Chapter II

H unched forward, he listened, then turned to his companion.

“The Chorillos road. Unless I am much mistaken, they are following the motor.”

“Come on; we must get after them! Where can we get horses?”

“Follow me. We can do better than that. We have the telephone and the railway.” And once again he took up his litany:—“The Red Ponchos! The Red Ponchos!”

“What do you mean by that?... Red or gray, it’s all one.... Those men belong to Huascar’s band, and helped him.... That seems pretty clear to me.”

“Quite right, quite right. I agree with you now, young sir,” replied Natividad, puffing by Dick’s side as they hurried toward the railway station. “Yes, indeed. They are all in it.... The Red Ponchos.... The Priests of the Sun.” Dick stopped dead. Natividad’s last words at last made him understand. He remembered, in a flash, all the legends told by Aunt Agnes and old Irene. And they had seen fit to laugh.

“Good God!” he groaned, and began running again. As he ran, he shouted to his companion:—“But we’ll catch them yet, and you’ll arrest them all!”

“I shall do what I can. But there are at least thirty of them, and there are not enough troops in Callao to send a squadron in pursuit.... Every soldier the city could spare has been sent into the sierra against Garcia.”

“You can telephone to Lima.”

“And they’ll take me for a madman, as they did ten years ago,” replied Natividad enigmatically.

“Will we get to Chorillos before them?”

“Yes, there’s a train in ten minutes’ time.”

“It seems to me we would have done better to follow on horseback. Then we could have found out where they were going. Thirty of them, are there? Only damned Indians, though. I wouldn’t mind tackling the lot myself.”

“This way is the best....” And Natividad added in an undertone: “They wouldn’t believe me ten years ago. Well, it’s beginning again.” Dick, intent on reaching the railway station, did not hear him. He could only think of those mysterious Indians on the highroad out there. “We shall lose their track,” he groaned.

“You need not fear that,” replied the Chief of Police. “Their road runs alongside the railway line. If we see a motor waiting on it, we stop the train. If we overhaul the Red Ponchos alone, we go on to Chorillos, and wait for them there. I’ll see that the police expect them. Nothing is lost yet, Se?or Montgomery.”

At the railway station, Natividad found he had just time to telephone his instructions to the Chorillos police. No motor coming from the direction of Callao was to be allowed to pass.

They were talking to the guard of the express when a Lima train steamed into the station, and they saw the Marquis, Uncle Francis and little Christobal appear.

“Where is Maria-Teresa?” shouted the Marquis as he caught sight of Dick, and ran toward him. “Why are you alone? Where is she? What has happened? Speak, boy!”

Little Christobal, clinging to Dick’s legs, reiterated his father’s questions, while Uncle Francis’ long shanks took him wandering aimlessly round the little group. The guard blew his whistle, and Natividad pushed them all into a carriage just as the train started.

“Yes, she has been carried off by the Indians, but we know where she is. She is at Chorillos.” Dick’s attempt to reduce the force of the blow to the Marquis partly succeeded. Then he explained what he knew while Don Christobal, raging in his corner, swore to kill with his own hands every Quichua in the country. Little Christobal, understanding only that his sister was lost, sobRed bitterly.

But what had given the others the alarm? The Marquis explained that Aunt Agnes and Irene, going to church for the evening angelus, found that the Golden Sun bracelet had been stolen from the shrine of the Virgin of San Domingo. They had returned home in a panic, to find the Marquis nearly distracted with fear. Going to his club for the first time in a week, he had there found an anonymous letter warning him to watch over his daughter day and night throughout the Interaymi. This letter, a twin of the one received at Cajamarca, had been waiting some days. It particularly warned him not to allow his daughter to go to Callao on Saturday. It was then seven o’clock, and going home to find that neither Maria-Teresa nor Dick were back, he had at once rushed to Callao. Little Christobal, refusing to listen to orders, had followed his father and Uncle Francis.

Dick listened like one demented. He was silent, but his mind was in a turmoil. To think of such a thing! In a country where people used telephones and traveled by rail! It was too horrible, too incredible, yet horribly credible. There was no doubt in his mind now as to the reasons for the abduction.

Natividad, closely questioned by the Marquis, finished by telling all he knew, and left them little hope. While loth to cause pain, he could not disguise certain facts. In a sense, too, he was triumphant. A conscientious official, he had once almost ruined his administrative career by certain reports on Quichua customs, dealing notably with the ritual murder of women and children. He had been laughed at, and called a lunatic—now the Red Ponchos were at work again.

The silence of despair greeted his words. Then, anxious to reassure them, the little old gentleman insisted that the Indians could not go far with their precious burden. All the defiles of the sierra were held by Veintemilla’s troops. They would always give assistance to the police, and the Indians were bound to run into them as soon as they left the costa. The chief thing was not to lose the trail.

They had now reached the point where the railway line joined the highroad running parallel to the sea, and all eyes were fixed on the great white band stretching out there in the moonlight. At first, it was bordered by a few tumble-down cabins and bamboo cottages, but soon there was only the nakedness of a huge sandy plain before them. Dick, the Marquis and Natividad, grouped at the windows, searched the night, while Uncle Francis took little Christobal in his arms and strove to console him. But the boy insisted on being held up, that he also might see out, moaning the while: “Maria-Teresa, Maria-Teresa!... Why have they taken my big sister?... Maria-Teresa!”

Suddenly, the same cry broke from them all: “The motor!” There it was, standing before the gates of a lonely hacienda. Natividad almost tore out the emergency cord, and the train, with a grinding of brakes, slowed down and then stopped. They tumbled to the line, Natividad shouting to the guard to go on, and send back police, troops and horses as soon as they could.

Dick raced across the plain, while Natividad, panting in the rear, called out to him to be careful, and not to give the alarm. The young engineer drew a revolver as he reached the motor, ready to shoot down the first man he saw. But there was nobody there. The car was empty, and the courtyard of the hacienda showed deserted, peopled only by the blue shadows of moonlight.

The gates were wide open, and he entered cautiously. Some of the buildings round the courtyard were in ruins; all were manifestly deserted. On his right, the bodega, or store-house; on his left, the proprietor’s casa. Here again the doors were open.

Dick returned to the motor, and was there rejoined by the Marquis and Natividad just as he lit one of the headlights. There was not a sound to be heard, and they followed the young man in silence. As they entered the first room of the house, a heavy, pungent perfume greeted their nostrils. Dick, leading the way, made a few cautious steps, and then fell back with a cry of horror. The furniture of the place was scattered in all directions, and there was blood everywhere.

“Maria-Teresa!” The Marquis and Dick, both calling out at the same time, were as suddenly silent again. Both seemed to have heard a faint voice answering them. |

“It’s up there!” shouted the young man, dashing toward a staircase leading to the first floor. All could now distinctly hear a low, prolonged moan. Dick, slipping on the stairs in his hurry, rose again with a white face. His hands were red with blood!