He wore no ceremonial festive garb as did the others. The white robe of deerskin was folded about him, and he gave no heed to the different visitors who entered. His eyes were on the floor as though in meditation, and in silence he accepted the sacred smoke, and then glanced towards the place where the governor sat always when in council. After that one little look there was no longer silence. The padre, watching the impassive young face, observed that one glance was all that was required of command. And the governor of Povi-whah arose and spoke.

He told to the brothers and neighbors of the coming, and the kindly coming, of the Castilians to bring back in safety one Te-hua man who had been carried far south as a slave. The man of the grey robe was the priest of the Castilian god, and that god had sent him to say that all men must be brothers, with the god in the sky for a father. These new brothers brought good gifts and tokens from their king. The king said his children would also help fight the wild Apache and Navahu and Yutah in the day when they came to kill and take captives.

Smiles went over many faces in the circle. Nods of approval gave good hope for the Castilian cause.

Then the governor of Kah-po arose.

This coming of the strange brothers was good, he agreed. It was much for nothing. How many fields for corn would the Castilian brothers ask for such help in battle?

The padre lifted the cross, and stood up, and the Castilians knelt on the stone floor with heads low bowed.

"Of fields of mortal man we ask no more than the corn we eat—" he said—"but the great god decreed that each soul for salvation must be written by the priest in the great record. Baptism must they accept,—and new prayers to the true god must they learn. Out of the far land had the true god made the trail that the faith be carried to the Te-hua people. Under the cross he wished to give the sacrament of baptism."

The kneeling Castilians impressed the pagan men more than might have been hoped. They were strong—yet they were as bidden children under that Symbol. It was big medicine! Ka-yemo found his own head bowed lower and lower—the spell of the older days was working!—when he lifted his eyes, it was to see the brief glance of Tahn-te rest on him. He sat erect again as though a spoken command was in that look. All this saw Don Ruy, and all this saw the padre, and his teeth locked close under his beard.

Many were the exchange of thought over faiths old and faiths new in the land, also of the ancient republics, the Pueblos, and the interest of the majestic ruler who was king of Spain and the Indies was made manifest by his subjects. Of many things did they speak until all the old men had spoken, and it was plain to be seen that the Castilians were not unwelcome. The winning courtesy of Don Ruy made many friends, and the wise brain of the padre made no mistakes. Yet of the one central cause of the quest not any one had spoken, and the silent Cacique had only designated by a glance or a motion of the hand who was to be the next spokesman. He was the youngest of all, and he waited to listen.

Then, when the smoke had been long, and silence had been long, Tahn-te the wearer of the white robe arose. For a space he stood with folded arms wrapped in the mantle of high office, and quietly let his gaze rest on one after another of those in the circle, halting last at Ka-yemo whose glance fell under his own—and whose head bent as under accusation.



Tahn-te smiled, but it was not a glad smile—he had seen that the old magic of the gray robe was holding the war chief in thrall to the strangers.

Then Tahn-te stepped forward from the seat of council—and threw aside the white robe, and slender and nude as the Indian gods are nude but for the girdle, and the medicine pouch, he stood erect, looking for the first time direct and steadily into the eyes of Padre Vicente. The circle of the council room might have been an arena and only those two facing each other and measuring each other.

While one might count ten he stood thus silent, and Don Ruy could hear his own heart beat, and Chico clutched at the embroidered doublet of Don Diego, and wished for the sound of any man's voice.

Then Tahn-te smiled as the eyes of Padre Vicente wavered, as Ka-yemo's had wavered—the boy who had tamed serpents felt the strength of the hills with him. Always he felt strong when he stood alone!

From the medicine pouch he took the gift of the rosary, and held it aloft that all might see, and the silver Christ on it caught the light from the opening in the roof, and swung and circled like a thing alive.

"Senores"—he said in Spanish though slowly, as one little used to the speech—"one of those among you has done me the honor to send me a gift and a message. I was making prayers at that time,—I have not been free to return thanks until now in the council. I do so, and I speak in Spain's words as this is not a Te-hua matter. It is a gift from a Christian to a Pagan, and the message told me a king would be proud to wear this strand of carven beads. Senores:—I am no king, kings give royal bounties to each giver of a gift. I stand naked that you see with your own eyes how little I can accept,—since in return I can give not anything! Take back your kingly gift, Senor Priest:—I cannot exchange for it even—a soul!"

He stepped lightly as a panther of the hills across the open space and let fall the beads into the hands of Padre Vicente.

"That you may save it for the king, Senor!" he said gently, and bowing with more of grace than a courtier who does homage, he returned to his place.

Padre Vicente turned gray white under the tan. Don Diego crossed himself and muttered a prayer. Juan Gonzalvo uttered an expletive and half smothered it in a gasp as the face of Tahn-te caught the light for one instant.

"Blood of Christ!"—he whispered—"look at his eyes—his eyes!"

Don Ruy caught the arm of the man and pressed it for warning to silence. When he turned a more composed face to the circle, the secretary was looking at him and there was something like terror in the face of the lad. Each knew the thought of the other—each remembered the words of Juan Gonzalvo at Ah-ko,—also the basket of the sacred first fruit at the portal under the dove cote—also the blue eyes of the Greek—blue with lashes so long and so heavy that black might be their color. The pagan priest would need all the help of his gods if Juan Gonzalvo caught this thought of theirs!

Padre Vicente recovered himself, kissed the crucifix and slipped it within his robe.

"The words of this man are the words Satan is clever in coining when the false gods speak and reject the true," he stated quietly. "My children, we must not hold this against the weak human brother. The devils of necromancy and sorcery are stubborn—but ere this the stubbornness has been broken, and the saints have rejoiced! It is plain that devilish arts could not prosper where the Image remained—hence it has been given back! Make no mistake my children, where the word of God, and the Image rest,—there the pagan powers must ever grow weak. Thanks be that this is so! Remember it—all of you when you pray!"

Don Diego started his prayers at once, while Juan Gonzalvo leaned forward and stared at the pagan sorcerer like a hound held in leash.

The Te-hua men had heard only gentle tones from Tahn-te and thought little of the strange change in the faces of the Castilians.—Tahn-te many times said surprising things—that was all!

But Tahn-te, listening closely to the priestly admonition as Padre Vicente grasped all the meaning of it. He was being branded as a worker of evil magic—a sorcerer—the most difficult accusation of all to fight down in an Indian mind!

He looked from face to face of the strangers—halted at the secretary, but seeing there either fear or sympathy—his eyes sought further, and rested on Don Ruy.

Then he drew from his medicine pouch a second rosary, a beautifully wrought thing of ebony and gold.

"Senor" he said,—"if I mistake not, it was your animal I helped but yesterday. Is it not so?"

"It was in truth—and much am I in your debt for that help!" said Ruy Sandoval with heartiness—"it is no fault of mine that I am late in rendering thanks. You deny that you are king—yet I have known majesty easier to approach!"

"And the animal is now well, and shows no marks of the Christian's Satan?"

"Sound:—every inch of him!"

"Thanks that you say so, and that you do not fear to say so," said Tahn-te. "Since it is so, it makes clear that the printed word, or the graven image is no weight to True Magic, even when taught us by pagan gods! For ten years I have read, day time and night time, all there is to read in the books of your church left by Padre Luis—also all the other books left by the men of Senor Coronado's company, and by Padre Juan Padilla who died at Ci-bo-la. Side by side I have studied the wisdom of these books, and the wisdom of our ancient people of the Te-hua, as told to me by the old men. One has never held me from seeing clear that which I read in the other, and the graven image has only the Meaning and the Power which each man gives to it! It was with me when I took away the sting of the Brother Snake. Padre Luis was a man who would have been a good man in any religion—that is why I kept this symbol of him—not for the crucified god on it! But for the sake of the god, is it sacred to you because your heart tells you to think that way. It is right to be what a man's heart tells him to be. I give you the prayer beads. I give it to you because your horse helped me to show your people that the pagan gods are strong, if the heart of the man is strong!"

In the "Relaciones" Don Diego wrote that—"The horrification of that moment was a time men might live through but could not write of.—For myself I know well that only the invisible army of the angels kept the beams of the roof from crushing us, as well as the poor pagans, who sat themselves still in a circle with pleasant countenances!"

Ruy Sandoval knew courage of any kind when he saw it, and he met Tahn-te midway of the council and accepted the rosary of beauty from his hand.

"My thanks to you, Senor Cacique," he said—"the more so for the care given this relic. The Fray Luis de Escalona was known of my mother—also was known the lady from whom this went to his hand. A goldsmith of note fashioned it, and its history began in a palace;—strange that its end should be found here in the desert of the Indies."

"The end has perhaps not yet been found, Senor,"—said the Indian,—"thanks that you accept it."

Then he spoke in Te-hua to the people as if every personal incident with the Castilians was forever closed.

"You have listened to fair words from these men—and to sweet words of brother and brother. I have waited until all of you spoke that I might know your hearts. You are proud that they come over all the deserts and seek you for friends. Have you asked them why it is so?"

No one had asked why all the other tribes were left behind, and why the strangers had come to camp at the Rio Grande del Norte.

"We are good people," stated one man, and the others thought that was so, and a fair enough reason.

Tahn-te listened, and then spoke to the Castilians.

