag, but if Slats Monahan brought i a rush. shaving shaved before a :I outside on the wall of fss now dancing noisily ;5wer. I sreeches and boots, made ; Tor and began lathering ; 3e shivered involuntarily 'he other. Taking a bath 31 morning air required , tough this was tropical could certainly get cold Monahan dismissed the d was rubbing himself Ja towel when Curt spoke , wrner of his mouth. voice down, Slats, and - ! "P at me. You touch !st nicht?" "What about that murder, Slats?" or twice when they stayed over of a Saturday or Sunday. They're not exactly the chummy kind but so far's I know they're okay. But Mitch had some kinda bug in his head about 'em. Can't say why." "Go on about Mitch." "Well, there ain't much more. He said he was sittin' on a powder keg and raved about Loring you know Loring" "Yeh, yeh," came impatiently from Curt. Loring had been American Consul at Soledad for years. He'd been appointed ap-pointed through influence of Associated Associ-ated Growers and was their man first and last Loring was as un-American un-American a person as could have been selected for the job hadn't even been to the States in sixteen years. "Well, what griped Mitch," Monahan Mona-han went on, "was that Loring was the closest official an American could go to for help, and he wasn't any good. But don't ask me what kind of help. A guy 'that'd blow the lid off was Mitch's words. Mitch complained that he couldn't get to the Canal Zone. Two-three times he muttered about how close we are to the Canal, yet not close enough for it to do him any good. 'It may be a coupla days by coast' he was gripin', 'but it's hardly more'n a coupla hours by air.' " "What do you know about Montaya?" Mon-taya?" "Nothin much, Curt Heard he was hooked up with Cedillo in that Mexican revolt that failed." Saturday nights or someone comes up river like you now. Why didn't you mention this before? Or Montaya?" Mon-taya?" "Well, there didn't seem any good spot for me to speak out And I supposed you knew. As for Montaya" Mon-taya" Curt reflected, then finished slowly, "I don't know's I can blame him for not wanting to spread such news himself." More could have been said, but speaking of Montaya made Curt glance from the corner of his eye. He saw the Spaniard urging his mule across the muddy ground. Curt handed the ragged end of the steel cable back to Slats, pulled out his pocket notebook to Jot down the ltC"Ready to go on to camp?" asked Montaya. His eyes said nothing, but they were leveled first on Monahan, the wire rope in his hand, then on C(Curt nodded. "See you later. Slats. Use up what spares you have now, but order inch and a quarter in future. fu-ture. I'll ee yu 6et it" (TO BE CONTINUED) "I know, neara mat mjseu.. mean something definite. Nothing more'n that?" I don't know a thing. Except I wouldn't play poker with him on a bet There he is now, Curt" "Under your hat, Slats." -Sure." j n Breakfast over, Montaya and Curt accompanied the dragline crew to the Job. Random, the engineer in charge, went along. No time was wasted getting down to work, machine ma-chine crew, ground crew, trimmers, all Jumping to it The apparent richness of the soil which the dragline drag-line turned over was amazing. Certainly Cer-tainly all the Spaniard had claimed it to be. - Montaya and Curt spent little time at the working Job. Mules, good Missouri mules that could cover ground at a comfortable lope, carried car-ried them on an inspection of the levee along the river to its end. It was flat country they traversed, and the levee loomed high. Ahead, to the. left, the Quebrado range M anything In it?" put a note in it warn-watch warn-watch out Watch out s'ats? Any idea?" ' lunno, Curt Got any. 4 with Chigger Mitchell's omething I'd ' like to :a' about that murder, 1 dunno. Curt They let ' 1 grudge killing, and I it musfve been. You Mitch was." know." . 11 at?" d know this. Mitch was 50,11 something for severe sev-ere they got him, who- f you mean?" ad something on his time h came out to |