But before Tahn-te the Po-Ahtun-ho she crouched, and sobs shook her, and her hair covered her face as a veil.

"If it is of the clan, Yahn, it is to the governor you should speak:—" said Tahn-te—"from him it may come to me if he thinks best. There are rules we must not break. Because I carried you, when little, on my shoulder, is no reason to walk past the door of the governor and bring his duties to me."

He spoke kindly, for his heart was kind towards the little fighter of boyhood's days. Her alien blood was ever prompting her to reckless daring beyond the customs of Te-hua maidens. In a different way, he himself was an alien and it helped him to understand her. But this day he saw another Yahn—one he had not known could hide under the reckless exterior.

She tossed back her hair and faced him.

"How should I speak with Phen-tza the governor—he is the uncle of Ka-yemo! It is he who has helped do this thing—he would make me a slave or have me whipped! How should I speak with him? Ka-yemo knows that the governor his uncle, will—"

"Ka-yemo! What has Ka-yemo done? What trouble does he make?"

"Oh—no trouble!" her words were bitter words,—"Only the governor his uncle, has talked with the family of Tsa-fah and the marriage is made with his daughter Koh-pe of the beads, and you—know, Tahn-te—you know!"

Tahn-te did know, he regarded her in silence.

"Speak!"—she pleaded. "You are more than governor—you are the Highest! Magic is yours to make and to unmake. Unmake this thing! With your magic send him back to me—to me!"

"Magic is not for that:—it is for Those Above!"

Again she flung herself at his feet and wept. The sobs hurt him, yet he must not lift her. She begged for a charm—for a spell—for black magic to strike dead the wearer of the red bears and the blue beads, for all wild things a wild passion could suggest.

"If you could see into the other years you would be content to have it as it is," he said gently—"the years ahead may—"

"I care nothing for the years ahead! I want the now!—I want—"

"Listen!" he said, and she fell silent with covered face. "That which you feel for Ka-yemo is not the love of marriage. A man takes a wife for love of a wife and a home and children in the home. A man does not chain himself to a tigress whose bite and whose blows he has felt. A man would wish to be master:—what man has been born who could be master in your home?"

"You do not know. You have lived a different sort of life! I could be more than another wife—than any other wife! I shall kill some one!—" and she rose to her feet—"unless the magic comes I kill some one!"

"And then?"

"Then Phen-tza the governor will have me strangled, and they will take me to my grave with ropes of raw hide and there will not any where be a sad heart for Yahn Tsyn-deh."

"You see how it is—he is precious to you—as he always has been. But your love is too great a love for happy days. Always it will bring you the ache in the heart. No thing of earth should be given the love like that:—it is a fire to burn a whole forest in the days of its summer, and in the winter snows there will be only ashes."

"Good!—then I, Yahn, will rather burn to the ashes in such summer days, and be dead under the snows in the winter of the year!"

"And after that?"

"After that will not the Po-Ahtun-ho be Ruler always? Will he not remember his friends who are precious in the Beyond as he remembers this one to-day?" she asked mockingly. "Kā-ye-fah told the council that you have lived a life no other man lives, and that no woman is precious to you:—when you find the woman who is yet to come, may a viper poison her blood—may a cat of the hills tear her flesh! May you love until madness comes—and may the woman find only death in your arms—and find it quickly!"

When the Woman of the Twilight came in from the field with yellow corn pollen for the sacred ceremonies, the lattice of reeds at the outer door was yet shaking as from touch of a ruthless hand, or a strong wind.

"Who was it that cried here?" she asked. "Who has left you sad?"

"Perhaps a prophetess, my mother," answered Tahn-te, and sat thoughtful where Yahn had left him. And after a long time he arose and sought the governor.

But it was fated that the governor and the new Ruler were not to talk of the love of a maid or the marriage of a man that day.

A runner had been sent to Povi-whah from Kat-yi-ti. He gave his message, and stayed to eat while other runners took the trail, and before the sun had moved the width of a hand across the sky, the villages of Kah-po and Tsa-mah and Oj-ke were starting other runners to Ui-la-ua and far Te-gat-ha and at Kah-po the head men gathered to talk in great council over the word brought from the south.

For the word was that the men of the iron and the beards and the white skins were again coming to the land of the People of the Sun. They came in peace, and searched for the lost padres. A man of the gown was with them for prayers, and a Te-hua man who had been caught by the Navahu long winters ago and traded to the land of green birds. The Te-hua man said the white people were good people, and he was guiding them to the villages by the big river, Pō-sōn-ge.



CHAPTER VII

THE SILKEN SCARF

Of the many godly enterprises set afoot for exploration and conquest in New Spain of the sixteenth century, not all have chronicles important enough for the historian to make much of. But there were goings and comings of which no written record reached the archives. Things forbidden did happen even under the iron heel of Castilian rule, and one of the hidden enterprises grew to be a part of the life of the Pō-sōn-ge valley for a time.

Not that it was unchronicled, but there was a good reason why the records were not published for the Spanish court.

It was a pretty romantic reason also—and the usual one, if we may trust the world's judgment of the foundation of all trouble. But a maid tossing a blossom from a Mexic balcony could not know that the stranger from Seville to whom it was thrown was the son of an Eminence, instead of the simple gentleman named Don Ruy Sandoval in a royal letter to the Viceroy. With him travelled his tutor whose tutelage was past, and the position a difficult one for even the Viceroy to comprehend.

Since the youth rebelled at the habit of a monk—he had been given a space for adventure under godly surveillance. The godly surveillance limped a trifle at times. And because of this did Don Ruy walk again in the moonlight under the balcony and this time more than a blossom came to him—about the stem of a scarlet lily was a flutter of white! The warm light of the Mexic moon helped him to decipher it—a page from Ariosto—the romance of Dona Bradamante—and the mark of a pen under words uttered by the warrior-maid herself—words to warm a cooler youth than this one from over seas:—"Why seek I one who flies from me?—Why implore one who deigns not to send me reply?"

Whereupon there was no further delay as to reply—there was found an open gate to a garden where only stars gave light, where little hands were held for a moment in his—soft whispers had answered his own—and he was held in thrall by a lace wrapped senorita whose face he had not even looked on in the light. All of Castile could give one no better start in a week than he had found for himself in three days in the new world of promise.

For there were promises—and they were sweet. They had to do with a tryst two nights away—then the lady, whom he called "Dona Bradamante" because of the page torn from that romance, would enlighten him as to her pressing need of the aid of a gentleman, and courage would be hers to tell him why a marked line and a scarlet lily had been let fall in his path—and why she had trusted his face at first sight—though he had not yet seen her own—and why—

It was the usual thing—the page of a poem and a silken scarf as a guerdon of her trust.

He found the place of the tryst with ease for a stranger in the Mexic streets, but a glimmer of white robe was all he saw of his unknown "Dona Bradamante." Others were at the tryst, and their staves and arms lacked no strength. He heard a woman scream, then he heard her try again to scream and fail because of a hand on her throat, and beyond that he knew little for a night or two, and there was not much of day between.

Monkly robes were the next thing in his range of vision—one face in particular, sallow and still with eyes glancing sideways, seeing all things;—divining much! soft steps, and bandages, and out of silence the excited shrillness of Don Diego Maria Francisco Brancadori the tutor:—the shepherd who had lost track of his one rather ruffled lamb.

Pious ejaculation—thanks to all the saints he could think of—horror that the son of an Eminence should be thus abused—prophecies of the wrath to come when the duchess, his mother—At this Don Ruy groped for a sword, and found a boot, and flung it, with an unsanctified word or two, in the direction of the lamentation.

"You wail worse than a dog of a Lutheran under the yoke," he said in as good a voice as he could muster with a cut in his lip. "What matter how much Eminence it took to make a father for me—or how many duchesses to make a mother? I am labelled as plain Ruy Sandoval and shipped till called for. If you are to instruct my youth in the path it should tread—why not start in with a lesson on discretion?"

At this hopeful sign of life from the bundle of bandages on the monk's bed, Maestro Diego approached and looked over his illustrious charge with a careful eye.

"Discretion has limped far behind—enterprise, else your highness would cut a different figure by now—and—"



"Choke back your infernal highnesses!" growled the younger man. "I know well what your task is to be here in this new land:—it is to send back reports of duty each time I break a rule or get a broken head. Now by the Blood, and the Cross, if you smother not your titles, and let me range free, I tell you the thing I will do:—I will send back a complaint against you to Seville—and to make sure that it goes, no hand shall carry it but your own. Ere they can find another nurse maid for my morals, I'll build me a ship and go sailing the South seas for adventure—and your court tricksters will have a weary time in the chase! I like you better than many another godly spy who might have been sent, and I promise myself much joy in the journal of strange travels it is in your mind to write. But once for all, remember, we never were born into the world until a week ago!"

"But your Excellency—

"By the Great Duke of Hell! Will you not bridle your tongue when the damned monks are three deep at the key hole?"

By which it will be seen that the travels of the pious Don Diego were not all on paths of roses.

A little later the still faced priest of the stealthy glances came in, and Don Ruy sat on the side of the bed, and looked him over.

"You are the one who picked me up—eh? And the gentlemen of the streets had tossed me into a corner after discreetly starting my soul on its travels! Warm trysts your dames give to a stranger in this land—when you next confess the darlings, whisper their ears to be less bloodthirsty towards youth innocence!"