"You have come far, Senores, and my people have not yet heard the true reason of the honor you pay them. The priest always goes—and the tale told is that it is for souls—(Father Luis truly did believe it was for souls!) But your books tell plainly one thing, and the Christian men I knew taught by their lives the same thing, and it was this:—For gold, for precious stones,—or for women—are the real things which your kings send out companies of men in search of. Women you could find without crossing the desert. This Te-hua man who was first captive, and then slave, would have come in gladness to his people if let go free, yet for five summers and winters did the Castilian priest hold him servant and at last comes with him to his home. Is this because of love? His reverence, the padre, is wise in much with men,—but great love is not his; I cannot see him starving in a cave, and blessing his tormentors as did Fray Luis. So, Senores, the reason must be made more clear. Senor Coronado sought gold—and full freedom was given him to find gold—if he could! Why is your desire to fight for us against the Apache and the Yutah—and what is the thing you ask in exchange? Not yet have we had any plain word as from your king."

Don Ruy smiled at his logic. Here was no untutored savage such as they had hoped to buy with glass beads—or perhaps a mule the worse for the journey! However it ended, he was getting more of adventure than if he had built a ship to sail the coasts!

"Games have been won by Truth ere now even though Truth be not popular," he said to the padre.

"It is not fitting that his Reverence should make reply,"—put in Don Diego with much anger. "Holy Church is insulted in his person. If this were but Madrid—"

"To wish for Paradise takes no more of breath,"—suggested Don Ruy, "and if it is beneath the dignity of any else, perhaps I could speak—or Chico here."

But the latter silently disclaimed gift of logic or oratory,—in fact the turn of things was not toward gaity. Don Diego was shocked at everything said. Gonzalvo and the padre were plainly furious, yet bound to silence. Only Don Ruy could still smile. To him it was a game good as a bull fight—and much more novel.

"I shall speak, though it be a task I elsewhere evade," he said, and looked at the Cacique—a solitary nude bronze body amidst all the gay trappings of the assembly. "Senor, it is not women we seek—though a few of us might make room for a pretty one! It is true that the men in armor would help guard your fields, for they have heard that you are the Children of the Sun as were certain people of the south. In the south the sun sent a sign to his children—it was gold set in the ledges of the rock, or the gravel of the stream. If these people of the Rio Grande del Norte can show these signs that they be given as proof to our king—then men in armor of steel will come many as bees on the blossom and guard your land that your corn and your women be ever safe from the wild Indians who make devastation."

Tahn-te repeated this to the Te-hua men without comment of his own, and the dark faces were watched by the Castilians. They could see no eagerness—only a little wonder—and from some a shrug or smile,—but—not from any of them anger or fierce looks!

The padre drew a quiet breath of content and leaned back—the game was at least even. The Navahu had been bad for two years—very bad! The appeal of Don Ruy might prove the right thing, and the simple thing. It would take time, for the Indian mind was slow;—the quickness of the naked sorcerer proved nothing otherwise, for every god-fearing man could see that he was more than mortal in satanic strength. Against this one man alone must the battle for the Trinity be fought!

Together did the Te-hua men of council speak much—and to Ka-yemo they turned more than once and asked of the Tiguex days of the other Christian men. But between the devil of the padre and his symbols and the deep sea of the eyes of Tahn-te, not much was to be remembered by a man, and he could only say that his stay in the south was not long—that he was only a boy, and without the understanding of things done and seen.

"I have spoken,"—said Tahn-te when the older men turned to him for council as to the wisdom of throwing away so powerful a friend as the men of iron. Some were concerned lest they should turn away and offer help to their enemies!

In the land of the Yutah the yellow stones were found in the stream—also in the heart of the Navahu desert. No people used these stones because they were sacred to the sun, and strong for prayer, but—it was well to think what would happen if the men of iron were brothers to the Navahu!

"Never more could we sleep under our own roof—or plant corn in our own fields," said the man from Te-tzo-ge,—"our daughters would be wives to the Navahu and mothers of Navahu, and the grass would grow over the walls we have builded."

They smoked in silence over this thought, for it was a dark thought—and it could come true!

"We could kill these few, and then sleep sound for a long time with no trouble thoughts," suggested one, a patriarch from Ui-la-ua.

"That is true," said Tahn-te—"but if we do that way we would be no better than these men of iron. Their god talks two ways for killing, and their men live two ways. Our god when he taught our fathers, gave them but one law for killing, it was this:—'Go not to battle. A time will come for you to fight, and the stars in the sky will mark that time. When the star of the ice land moves—then the battle time will be here! Until then live as brothers and make houses—use the spear only when the enemy comes to break your walls.' That is the world of the Great Ruler. To kill these men only holds the matter for your sons to decide some other year."

"What then is to do?" demanded a man of Naim-be—"they do not break the walls, but they are beside the gates."

"When the Yutah and the Navahu traders come with skin robes, what is it you do?" asked Tahn-te.

"We trade them our corn and our melons and we get the robes."

"And,"—added Tahn-te—"the governor of each village gives them room outside the walls when the night comes, and the chief of war sees that the gate is closed, and that a guard never goes down from the roof! If these men are precious to you, make of them brothers, and send prayer thoughts on their trail, but never forget that they are traders, and never forget that the watchers must be on the roof so long as they stay in your land! They come for that which they can carry away, and once they have it you will be in their hearts only as the grass of last year on the hills—a forgotten thing over which they ride to new harvests!"

"You talk as one who has eaten always from the same bowl with the strangers," spoke one man from Oj-ke—"yet you are young, and some of these men are not young."

"Because—"—said Tahn-te catching the implied criticism of his youth and his prominence—"because in the talking paper which their god made, there is records of all their men since ancient days. They have never changed. Their gods tell them to go out and kill and take all that which the enemy will not give,—to take also the maids for slaves,—that is their book of laws from the Beginning. Since I was a boy I have studied all these laws. It was my work. By the god a man has in his heart we can know the man! Their god is a good god for traders, and a strong god for war. But the watchers of the night must never leave the gate unguarded when they camp under the walls."

All this Padre Vicente heard, all this and much of it was comprehended by him. Plainly it was not well to seek converts when the pernicious tongue of the Cacique could speak in their ears.

"It may be that we abide many days beside you," he said gently and with manner politic—"also it may be that we visit the wise men of the other villages, and take to them the good will of our king. The things said to-day we will think of kindly until that time. And in the end you will all learn of the true god, and will know that we have come to be your brothers if you are the children of the true god."

Upon which he held up the cross, and bent his head as in prayer, and went first up the ladder into the light. He was pale and the sweat stood on his face. It had been a hard hour.

The others followed in due order, but Don Diego eyed the wizard Cacique with a curiosity great as was his horror.

"Alone he has studied books without a tutor—sacred books—since his boyhood!" he said to Don Ruy—"think of that, and of the grief we had to persuade you to the reading of even the saintly lives! There is devilish art in this—the angels guard us from further sorcery—without a tutor! A savage magician to study strange tongues without a tutor! It is nothing short of infernal!"

But despite all opinion, Don Ruy waited and approached the man of the white robe and the cruel logic.

"You have been my friend,"—he said—"will you not eat with me and talk in quiet of these matters?"

"You do not fear then to be marked as the comrade of a sorcerer?" asked Tahn-te. "You must be a man of strength in your own land, Excellency, to dare offend your priest by such offer. Is the Holy Office no longer supreme in Spain?"

"How do you—an Indian—know of the office, of the duties of the workers there?"

"Two years of my life I lived in the camp of Coronado. To listen was part of my work. Strange and true tales were told in the long nights. They are still with me."

"But—you will come?"

Tahn-te looked at him and smiled—but the smile held no gladness.

"My thanks to you, Senor. To you I give the prayer beads—it is good to give them to you. More than that is not for me to do. My work takes me from where the feast songs are sung."

Then he wrapped about him the white robe made of deer skins, and it was as if he had enshrouded himself in silence not to be broken.

With reluctance Don Ruy went up the ladder and left him there. The sweetness of the outer air was good after the reek of many smokes in the kiva—and the adventurer stood on the terrace and drew great breaths and gazed across the tree fringed water, and thought it all a goodly sight well worth the jealousy of the pagan guardian.

Don Diego had accompanied the padre to their own quarters, but Juan Gonzalvo was across the court speaking quietly to Yahn Tsyn-deh whose vanity required some soothing that she had been shut out by Tahn-te from council and her coveted official tasks.

At the wall of the terrace waited the secretary in some hesitation, yet striving for boyish courage to speak the things outside the duty of his office.

"Your pardon, Excellency," he said lowly. "It is not for me to advise, but I heard some words of the two over there—may I speak?"

"Yes, my lad, and quickly as may be. Their two heads are over close together for discretion. I fear I shall have the task and expense of providing a duenna for my beauteous interpreter."

"Little enough of love there is with that dame!" commented the other,—"it is hate—your Excellency—and for you to say whether their private hates may not be a breeder of woe for all of us."

"You mean—?"—and Don Ruy motioned with his head towards the kiva.

"Yes:—it is the Cacique. The woman for some cause is bitter with hate against him.—Juan Gonzalvo is eager to listen—he is restless as quicksilver already with suspicion of strange things. In the far south he and his comrades made little odds of riding rough shod over the natives—here he would do the same at a word from the padre."

"And that word we can ill afford when we are but a handful!" decided Don Ruy,—"Hum!—for instant annihilation of the proud pagan we can depend on Gonzalvo, the padre, and Maestro Diego, if it came to a showing of hands. There must be no showing:—Capitan Gonzalvo!"

"Yes, Excellency."

Gonzalvo crossed quickly to him, while Yahn stood sulkily watching the three with lazy, half closed eyes.

"You forget none of the pagan Cacique's words—or his defiance of Holy Church?"

