THE STORY BY THE DESERT WELL
Don Diego marvelled much at the briskness of the plans for a season of
hunting ere his troublesome charge was well able to see out of both
eyes. But on being told that the range might be wide, he laid in a
goodly stock of quills and parchment, for every league of the land
would bring new things to his knowledge.
These records were to be entitled "Relaciones of the New and Wondrous
Land of the Indian's Island" and in those Relaciones the accounts of
Padre Vicente were to loom large. Among the pagan people his war
against the false gods had been ruthless. Maestro Diego was destined
to hear more of the padre's method than he dared hope in the earlier
days.
José, the Indian of the North whose Te-hua name was Khen-zah, went
with them--also his wife--the only woman, for without her the man
would not go in willingness. Two only were the members added by Don
Ruy to the cavalcade--one a stalwart fellow of many scars named Juan
Gonzalvo who had known service with Pizarro in the land of gold--had
lost all his coin in an unlucky game, and challenged the young
stranger from Seville for the loan of a stake to gamble with and win
back his losses. He looked good for three men in a fight. Instead of
helping him in a game, Don Ruy invited him on the hunting trip!
The other addition was as different as might be from the toughened,
gambling conquistador--a mere lad, who brought a letter from the hand
of the Viceroy as a testimonial that the lad was a good scribe if it
so happened that his sanctity the padre--or his Excellency Don Ruy,
should need such an addition in the new lands where their hunting
camps were to be. The boy was poor but for the learning given him by
the priests,--his knowledge was of little save the knowledge of books.
But his willingness to learn was great, and he would prove of use as a
clerk or page as might be.
Padre Vicente was not present, and the cavalcade was already two days
on the trail, but Don Ruy read the letter, and looked the lad over.
"Your name is--"
"Manuel Lenares--and called 'Chico' because I am not yet so tall as I
may be."
"It should be Manuella because you look not yet so manlike as you may
be," declared Ruy Sandoval,--and laughed as the angry color swept the
face of the lad. "By our Lady, I've known many a dame of high degree
would trade several of her virtues for such eyes and lips! Tush--boy!
Have no shame to possess them since they will wear out in their own
time! I can think of no service you could be to me--yet--I have
another gentleman of the court with me holding a like office--Name of
the Devil:--it would be a fine jest to bestow upon him a helper for
the ponderous 'Relaciones'!" and Don Ruy chuckled at the thought,
while the lad stood in sulky embarrassment--willing to work, but not
to be laughed at.
He was dressed as might be in the discarded garments of magnificence,
well worn and visibly made over to fit his young figure. His cloak of
old scarlet, too large for him, covered a patched shirt and jacket,
and reached to his sandal straps of russet leather:--scarce the garb
of a page of the Viceregal court, yet above that of the native
servant.
"You are--Spanish?"
Again the face of the youth flushed, and he shrugged his shoulders and
replaced his velvet cap with its pert cock's feather.
"I have more than enough Spanish blood to send me to the Christian
rack or stake if they caught me worshipping the pagan gods of my
grandmother," he stated briefly, and plainly had so little hope of
winning service that he was about to make his bow and depart in search
of the Padre.
But the retort caught Don Ruy, and he held the lad by the shoulder and
laughed.
"Of all good things the saints could send, you are the best," he
decided--"and by that swagger I'll be safe to swear your grandsire was
of the conquistadores--I thought so! Well Chico:--you are engaged for
the service of secretary to Maestro Diego Maria Francisco Brancadori.
You work is seven days in the week except when your protector marks a
saint's day in red ink. On that day you will have only prayers to
record, on the other days you will assist at many duties concerning a
wondrous account of the adventures Don Diego hopes for in the heathen
land."
"Hopes for:--your Excellency?"
"Hopes for so ardently that our comfort may rest in seeing that he
meets with little of disappointment on the trail."
For one instant the big black eyes of the lad flashed a shy
appreciation of Don Ruy's sober words and merry smile.
"For it is plain to be seen," continued that gentleman--"that if Don
Diego finds nothing to make record of, your own wage will be a sad
trial and expense."
"I understand, your Excellency."
"You will receive the perquisites of a secretary if you have indeed
understanding," continued Don Ruy, "but if there are no records to
chronicle you will get but the pay of a page and no gifts to look for.
Does it please you?"
"It is more than a poor lad who owns not even a bedding blanket could
have hoped for, señor, and I shall earn the wage of a secretary. That
of a page I could earn without leaving the streets and comfort."