The man in the robe smiled.

"That unwise maid will make no more trysts," he said quietly,—"not if she be one important enough to cause an assault on your Highness."

"Did they—?"

"No—no—harm would not be done to her, but her destiny is without doubt a convent. The men who spoiled your tryst earn no purses as guard for girls of the street,—sacred walls will save them that trouble for a time—whether maid or wife I dare promise you that! It is as well you know. Time is wasted seeking adventure placed beyond mortal reach."

"Convent—eh? Do your holy retreats teach the little tricks the lady knew? And do they furnish their vestals with poems of romance and silks and spices of Kathay?"

He drew from an inner pocket a little scarf of apple green with knotted fringes, and butterflies, various colored in dainty broidery. As the folds fell apart an odor of sweetness stole into the shadowy room of the monastery, and the priest was surprised into an ejaculation at sight of such costly evidence, but he smothered it hastily in a muttered prayer.

After that he listened to few of the stranger's gibes and quips, but with a book of prayers on his knee he looked the youth over carefully, recalled the outburst of Don Diego as to origin, and the adventurer's own threat to build a ship and sail where chance pointed. Plainly, this seeker of trysts, or any other thing promising adventure, had more of resource than one might expect from a battered stranger lifted out of the gutter for the last rites.

The priest—who looked a good soldier and who was called Padre Vicente "de los Chichimecos" (of the wild tribes) read further in his book of hours, and then spoke the thing in his mind.

"For a matter of many years in this land of the Indies I have waited for a man of discreet determination for a certain work. The virgin herself led me to the gutter where you groaned in the dark, and I here vow to build her a chapel if this thought of mine bears fruit."

"Hump! My thanks to our Lady,—and I myself will see to the building of the chapel. But tell me of the tree you would plant, and we'll then have a guess at the fruit. It may prove sour to the taste! Monkly messes appealed to me little on the other side of the seas. I've yet to test their flavor on this shore of adventure."

Padre Vicente ignored the none too respectful comment—and took from his pocket a bit of virgin gold strung on a thread of deer sinew.

"Your name is Don Ruy Sandoval," he said. "You are in this land for adventure. You content yourself with the latticed window and the strife of the streets—why not look for the greater things? You have wealth and power at your call—why not search for an empire of—this?"

Then he showed the virgin gold worn smooth by much wearing.

Don Ruy blinked under the bandage and swore by Bradamante of the adventure that he would search for it gladly if but the way was shown.

"Where do we find this golden mistress of yours?" he demanded, "and why have you waited long for a comrade?"

"The gold is in the north where none dare openly seek treasure, or even souls, since Coronado came back broken and disgraced. I have waited for the man of wealth who dared risk it, and—at whose going the Viceroy could wink."

"Why wink at me—rather than another?"

"That is a secret knotted in the fringes of the silken scarf there—" said Padre Vicente with a grim smile. "Cannot a way be found to clear either a convent or a palace of a trouble breeder, when the church itself lends a hand? You were plainly a breeder of trouble, else had you escaped the present need of bandages. For the first time I see a way where Church and the government of the Indies can go with clasped hands to this work. In gold and converts the work may prove mighty. How mighty depends whether you come to the Indies to kill time until the day you are recalled—or improve that time by success where Coronado failed."

"And if we echo his failure?"

"None will be the wiser even then! You plan for a season of hunting in the hills. I plan for a mission visit by the Sea of Cortez. Mine will be the task to see how and where our helpers join each other and all the provisioning of man and beast. Mine also to make it clear to the Viceroy that you repent your—"

"Hollo!"—Don Ruy interrupted with a grimace. "You are about to say I repent of folly—or the enticing of a virgin—or that I fell victim to the blandishments of some tricky dame—I know all that cant by rote!—a man always repents until his broken head is mended, but all that is apart from the real thing—which is this:—In what way does my moment with a lady in the dark affect the Viceroy of the Indies? Why should his Excellency trouble himself that Ruy Sandoval has a broken head—and a silken scarf?"

Padre Vicente stared—then smiled. Ruy Sandoval had not his wits smothered by the cotton wool of exalted pamperings.

"I will be frank with you," he said at last. "The Viceroy I have not yet addressed on this matter. But such silken scarfs are few—that one would not be a heavy task to trace to its owner."

"Ah!—I suspected your eminence had been a gallant in your time," remarked Don Ruy, amicably—"It is not easy to get out of the habit of noticing alluring things:—that is why I refused to do penance for my birth by turning monk, and shrouding myself in the gown! Now come—tell me! You seem a good fellow—tell me of the 'Dona Bradamante' of the silks and the spices."

"The destiny of that person is probably already decided," stated the priest of the wild tribes, "she is, if I mistake not, too close to the charge of the Viceroy himself for that destiny to be questioned. The mother, it is said, died insane, and the time has come when the daughter also is watched with all care lest she harm herself—or her attendants. So I hear—the maid I do not know, but the scarf I can trace. Briefly—the evident place for such a wanton spitfire is the convent. You can easily see the turmoil a woman like that can make as each ship brings adventurers—and she seeks a lover out of every group."

"Jesus!—and hell to come! Then I was only one of a sort—all is fish to the net of the love lorn lady! Maestro Diego would have had the romance and the lily if he had walked ahead instead of behind me!—and he could have had the broken head as well!" Then he sniffed again at the bit of silk, and regarded the monk quizzically.

"You have a good story, and you tell it well, holy father," he said at last,—"and I am troubled in my mind to know how little of it may be truth, and how much a godly lie. But the gold at least is true gold, and whatever the trick of the lady may be, you say it will serve to win for me the privilege to seek the mines without blare of trumpets. Hum!—it is a great favor for an unknown adventurer."

"Unknown you may be to the people of the streets, and to your ship mates," agreed the Padre. "But be sure the Viceroy has more than a hint that you are not of the rabble. The broils you may draw to yourself may serve to disquiet him much—yet he would scarce send you to the stocks, or the service of the roads. Be sure he would rather than all else bid you god speed on a hunting journey."

"But that you are so given to frankness I should look also for a knife in the back to be included in his excellency's favors," commented Don Ruy. "Name of the Devil!—what have I done since I entered the town, but hold hands with one woman in the dark—and be made to look as if I had been laid across a butcher block on a busy day! Hell take such a city to itself! I've no fancy for halting over long in a pit where a gentleman's amusements are so little understood. If the Dona of the scarf were aught but an amiable maniac the thing would be different. I would stay—and I would find her and together we would weave a new romance for a new world poet! But as it is, gather your cut throats and name the day, and we'll go scouring the land for heathen souls and yellow clinkers."

Padre Vicente de Bernaldez was known by his wonderful mission-work to be an ecclesiastic of most adventurous disposition. Into wild lands and beyond the Sea of Cortez had he gone alone to the wild tribes—so far had he gone that silence closed over his trail like a grave at times—but out of the Unknown had he come in safety!

His fame had reached beyond his order—and Ruy Sandoval knew that it was no common man who spoke to him of the Indian gold.

"Francisco de Coronado," stated this padre of the wilderness, "came back empty handed from the north land of the civilized Indians for the reason that he knew not where to search. The gold is there. This is witness. It came to me from a man who—is dead! It was given him by a woman of a certain tribe of sun worshippers. To her it was merely some symbol of their pagan faith—some priestly circle dedicated to the sun."

"It sounds well," agreed Don Ruy—"but the trail? Who makes the way? And what force is needed?"

For a guide the Padre Vicente had a slave of that land, a man of Te-hua baptized Jose, for five years the padre had studied the words and the plans. The man would gladly go to his own land,—he and his wife. All that was required was a general with wealth for the conquest. There were pagan souls to be saved, and there was wealth for the more worldly minds. The padre asked only a tenth for godly reasons.

Thus between church and state was the expedition of his Excellency Don Ruy Sandoval ignored except as a hunting journey to the North coast of the Cortez Sea—if he ranged farther afield, his own be the peril, for no troops of state were sent as companions. The good father had selected the men—most of them he had confessed at odd times and knew their metal. All engaged as under special duty to the cross:—it was to be akin to a holy pilgrimage, and absolution for strange things was granted to the men who would bear arms and hold the quest as secret.

Most of them thought the patron was to be Mother Church, and regarded it as a certain entrance to Paradise. Don Ruy himself meekly accepted a role of the least significance:—a mere seeker of pleasure adventures in the provinces! It would not be well that word of risk or danger be sent across seas—and the Viceroy could of course only say "god speed you" to a gentleman going for a ride with his servants and his major domo.

And thus:—between a hair brained adventurer and a most extolled priest, began the third attempt to reach the people called by New Spain, the Pueblos:—the strangely learned barbarians who dwelt in walled towns—cultivating field by irrigation, and worshipping their gods of the sun, or the moon, or the stars through rituals strange as those of Pagan Egypt.

Word had reached Mexico of the martyrdom of Fray Juan Padilla at Ci-bo-la, but in the far valley of the Rio Grande del Norte—called by the tribes the river Pō-sōn-ge,—Fray Luis de Escalona might be yet alive carrying on the work of salvation of souls.

The young Spanish adventurer listened with special interest as the devotion and sacrifices of Fray Luis were extolled in the recitals.