"His defiance of Holy God!—Excellency," answered Gonzalvo hotly,—"and that is not all—I have heard things—I am putting them together—You saw his eyes—scarcely Indian eyes! You heard his accursed logic of heresy—not all Indian—that! Indians may think like that in their accursed hearts, but they do not find the quick words to argue with their superiors as does this insolent dog! Listen, Don Ruy, for I have found the clue—and he belongs to me—that man!"

"To you—Capitan?"

"To me! You have listened to mad things of his birth and of his clan—the girl of the twilight and the seed bearer—well, what I tell you seems even more mad, but it will be true if ever we get to the end of it—that story of the thrice accursed Teo the Greek—you recall it?—he did without doubt cross this river and saw the Pueblos,—this sorcerer is of his spawn—he and his medicine mother come back in good time with their Star God story, and the seeds—the identical seeds of the padre's story! See you not what it all leads to? He has the blood of the Greek in him:—in any Christian land he has enough of it to be broken on the wheel for his damnable heresies!"

"But—since we are not in a Christian land, and doubtless shall never see him in a Christian land?"

"That narrows it down to man and man, Excellency! His father made a slave of mine—my earliest oath on the Cross and on the Faith, was vengeance against the Greek and all his blood! God of Heaven!—to think that of all the priests of Mexico you chose the one who knew that story!—and that of all the Indian tribes, we have come to the one where the half Greek sorcerer rules like a Turk! Don Ruy—you have led me north to vengeance—my sword and my arm are forever to your cause."

"Many thanks to you, Capitan, but in this case it is not your sword I shall command—except to remain in its scabbard!—but your speech I must silence while we give this matter of the Cacique a season of prayer and due consideration."

"Excellency—I do not understand—"

"You understand at least all that a soldier need, Capitan," said Don Ruy with smiling ease. "Your commission comes from me,—and I did not bestow it for the furtherance of private quarrels. Until I give the word, your speech must not again mention the thing you suspect—"

"But—the padre—"

"Least of all must the padre or Senor Brancedori hear even a whisper of it! Neither private vengeance, nor religious war must be pursued while the company is on our present quest."

"You would have me break my oath on the cross—save a heretic alive who belongs in the deepest pit?—Excellency!"

Gonzalvo's voice had much of pleading. He felt himself a man cheated of his righteous dues.

"Your holy vengeance will keep until our quest is over—and the more time to prepare your soul," suggested Don Ruy. "Then—if the gold is found, and all goes well, you two can have open fight before we take the road to the south. But until that lucky hour, the first and the last word for you is—silence!"

Gonzalvo stood, staring in baffled rage. It was to the padre he should have gone first. He had played the wrong card in the game. Was Don Ruy bewitched as well as his horse?

"At least I shall have a double debt to pay when my time does come, Excellency"—he said at last. "His pagan discourse warrants him a Christian knife, and will insure him a corner of hell when I send him there!"

At a respectful distance the secretary had seated himself, and rested with brow on fists.

"How now?"—asked Don Ruy. "You seem little heartened by all this brave talk of righteousness. Think you the monk's life of cloister and garden looks fair after all?"

"In truth, Senor, if you have the desire to despatch a lackey to your lady love across the sands, you may choose me if you like!" agreed the lad. "I have neither heart nor stomach for this contest of souls or no souls—the pagan blood for my far away grandmother unfits me for judgement—this heretic of the white robe is fighting the same fight of my own people—but he fights it like one inspired by the nahual of a god. Yet—there is only one finish to it! Bulls-hide shields and arrows stand not long before steel coats and leaden bullets—I would be elsewhere when the finish comes, Senor."

"The nahual of a god!" repeated Don Ruy, "now what may that mean in Christian speech?"

"In Christian speech it does not exist—the church has spilled much blood that it be washed from the pagan mind," said the lad. "But the nahual is the guardian angel or guardian devil born to earth with each man—it is like his shadow, yet unseen, it is part of the Great Mystery from the other side of the dawn and the other side of the dark. Once open worship was given to the Nahual, and their priests were strong. Now if the worshippers do meet, it is in secret. This man has truly drawn to himself a strong nahual and it should give him much of the magic which the good padre tells us is accursed."

"For a boy you have a fund of strange lore!" commented Don Ruy,—"too much for good company in the night time,—small wonder that you range abroad and dream under the stars! The monks never taught you all of it. Come:—tell me truly of your escapade—what sent you to our ranks?"

The lad flushed, then shrugged his shoulders and regarded the toes of his sandals.

"Excellency—if you require that I tell you—I am most certain never to get the commission to carry message to lady of yours!" he said so whimsically that the excellency laughed and promised him constant employment on such embassies if fortune found him ladies.

"Then:—I must speak myself a failure! A damsel did trust me with some such message to her cavalier and seeing that the love was all on one side—and that side her own—I dared not go back and face her—not even her guerdon could I by any means steal from him; brief:—I saved my neck by following you and leaving the land!"

"Was she so high in power?"

"Yes:—and—no, Excellency. She was, with all her estates, so close under the guard of the Viceroy that she could win all favors but—freedom!"

"How?" queried Don Ruy with wrinkled brow—his thoughts travelling fast to the converse of the gentle maniac as told him by the padre. "Has the Viceroy then a collection of pretty birds in cages—and must they sing only for the viceregal ear?"

"I cannot tell as to other cages, Senor, but this one was meant to sing only for a viceregal relative:—if she proved heretic, then the convent waited and her lands were otherwise disposed of."

"Hum! Then even in the provinces such rulings work as swiftly as at court! Well, what outer charge was there?"

"The strongest possible charge, Excellency. The mother of the girl had Indian blood, and, despite the wealth and Christian teaching of her husband—returned to Indian worship at his death. For that she was called mad, and ended her days in a Convent. The daughter of course will also be mad if she refuses to be guided by the good friends who select her husband—that husband was her only gate to freedom, knowing which the maid did certainly do some mad things:—to strangers she tried to speak—from her duenna she slipped out in the night time—oh there is no doubt that all the evidence will show plainly in court that she is more mad than her mother—"

"Chico!"—The hand of Don Ruy rested on the shoulder of the lad—"You are telling me the hidden part of a story to which I have listened from other lips—and your eyes have tears in them!—Tush!—be not ashamed lad. You yourself have heart for the lady?"

"Not in a way unseemly," retorted the lad, dashing the water from his eyes,—"to think of the mother dead like that behind the bars is not a cheery thing! As for the daughter—I dare call myself her foster brother, and I dare pray for her that she finds the chance to die in the open!"

"What a little world it is!" said the adventurer. "Do you mean that you did come with a message—and that your heart failed you as to consequences? You failed the lady—my unknown lady of the tryst?"

"Excellency:—the maid thought you a person of adventure, and she dared hope to buy your services—then—you two know best what you whispered in the dark!—but she no longer thought of purchase money in exchange for helping her escape to a ship;—God knows what she thought of, for you must not forget that she is called mad, Senor! But with all her madness she would not have approached your highness with the same freedom had she dreamed that your rank was high as the camp whispered to me the day I came for speech with you! That rank told me a story I could not go back and tell her, Senor—so—I used my forged letter written on viceregal paper, and secured service with a man instead of a maid."

"And left her waiting?"

"I could do her no help by going back—she is no worse off than if I had not come."

"She sent you for the silken broidery?"

"She said if you could come to her service, the scarf or a certain page of a certain book would serve as a sign:—letters are difficult things—boys who carry them are tripped up at times and learn the might of a lash. To send a jewelled bauble and ask for the silken scarf was a less harmful thing for the messengers."

"You imp of an Indian devil! a souvenir was sent me—and a message—and I am hearing no word of it until now in this pagan land!"

"Excellency:—the message is of little moment now—it was only a matter of a tryst—and you were too far on the journey! But the ardor of the Capitan Gonzalvo may bring us all strange moments,—and it may be some graves! If mine should be among them, and you should live to go back, you can take from my neck the bauble trusted to me by the lady. It is one of the records of her madness. But you will not quite laugh at it, Senor—and you will forgive me that I could not give it to you as she had dreamed in her madness that I could easily do."

"Mad? By our Lady!—there has been no madness from first to last but my own when I was tricked away from her by lies pious and politic! Oh—oh!—our padre was in it deep, and I have served their purpose! And you—you girl-faced little devil—what share is yours in all this? Whose tool have you been from first to last?"

"Whose?"—the lad had regained his careless mien—"surely not that of Dame Venus or her son, Master Cupid! It is well for me to find employ in the wilderness—never again dare I seek service with lord or lady!"

"Your lady lost her wits ere she made you ambassador on a love quest!"

"Without doubt you speak truth, Excellency. I might add—(had I not been whipped into politeness to my superiors!) that the deluded maid had lost her wits ere she fell into love with a face seen from a balcony—or with a voice whispering to her in the darkness of a rose bower!"

Don Ruy looked at him without much of sweetness in the glance.

"I've two minds regarding you," he stated,—"and one of them is to thresh you for faithlessness and a forward tongue!"

"Then I beg that you choose the other mind!" said the secretary, on his feet, alert, and ready to make a run if need be. "Don Diego could not well spare me in the midst of his struggles with the heathen, and his desire that honest things be set down in the 'Relaciones.' Moreover—Excellency, it would take many words to convince that pious gentleman that I had been faithless in aught—to you!"

