Phillips was making, Ken felt sure, a deliberate effort to sound casual. He found himself wondering about the man's curiosity, and wondering even more about his apparent efforts to conceal it.

A moment later Phillips swallowed the last of his coffee and looked around the table. "Whenever you two are finished," he said, "I'm ready to start. In the meantime, I'll take care of the bill." And when Ken automatically protested, he said, "No, I insist. The least I can do in return for the lift is to buy your first Mexican meal." He summoned the proprietor then and paid the check, while Ken and Sandy drained their own cups.

"He's in a hurry all of a sudden," Ken found himself thinking, and again he wondered.

As they climbed into the convertible a moment later Ken noticed that the big black sedan was gone. And the open highway, when they left Nuevo Laredo behind, seemed occupied almost entirely by crowded buses and trucks. Ken, who was driving, instinctively watched for another red convertible, although he reminded himself that it probably was fifty miles ahead by now, unless its occupants too had stopped for breakfast.

The country was flat and dull, with a spa.r.s.e cover of low bushes. Villages were few and small, each one CUBIOUs. .h.i.tCHHIKER 23.

little more than a handful of low earth-colored houses made of sun-baked adobe brick.

"I still feel let down," Sandy muttered. "It still looks just like Texas."

"There isn't much to look at until you get near Monterrey," Phillips agreed. "Then the hills begin and the road is more interesting. In the meantime, if you don't mind, I'll practice some Spanish verb conjugations. I've got an exam coming up when I get back to school." He took a small notebook from his pocket and settled back into the corner near the door.

Ken's foot pressed down on the accelerator. Ten minutes went by, and as many miles. Suddenly a highway sign loomed up on the right.

Phillips roused himself. "Despotic," he read, and translated the word. "Slow down. The first customs station is right ahead."

The small building appeared a moment later, and a man in a neat brown uniform waved them to a halt beneath a portico that offered protection from the hot sun.

"Will you please show me your tourist permits and your car permit," he said politely. "And unlock the trunk of your car."

They all handed over their papers. While the guard took them, Phillips opened the door and got out. "Want me to unlock the trunk?" he asked.

"Never mind, thanks. I'll do it." Ken opened the door on his side of the car and walked around to the trunk. Phillips, he noticed, sauntered toward the small customs building where a man in civilian clothes stood leaning against the wall. Phillips spoke to him quietly and the man answered in a voice equally inaudible.

"Having trouble?" Sandy joined Ken.

24 .

Ken shook his head. "Just a little curious about our hitchhiking friend." Without taking his eyes off Phillips he fumbled around for the lock and inserted the key.

Phillips still had his small notebook in his hand, and now he was tearing out a page and folding it over, as if absent-mindedly unaware of what he was doing. But suddenly, in a single swift movement, the folded paper changed hands and disappeared into the stranger's pocket.

"Did you see that?" Ken murmured. The customs official was coming toward them and he hastily flung up the lid of the trunk.

Over the official's head Sandy nodded. There was a puzzled look in his eyes.

The official glanced inside the trunk and nodded his satisfaction when he saw that the seals put on at the border were still unbroken. "Thank you, senores. You may close it now."

Phillips wandered back to the car. "Just been checking up," he said. "When I came north recently there was a road gang at work on the highway not far south of here-delayed me half an hour. But I've been told the work's all done and the road is clear now."

Ken and Sandy looked at each other. If Phillips and the stranger had been discussing road conditions, what reason would there have been for the swift pa.s.sage of a note between them?

CHAPTER III.

CHANGED PLANS.

PHILLIPS APPEABED not to notice the look the boys exchanged. While Ken banged down the trunk lid, Phillips rattled off a volley of Spanish at the customs official. The official's answer, a quiet, "No, senor," threw no light on what Phillips had said.

Then the official was returning their identification papers, bowing slightly, and saying, "Thank you, senores. That is all. But please do not break the seals until you pa.s.s the next inspection post about a hundred and fifty kilometers farther on."

As they all climbed back into the car Sandy raised his eyebrows at Ken, silently querying, "What do you make of it?"

Ken shook his head. He was remembering that Phillips had pretended not to see the man he later conferred with, back at the restaurant, and that he had shown definite interest in Sandy's account of the man with the green-flamed lighter. Now, for some reason, he had secretly pa.s.sed a message to the stranger leaning against the customs-house wall. Ken glanced over toward the little building. The man to whom Phillips

25.

26 .

had handed the folded slip of paper was no longer in sight.

Ken couldn't have answered Sandy's question in words, even if he had had the opportunity, but he had the definite feeling that Phillips was not what he claimed himself to be.

"All set?" Their pa.s.senger spoke as cheerfully as ever.

"Sure," Ken answered shortly. A moment later he swung the car back onto the road that stretched flat and straight ahead of them, under the blinding sun.

Far to their right, dimly visible through a faint haze, a range of mountains seemed to parallel their course. But as mile after mile flowed away beneath their wheels, the rugged hills drew a little closer. The country remained only spa.r.s.ely populated, however, and it was a relief, some thirty miles beyond the inspection station, when the highway ran through the little village of La Gloria. It was upon them suddenly. Ken slowed the car. On either side of the road, cement and whitewashed adobe houses stood in closely packed rows. Each house adjoined its neighbor, creating a single unbroken front wall close to the highway's edge.