"If he lives we will find that man," he determined. "He was nobly born, and of the province of my mother. I've heard the romance for which he cloaked himself in the gray robe. He should be a prince of the church instead of a wandering lay brother—we will have a human thing to search for in the world beyond the desert—ours will be a crusade to rescue him from the infidel lands."



CHAPTER VIII

THE STORY BY THE DESERT WELL

Don Diego marvelled much at the briskness of the plans for a season of hunting ere his troublesome charge was well able to see out of both eyes. But on being told that the range might be wide, he laid in a goodly stock of quills and parchment, for every league of the land would bring new things to his knowledge.

These records were to be entitled "Relaciones of the New and Wondrous Land of the Indian's Island" and in those Relaciones the accounts of Padre Vicente were to loom large. Among the pagan people his war against the false gods had been ruthless. Maestro Diego was destined to hear more of the padre's method than he dared hope in the earlier days.

Jose, the Indian of the North whose Te-hua name was Khen-zah, went with them—also his wife—the only woman, for without her the man would not go in willingness. Two only were the members added by Don Ruy to the cavalcade—one a stalwart fellow of many scars named Juan Gonzalvo who had known service with Pizarro in the land of gold—had lost all his coin in an unlucky game, and challenged the young stranger from Seville for the loan of a stake to gamble with and win back his losses. He looked good for three men in a fight. Instead of helping him in a game, Don Ruy invited him on the hunting trip!

The other addition was as different as might be from the toughened, gambling conquistador—a mere lad, who brought a letter from the hand of the Viceroy as a testimonial that the lad was a good scribe if it so happened that his sanctity the padre—or his Excellency Don Ruy, should need such an addition in the new lands where their hunting camps were to be. The boy was poor but for the learning given him by the priests,—his knowledge was of little save the knowledge of books. But his willingness to learn was great, and he would prove of use as a clerk or page as might be.

Padre Vicente was not present, and the cavalcade was already two days on the trail, but Don Ruy read the letter, and looked the lad over.

"Your name is—"

"Manuel Lenares—and called 'Chico' because I am not yet so tall as I may be."

"It should be Manuella because you look not yet so manlike as you may be," declared Ruy Sandoval,—and laughed as the angry color swept the face of the lad. "By our Lady, I've known many a dame of high degree would trade several of her virtues for such eyes and lips! Tush—boy! Have no shame to possess them since they will wear out in their own time! I can think of no service you could be to me—yet—I have another gentleman of the court with me holding a like office—Name of the Devil:—it would be a fine jest to bestow upon him a helper for the ponderous 'Relaciones'!" and Don Ruy chuckled at the thought, while the lad stood in sulky embarrassment—willing to work, but not to be laughed at.

He was dressed as might be in the discarded garments of magnificence, well worn and visibly made over to fit his young figure. His cloak of old scarlet, too large for him, covered a patched shirt and jacket, and reached to his sandal straps of russet leather:—scarce the garb of a page of the Viceregal court, yet above that of the native servant.

"You are—Spanish?"

Again the face of the youth flushed, and he shrugged his shoulders and replaced his velvet cap with its pert cock's feather.

"I have more than enough Spanish blood to send me to the Christian rack or stake if they caught me worshipping the pagan gods of my grandmother," he stated briefly, and plainly had so little hope of winning service that he was about to make his bow and depart in search of the Padre.

But the retort caught Don Ruy, and he held the lad by the shoulder and laughed.

"Of all good things the saints could send, you are the best," he decided—"and by that swagger I'll be safe to swear your grandsire was of the conquistadores—I thought so! Well Chico:—you are engaged for the service of secretary to Maestro Diego Maria Francisco Brancadori. You work is seven days in the week except when your protector marks a saint's day in red ink. On that day you will have only prayers to record, on the other days you will assist at many duties concerning a wondrous account of the adventures Don Diego hopes for in the heathen land."

"Hopes for:—your Excellency?"

"Hopes for so ardently that our comfort may rest in seeing that he meets with little of disappointment on the trail."

For one instant the big black eyes of the lad flashed a shy appreciation of Don Ruy's sober words and merry smile.

"For it is plain to be seen," continued that gentleman—"that if Don Diego finds nothing to make record of, your own wage will be a sad trial and expense."

"I understand, your Excellency."

"You will receive the perquisites of a secretary if you have indeed understanding," continued Don Ruy, "but if there are no records to chronicle you will get but the pay of a page and no gifts to look for. Does it please you?"

"It is more than a poor lad who owns not even a bedding blanket could have hoped for, senor, and I shall earn the wage of a secretary. That of a page I could earn without leaving the streets and comfort."

"Oho!" And again the eyes of Don Ruy wandered over the ill garbed figure and tried to fit it to the bit of swagger and confidence.—"I guessed at your grandfather—now I'll have a turn at you:—Is it a runaway whom I am venturing to enroll in this respectable company of sober citizens?"

"Your Excellency!" the lad hung his head yet watched the excellency out of the corner of his eye, and took heart at the smile he saw—"it is indeed true there are some people I did not call upon to say farewell ere offering my services to you, but it is plain to see I carried away not any one's wealth in goods and chattals."

"That is easily to be perceived," said Don Ruy and this time he did not laugh, for with all his light heart he was too true a gentleman to make sport of poverty such as may come to the best of men. "By our Lady, I've a feeling of kinship for you in that you are a runaway indeed—this note mentions the teaching of the priests—I'll warrant they meant to make a monk of you."

"If such hopes are with them, they must wait until I am born again," decided the lad, and again Don Ruy laughed:—the lad was plainly no putty for the moulding, and there was chance of sport ahead with such a helper to Maestro Diego.

"It will be my charge to see that you are not over much troubled with questions," said his employer, and handed back the letter of commendation. "None need know when you were engaged for this very important work. Jose over there speaks Spanish as does Ysobel his wife. Tell them you are to have a bed of good quality if it be in the camp—and to take a blanket of my own outfit if other provisions fall short."

A muttered word of thanks was the only reply, and Don Ruy surmised that the boy was made dumb by kindness when he had braced himself for quips and cuffs—knowing as he must—that he was light of build for the road of rough adventure.

"Ho!—Lad of mine!" he called when the youth had gone a few paces—"I trust you understand that you travel with a company of selected virtues?—and that you are a lucky dog to be attached to the most pious and godly tutor ever found for a boy in Spain."

"It is to be called neighbor of these same virtues that I have come begging a bed on the sand when I might have slept at home on a quilt of feathers:"—the lad's tongue had found its use again when there was chance for jest.

"And—"

"Yes:—your Excellency?"

"As to that pagan grandmother of whom you made mention:—her relationship need not be widely tooted through a horn on the journey—yet of all things vital to the honorable Maestro Diego and his 'Relaciones,' I stand surety that not any one thing will be given so much good room on paper as the things he learns of the heathen worship of the false gods."

"A nod is as good as a wink to a mule that is blind!" called back the lad in high glee. "Happy am I to have your excellency's permission to hold discourse with him concerning the church accursed lore of our ancestral idols!"

Then he joined Jose and Ysobel as instructed, and gave the message as to bed and quarters. Jose said no word in reply, but proceeded to secure blankets, one from the camp of Don Ruy. Ysobel—a Mexican Indian—who had been made Christian by the padre ere she could be included in the company, was building a fire for the evening meal. Seeing that it burned indifferently the new page thrust under the twigs the fine sheet of paper containing the signature of the Viceroy.

Ysobel made an exclamation of protest—but it was too late—it had started the blaze in brave order.

"Your letter—if you should need it—perhaps for the padre!" she said.

"Rest you easy, Nurse," said the lad and stretched himself to watch the supper cooked. "I have no further needs in life but supper and a bed,—see to it that Jose makes it near you own! I am in the employ of Don Ruy Sandoval for a period indefinite. And he has promised—laugh not out loud Ysobel!—that he will see to it I am not questioned as to whence or why I came to seek service under his banner!—even the holy father is set aside by that promise—I tell you that laughter is not to be allowed! If you let him see that you laugh, I will beat you when we are alone, Ysobel—I will though you have found a dozen husbands to guard you!"

Don Ruy did see the laughter of the woman, and was well pleased that the lad could win smiles from all classes,—such a one would lighten weary journeys.

He felt that he had done well by Maestro Diego. Plainly the quick wit of the lad betokened good blood, let him prate ever so surely on his heathen grandmother!

Don Diego felt much flattered at the consideration shown by Don Ruy for the "Relaciones"—in fact he had so pleased an interest in the really clever young pen-man that the Padre took little heed of the boy—he was of as much account as a pet puppy in the expedition—but if the would-be historian needed a secretary—or fancied he did,—the lad would be less trouble than an older man if circumstances should arise to make trouble of any sort.

So it chanced that Juan Gonzalvo and Manuel Lenares, called Chico, were the only two included in the company who had not been confessed and enrolled by Padre Vicente himself.

It was the magic time of the year, when new leaves open to the sun, and the moon, even in the bare desert stretches of the land, brought dreams of Castile to more than one of the adventurers.

"Good Father," said Don Ruy with feigned complaint, "Think you not that your rigid rules for the journey might have stopped short of hopeless celibacy for all of us?—Why a moon like that and Venus ascendent unless to make love by?"