There was a pitiful little quaver in the last words by which Don Ruy was made ashamed of his threat, for despite his anger that the lad was over close in the confidence of the unknown Mexican maid, yet the stripling had been a source of joy as they rode side by side over the desert reaches, and he knew that only for him had those Indian thoughts been given that were heresy most rank for any other ears. In ways numberless had the devotion of the lad been manifest.



But Don Ruy had little heart to discuss the matter, he was still flushed with the annoying thought that the young cub had been let know every whisper of the moment under the roses. He walked away without more words.

And Yahn who was watching the two, was very glad in her heart. She could plainly see that those two who had laughed at her sometimes, were having a quarrel that was a trouble to each, for Don Ruy walked away with an angry frown, and the page stood by the terrace steps a long time, and looked across the river with no smile on his face.



CHAPTER XIV

THE COURIER AND THE MAID

Ere the morning star saw its face in the sacred lake of the Na-im-be mountains, Tahn-te, the Po-Ahtun-ho, had done a thing not of custom:—he was leaving the governor to hear the prayers of Povi-whah, while he, for reasons politic, made the run to the most northern of pueblos.

Much in the council of the strangers had shown him their power over the old men whose minds were divided between dread of the savage tribes, and wonder if the youth of Tahn-te gave him warrant for all the knowledge expressed by him.

The governor of Te-gat-ha had sent no men to the council of Povi-whah. From that fact had Tahn-te reasoned that Te-gat-ha meant to show no favors to the white strangers. Te-gat-ha was of itself, very strong, else it could not have held its walls against the Yutah and the wild tribes of the north. Therefore would Te-gat-ha be a good comrade.

Twenty leagues it lay across the river and the mountain, but Tahn-te had ere the dawn taken the bath in the living stream of the river:—it runs and never tires, and its virtues are borrowed by the bather who lets it have its way with him while he whispers the prayers of the stars of the morning.

He knew that this was the moon and the time of the moon, when the summer ceremonies were made in Te-gat-ha to the God of Creations, and because of a wonderful visitor in the sky, he knew that special ceremonies would be held. The Ancient Star was near the zenith—never must it depart without a life to strengthen it on the downward trail!

The Po-Ahtun-ho in his ceremonial person never leaves the region of the sanctuary, any more than the pope across the seas dare go adventuring. It was as Tahn-te the courier, that he carried the message of the Po-Athun to the man of Te-gat-ha that no shadow of doubt be left in his mind as to where they stood in the Pueblo brotherhood.

The mountain forest of Te-gat-ha, and the rose thickets close to the brown walls make it a place of beauty. Through the open court between the century old buildings, runs the mountain stream with its message from the heights to the hidden river cutting deep down in the green plain to the west.

The valley of Povi-whah was beautiful in itself as a garden is good to look on when the spirits of the Growing Things have worked well with the man who covers the seed, but Te-gat-ha brought thoughts of a different beauty—even as did the memory of Walpi in Tusayan.

Walpi breathed the spirit of a tragic life, the last fortress of a mysterious people. Te-gat-ha sat enthroned facing the setting sun. Ancient, beautiful and insolent—with the insolence which refused to grow old though she had been mistress of many centuries.

Tahn-te the dreamer,—the student of mystic things, was subtly conscious of that almost personal—almost feminine appeal of Te-gat-ha. Strong in its beauty as in its battles—it yet retained a sensuous atmosphere that was as the mingling of rose bloom and wild plum blossom, of crushed mint grown in the shadows of the moist places, and clinging feathery clematis, binding by its tendrils green thickets into walls impregnable.

He could hear the beating of the tombe while yet out of sight of the sentinel on the western wall of the terrace. Medicine was being made, or dances were being danced.

While he ran through the forest his thoughts had drifted again and again to the vision of the bluebird maid. Was she the earth form of the God-Maid on the south mesa where the great star hung low? Was she the Goddess Estsan-atlehi who wore for him the color of the blue earth jewel sacred to her?—was she the shadow of the dream-maid of all his boy days—the Kā-ye-povi who had gone from earth to the Light beyond the light? All the wild places spoke of her, each stream he crossed made him see the young limbs pictured in the pool—each bird song made him remember the symbol sent to him by the vision—the world was a sweeter place because of the vision.

It came even against his will between himself and the priest of the robe who had called him "Sorcerer"—and who was the real general he would have to do battle with in the near days. The others he scarcely thought of, but that one of the wise tactful speech he must think of much.

Then while he told himself that the thought of the men of iron must never be forgotten for even the sweetest of forest dreams;—in that same moment the rustling of the wind in the pinyons made him thrill with the closeness of the remembered vision as no sight of living maid had ever made him thrill:—might it be magic from Those Above to try his strength? Might the memory of the maid and the pool, be akin to that temptation of the babe and the arms of the mother outlined on the shadows of the ancient graven stone?

That had plainly been false enchantment—and he had danced it away in the prayer dance to the Ancient Father. It had not returned even in his dreams. But the maid of the bluebird had not ever gone quite away. So close she seemed at times that if he turned his head quickly in the places of shadows he felt that he might see her again before the Spirit People hid the body of beauty.

And then—as he ran, and turned where the trail circled a rugged column of stone at the edge of the pinyon woods,—there a shadow flitted as a bird past the great gray barrier. He turned from the trail almost without volition of his own, and followed the flitting shadow, and—the maid of the bluebird wing was again before him!

Not merging into the shadows as before. Against the grey wall of rock she stood as a wild hunted thing at bay—breathless, panting—but with head thrown back to look death in the face.

But death was not what she saw in his eyes—only a wonder great as her own—and with the wonder fear,—and something else than fear.

Plainly she had been bound by thongs of rawhide, for one yet hung from her wrist. Much of her body was bare, her greatest garment was a deerskin robe held in her hand as she ran.

Because of this, could he see that her body and her arms were decorated with ceremonial symbols in the sacred colors, and the painting of them was not complete. It was evident she had been chosen for the forest dance of the maidens who were young. It was plain also that she had resisted, and had in some way broken from the people.

At the something other than fear in his eyes, she gained courage, and at the bluebird's wing in his head band, she stared and touched the one in her own braids, and then touched her own breast.

"Doli (Blue Bird)—me!" she said appealingly. "Navahu"—then she held her hand out as though measuring the height of a child.—"Te-hua—me!"

"Te-hua!"—he caught her hand and knew that she was not a vision, though he had first known of her in a vision. She was a living maid, and twice on wilderness trails had she come to him!

"Te-hua—you?" he half whispered, but in Te-hua words she could not answer him—only begged rapidly in Navahu for protection—and motioned with fear towards the villages where the tombe was sounding.

To give help to an escaped captive of Te-gat-ha while on the trail to ask friendship of Te-gat-ha, was an act not known in Indian ethics—but as when he had been wakened by her in the canyon of the high walls—so it was now—the outer world drifted far, and the eyes of the girl—pleading—were the only real things. In his hours on the trail through the forest he had thought the ever-present picture of her in his heart might be strange new magic for his undoing, but to hear her tremulous girl voice:—and to see the broken thong, and the symbols of the most primitive of tribal dances, drove into forgetfulness the thought of all magic that was false magic. The gods had sent the vision of her in the dawn of the sacred mountain, that he—Tahn-te—might know her for his own when she crossed his trail for help. The Navahu goddess of the earth jewel had surely sent her—else why the pair of blue wings between them? The symbolism of it was conclusive to the Indian mind, and he reached out his hand.

"Come!" he said gently. "Little sister,—come you with me!"

* * * * *

When the sentinel on the wall of Te-gat-ha sighted a strange runner who ran to them, and ran with swiftness, the word went to the governor, and he sent his man of the right hand to the gate of the wall.

In times of feasts these two had met before the days when the prayers were listened to by Tahn-te, and the greeting given to the visitors was a greeting to a friend.

As they crossed the court, Tahn-te could see that confusion and alarm was there. A woman who had been chidden was weeping, and the governor of war had his scouts at the place in the wall where the water ran under the bridge of the great logs—that was the only place where one could creep through without passing the gates, where the sentinel could always see.

"She is a witch!" wailed the woman who was in tears—"The painting was being done on her,—she would have been complete—and then it was the pot boiled over in the ashes:—they blinded my eyes, and the child was in the ashes also, and the body of him was burned. Could I see the witch when my eyes were blind? Could I hear the witch when my child screamed? Could I know she would cover herself with a deer skin and go into the ground, or into the clouds? On no trail of earth can you find her. She is a witch who brings bad luck to my house!"

But the men, heeding not her words, went over the ground in ways towards the mountains, and looked with keenness on all the tracks of women's feet.

Beyond the words of the women, Tahn-te heard nothing more of the person who was painted almost to completeness ere she went into the clouds, or into the ground. It was not etiquette to make questions. The wise old governor gave greeting to the visitor as if no thing had happened more unusual than the rising or setting of the sun.

Tahn-te had been many times to Te-gat-ha when the Sun races were made in the Moon of Yellow leaves. At that time the Sun Father grows weak, and the races are made that he may look down and see the earth children as they show strength, and the prayer of the race is that the Sun Father goes not far away, but seeks strength also, and grows warm again after a season.

Thus Tahn-te knew kindly the people, and the chief men were called to hear why a runner had been sent at this time to the brothers of the North.

The head men wrapped themselves in the robes of ceremony, the younger priests painted their bodies with the white, and into the kiva of council they descended with their visitor of high office.

On the shrine there, Tahn-te placed a fragment of the sun symbol taken from the pouch at his girdle. Before a white statue of the weeping god he placed it, and the Keeper of the Sacred Fire there, breathed on his hand, and threw fragrant dried herbs of magic on the live coals, that all evil and all discord be driven out by the fumes, and when the smoke drifted upwards and out by the way of the sky, the talk was made.