Phillips broke a long silence. "Try to catch a glimpse through an open doorway," he said. "Houses like tin's look pretty grim to those of us who are accustomed to front and back yards. The barred windows and the heavy doors and solid walls don't look very cheerful to us."

A procession of six burros, each laden with two c.u.mbersome bags of charcoal, appeared suddenly at the intersection of a narrow cobblestoned cross street. Ken braked to a stop when it was apparent that they were going to amble slowly right across the highway.

CHANGED PLANS 27.

"There-to the right-look!" Phillips said, gesturing toward an open doorway. "You can't have any idea of how Mexicans live until you know about the patio in the center of almost every house."

The boys looked in the direction toward which he was pointing. Almost opposite the car a heavily timbered house door stood open, and beyond it, at the far end of a short corridor, was a brilliant riot of lush-green leaves and many-colored flowers. Its vivid contrast to the sober quiet of the street was breath-taking.

"The patio down here represents a whole way of life," Phillips was saying. "It permits the people to live most of their lives outdoors, but with complete privacy. Of course not every patio is that beautiful. Some of them are pretty well crowded with chickens and pigs and other kinds of livestock. But almost all of them have gardens and flowers of a sort."

The last burro had crossed to the far side of the highway. Almost reluctantly Ken turned his head away from the flower-filled patio and started the car again. The Mexican owner of the burros touched his wide-brimmed straw sombrero with a gesture of thanks as he followed his animals, and the car began to move slowly forward.

Ken gestured a response to the Mexican's thanks, and Phillips too waved a hand.

"Almost everybody you'll meet down here will be polite," he commented. "I think you're going to like the Mexicans. They're dignified and friendly and- well, just nice people."

Ken glanced sideways at him with curiosity. There had been a genuine warmth in Phillips' voice, an honest admiration for the people of the country. Was it really likely, Ken asked himself, that a person so openly friendly, as Phillips appeared to be, would involve 28 .

himself in some dark and mysterious undertaking?

A block farther on, the highway formed one boundary of the village square, a place of tree-shaded walks and beds of flowers.

"Drive around the square if you can take the time," Phillips said, and Ken found himself swinging obediently to the right.

"If this were market day in the village, the whole plaza would be occupied with tiny stands-some of them no more than a piece of cloth spread out on the sidewalk," Phillips was saying. "Weekly market day is a wonderful inst.i.tution down here. You must try to see at least a couple while you're in the country. People come from miles around, to buy and sell and just to visit. It's a great sight-pottery, shoes, vegetables, flowers, sc.r.a.pes, and rebozos-all spread out so close together you can hardly walk between them."

A group of st.u.r.dy boys playing in the square, all dressed in jeans, grinned and shouted, " 'Allol"

" 'Allo!" Phillips called back, and Ken and Sandy waved.

"Those kids are dressed the same way kids dress in the States," Sandy commented.

"Sure. And they've got television and refrigerators and movies down here too, just like ours," Phillips said.

"And juke boxes," Ken added, pointing to a huge one set up under an awning at the small refreshment stand which occupied the corner at which their circuit of the plaza ended.

As the car turned back into the highway again, Phillips said, "I guess I've been talking like a travel guide. But I'm so crazy about this place I want everybody else to like it too. That's why I was urging you CHANGED PLANS 29.

to get off the main road if you can, so that you'll see something besides juke boxes and the trucks and buses on the highway. The real Mexico is off the road, in the little villages that aren't crowded with tourists."

Beyond La Gloria they crossed the Salado River, a small trickle of water at the bottom of a ravine. The highway was beginning to change its character. It was no longer ruler-straight, although Ken still found it easy to maintain a sixty-mile-an-hour pace. Most of the traffic they encountered consisted, as it had earlier, of trucks and heavily laden buses-and innumerable burros. Some of the patient long-eared animals were carrying loads and plodding along the road's edge at a steady pace. Others were cropping the spa.r.s.e gra.s.s on the shoulder, apparently-like their masters, sometimes glimpsed in the thin shade of a bush-enjoying a brief rest.

Twenty miles below La Gloria, as they approached the village of Vallecillo, Sandy said, "I could do with a cold drink, Ken. That looks like a roadside stand coming up."

Ken was so accustomed to Sandy's regular suggestions of food and drink that he offered no argument. Almost automatically he pulled up in front of the tiny gaily painted stand not far ahead.

"Good idea," Phillips was saying. "I'll get them." He jumped out of the car and headed for the counter, which was tended by a young boy with black hair and lively black eyes.

Sandy leaned close to Ken and spoke in a low voice. "I'm not really dying of thirst," he murmured. "I just wanted a chance to talk for a minute. I've been thinking about this Phillips guy and it seems to me it would 30 .

be a good idea if we eased him out of our lives. Why don't we tell him we're not going straight through to Mexico City after all-that we've decided to stop over in Monterrey? I've got a hunch that if he sticks with us we'll somehow land in the middle of some strange goings on."