"The brightness of that same moon saved you nothing of a cracked pate the hour of fortune when we first met," observed Padre Vicente drily.—"Maids or matrons on the journey would have caused broken heads in the desert as handily as in the city streets."

"By the faith—your words are of wisdom and much to be valued by his highness," agreed Don Diego. "Make note of that thought for the Relaciones Chico, my son. This pious quest may be a discipline of most high import to all of us. Wifeless should we ride as rode the crusaders of an older day."

"Tum-a-tum-tum!" Don Ruy trolled a fragment of love melody, and laughed:—"I have no fancy for your penances. Must we all go without sweethearts because you two have elected to be bachelors for the saving of souls? Think you the Indian maids will clamor for such salvation? I lay you a wager, good father, that I win as many converts with love songs and a strip of moonlight, as do you both with bell and book!"

Around the camp fires of the nights strange tales were told—and strange traits of character unconsciously given to the light, and to all the far seeing Padre gave note;—in emergencies it is ever well to know one's resources.

Jose the Te-hua slave—caught first by the Navahu—traded to the Apaches—thence to neighbors of the south—after years of exile, was the one who had but few words. All the queries of the adventurers as to gold in the north gained little from him—only he remembered that fine yellow grains were in some streams, and it was said that other yellow metal was in secret places, but he did not profess to be a knower of High Things—and it was half a life time since his eyes had rested on his own people.

He was a silent man whose words were in the main for his Ysobel and the boy secretary. But the gold nugget worn smooth in the pocket of Padre Vicente was as a charm to find its parent stock in all good time! Men were with them who knew minerals in other lands!—It would go hard but that it should be found!

He willingly let the nugget pass from hand to hand:—it was restful as sleep to make the trail seem short. To Don Ruy he had told somewhat of its finding, and the story in full was promised some day to the cavalcade.

And at Ah-ko where they rested—they had not halted at hostile Ci-bo-la!—At Ah-ko where the great pool on the high mesa made glad their eyes, and the chiefs came to pay ceremonial visits, and the men felt they were nearing the end;—there, at the urging of Don Ruy who deemed it worthy of the "Relaciones"—there was told the story of the bit of gold, the Symbol of the Sun, as it had been told to Padre Vicente years before.

"Yes—I did mean to tell you of the finding of it," he announced amiably. "I have listened to all your discourses and romances on the journey—and good ones there were among them! But mine would not have been good to tell when seeking recruits, it might have lessened their ardor—for a reason you will shortly perceive!"

"I plainly perceive already that the good father has saved us thus far from a fright!" decided Don Ruy.

"Since a man lived through it you can perhaps endure the telling of it—even here in the half darkness," said the priest, and noted that Don Diego was sharpening a pen, and Chico taking an ink horn from his pocket. The journal of the good gentleman had grown to be one of the joyful things of the journey, and the more gay adventurers gave him some wondrous tales to include.

"It is not a pretty tale, but it may teach you somewhat of these brown people of the stone houses—and some of the meaning back of their soft smiles! It is not a new tale of to-day:—it goes back to the time when the vessels of Narvaez went to the bottom and a few men found their way westward to Mexico."

"De Vaca and his men?" said Don Diego. But the priest shook his head.

"Earlier than that."

"Earlier? Holy Father:—how could that be when no others—"

"Pardon me:—you are about to say no others escaped, are you not? Have you forgotten De Vaca's own statement as to two other men who went ashore before the sinking of the vessels, and who were never heard of again?"

"I have heard of it with great special interest," announced Don Ruy—"heard it in the monastery on the island of Rhodes where the white man you speak of (for one of the lost ones was a negro) had as a boy been trained in godly ways by the Knights of St. John. There the good fathers also educated me as might be and tried with all zeal to make a monk of me! Ever before my mind was held the evil end of the other youth who fled from the consecrated robe,—for he had made a scandal for a pretty nun ere he became a free lance and joined hands with Solyman the Magnificent against Christendom,—oh—many and long were the discourses I had to listen to of that heretic adventurer! He was a Greek of a devout and exalted Christian family, and his name was Don Teodore."

Juan Gonzalvo—called Capitan Gonzalvo in favor of his wide experience and wise management of camp, had been resting idly on the sands, but sat up, alert at that name.

"Holy name of God:—" and his words were low and keen as though bitten off between his teeth—"is he then alive? Good Father—was it he? and is he still alive?"

While one might count ten, Padre Vicente looked in silence at the tense, eager face of his questioner, and the others stared also, and felt that a spark had touched powder there.

"Yes:—it is true. It was that man," said the priest at last. "But why do you, my son, wake up at the name? May it be that the Greek was dear to you?"

"He should be dear should I find him, or any of his blood!" But the voice of the careless adventurer was changed and was not nice to hear. "All the gold the new land could give me would I barter but to look on the face of Don Teo, the renegade Greek!"

"But not in friendship?"

Juan Gonzalvo laughed, and Don Diego crossed himself at that laugh,—it had the mockery of hell in it, and the priest turned and gave the heretofore careless fellow a keener attention than had previously occurred to him. By so little a thing as a laugh had the adventurer lifted himself from the level where he had been idly assigned.

"You will not look on his face in this world, my son," said the priest, "and enmities should cease at the grave. The man is dead. You could have been but a child when he left Spain, what evil could have given him your hate?"

"My father was one of the Christian slaves chained by him to the oars of Solyman the infidel Turk! Long days and horrible nights was he witness to the lives of Solyman the magnificent, and Don Teodore the fortunate. When the end came,—when the magnificent patron began to set spies on his favorite lady of the harem, the tricky Greek escaped one dark night, and brought up in Barcelona as an escaped slave of the Turk, pretending he had eluded the swords of the oppressor after dreadful days of bondage."

"I remember that time," said Don Diego. "He was entertained by the nobles, and plied with questions, and was offered a good office in the next crusade against the unsanctified infidels."

"So it was told to me," said Juan Gonzalvo—"told by a man whose every scar spoke of the Greek wolf! I was told of them as other children are told the stories of the blessed saints. My first toy sword was dedicated to the cutting down of that thrice accursed infidel and all his blood. God:—God:—how mad I was when I was told the savages of the new world had done me wrong by sending him to hell before I could even spell his name for curses!"

"My son! You are doing murder in your heart!" and Padre Vicente held up the crucifix with trembling hand.

"That I am!" agreed Gonzalvo and laughed, and laid himself down again to rest on his saddle.—"Does it call for penance to kill a venomous thing?"

"A human soul!" admonished the priest.

"Then he came by such soul later in life than his record shows trace of!" declared Juan Gonzalvo, and this time the priest was silent.

"In truth, report does stand by our friend in that," agreed Don Diego. "He lived as a Turk among the Turkish pirates, and was never so much a Christian as are those who serve as devils, in the flames of the pit. To slay the infidel is not to slay a soul, good father,—or—if you are of that mind," he added with an attempt at lightness which sat ill on him—so stiff it was as he eyed the still priest warily,—"if you are of that mind, we can never grow dull for argument in the desert marches. In the Holy Office godly men of the Faith work daily and nightly on that question even now in Christian Spain."

The priest shuddered, and fingered his beads. Well they knew in those days the "question" and "Holy office" in Christian Spain. The rack loomed large enough to cast its shadow even to the new found shores at the other side of the world!

And plainly he read also that two otherwise genial gentlemen of the cavalcade were equipped well for all fanatic labor where Holy Cross or personal hates were to be defended. It is well to know one's comrades, and the subject of the Greek had opened doors of strange revelation to him.

"The mind which is of God and of the Holy Mother Church is the mind for the judgments of souls," said Padre Vicente after a silence. "We may thank the saints that we are not called on to condemn utterly any of God's children."

"But what of the Devil's?" asked Don Diego plainly not satisfied with the evasive reply where he had least expected it. "What of the children of the darkness and the Evil One?"

Padre Vicente, of the wild tribes, looked around the group and smiled. Scarce a man of them without at least one lost life to his record—and more than one with murders enough on his list to have won him sainthood if all had been done for the Faith:—which they were not! Back of them crouched dusky Indians of the village, watching with eager yet apparently kindly interest, this after supper talk of the strange white men of the iron and the beasts, who had come again to their land. The priest made a cigarro—then another one, lit both and passed the first made to the oldest chief—the Ruler of the Indian group. The Indian accepted it with a breath of prayer on the hand of the reverend father, and the latter sent out smoke in a white cloud ere speaking.

"Every brown skin here is a worshipper of false gods, and is therefore a son of Beelzebub—yet to slaughter them for that won no favors for the last Capitan-General who led an army across this land," he remarked, "and mine must not be the task to judge of their infidelity to the Saints or to Christ the Son who has not yet spoken to them!" The words were uttered with an air of finality. Plainly he did not mean to encourage blood lust unless necessary to the work in hand. Don Diego sulkily made the sign of the cross at the Name, and Don Ruy noted that the good father was good on the parry—and if he could use a blade as he did words, he would be a rare fencer for sport. One could clang steel all day and no one be the bearer of a scratch!

"Since the illustrious and much sought for Greek is without doubt serving his master as a flame in hell, it would add sweetness to a fair night if you would tell us how he fared at the hands of his brown brothers," suggested Don Ruy—"and how the Devil found his own at last. These others will be much entertained to hear what share he had in the finding of the gold. Strange it is that I never thought to ask the name of the man—or you to tell it!"