With briefness Tahn-te stated all heard in the council of Povi-whah concerning the wishes of the strangers from the South.



The men smoked the sacred smoke of council and listened, and when all was said, they nodded to each other.

"That which you say is that which the tribes have always talked about when the wild people came for war. In old days of our fathers, we people of the houses and the fields did make compact with each other as brothers. But always it has been broken, often it had to be broken. We are far apart. When the Yutah comes from the north, and the Pawnee from the east—and the Apache and the Navahu from every place, the men of each village must look to their own women. He cannot go to his brother to learn if he also is having war."

"That is true," said Tahn-te. "But the wild people fight and go away again. If these strangers find the symbol of the sun in our land, they will never go away—more will come—and then more always! I have seen the talking leaves of their people. If they get room for their feet, they then ask the field; if the way of the door is opened to them, they then take the house. They and their animals will ride us down as the buffalo tramp under foot the grass on the wide lands."

"That other year the white strangers came. They staid not long. This time not so many come—next time not any ever come—maybe so!"

"Maybe so!" echoed Tahn-te, but shook his head in sadness. Like the men of his own village, these men had the hopefulness of children that all would be made well.

"If their god is so strong a god—and they come with good gifts, is it not well to make treaty and have them as brothers?" asked the old governor. "With the thunder and the lightning given to them instead of arrows, they could do good warrior work for those who were precious to them."

"That is so," agreed Tahn-te—"but the men of dark skins will never be precious to the white men of the beards—except they make slaves who obey,—who carry the water, and bring wood for the fire."

"Men carry the water?"

"They are not men when they become slaves—they are not people any more!"

"We did not hear that," said the governor. "Do these men tell it that way?"

"No—not in that way. But talking leaves of their god tells them that dark men of other gods than theirs must be ever as slaves to the white men of iron and all of their kind. It has been like that always. The talking leaves tell them how to make slaves—and how to make war on all people who refuse to say that their god must be the only god."

"And that white god sends talking leaves of a spirit tree?"

"It is so," said Tahn-te:—"Many leaves! The spirit of that tree was once a strong spirit, but the white people caught it with magic and shut it in a book, and the spirit grows weak in the book—the heart of the Most Mysterious cannot be shut in a thing like that. They have magic, but the heart does not sing to that magic—only the eyes see it."

"Yet these strangers are wise," ventured one of the council, "such leaves might be good to instruct quickly the youth of the clans."

"It is so," agreed Tahn-te again. "But when the gods are caught in the leaves of a book, is when they no longer speak in silence to the hearts of men. On a day when we walk no more on the Earth Trail, the names of our gods may also be written on the leaves of a spirit tree that is dead. Think of this and warn your sons to think of this! The youths of Povi-whah and of Kah-po hearken with joy to the trumpets of the men of iron, but the music for the desert gods is the music of the flute—let it not be silenced by trumpets of brass made by white men who conquer!"

Some of the men of the council looked at each other, and wondered in their hearts if the youth of Tahn-te did not make him dream false things and think them true. It was scarcely to be believed that one people would fight because another people found the Great Mystery—and prayed to It for strength to live well—and to live long—but called It by another Prayer Name!

They knew that in things of sacred magic Tahn-te was more wise than any other;—other youth were trained only in their own societies—but the son of the Woman of the Twilight reached out for the Thought back of the outer thought in all orders, and in different tribes.

Yet—they doubted him now and for the first time! They did not think that Tahn-te spoke with a crooked tongue, but some one had lied to him in the days when he crossed the land with the man Coronado;—or maybe the talking leaves had lied on some dark night of magic!

But however that might be, the Great Mystery had never sent the word to kill a people because of their prayers. The men of the council knew that could not be. But they were respectful to the young Po-Ahtun-ho, and they did not say so. That he had put aside his dignity of office, and come himself to Tegat-ha for council, was a great honor for Te-gat-ha.

And they smoked in silence, and did not say the thing they thought.

But Tahn-te the Ruler, read their hearts in their silence, and for the first time his own heart grew sick. In Povi-whah there was the jealousy of the war chief—and of the governor as well, and that, he thought, made them blind to much. But these men had only honor in their hearts for him and no jealousy. Yet to make them see motives of the strangers, as he saw them, was not possible; and to tell them that the men of iron gave worship to a jealous god was to brand himself for always as foolish in their eyes! They had thought him wise—but not again could they think him wise as to the foreign men, or the reading of their books!

The early stars were alight in the sky when the men came up from the council. In the house of the governor the evening meal was long ready.

From the place of the dance in the forest, men and maids were coming:—under the branches of the great trees they were coming, but among them was not the maid of the thong and the unfinished paintings. Tahn-te, seeing that it was so, ate with his hosts the rolls of paper-like bread, and the roasted meat of the deer.

It was a silent meal, for it was his first day of failure. All other things he had won—but to win his brothers to brotherhood against the strongest enemy they or their fathers had ever met—was a thing beyond his strength.

They had chosen to be blind, and for the blind, no one can see!

Standing on the terrace, the governor spoke alone to Tahn-te of the thing which the men of iron sought—it was the same thing Alvarado had asked of when he had come north from Coronado's camp. It was strange that the sign of the Sun Father was a thing the white men sought ever to carry from the land. It must be strong medicine and very precious to them!

It was not possible for Tahn-te to make clear that the virtue of the yellow metal was not a sacred thing—only a thing of barter as shell beads or robes might be.

"Is it as they say,"—said his host after a smoke of silence—"is it as they say that the Order of the Snake is again made strong by you in Povi-whah?"

"It is true," said Tahn-te. "The help I have is not much. The Great Snake they all revere for the sacred reasons, but only the very old men know that with the Ancients the medicine of the wild brother snakes was strong medicine for the hearts of men. Maybe I can live long enough to teach the young men that the strong medicine is yet ours, and that the wild brother snake can always help us prove to the gods that it is ours."

"It is true that it is ours," assented the old man,—"and it is good when the visions come to show us how it is ours,"—then after a little, he added:—"For the sleep you will stay with my clan?" but Tahn-te, standing on the terrace, shook his head and pointed to the south.

"Thanks that you wish me," he said,—"but the work is there and the watching is there. When the smoke is over—I ask for your prayers and—I go!"

Steadily he ran on the trail past the thickets of the rose, and the great rock by the trail—steadily under the stars a long way. Then out of the many small night sounds of the wilderness he heard behind him the long call of a night bird in flight. Only a little ways did he go when again that little song of three descending notes came to him. It was very close this time, but he neither halted nor made more haste. For all the heed given it he might not have hearkened to it more than to the cricket in the grass.

Yet it spoke clearly to his ears. He knew that sentinels had been placed along his trail, and as he ran steadily, and alone, past each, he knew that the watchers were keen of eye and ear, and that the last two sent each other the signal "All is well,"—also he knew that the signal would be echoed back along the trail until each watcher would know that their visitor was on the trail alone, and all was well, and each could go back to Te-gat-ha and report to the war chief, and find sleep.

The watchfulness told him also that the maid they sought was one of importance. The visitor in the sky, called by his people the Ancient Star,—and called by Fray Luis the planet Venus, gave special meaning to a captive from the tribe of an enemy. It saved some clan from devoting a son or a daughter to sacrifice.

He did not halt at once even after the last call was sent back into the night, and he was far on the south trail ere he turned and more slowly retraced his steps. No lingering watcher must be overtaken by him on the trail.

So it was that Arcturus (the watcher of the night when the sun is away) was high overhead when he came again to the place of the great rock where as youths, he and his comrades climbed on each others' shoulders—and even then only the most agile and daring had scaled the smooth wall, and lay hidden there in a water worn depression. Many scouts might pass it without thought that a maid could be hidden there!

But the mere whisper of a whistle like the bluebird call brought her head over the edge, and their eyes met in the starlight.

Half the day, and half the night, had she lain there waiting for his call, hearing more than once the pad of the feet, or the panting breath of scouts:—she had even heard words of the sentinels sent from Te-gat-ha ahead of Tahn-te—eager as wolves they were in search of the maid—for it was evil medicine most potent to lose a captive after the symbols of ceremony had been drawn on the body!

But all her fear of them gave her no fear of Tahn-te. His first look into her eyes had been the look which said strange things, and sweet things—it was as if he had spoken thanks that he had found her on the trail.

And when he held up his arm to her in the night, she wrapped closely the deerskin robe about her, and slipped downward into his embrace.

The wall was so high he had himself gone ahead and dragged her up by help of the skin robe. And, strong though he was, the weight of her as she slipped downward against him staggered him, and his arms went tightly around her slender girl's body to save her, and to save himself.

And in that moment one of the magical things came to pass in the starlight, her young breasts were bare and held close to his own body. Her heart beats were felt by him as she lay limp for a space in his arms, and Tahn-te knew that for all other things in his life words could be found—but for the thrill of the touch of her body there were no words. It was as if a star had slipped out of the sky and given its glow and radiance to his life—the music of existence had touched him—and the magic of it held him dumb and still.

And he knew that the magic of the maid was born of the Great Mystery, and that a new life for him was born as each heard the heart beats of the other.

It was as truly a new marking for the Life Trail as had been the prayer made as a boy at the mesa shrine to answer the young moon message of the God of the Wilderness.

