第41章

"Don't touch!" cried Tal."Poisoned arrows snake poison--very dead- like and quick.""Don't worry, I won't touch," said Tom grimly."But go on.You say Valdez sneaked into our camp, took the oiled-silk package from the coat pocket of Professor Bumper and went back to his own camp with it, thinking it was gold.""Yes," answered Tal, though it is doubtful if he understood all that Tom said, as it was half Spanish and half English.But the Indian knew a little English, too."Valdez, when he find no gold is very mad.Only papers in the yellow silk-papers with queer marks on.Valdez think it maybe a charm to work evil, so he burn them up--all up!""Burned that rare map!" gasped Tom.

"All in fire," went on Tal, indicating by his hands the play of flames."Valdez throw away yellow silk, and I take for my arrows so rain not wash off poison.I give to you, if you like, with blow gun.""No, thank you," answered Tom, in disappointed tones."The oiledsilk is of no use without the map, and that's gone.Whew! but this is tough!" he said to his chum."As long as it was only stolen there was a chance to get it back, but if it's burned, the jig is up.""It looks so," agreed Ned."We'd better get back and tell the professor.It he can't get along without the map it's time he started a movement toward getting another.So it wasn't Beecher, after all, who got it.""Evidently not," assented Tom."But I believe him capable of it." "You haven't much use for him," remarked Ned.

"Huh!" was all the answer given by his chum.

"I am sorry, Senors," went on Tal, "but I could not stop Valdez, and the burning of the papers----""No, you could not help it," interrupted the young inventor."But it just happens that it brings bad luck to us.You see, Tal, the papers in this yellow covering, told of an old buried city that the bald-headed professor-- the-man- with-no-hair-on-his-head--is very anxious to discover.It is somewhere under the ground," and he waved to the jungle all about them, pointing earthwards.

"Paper Valdez burn tell of lost city?" asked Tal, his face lighting up."Yes.But now, of course, we can't tell where to dig for it."The Indian turned to his wife and talked rapidly with her in their own dialect.She, too, seemed greatly excited, making quick gestures.Finally she ran out of the hut.

"Where is she going?" asked Tom suspiciously.

"To get her grandfather.He very old Indian.He know story of buried cities under trees.Very old story--what you call legend, maybe.But Goosal know.He tell same as his grandfather told him.You wait.Goosal come, and you listen.""Good, Ned!" suddenly cried Tom."Maybe, we'll get on the track of lost Kurzon after all, through some ancient Indian legend.Maybe we won't need the map!""It hardly seems possible," said Ned slowly."What can these Indians know of buried cities that were out of existence before Columbus came here? Why, they haven't any written history.""No, and that may be just the reason they are more likely to be right," returned Tom."Legends handed down from one grandfather to another go back a good many hundred years.If they were written they might be destroyed as the professor's map was.Somehow or other, though I can't tell why, I begin to see daylight ahead of us.""I wish I did," remarked Ned.

"Here comes Goosal I think," murmured Tom, and he pointed to an Indian, bent with the weight of years, who, led by Tal's wife, was slowly approaching the hut.