The priest hesitated ever so slightly. Was he of two minds how much to tell these over eager adventurers? Especially that one of the curses! But the truth, as he had told Don Ruy in part, was an easier thing to maintain, and keep memory of, than a fiction dressed up for the new man. And the man was watching him with compelling eyes, and the boy Chico, with eyes agog, was also alert for his endless notes.

"Yes, he had to do with the gold—much!" he said at last. "He was the only white man who had been told the secret of it."

"Ah-la-la!" murmured Don Ruy, plainly suggesting that such evidence would be the better for a trusty witness.—Padre Vicente heard him, and puffed his cigarro, and half closed his eyes in his strange patient, pale smile.

"But it is true for all that!" he insisted. "And of all places we have crossed since Culiacan was left behind us, none seems more fitting than this for the telling of his story."

His eyes glanced over the men circled above the great pool. The stars were making little points of light in the rock bound water. Far below in the desert a coyote called to his intimates. Indians loitered at the edge of the circle. And at the rim of of the mesa, and high places of the natural fortress, armed sentinels paced;—dusk figures against the far sky. It was truly a place made for tales of adventure.

"Whatever evil your much hated Greek was guilty of, there is one question to ask:—in monk's cell, or in the battles for the wrong—left he the record of a coward?"

"No," acknowledged Don Diego—"but his zeal was damnable in all things."

"I ask because various things which he endured could scarcely be understood if you put him in the list of the weak or the incapable."

"Often the strength of the Evil One is a stupendous force for his chosen people," agreed Don Diego. "That is widely known in Europe to-day when Paracelsus with infernal magic of the mind makes cures which belong by every right to the saints alone!"

"And the people are truly cured of their ills—truly healed?"

"Their bodies are truly healed for the life that is temporal, but each soul is doomed for the life that is eternal. No Christian doubts that the mental magic of the physician is donated by Beelzebub whose tool he is."

"He was a student of exceeding depth,"—agreed Padre Vicente—"and it may be he has found magic forbidden to man. But the Greek laid claim to no such power as that, however much it is said that the devil loved him! He had only a strong body, and the dislike to see it cut to pieces for a heathen holiday."

"De Soto, it is said, found a dirk of his when he crossed the land of Apalache years later, seeking empire. But the tribes could or would tell nothing of the lost Greek and the negro slave. The latter was killed by the people called Natchez, and the Greek, who had been among many things:—a sailor, escaped by the water, leaving no trail—not even the trail made by a white skin in a land of dusk people.

"From the Turks he had learned a trick of using stain of barks and herbs. His hair was of brown, but the eyebrows and lashes were heavy and dark. After using such concoction, a mirror of clear water showed him no trace of himself except the eyes—they were blue beyond hope, but the heavy lashes were a help and a shadow.

"With stolen arms of bow, hatchet, and a flint knife, the man went north—wading the river edge at night, and hiding by day until the land of the Natchez was left behind. A strong river came from the west—and an old canoe gave him hope of finding New Spain by the water course. That journey was a tedious thing of night prowlings, hidings, and, sometimes starvings. Then the end of solitude came, and he was captured by heathen rangers.

"They were a large company and were travelling west. Later he learned they were a war company and in a fight his master and most of the others were killed. At the rejoicing of the victors, he sang louder, and danced more wildly than all the others, so they did not kill him. He was traded to other Indians further west for a painted robe and some clay pots. This last move brought him to the villages of the stream, named later by Coronado the Rio Grande, but called by the Indians another name, the Pō-sōn-ge."

"The very villages where we are to go?" demanded Don Ruy.

"Possibly some of the same," said the priest. "How many of you remember the great comet of 1528?"

Several did, and all remembered the dread and horror it spread in Western Europe.

"Think you then what that same threat in the sky must have been to these wild people who seek magic ever from the stars and even the clouds. It was a threat and it called for some sacrifice propitiating the angry gods."

"Sacrifice? Do these infidels then practise such abominations?" asked Don Diego.

"To look at the mild eyes and hear their soft voices of these our guests it is not easy to think it," agreed Padre Vicente, "but these people are but the northern cousins of the men Cortez conquered—their customs differ only in degree. To both Venus and Mars were human god-offerings made—that day of sacrifice is not so long past, and in that day it was done here."

"And?"

"And your lucky Greek was the one to be chosen! He was fed well as one would fatten an ox for the knife. He had some knowledge of simple remedies, and in brewing herbs for their sick he had also stolen the opportunity for the further addition to his coat of color. He was to them an Indian of an unknown tribe, yet, since he was to be offered to the gods, he was made the very center of ceremonial dances, and infernal heathenish customs.

"Both men and women enter into certain sacred—or infernal orders, whose ceremonies are only known to those initiate. An inter-tribal connection is kept up in such societies between villages speaking a totally different language,—even though the tribes be at war, there is always a truce for these wild creatures who dance together for some magic, or some prayer to their false gods."

"And the truce is kept?"

"It would not be possible for a tribe to break truce of their diabolical things of their spirits. At the ceremonies for the sacrifice to the comet god was a girl of another tribe, and when the Greek noted that her desire was not to see him destroyed, he had the first glimpse of hope,—the only other he had was to remove the stain in some way, and convince them that their gods had made a miracle to save him."

The priest made a gesture towards the great sand drifts at every side of rock wall and column.

"To which of you would it occur, if hiding meant chance of life—to which of you would it occur to go under that sand for days so close to the trail that the women with the water jars would pass you scores of times in a day carrying water from this pool?"

"This pool?—this—"—the eyes of Don Ruy lightened—"this is then that place of the great danger?"

"A man could not hide in the sand like that—nor deceive these wild trailers of animals," decided Don Diego—"and of a certainty it could not be close to the trail!"

"So we would naturally think," decided Padre Vicente. "But the Indian girl was wiser than our wisdom, Senor, for she did aid his escape, and she did hide him there. To get breath, his face was touching a great wall of rock against which another was carelessly laid. The place had been chosen with a knowledge that seemed inspired—for only close to the trail where the sand was like to be disturbed by naked romping children,—only there in all these deserts could he have been hidden from their hunters."

"Here?—in this place?" again said Don Ruy. "Holy father it is a good story—yet sounds a romance fantastic to fit this weird place of the pool and the star shine of the night?"

"By the name of these people, the Queres, and the name of the village Ah-ko, this should be the place of the sacrificial intentions," said the priest. "By the careful account given, this is the pool to which the trail led, and it may even be that the ancient Cacique to whom, but now, I gave the cigarro, was chief priest of the sacrifice in that day."

"A truly delectable neighbor for a help to pleasant fancy," said Don Ruy and laughed. "If the amiable devil should be moved to sacrifice now, I would be the nearest to his hand—think you he would make ill use of my youth and tenderness?"

"His Sanctity, the padre was indeed wise that no word of this was breathed in the viceregal ears of Mexico," said Don Diego with a testiness not yet subdued over the question of utter damnation for the souls unregenerate. "Piety would carry me far—but no warrant is mine to follow even the Highest where cannibals do wait for unholy sustenance!" and he arose and bowed to Don Ruy.

"Oh—Name of the Devil!" said his noble ward, and laughed and stretched his legs. "I may not be so unholy as your words would suggest. Give not a dog a bad name in the days of his youth!"

And at this the scandalized and pious dignitary multiplied words to make clear how far from such meaning were his devoted intentions. But if wild tribes must be fed ere their souls could be reached,—victims could be found other than the heir of a duchess!

At which outburst Don Ruy suggested that he save his pious breath and devote it to prayers, and to take some of his own medicine by remembrance that soul of king and soul of peasant weighed the same before high God.

"After which devout exhortation from your servant, good father, we again give ear to the tale of that devil's disciple—the Greek Teo," he said, "Did they find him in the sand? And did the merciful dame hide in the sand also?—if so the prison might not be without hope. Holy Saint Damien!—to think that the man walked these same stony heights—and drank from that pool!"

"They never found him in the sand." The priest ignored the other frivolous comment. "They never found him anywhere, and a slave from the Navahu people was made a sacrifice in his stead. The strange girl was a Te-hua medicine maid or magic learner of things from the wise men of Ah-ko. Her prayers were very many, and very long, and she made a shrine for prayer on the sand beside the stone wall where he was hidden. Their men set watch on her, she knew it, but not anything did they find but a girl who made her prayers, and gave no heed to their shadowings.

"When were ended her days of devotion to the false gods—then she ate, and drank, and took the way to her own people; with moderate pace she took that trail north, but when night came, she ran like the wild thing she was, again to the south, crept unseen again into this fortress, and led the rescued man as far to the west as might be until the dawn came. With the coming of the sun, came also a sand storm of great stress, and all trace of their steps were covered, and the medicine maid saw in that a mystic meaning.

"To Turk and Spaniard the refugee might be only Teo the Greek, a fugitive from all high courts. But to the Indian he was a lost God of the Great Star for whom even the desert winds did duty. When with moistened yucca root he rubbed his hands that the white skin showed, she bent her head to the sand, and was his slave until ... the end!"