The maid stirred in his clasp and drew herself shyly away from him. At her first little movement, his arms grew tense about her, then they fell away, and he watched her, while with head averted from him, she arranged as well as might be her scant garb. There could be no words between them, but his touch was tender as he took her hand and led her out to the trail. He felt that she must know all he felt—and all the dreams into which the white shadow of her had entered—the sacred fourth shadow cast not by the body, but by the spirit, and linking itself with kindred spirit even while the human body breathed and moved and cast the black first shadow that all people may see.

The black first shadow all can see as a man moves or as he stands still, and the two gray shadows many can see after a man is on the death trail or when the breath has gone away. These remain with a man because they are of his body, but the white shadow is the shadow of the breath of the Great Mystery—it is as the perfume of the flower, the song of the bird, and the love of the man.

Fear lent the girl fleetness as she ran beside him in the night, and he marvelled at her.—No pueblo girl could have kept that pace. It was plain that she had lived with the rovers of the desert. All the long hours had she been without food or drink, yet she ran like a boy, and with the swiftness of a boy.

When the dawn broke, and the morning star showed each the face of the other, they had reached the trail by the river. From the west came black wind-swept clouds to meet the sun, and in the south the angered God of Thunder spoke. Tahn-te looked at the girl whose eyes showed the weariness of the long strain—his thoughts dwelt on the woes she must have lived through ere he found her:—plainly she could not run unfed to the hills of his people, and plainly since the storm was meeting them, the wise time to halt must be ere it swept the valley.

From the well known trail he had departed before the dawn, and the way they went was a hard way across the heights where earth's heart-fires had split the land and left great jagged monuments of stone;—and red ash as if even now scarcely free from the heat of flame.

Into one of the great crevices,—wide, and roofed by rock—he led the strange maid. Water came from a break in the great grey wall, and sand had drifted there on the wind, and the girl with a moan that was of weariness sank down there where the sand was. Tahn-te felt himself strangely hurt by that moan and wondered that it should be so.

She was only a maid after all, and the little woeful cry made him think of a hurt child he would have lifted in his arms and carried home to its mother. But the maid of the bluebird wing was far from mother and from her people;—no words had they exchanged in the long trail of the night, he knew not anything but that she spoke Navahu, and would have him think she wished to be Te-hua.

When she lay so very still that he could not see even the sign of life in her face, he went close and touched her—and then he saw that the spirit of her had truly gone on the trail of the twilight—she was no longer alive as other people are alive.

He lifted her to where the water ran, and with prayer let the cool drops of the living spring touch her face until the life came back, and her eyes opened wide with terror at sight of him bending above her, but he whispered as to a child—"Na-vin (my own)" and then "Kā-ye-povi"—which was to call her the Blossom of the Spirit, the name had been always with him in the Love-maiden Dream;—and this maid was the dream come true!

He drew her back from that strange border land of life where the strong gods of shadow wait;—and then the whisper of the blossom name took the fear from her dazed eyes—she clung to his hands and in a sort of breathless joy repeated the name "Kā-ye-povi—Kā-ye-povi!"—Me! "Kā-ye-povi!"

"You!—Doli—Navahu!"

She nodded assent. "Yes—it is so—now," she said—"but once when little,"—she made the sign for the height of a child—"Te-hua, not Navahu—then Kā-ye-povi!"

Thus it was Tahn-te found Kā-ye-povi after the many years, and knew that the Great Mystery had set his foot on the trail to Te-gat-ha that he, and not another, should find her!

From traders, and from an occasional Navahu prisoner, Tahn-te had learned Navahu words, and Navahu god thoughts, and now he strove with eagerness to speak their language, even though haltingly, and question of her coming to him—to him!

To a new master she had been sold by the old people who had owned her long, and many of the Navahu had gone north for deer—and perhaps for buffalo, and she had been taken with them. So far had they travelled that Tse-cōme-u-pin, the sacred, had been pointed out to her—and as a bird will seek its own place of nesting, had she sought the Te-hua land by fleeing to the sacred mountain. In the night time she had fled from her new master,—from a tall pine where she had climbed, had she seen them search the trail for her. In vain they had searched, and alone she had wandered many days. Almost had she reached the Te-hua towns of the river when some traders of Te-gat-ha had found her in the forest. To their own town they had taken her and had traded her for shell beads and for corn—the rest Tahn-te knew!

He strung his bow while he listened,—and while the thunder shook the earth he slipped through the crevices of the rock and lay hidden at the edge of a mountain morass where the reeds grew tall, and wild things fed—ahead of the storm small animals might cross the open there to reach the shelter of the rock walls—and Kā-ye-povi must not go unfed.

A rabbit he killed and covered each track of his feet from the place where he picked it up. When he took it to her it had been cleaned and washed in a little cascade below the shelter he had found for her. With him he took also dry twigs and dry pinyon boughs, that the fire made might not carry the odor of green wood.

The sheets of rain were flowing steadily towards them from the west, the earth trembled as the God of Thunder spoke, and the lances of fire were flung from the far sky and splintered on the rocks of the mountain.

The maid lay, wide eyed and still, where he had left her. That she feared was plain to be seen, and at his coming tears of gladness shone in her eyes.

To see that light in her face as he came back to her brought to him a joy that was new and sweet. He did not speak to her. He made the fire in silence, but at every crash of the storm he smiled at her, and made prayers, and threw sacred white pollen to the four ways, and the feeling that he was as guardian to the maid whose very name had been a part of his boy dreams, was a sweet thought.

It was a wonderful thing that out of the dreams she had grown real, and had covered the trails until she had reached him! It was sweet that his hand had touched her and told him that the maid was a real maid of pulsing heart and tremulous breath.

But with all the sweetness of it, there was a strange thought fluttering over his mind like a moth or a butterfly. It did not find lodgment there, but it did not go quite away, and ere he offered to her the meat roasted in the red coals of the pinyon wood, he scattered prayer pollen between them as on a shrine.

The line of the white between them was as the threshold of a door over which a man may not step. No man crosses threshold of another if the wife of that man is alone there,—and no brother goes into the house where his sister is without other companion. This was the law from the time of the ancient days, and belongs to many tribes.

To the Navahu it did not belong, and the maid knew only that the white pollen meant prayer, and that she was circled by sacred things, and by thought so sweet that her eyes rested on the sands when he gazed at her.

So sweet did the thought grow that they no longer tried to speak as at first, and compare words Navahu, and words Te-hua;—her own forgotten tongue.

To whisper "Kā-ye-povi" was sweet, but to think "Doli" was sweeter—for it had been the vision of the goddess of the blue he had first seen in the pool of the hills;—and to him had come her symbol dancing on the ripples. He wore it in the banda about his head;—and he knew now that the image of her would never grow faint in his heart. Out of the hand of the Great Mystery had she come to him that the last and best gift of life should be known, and that the prayers to the gods be double strong because of that knowing.

Without daring to look at her he sat in silence and thought these things, and he felt that she must know what the thoughts were. The war of the elements was as a background for strange harmonies, and the low roaring clouds of darkness were but a blanket of mist under which the fire glow of two hearts be felt to shine near and clear, and send to each its signal.

Then—like a monster let loose, there were broken all bonds of the tornado on the river hills. A blackness as of night covered the earth with wide spread wings. With the voice of thunder it came;—and with the strength of a god it came.

Earth and stone were hurled on the wind as if a rain of arrows or spears had been hurled by some spirit of annihilation.

Even breath had to be fought for there,—and the maid in terror reached out her hands to the man across the sacred barrier and moaned pitifully, and in the darkness the man drew her close until her head rested on his breast, and his own bent head, and his body, sheltered her.



CHAPTER XV

THE GIVING OF THE SUN SYMBOL

Two nights had passed over the world, and the day star was shining over the mountains of the east when the people of Povi-whah saw again Tahn-te the Po-Ahtun-ho.

It was the sentinel on the terrace who saw him, and he was at the ancient shrine at the mesa edge, and a flame was there to show that prayers were being made to greet the god of the new day.

And when he came down from the mesa, and looked at the corn of the fields torn and beaten low by the great storm, his face showed that he carried a sad heart, and that he had gone from Te-gat-ha somewhere into the hills for prayer.

And to his house went the old men, and they listened to that which had been decided by the council of Te-gat-ha. A man had already arrived from Te-gat-ha to tell them that same thing, and to tell them that an evil spirit of the forest who spoke as a Navahu maid, had brought woe on the valley.

Some said it was the Ancient Star calling on the voice of the wind for sacrifice, and others said the tornado had come because the maid had been let go with the sacred symbols of ceremony painted on her body, and the gods of that ceremony called for her on the wind. But whichever way was the true way, the maid was linked to spirits of evil, and the corn of that year would be less than half of a full year, and the Te-gat-ha men asked that any Te-hua man who found the evil maid would send a runner to tell of it. Robes and blue beads would be given for her:—she belonged to the god of the star, or the god of the mad winds, and on the altar with prayers must she be given to them, that they be not angry.

Tahn-te listened—and when they said the anger of the sky had come from the west, as the maid had come, he was silent.

His first day of failure in council had been the day when he shielded the Dream Maid on the trail.—The woman who had wept in Te-gat-ha had said she was evil and a witch, and now the men pointed to the killed corn as the work of her magic!

No word of his could undo these things or wipe them from the Indian mind. In his own mind he knew that a weakness had come upon him. To live alone for the gods had been an easy thing to think of in the other days, but now it was not easy, and his heart trembled like a snared bird at each plan made by the men for the undoing of the witchmaid if she should be found.