"So you've got a hunch now," Ken said dryly.

"I'm serious," Sandy whispered urgently. "He seems nice all right, most of the time-but some of his behavior has been pretty peculiar."

"I know." Ken nodded. "I can't figure him out. Maybe he's somehow tied up with that green-flame lighter routine. Or maybe he's-"

"Whatever he's up to, I say we'd better count ourselves out of it," Sandy broke in. "We're down here on a vacation. We don't want to get mixed up in anything-and I mean ant/thing."

"I'd kind of like to find out what's going on, though," Ken admitted. "And if we drop him, we never will."

"If we don't drop him, and get involved in some mix-up, your father is going to be pretty annoyed when we don't turn up in Mexico City," Sandy pointed out.

Phillips was returning to the car, holding three bottles of soda glistening with drops of moisture. Ken bit off his answer.

Phillips stood outside the car as he drank, tilting the bottle against his lips. But in the middle of his first long swallow he lowered the bottle abruptly and stood staring up the road, in the direction from which they had just come. The boys instinctively twisted their heads to follow his glance.

The second red convertible was tearing toward them. And directly in its path was one of the inevitable small processions of burros, half a dozen animals ambling Directly in its path was a procession of burros.

32 .

slowly across the highway. The horn of the oncoming car blasted raucously, but the animals continued their slow, oblivious movement.

At the last possible moment the red car came to a screaming stop, its locked wheels skidding on the smooth roadway.

Five hundred feet behind it another car was slowing down, and neither Ken nor Sandy had any difficulty in recognizing the car that had been parked in front of the Nuevo Laredo restaurant earlier that morning. Its rear whip antenna waved wildly as the heavy vehicle bucked against hastily applied brakes.

Then the burros stepped onto the shoulder at the far side of the highway and the red car started up again with a jerk. The man with the green-flamed lighter was at the wheel as it sped past the roadside stand. The car's original driver sat slumped low in the seat beside him.

The black sedan followed, but at a considerably slower speed.

Ken glanced quickly toward Phillips and realized only then that their pa.s.senger had stepped back into the shelter of the refreshment stand's overhanging awning. He stood half-turned away from the highway, his face almost entirely invisible. But Ken could see that the hand that clutched the soda bottle held it so tightly that the knuckles showed white.

As Ken watched him curiously, Phillips straightened up and began to step forth from his place of near-concealment. But after a single step he stopped and retreated once more.

Another car was coming along the highway and an instant later it zipped past in a flash. This one, too, the boys had seen earlier. It was the gray coup6 that had CHANGED PLANS 33.

been parked some distance away from the customs office at the Laredo border station.

Ken wasn't aware that Phillips had moved, but suddenly he was standing close to the highway, his eyes riveted on the rapidly disappearing car. His lips moved slightly, as if he were repeating something to himself.

Ken spoke his deduction half-aloud. "He's memorizing the license number."

Sandy had no time to comment. Now Phillips was striding toward them, his face set, his eyes narrowed. For an instant he seemed entirely different from the man who had, so recently, talked to them warmly of Mexico and Mexicans. But even as Ken became aware of this difference, it disappeared. By the time Phillips reached the car, and leaned easily on the door next to Ken, the grimness had gone from his features. All that remained was a look of mild irritation, coupled with a slight embarra.s.sment.

"I'm afraid my temper flares up," he said easily, "every time I see fools driving through a village as if they were on a race track. I always take down their license number, but by the time I've found a policeman to report to, my temper has died down and I don't do anything about it." He grinned and finished the contents of his soda bottle in one long swallow. "All set?" He eyed Ken's bottle and Sandy's, still both nearly full.

Ken had come to a decision. He knew Sandy was right. Richard Holt was expecting them in Mexico City, and they had no right to expose themselves to any situation, however curious, that might delay their arrival. He wondered if he would ever learn the significance of the signal that was transmitted with the green flame on a cigarette lighter, but he told himself that this time his curiosity would have to go unsatisfied.

34 .

"We've been thinking," he told Phillips, "that we'd like to stop over in Monterrey for a while, to take a look around. So if you're in a hurry to get on to Mexico City, maybe you'd rather leave us behind and look for a ride with somebody else."

"Oh." Phillips looked at him sharply. "I thought you were in a hurry to get there yourself."

There was relief in Sandy's voice as he said, "Well, we are, of course. But a day or so won't make much difference. Ken's father will be tied up all week, anyway. And it seems silly to go das.h.i.+ng through the country so fast that we don't have a chance to look around. Monterrey's worth looking at, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes. Very much." Phillips was still eying them intently and his voice sounded almost absent-minded, as if he were thinking of something else. "Big factories, mostly. People call it the Pittsburgh of Mexico." He straightened up suddenly and backed away from the door. "In that case," he said, "if I'm going to be looking for another ride in Monterrey, I'd better make a phone call if you don't mind waiting a minute. I've got an appointment in Mexico City tomorrow, which I may not be able to keep now."

"We're sorry," Sandy said awkwardly, "if this-"

"No-not at all." Phillips grinned his cheerful grin. "Glad you're really going to take enough time to see this country."