"It moves well, and beautifully smooth:—this tale of the outlaw," agreed Don Ruy—"but it is that end we are eager for—and the how it was compassed—that she turned slave—or mistress—or both in one, as alas!—has chanced to men ere our day!—was the doom expected from the earliest mention of the pitiful and most devout lady—devout to her devils! But of the end—the end?"

"The end came to him long after they parted, and for one winter and one summer were their wanderings to the west. Of the Firebrand river deep between rock walls he had heard, and of the ocean far beyond, and of Mexico to the south. To reach the river they crossed dry leagues of desert and lived as other wild things lived. But the river was not a thing for boats or journeys, and they went on beyond it seeking the sea. Strange things and strange lives they passed on the way. His skin had been stained many times and his beard was plucked out as it grew. Enough of Indian words he learned to echo her own tale to the brown savages, and the tale was, that they were medicine people of Te-hua in the land of Pō-sōn-ge, and that they travelled to the shores of the sea for dances and prayers to the gods there. And sometimes food was given them—and some times prayers were sent in their keeping. Thus was their journey, until in the south, in the heart of a desert they found the place of the palms where the fruit was ripe, and the water comes from warm springs, and looks a paradise—but is as a hell when the sand storms come:—and human devils live to the South and by the Sea of Cortez.

"They knew nothing of that, it was a place for rest, and a place of food, and they rested there because of that, and gathered food for the further journey.



"All medicine people of the tribes carry on their neck or in a pouch at the belt, some sacred things of their magic practices, and under the palms, when other amusement was not to be found, it pleased him to see what his brown girl carried hidden even from her master. It took much persuasions, for she felt that evil would happen if it was shown except it be a matter of ceremony. Then she at last took from the pouch, salt from a sacred lake, feather and claw and beak of a yellow bird, a blade of sharpest flint, and—this!"

He again held the piece of gold that they might see it. Even the Indians leaned forward and looked at it and then eyed the white men and each other in silence. To them it was "medicine" as the priest told the adventurers it had been to the Te-hua girl.

"Your Greek pirate of the good luck went close to madness at the certain fact that for months he had been walking steadily away from the place where this was found. To the girl it was a sacred thing hidden in the earth of her land by the sun—and only to be used for ceremonies. The place where it grew was a special hidden place of prayer offering."

"Faith!—we all must learn prayers enough to get our share!—if prayer will do the work!" said Don Ruy.—"Chico, it means that you get an Indian primer,—and that you find for me a brown enchantress. His reverence will grant us all a special indulgence for hours of the schooling!"

Senor Don Brancadori sat up very straight and shook his head at the priest:—so well assured was he that enough liberties would be taken without the indulgences of holy church. Moreover it was not well to put the deviltries of camp in the mind of so good a lad as Chico.

"And the girl gave to him the gold and told him its hiding place?" he asked.

"We may say she gave it—thought in truth she declared it could not be given—it could only be made a barter of for other medicine, but it must be strong medicine. The blade of flint was to guard her magic symbols if need be, and the man, her master, saw in that moment that the mind he had to deal with in this matter was an Indian mind, in which there is not reason. And to find a 'medicine' potent for charms was a task set for a man in the place of the palms."

"Then a forgotten thing came into his mind. It had been a vow made to an enticing creature of San Lucar. She was also devout as a young nun. The vow was of a return—and no doubt of other meetings. The end of it was that she gave him a rosary—(his first captors coveted that and took care of it). But also they ate together of fruit, and as both ladies and gallants do strange things at strange times, the lady divided the seeds, and counted them seeking a lucky number or some such freakish quest. And by the rosary, and by his mother, she made him swear that when he had found fortune and a plantation in the new world, he would plant with his own hands the seeds there, and send for the lady to come by ship as chatelaine! Failing the plantation, he was to return, and her own relatives would find on land or sea an office fit for his talents:—only he was to faithfully guard the seed of the fruit eaten in a happy hour, and her prayers would meet his own across the waters.

"It may be that women with prayers for him had not been plentiful—whatever the vow was it was made and sealed with the prayer of the lady. When the savages took her rosary they gave no heed to some brown seeds in a leather pouch—no more of them than you could count on your fingers! A man alone for long in a wilderness gives meaning to things he would not remember at happier times. And the training of the Holy Church returns to even the most gardened men in their hours of stress! So it was that the prayer of the willing dame kept him company, as he looked on the seeds. They had become his rosary—and were the last evidence of the nightly prayers promised by the lady.

"Thus:—because of their smallness had they been unnoted of his several captors. Having slipped between the lining and the cover of the pouch he had ceased to remember them after the Indian maid lessened his loneliness. But he went searching for them now—even one peach seed was still with them—and some grains of the bearded wheat—that by a special grace had fallen into a pocket on ship board while handling grains, and as a jest on himself he had added it to the others for the plantation to be made for the waiting dame.

"He could truly say they were 'medicine' given with prayers. But with forgetfulness of truth, he also added much as to their divine origin—and the wondrous power they held.

"Gladly the Indian girl let go the gold for the unknown seeds! She further signified that now she could know always that he was a God, for the gift of the seeds fitted some myth of her own land—some thing of one of their false gods who brought seeds and fruits and great good to the people.

"In that way was made the exchange of medicine for medicine beside some pool by the palms, and well it was it was made that day, else never would we have this golden guide! For:—it fell out that a day later as he was hunting to the south, he was surrounded and taken prisoner by the savages who range by the inland sea of California. The gold had a hole as you see, he pulled hair from his head, tied the nugget in the braid, and thus hid it for the next two years of his life. The girl he never again heard of. She would die of a certainty alone in the desert.

"A missionary of our order found the man in the wilderness. They were exiles, the two for the length of a winter, and the Greek listened to the tales of the lost fleet on which Don Teo sought the new world, and also of the royal order for his arrest following on the next ship. For a prisoner of Solyman the Magnificent had escaped from the galleys of the Turk, and wild tales were told of princes of the North who gave aid to the traffic in Christian slaves. Don Teo was by all means to be taken back to Spain that the Holy Office learn through him the names and numbers of the offenders!"

"Good it is to hear that the varlet was not let sleep sound all the night!" decided Don Ruy.

"It appears there were many nights when sleep kept from him—to judge by his confessions!" said the priest. But to go into deeper hell while he was yet alive did not march with his wishes, and while he half inclined to the desert again, that he might die quietly there as any other starved wild thing does die:—a thing came which he had not thought:—the padre died of a serpent's sting, and he, Teo the Greek, was alone, and apart from the world again!

"It was the gown for which the savages had reverence—and he took the consecrated robe from the dead padre and wore it—he had been driven by misfortune back to Holy Church!

"He lived under the name of the padre as a priest in holy orders. His reports to his superior were well counterfeited as the writing of the man he had buried. He held that mission as the extreme outpost for three years. He died there of a fever, but not until I had found him, and confessed him. The gold and the tale of his wanderings he gave to me. Much of it he told me more than once, for when men are exiles as he was for those several years, the things of the old life loom up big with significance. He felt that he was the finder of the way, and that mayhaps, Mother Church, so long forgotten by him, would be the richer that he had lived. Masses were said for the girl dead in the desert. She had saved him, and for a little while of life—he had given her love!"

"He may have made a most righteous end—since it was no longer in his power to do evil!" commented Don Ruy—"But your pirate priest would never have let go the nugget for masses if the breath of life had kept him company."

"Who knows!—the high God does not give us to see in the heart of the other man," said Padre Vicente—"In the years of his trial he was made to feel his sins against Holy Church—and when the girl died in the desert, another life died with her. Even men of sin do give thought to such matters."

But Juan Gonzalvo who hated him, swore at the ill luck of his escape by death, and no one felt any pity for that first white pilgrim across the Indian lands. All of them however gave speech of praise to the priest's telling of the story. Don Ruy gave him leave to tell romances in future rather than preach sermons.

The men were vastly interested to learn at last the exact region of their destination—and that the province where the yellow metal had been hidden by the sun was but a matter now of a few days more of journeying—since the people of Ah-ko had brother Queres in settlements adjoining the settlements of the Te-huas.

So, seeing that the guard was good, and that each arquebus was near, and in readiness if need be for dusky visitors, the company fell asleep well content. Only Don Ruy strolled over the path through the sand and tried to fancy how the girl and the Greek had managed the hiding there. A little of the story had been told him in the monastery when the great plan had been made, but no names were given, and the telling of it this night had been a very different matter—he had so lately crossed the desert where those two refugees had wandered, that the story had now a life unknown before. Even the sand billows and the rock walls of the mesa spoke as with tongues. The mate to this wonderful Ah-ko could not, he thought, be in the world any where, and the romance of the young priestess and the Greek adventurer fitted the place well and he felt that the priest of the wild places had chosen rightly in keeping the story until they had climbed to this place where the story of the gold had its beginning.

As he retraced his steps, they took him past the sleeping place of Jose and his wife of Mexico. Beside them was spread the blankets of Chico, but the lad was not there,—he was standing apart, at the edge of the sheer cliff, looking out over the desert reaches where the sand was blue grey in the star light.

"Hollo!"—said Don Ruy and halted in surprise, "do you select sentry duty when you might sleep soft on the sand? Must I send you another blanket to woo you to a bed?"

"Your Excellency has been most generous in the matter of the blanket—one has been enough to keep record of your kindly heart."