The runner from Te-gat-ha looked strangely at Tahn-te as he walked across the court, and to Ka-yemo, he said:

"You men of Povi-whah are good runners always, and your Ruler of the Spirit Things has left you all behind always in the race. Yet this time, to come from Te-gat-ha, he stays two sleeps, and follows a trail no man sees!"

"In the hills he has been for prayers—so the old men say," replied Ka-zemo. But Yahn, whose ears were ever open, gave stew of rabbit to the Te-gat-ha runner and asked many things, and learned that the storm had washed away all tracks of feet, but that the witch maid had certainly run to the south—every other way was under the eyes of the sentinel on the wall. By a little stream to the south had her tracks been seen but not in any other place.

"Tahn-te crossed over the trail," said Yahn and laughed. "The priest of the men of iron say that Tahn-te is a sorcerer,—who knows that he did not bury owl-feathers or raven-feathers on the way to hide her trail? If the witch maid was a maid of beauty, is he not already a man?"

The man laughed with her, but he had heard of the dance of Tahn-te to the ancient stone god of the hills! The man who danced there was not the man for the cat scratches of Yahn the Apache, and though he laughed with her because she was pretty and a woman, he was not blind to her malice, and the meaning of her words went by him on the wind.

But the thought once planted in the mind of Yahn did not die. The face of Tahn-te held a trouble new and strange. He walked apart, and the old men said he made many prayers that the Great Mystery send a sign for the going of the white strangers.

In her heart Yahn thought as Tahn-te thought. The eyes of the man of the priest gown went like arrows through her at times—he looked like a man who knew all things. To Ka-yemo he talked until she was wild with desire to know the things said between them. It angered her that Ka-yemo was flattered by such attention. Padre Vicente she hated for his keen eyes and his plain speech of her. Don Ruy and the boyish secretary had too many moments of laughter when her name was spoken of to Juan Gonzalvo—as it often was! Their gifts she took with both hands, and did the talking for them as agreed, but she sulked at times even under their compliments, and Don Diego instructed Saeh-pah to strive that the unruly beauty be brought within the Christian fold.

The success was not great, for Saeh-pah was brave in a new gift of silver spurs—worn on rawhide about her neck, for it was the time of the Summer dance when the women choose companions, and love is very free. If the man prefers not to share the love of the dame who makes choice of him—he makes her a gift—or she chooses one.

The pious Don Diego had the secretary give many lines in the "Relaciones" of this strange custom where the fair fond ones offered marriage—or accepted a gift as memento. He even strutted a bit that the poor heatheness offered to him what best she could afford in exchange for the divine grace of a good sprinkling of holy water. But Yahn said things of the baptism not good for ears polite, or for the "Relaciones," and Saeh-pah scuttled back in fear to her new master, and told him,—and told Juan Gonzalvo, that the veins of Yahn Tsyn-deh must be cut open to let out the Apache blood, before they could hope she might be one of the heaven birds in their angel flock!

But Saeh-pah did not tell them that the thing of torment awaking Yahn to wrath had been the knowledge that Ka-yemo was somewhere across the mesa, and the old people laughed that he could not stay longer from the new wife, but had gone to seek her in the place of the old ruins.

After that, divine grace had not shielded Saeh-pah from vituperation, and when Juan Gonzalvo came wooing, Yahn told him that across the hills was a woman waiting for a man, and dressed in fine skins and many beads:—when he or his men had won Koh-pe the daughter of Tsa-fah, to come back and tell her. She did not mean to be won easier than the other, and without a price!

Which was also a novel statement for the truthful record of the adventurers, and the secretary, on a terrace above, heard it, and rolled on the flat roof in laughter, and wrote it down most conscientiously. By such light matters was the dreariness of waiting days lessened.

For plainly the days were to be of waiting. All the good will of gift-bought friends helped the strangers not at all to the finding of the trail of gold. In the sands of the streams some fragments no larger than seeds of the grass were found, and in the canyon of Po-et-se some of the adventurers dug weary hours in the strange soil where the traces are yet plain of black ashes, and charred cinders far beneath the sagebrush growth of to-day.

But while the Te-hua men gave good will for their digging, yet more than that they could not give, for the reason that no more than two persons could hold in trust that secret of the Sun Father's symbol—and only certain members of the Po-Ahtun order knew even the names of those two people.

After much patient delving had Ka-yemo learned that this was so, for the thing was not a tribal matter, but a thing of high medicine in the Po-Ahtun order. Not even the governor knew who held the secret. When the time came for certain religious ceremonies, some of the yellow stone was placed on the shrine of the weeping god with other prayers, but it was a sacred thing, as was the pollen of the corn, and no man asked from whence it came. To be told meant that the person told was made guardian until the death blankets wrapped him. It was a great honor. No man could ask for it. A brother might not know that his brother was the keeper of the trust. Only the head men of the secret order of Spirit Things could know.

In vain Juan Gonzalvo swore, and Padre Vicente used diplomacy and made wondrous fine impression as the ambassador for the king of all Spain and the Indian Island!

Don Ruy took the secretary and Yahn Tsyn-deh, and went to the governor of Kah-po where his reception was kindly, but the information given him was slight.

That dignitary told him that his men of Mexico might dig great caves if they chose in search for the yellow metal of the sun symbol, but that to Povi-whah had been given the secret of the gold at the time when Senor Coronado had burned the two hundred men at the stake in Tiguex. All the old men knew that gold was the one thing the men of iron searched for. Before that time all villages had men who knew where it was hidden by the Sun Father. But a council of head men had been called. It had been a great council and long. At the end of it, one village was chosen, one order of that village, and two members of that order, and in the ears of those two alone was whispered the hiding place. No man could know who the two keepers of the secret might be, for it had to do with sacred things and with strong magic, and in that way did the villages decide to guard the secret of the High Sun.

"No chance here for whispers of courtiers and king's counselors to get abroad in the land," decided Don Ruy as they mounted their horses for the home ride and Yahn lingered to gossip with neighbors. "In the south the conquerors could fight for gold and win it—but in this land of silence with whom is one to fight?"

"Need you the gold so much that you must come between these poor people and their god in the sky?" asked the secretary doubtfully, for the attitude of the two had been of extreme politeness and not so much of comradeship since that morning of confession when the lad had owned himself a deficient page in the bearing of love messages,—"Is the finding of the gold a matter of life or of death?"

"It pays for most good things," stated Don Ruy. "How know you that I do not beggar myself on this expedition? And to go back with empty hands would win little of favor for me from even the well-guarded Dona of the Mexic tryst."

"You forget, Excellency," said the lad and smiled, "she is called mad you know—and to a mad maid you might return in a cloak of woven grasses, or of shredded bark, and lack nothing of welcome."

"Humph! Only to a mad maid dare I return coatless, and find an open gate? And suppose it be another than the gentle maniac whom I seek?—a cloak of grasses would be a sorry equipment to cover my failure."

"There is one right good blanket at your disposal," said the lad looking straight out across the river, yet feeling the color mount to his hair as Don Ruy regarded him keenly and then clapped him on the shoulder.

"I'll claim half of the blanket when the day comes!" he declared—"and in truth I'd not be so sorry to see the maid of your discourse whether mad or of sanity. That ever restless Cacique who strives to bar us out, shows me that more than one Indian may have gone mad in the same struggle. Think you he must know the keepers of the secret of gold?"

"It would not be strange, since he is the head of the magicians and the worker of spirit things."

"God send that Juan Gonzalvo gets not that idea strongly in his mind—it would be the cap sheaf to the stack of his grievances."

"And it would be the one to weigh most heavily with his reverence the padre"—added Chico. "His soul is set on treasure for the Holy Brotherhood—and to win in secret where Coronado and the church failed with all the blare of trumpets, means that no man in the Indies would have a name written above that of the patient and devout Padre Vicente."

"You say things, lad, with a serious face;—but with a mocking voice," commented Don Ruy. "Tell me truly if the life of a page in the palace of the Viceroy teaches you so much of politics and holy orders that you combine the two and grow skeptic to each?"

"A page sees more than he understands—" returned the lad, "it was the teaching of your mad Dona of the silken scarf who saw things as the priests told her they were not to be seen,—she it was who taught me to laugh instead of doing penance."

"And she it was also no doubt who taught you of magic Mexic things in keeping with the fairy Melissa of Charlemagne's day, and Merlin the magian of Britain?"

"Heigh-ho! It is precious magic those old romancers did tell of!" agreed the lad. "Think how fine it would be if we had those enchanted steeds and lances,—and the fair daughter of the Khan of Kathay for company through the wilderness!"

"She was too fickle, and too much the weeping fair," decided Don Ruy. "Bradamante the warrior maid is more to the fancy—she would fight for the lover she loved—or against him as the case might be, yet give love to him all the time! She was the very pole-star of those old romances—but they make no such maids except in books!"

"Not so much pity for that," commented the secretary. "Since she was too easily won for the hearth stone of a plain man. It is clearly set down that she spoke with her pagan lover but once, and fell straightway so deep in love that she would fight either Christian or Moor to find the way to him. A maid like that looks well afar off, but it would take a valiant man to house with her!"

"How know you aught of how many times eyes must meet—or words be said ere love comes?" demanded Don Ruy—"Bantam that you are!—Must a man and a maid see summer and winter together ere the priest has work to do?"

"Alas—and saints guard us!—we need not to live long to see denial of that!" said the secretary and shrugged and smiled. "But since a maid close to my own house throws lilies to strange cavaliers, it is not for me to make discourse of ladies light-of-love!"