"Then why not enjoy your sleep as a hearty lad should? Has this place of wonder bewitched you—or has the story of the Greek and the gold stirred you into ambitions beyond repose?"

The lad might have retorted by reminding Don Ruy that he also was abroad while his company slept,—usually a glib pertness would have answered his employer, but the answer came not readily, and when it did,—his excellency saw in a surprised moment that the boy was not such a child as the careless company fancied him.

"I have thought nothing of the Greek—and little of the gold," he said. "But the woman who followed the love and the man across the deserts—and who died alone somewhere in the sands like a starved dog—of her I was thinking! All the magic she had learned could not save her from hell when that one man came in her path!"

"But—you are only a lad and may not understand these things,"—said Don Ruy—"The girl may have died like that, it is true, but the hell in the life she perhaps never got glimpse of,—since she loved the man!"

"But if the dead do know, would not a sort of hell be hers when she learned she had given the magic medicine of her God for the idle gift—bestowed by another mistress?"

Then the lad marched to his blankets and wrapped himself in them, leaving Don Ruy the question to ponder.



CHAPTER IX

YAHN, THE APACHE

"Brothers:—you of the life —Of also the fire divine! You of the mountains Of also the Mother Mist! Out of the mist is a voice. It is not the voice afraid! Out of the shadows, Out of the forests, Out of the deserts It is born! In a good hour it is born. The wind of the Sun sends it breath! Brothers:—the Dawn drives the Darkness And in the mountain strong No one sings fear! Out from far worlds it comes, With the strong Dawn it comes Brothers:—be mountain strong Sing not of fear!"

The rising sun tipped the terraces with gold and rose, and the nude brown men, and the men children, faced the east with hands lifted to greet the coming of the Great Power. This was as it had been since the time of most ancient days.

But the song chanted from the terrace by the Woman of the Twilight was a new song, and the men made their prayers, and wondered at the singer singing thus on the roof of her dwelling.

The dew of the hills was on her clothing and on her hair. She had dreamed a dream and walked in the night until the words of the dream had come to her lips, and when they came she sang them aloud and the people listened, and the men went from their prayers and thought about it.

Many were conscious of secret thoughts of dread at the coming of the strangers. The priestess had spoken of the thing no one had given voice to.

From the day when her son had been honored as Po-Ahtun-ho, the strife of existence seemed ended for S[=aa]-hanh-que-ah. The thing she had lived to see was now accomplished. Her days were now the gray days of rest and of mystery. She made many prayers alone in the hills, and forgot to eat.

She was not old, yet to Tahn-te she said, "It is over:—The time is come when you stand alone to be strong. Your work is now the work of the strong man, and I go to make prayers in the hills."

When she stayed over long, he sought her out lest ill should come to her, and more than once he had walked into the village with his mother in his arms as other people carried the little children. It was the Woman of the Twilight, and no one laughed. At any other woman they would have laughed to see her carried in the arms of a man.

And so, when she stood on her terrace and spoke of the voice of the Dawn and the Mountain Mists, all listened. The men talked of it in the kivas of each clan, and the women talked all together, and were glad. They did not know quite what their fear had been, but it was no longer with them since the woman of the God Thoughts said the voices sang no fear.

Only Yahn Tsyn-deh on the terrace opposite, strung together claws of birds for a necklace, and scoffed warily.

"Only if you are mountain strong need you have no fear," she said. "The promise that her son is maybe the Voice and the Dawn is a good promise—but the wise woman of the hill caves is double wise! Her song has double thoughts. Be you all mountain strong, as gods are strong, and no fear will come! But if the mountain strength waits not at your door—what then happens?"

No one knew, and the women looked at each other in question. The peace of the wise woman's words was killed by the bitter laugh of Apache Yahn.

When the bitter mood touched the girl, the Te-hua people remembered that her mother was of that wild Apache people—enemy to all. At times she could be a maid like other maids—with charm and laughter—a very bewitching Yahn who made herself a beauty barbaric with strings of gay berries of the rose, or flat girdles of feathers dyed like the rainbow. Her bare arms had bracelets of little shells. Into the weaving of her garments she had put threads of crimson in strange patterns—they were often the symbols of the Apache gods or spirit people, and when she chose she made the other women feel fear with them. Her own mother who told her of them, would not have worn them thus—but Yahn was more Apache than her mother.

One woman shelling corn for the meal, suggested that if the Te-hua people had not mountain strength it might mean war as the people to the South had endured that other time—when the men at Tiguex were burned to ashes by the strangers.

"Oh, wise Saeh-pah!" and Yahn laughed at the late thought,—"Has the thing at last come to the mind of one of you?"

"I thought of it also," said one of the other women sulkily.

"Ai:—you all thought—but none of you dared say words while the new Ruler and the wise governor kept silent to the people!" she taunted them. "Of all the women I only can speak in the speech of the strangers."

"Think you we will see them?" asked one girl doubtfully—"will we not all be sent to the hills the days when they come?"

"In other villages they did so in that long ago day—some men never let their women be seen of the white men who wore the iron."

"I will not be sent to the hills," decided Yahn. "From Ke-yemo and from Tahn-te I know their words. I will talk for the strangers. I will learn many things!"

"When was it you learn so much?" asked Saeh-pah jealously.

"A little—little at a time all these years!" declared Yahn in triumph. "Tahn-te wanted not to forget it—so he said to me the words—now they are mine."

The women regarded her with a wonder that was almost awe,—there might be something infernal and unlucky in talking two ways.

"If it be war, think you Ka-yemo will be the war chief as he has been made?" queried Saeh-pah. "He will be made second if there is fighting,—think you not so?"

Yahn apparently did not think, but she did listen.

"We know how it was with his father Awh-we—" said one. "In that day of trial he failed that once in the battle with the Yutah. The old men let him pull weeds in the corn when the next war came."

The strong fingers of Yahn broke the bird's claw, and she tossed it from the terrace edge, and selected another.

"But the new young wife Koh-pe may make the son of his father brave for all that," and Saeh-pah who was not young and not winsome, watched Yahn, and felt content when she saw the Apache eyes grow narrow and the teeth set. "A wife with many robes and many strings of shells and blue stones, makes a man strong to fight for them. Ka-yemo will be a strong man now."

"He is of my clan—Ka-yemo!" said Yahn panting with pent up fury, "he can fight,—all of our blood can fight!—if the war is here we can show you of the Panyoo clan how the Tain-tsain clan can fight with the new enemy!"

They all knew that Yahn Tsyn-deh could indeed fight, she wore eagle feathers and had a right to wear them since a season of the hunt on the Navahu border when a young warrior had stolen her for his lodge, and with his own club set with flint blades, had she let his spirit go on the shadow trail, and to her own village had she brought the scalp and the club, also his robe and beads of blue and of green stone—and she made the other women remember it at times.

"Ho!—and will it be you who bears a spear and a shield and a club on that day?" asked Saeh-pah the skeptic.

"I fight that day—or any day, as strong as the fight any man of yours can ever make!" This retort of Yahn was met with half frightened giggles by the other women. Saeh-pah had been unlucky in the matter of men. Yet, her list of favorites had not been limited, and the sarcasm of Yahn was understood.

"It is good there is some one brave to meet the strangers!" and the smile of Saeh-pah was not nice. "Maybe you go to ask for a man—maybe it is why you learn their words—maybe the Tain-tsain clan will ask for a white man for you!"

"When I ask—I will not be made a laugh, and sent home with a gift,"—and the other women squealed with shrill laughter and had great joy over the quarrel. The eyes of Saeh-pah blazed. She tried to speak but her fury gave voice only in throaty growls, and an older woman than all of them stepped between them in protest.

"To your own houses—all you who would fight!" she decided—"go fight your own men if they send you away with gifts, but by my door I do not want panthers who scream!"

Saeh-pah sulkily obeyed, and Yahn laughed and continued her work.

"It is not good to laugh when the bad fortune comes to any one," said the old woman, but Yahn refused to be subdued.

"It is true, mother—" she insisted—(all elderly women are mothers or aunts to village folk)—"it is true. When the dance of the corn was here and the women made choice of their favorites—it is well known that Saeh-pah did follow Phen-tza a long ways. He laughed at her." Yahn herself laughed as she told it,—"he laughed and he asked why she comes so far alone—and he gives her his blanket and goes away! That is how he takes her for favorite that day!—he only laughs and let go his blanket to Saeh-pah!"

The old woman put up her hand that her laugh be not heard. The humor of primitive people is not a delicate thing, and that the blandishments of Saeh-pah had been of no use—as was witness the blanket!—had made many laugh around the night fires. Yet the old "mother" thought it not good that quarrels should grow out of it.

"Is your heart so bright with happiness that you understand nothing of the shame another woman may know, Yahn Tsyn-deh?"—she asked seriously. "Saeh-pah is of the free woman—and we are not of her clan to make judgement."