"Light-of-love!—Jack-a-napes! You know not so much after all if you get that thought cross wise in your skull! My 'Dona Bradamante' (for as yet neither you or the padre have given a name to her!) the 'Dona Bradamante' spoke no word the most rigid duenna could have frowned down! If you are her foster brother you might have gathered that much of wisdom to yourself!"

"But—your Excellency—she has never scattered wisdom broadcast on any one of us! An elfish maid who needed guard of both duenna and confessor:—how was a mere friend to know that a love of a mad moment would have made her a wonder of wisdom and discretion?"

Whereupon Don Ruy suggested that he go to the devil and learn sense, and added that if the famous magic steed, or ring of invisibility were to be found in the desert regions of these Indian provinces, he would use them for a peep into the palace of the Viceroy, or the nunnery of the Dona of the Lily. No ambassador would he trust. For himself he would see how much or how little of madness was back of the message of the blossom, or the guerdon of the silken scarf.

"If I were indeed a worthy page I would make a song of your enchanted—or demented Dona, and pipe it to you to the tombe of the medicine workers on the roofs," declared the lad in high glee that Don Ruy again spoke with frankness to him.

But his excellency put aside the offer, content to make his own songs when there was a maid to listen.

"Dame Yahn Tsyn-deh might listen—and even make herself beautiful for you."

"The Dame Yahn is like enough to make trouble without the singing of songs! Whether it is the Indian war capitan, or our own, I know not as to the favorite. But some game she is playing, and I doubt if it is for Juan Gonzalvo, despite his gifts."

Padre Vicente and Jose were walking apart under a group of the white limbed cottonwoods, as the two riders drew near the village. Their discourse was earnest, and the voice of the padre was heard in decision.

"That is how it must be, Jose—" he said. "You have found the way,—the gold is as good as ours!"

"By the faith!"—said Don Ruy swinging from the saddle to join them; "if this be true let us fill wallets and break camp for Mexico!—there is a gentle maniac over there with whom I would fain hold hands once more—this womanless paradise pleases me little!"

The padre regarded him with tolerance, and never a blink of the eye to denote remembrance of any gentle maniac in particular. Since the dame had served a worthy purpose, forgotten was all the episode!

"It is well you know the good tidings of Jose," he said—"though there is no hint that the gold is piled in bars waiting for the lading. Speak, Jose."

"It is a man of Ni-am-be," said Jose. "He has been outcast for a reason. He lives alone, and the fear of the alone is growing in him, for he is old! He was one of the men who made medicine to forget where the sign of the Sun Father hides in the earth. But the medicine was not good medicine."

"He does not forget?"

"He made a vow to the sky to forget, but the sky did not listen and take the vow. He does not forget."

"And he will show the place?"

"It may be he will show the place. He asks me if it is a good life to live with your people, also if you would take him away when you go."

"Oh—ho!—he fears what would happen if he was left behind after telling—he fears they would kill him?"

"Not so much of the to kill is he afraid. He was a medicine man. He knows what the other medicine men could do. He would wish for the to die many times and they would not let death come near to his cave in the rock."

"By their magic?" asked Don Ruy.

"By their magic, Excellency. Of all the head men is he afraid, but of Tahn-te the Po-Ahtun-ho who has the sight of the dark is he much afraid."

"The sight of the dark?"

"It is so, some men are born into the world with it. They know the thought of the other man,—they see the hidden things. Tahn-te has the strong medicine and the eyes to see. He is much afraid of Tahn-te the Ruler."

"You see the power of these necromancers with their satanic arts?" said Padre Vicente. "We must make it plain to these people that such fear is to be driven out only by the true church and the power of its saints."

"If we wait for the gold until we teach them all that, the profit of this journey will be to our heirs and not to ourselves," decided Don Ruy. "Pay the renegade for the secret he should have forgotten, take him along with us, and convert him at your leisure. In all good time, and with a larger guard of men, you can come for the further conversion of the tribe."

"There is wisdom in what you say," replied the padre, "for converts here will mean a waiting game. But once let us take to Mexico the golden proof of the wealth in this province and there will be eager troops and churchmen in plenty to cross the deserts and defend the faith. But for that devil-possessed Po-Ahtun-ho the road to success would be shorter."

"It is not good luck to say things against the man of strong magic," stated Jose. "Ka-yemo, the war capitan would like if Tahn-te had never come from the land of the Hopitu—but Ka-yemo says no evil words of Tahn-te—he knows that Tahn-te has ears to hear far off, and eyes to see in the dark."

"Do you forget you are a Christian soul?" demanded the padre. "The holy saints can kill the evil powers even in the sons of Satan! Let me hear no more of the 'eyes of the dark;'—pagan trickery!"

Jose said no more, but it was easy to see that the veneer of foreign ritual had made little impression on the Indian mind. He feared all the devils of the Christian hell, and most of the gods of the pagan pantheon. A policy of propitiation towards all the unseen powers is the wise and instinctive attitude of the primitive mind. He slipped his prayer beads through his fingers as taught for prayer, but to be quite certain that evil be bribed to keep its distance, he stealthily scattered prayer meal as he walked behind the others, and Yahn who was coming behind them, saw him, and laughed. She was glad of heart to see that the Te-hua, after years of the white man's religion, was still at heart, a devotee of the Sun.

"He says that Tahn-te the Ruler has not the strong magic," he said lowly to Yahn—"but no one else says so in this land."

Yahn did not care to discuss the power of Tahn-te—it was a bitter thing in her days.

And as the little group went on through the fragrant sage and the yellow bloom, Tahn-te himself stood almost on their trail, but a little to one side where a knoll was.

Still as a thing of stone he stood there. His hand shaded his eyes while he gazed across the sage levels—across the water of the river and to the yellow and red sands beyond.

Even at their footsteps near, and their voices, he made no sign and wavered not in his gaze. Don Ruy glancing at him saw that his expression was keen, yet incredulous. So strange was it that Don Ruy instinctively turned in his saddle to see the thing at which Tahn-te looked and frowned.

At first he could see only the wavering lines of heat across the level—and then he saw the thing, and with a word halted the others and pointed.

Out of the red and yellow sand and soft green patches of the desert growth a group of men were outlined against the low hills. Indians with lances and with shields.

"That is a curious thing," said Don Ruy. "They walk this way yet their steps bring them not closer! Is it a war party?"

Yahn gave one look, drew her breath sharply, and turned speechless to Tahn-te. Jose after a long look crossed himself many times and gripped the sleeve of the padre.

"Navahu!"—he muttered, the terror of his ancient first captors coming over him. "Navahu to battle!"

But Tahn-te made a little gesture to reassure the startled interpreter.

"You do not see men alive there," he said,—"these are not men, but the shadows of men who will come."

"Shadows?"—the tones of the padre were contemptuous.

"Spirit people of the shadows—these things do come to some eyes, some days, in our land," stated Tahn-te quietly. "This time you have also been given to see that these things are."

Even as he spoke the mirage of the armed men faded in a whirl of sand caught up by a wandering wind, and while the others still stared at the place where it had been, Tahn-te passed them and ran with easy stride across the levels to Povi-whah.

The Spanish crossed themselves, and even Yahn Tsyn-deh trembled. Tahn-te had chosen to show the men of iron that his medicine was strong to bring visions, and what was most wonderful—to bring them before the eyes of other men!

Jose was shaking with fear.

"All things he hears," he muttered—"all things! Under the trees we spoke words—far off they reached his ears! He waited to show us that his eyes were for the dark or the day—or—the dead! The spirit men were Navahu. Holy Father, he can bring all the men who ever died to tramp us into the sand! Holy Father, my heart is very sick!"

The others were silent. All were awed, and Padre Vicente was thinking what was most wise to say. There were enough in the group for strong witness that Tahn-te had shown them a thing which did not exist;—only a sorcerer could call up men out of the earth and send them away on the wind!

"In the sorcery we had no part, my children," he said at last. "The man who raised those demons fled, as you see, at the sign of the cross! To-morrow morning we have a mass. It is well to walk in prayer, when Satan works with his chosen helpers."

Don Ruy looked at him sharply—for the mirage could not be a thing of wonder for so travelled a man. But his was not the task to correct eminence as to natural or infernal agencies, and the effect on the minds of the two interpreters might prove a thing of grace!

Therefore he bent his head, and rode onward, and smiled at the secretary, who was careful to ride close, and showed none too much of courage at this glimpse of the magic of the barbarian who clasped hands with the gods—or the demons!

"What dare be written in the 'Relaciones' of a thing like that?" he queried.—"You smile, Excellency, as if you carried a magic shield, or enchanted sword lifted from pages of old romance, but what think you Senor Brancadori will say to this thing of wonder? It does not belong to the living world we know."

"Let it not get into your dreams," suggested Don Ruy—"or if you do, content yourself with the fancy that I indeed bear a magic shield and am ever near enough for you to hide behind it."

"I am not so much a coward!" retorted the lad,—"to die for a good cause in any human way is not a thing to fear—but these magical works—"

"Without doubt they do belong to the sorcery of Satan," said Don Ruy soberly, yet with an eye on the padre—"and yon supple racer is of course one of his heirs. Stay you close to me, lad, and forget not your orisons."

When they reached the camp, a herald was calling to the people from the terraces. He was calling for all the men to prepare for battle. In a vision of the bright day had Tahn-te seen the coming of the Navahu. The medicine of Tahn-te was strong. Not at home would they wait for battle. To steal women had the enemy taken the trail to the dwellings of the Ancient ruins in the hills, and there must the warriors prepare to meet them on the trail.