"Speak no words to me of a bright heart!" said Yahn, and arose, and went away. Across the roofs she went to the stairway of her dwelling, where she had lived alone since the death of her mother. It was a good room she entered, very white on the walls, and the floor white also, with the works of her own fingers on the smoothness of it. In a niche of the thick wall stood a bronze god, and a medicine bowl with serrated edges, and a serpent winged and crowned painted in fine lines to encircle it. On the wall was a deerskin of intricate ornamentation, good and soft in the dressing, it was painted in many symbols of the Apache gods and the prayer thoughts. From her mother Yahn had learned them and had painted them in ceremonial colors. The great goddess of the white shell things—and white flowers—and white clouds—was there, and the sun god was also there, and the curve of the moon with the germ of life in its heart. The morning star was there—and also the symbol of the messengers from the gods. Circling all these sacred things was the blue zig-zag of the sky lightening by which Those Above send their decrees to earth children who know the signs, and at each corner the symbols of the Spirit People were on guard.



Saeh-pah had said once that they might be devil things, and not god things, and Yahn had watched her chance, and emptied a jar of dirty water on her head for that, and no more women said things of the walls of Yahn Tsyn-deh's house. But whether she deemed them holy or not holy, she hung the necklace of birds' claws under the symbol of the Goddess Stenaht-lihan, and then prostrated herself and lay in silence.

After a long time she spoke.

"All this that the Apache blood be not lost in the flood of a shame! All this that no Te-hua woman ever again sees that my heart has been sick—all this that a double curse of—"

But in the midst of her words of whispered prayer speech failed her—and tears choked her until she sobbed for breath. With all her will she wished to curse some one whom all her woman's heart forbade her harm!



CHAPTER X

SHRINES OF THE SACRED PLACES

When new things cast shadows across the Indian mind, every cloud touching the moon is watched at its birth and at its first hours of the circle, also the stars. And for those other worlds,—the planets—is it their brotherhood to the earth that is sealed by a living sacrifice as they come and as they pass again from the visible path in the sky?

The Reader of the Stars lives often above the mists of the earth dews. The door of the high priest Po-Ahtun-ho faces the way of the South that the shadows of the moon and the shadows also of the sun, make reckonings for him of that which must be noted. So it has been since ancient days.

But for the Reader of the Stars there is a door not like another door; even to the stranger who runs as in a race, the house of the stars is seen and noted, and known as the sacred place for high prayer, and the record of the God things.

In Pu-ye the Ancient—and the deserted through centuries, the dwellings of high priests are marked beyond shadow of doubt, and each Te-hua man knows as well the dwelling of the Ruler of five centuries ago in Pu-ye, as he knows the door of his own brother across the court of the village. And the door of the stars is still beautiful there in Pu-ye.

Day time or night time the lines of ancient dwellings look ghost-like in their whiteness. Only medicine men with prayer rites ever sit alone in the deserted rooms. The men from the river villages on the way for the pine of the hills used in their sacred dances, do halt to scatter prayer meal at sacred places where the water once ran:—there is ever the hope that if prayers enough are thought, the springs in the Mother Mountain may make fertile again the fields of the high levels,—for in the days of the carving of Pu-ye from the white cliffs there were certainly many streams and wide harvests in the land that is called now the desert lands.

And to the west is Tse-cōme-u-pin, the sacred mountain where the lightning plays, and westward also, but not so far, is the Cave of the Hunters where prayers are made to the Trues—the guardian spirits of the Sacred Ways, and the wild things of the forest, symbolizing sacred ways and sacred colors. These places of prayer and of sacrifices are here to-day—and the way to them is marked by the symbols of stars and of planets—many eyes see them—but the readers of them are not so many to-day. A Te-hua man will tell you they are the forgotten records of the Lost Others—and will sprinkle prayer meal craftily to make amends for the truth which is half a lie. The unspoken pagan gods of the Lost Others have endless life, and eternal youth, in the land.

All is as it was in the ancient day, except that the dwellings have changed from the ancient places, and the priests go over more ground to reach the high places of prayer.

In the valley of the Pō-sōn-ge many vigils were kept through the nights of the Springtime, as messages from the south brought word of the steady, and thus far, harmless advance of the white strangers. The treachery at Tiguex in the day of Coronado was a keen memory. It would take much wisdom to avoid war with the iron men of the white god, yet keep their own wives and daughters for their own tribe.

Many arrows were made—also spears and shields. Men went hunting and women dried the meat, pounding it into shreds for the war trail if need be. From earliest dawn were heard the grinding songs as the corn of yellow and blue and red and white was ground by the maidens keeping time to the ancient carols—and ever above the head of the worker was hung the sacred and unhusked ear, which, when resting, she contemplated, kneeling, and the thought in her heart must be the sacredness of the life-giving grain, and the prayer of thanks that it was given by the gods to the people.

Tahn-te, going from the river bath of the dawn, crossed the terrace of Yahn Tsyn-deh, and caught brief glance of her face thus lifted above the grinding stone. The steadiness of the quiet prayer was contrast decided, compared with the last wild prayer she had come to make at his feet:—begging for magic of any nature since the laws of the clans forbade that she be wife to her cousin to whom she had given love.

Almost he halted, moved in his mind to speak to the girl who had been more of comrade than had any other woman. But he remembered the evil prayer she had spoken that day, and this was not a time to give to thought of her anger. It was bad to have the evil wish of a woman, but to the other man must go the cares of the village loves and hates. All things had worked together to make him the wearer of the white robe—to place him outside the lines of village joys or sorrows,—his every demand was for vision of the strongly felt, yet unseen powers. Was he the son of a god?—as in the heart of him he still thought:—then to him belonged the fasting and the prayer of tribal penance, and the loves and the hates of the children of Te-hua were luxuries not for him. He was enemy to no man—and he could be lover to no woman!



The old men of his own orders had taught him much of the strength of magic which comes only to the priest who seeks no earthly mate. But the ten years of study of the white man's magic as spoken in their books of their gods, had taught him more. He had been witness that their gods were strong for war, and for worldly power. His people had need of all that power if the strangers came again and again like this into the country of the Pō-sōn-ge.

The picture of Yahn, kneeling by the fireplace on the terrace, her eyes lifted to the sacred corn, brought quickly to him the memory of a more childish Yahn who was not unhappy even in her wars.

And now—through the madness, which he was warned came to all men—now she was a woman through that madness:—and a forsaken woman whom all Te-hua watched for the revenge she would take.

They knew Ka-yemo could not marry with the daughter of his uncle, but they knew also that he could not be driven into taking the daughter of another man as wife,—and Yahn knew this also. Many robes, and blue jewels had weighed down the love of a boyhood!

Tahn-te thought of this, and of the girl, as he passed through the village to his own dwelling. Other maids greeted him, and followed him with kindly eyes. By all women Tahn-te was told in many ways that the wearer of the white robe need not live in a lonely house!

Yet he was not lonely, and when the marvels of the inviting eyes turned towards him, he was always conscious of an ideal presence as if the god-maid of the mesa had stepped between, and made harmless the sorcery of the village daughters by which he might otherwise have been enveloped.

Once, when he had confessed as much to the ancient Ruler who had been his guide and guardian, the old man had voiced approval and interpreted clearly for him the dream presence which was as a gift of the gods, and clearly marked him for other loves than that of an earth maid.

"But—if the dreams came like a maid also—but a maid so fine that it was as a star—or a flower—or a prayer made human—then—"

"It is like that?" asked the old man, and the boy answered:

"Sometimes it seems like that—but not when I awake. Only in my sleep does she come close, yet that dream has kept guard for me many days until the others laugh and say I have no eyes to see a woman, I do see—but—"

"That is well—it is best of all!" said Kā-ye-fah, the Ruler. "If my own child had come back to me I might not have said it is well. My heart would have wanted to see your children and the children of Kā-ye-povi—I dreamed of that through many harvests—but it is over now. She did not live. The trader of robes from the Yutah brought that word, and it is better that way. I was dying because my daughter would be slave to Navahu men—and when word comes that she died as a little child, then the sun is shining for me again, and I live again. But always when I think that the little child could be a woman, then it is good to think that your children could be her children. Since it is so—so let it be! The dream maid of the spirit flower, and of the star, can be my Kā-ye-povi, and you will have the mate no other earth eyes can ever see, and your nights and your days will not be lonely. Also it will be that your prayers be double strong."

From that day of talk, the dream maid of Tahn-te had been a more tangible presence—never a woman—never quite that, but in the smile of certain children he caught swift glimpse of her face and then music rang in the rustle of the corn or the rush of the river. When the dream vision was beyond all measure sweet, he was certain of the wisdom of the Ancient—for the dream and the thoughts of prayer were double strong.

They were double strong that morning as he came from the river bath, and the face of Yahn—and the thought of her love—brought strangely that dream face to him in which there was no madness such as the Apache had shown him when at his feet in prayer.

The tombe sounded softly from a far terrace where special prayer was being made for the growing things, gray doves fluttered home with food to their young, and little brown children—not so much clothed as the birds!—climbed ladders to look in the dove cotes on his roof, and see the nurslings there lift clamoring mouths for worms or other treasure.

A woman weaving a blanket of twisted skins of rabbits worked in the open with her primitive loom in an arbor before her door, beside her a man whirled a distaff and spun the coarse hemp of which the warp was made. Maids and mothers with water jars on their heads walked in stately file from a spring near the river's edge—and above all the serene accustomed life of that Indian village, could be heard the drone of the grinding songs—in the valley of Pō-sōn-ge there was ever corn for the grinding, and the time of hunger had come not often to Povi-whah.