"Oho!" And again the eyes of Don Ruy wandered over the ill garbed
figure and tried to fit it to the bit of swagger and confidence.--"I
guessed at your grandfather--now I'll have a turn at you:--Is it a
runaway whom I am venturing to enroll in this respectable company of
sober citizens?"
"Your Excellency!" the lad hung his head yet watched the excellency
out of the corner of his eye, and took heart at the smile he saw--"it
is indeed true there are some people I did not call upon to say
farewell ere offering my services to you, but it is plain to see I
carried away not any one's wealth in goods and chattals."
"That is easily to be perceived," said Don Ruy and this time he did
not laugh, for with all his light heart he was too true a gentleman to
make sport of poverty such as may come to the best of men. "By our
Lady, I've a feeling of kinship for you in that you are a runaway
indeed--this note mentions the teaching of the priests--I'll warrant
they meant to make a monk of you."
"If such hopes are with them, they must wait until I am born again,"
decided the lad, and again Don Ruy laughed:--the lad was plainly no
putty for the moulding, and there was chance of sport ahead with such
a helper to Maestro Diego.
"It will be my charge to see that you are not over much troubled with
questions," said his employer, and handed back the letter of
commendation. "None need know when you were engaged for this very
important work. José over there speaks Spanish as does Ysobel his
wife. Tell them you are to have a bed of good quality if it be in the
camp--and to take a blanket of my own outfit if other provisions fall
short."
A muttered word of thanks was the only reply, and Don Ruy surmised
that the boy was made dumb by kindness when he had braced himself for
quips and cuffs--knowing as he must--that he was light of build for
the road of rough adventure.
"Ho!--Lad of mine!" he called when the youth had gone a few paces--"I
trust you understand that you travel with a company of selected
virtues?--and that you are a lucky dog to be attached to the most
pious and godly tutor ever found for a boy in Spain."
"It is to be called neighbor of these same virtues that I have come
begging a bed on the sand when I might have slept at home on a quilt
of feathers:"--the lad's tongue had found its use again when there was
chance for jest.
"And--"
"Yes:--your Excellency?"
"As to that pagan grandmother of whom you made mention:--her
relationship need not be widely tooted through a horn on the
journey--yet of all things vital to the honorable Maestro Diego and
his 'Relaciones,' I stand surety that not any one thing will be given
so much good room on paper as the things he learns of the heathen
worship of the false gods."
"A nod is as good as a wink to a mule that is blind!" called back the
lad in high glee. "Happy am I to have your excellency's permission to
hold discourse with him concerning the church accursed lore of our
ancestral idols!"
Then he joined José and Ysobel as instructed, and gave the message as
to bed and quarters. José said no word in reply, but proceeded to
secure blankets, one from the camp of Don Ruy. Ysobel--a Mexican
Indian--who had been made Christian by the padre ere she could be
included in the company, was building a fire for the evening meal.
Seeing that it burned indifferently the new page thrust under the
twigs the fine sheet of paper containing the signature of the
Viceroy.
Ysobel made an exclamation of protest--but it was too late--it had
started the blaze in brave order.
"Your letter--if you should need it--perhaps for the padre!" she
said.
"Rest you easy, Nurse," said the lad and stretched himself to watch
the supper cooked. "I have no further needs in life but supper and a
bed,--see to it that José makes it near you own! I am in the employ of
Don Ruy Sandoval for a period indefinite. And he has promised--laugh
not out loud Ysobel!--that he will see to it I am not questioned as to
whence or why I came to seek service under his banner!--even the holy
father is set aside by that promise--I tell you that laughter is not
to be allowed! If you let him see that you laugh, I will beat you when
we are alone, Ysobel--I will though you have found a dozen husbands to
guard you!"
Don Ruy did see the laughter of the woman, and was well pleased that
the lad could win smiles from all classes,--such a one would lighten
weary journeys.
He felt that he had done well by Maestro Diego. Plainly the quick wit
of the lad betokened good blood, let him prate ever so surely on his
heathen grandmother!
Don Diego felt much flattered at the consideration shown by Don Ruy
for the "Relaciones"--in fact he had so pleased an interest in the
really clever young pen-man that the Padre took little heed of the
boy--he was of as much account as a pet puppy in the expedition--but
if the would-be historian needed a secretary--or fancied he did,--the
lad would be less trouble than an older man if circumstances should
arise to make trouble of any sort.
So it chanced that Juan Gonzalvo and Manuel Lenares, called Chico,
were the only two included in the company who had not been confessed
and enrolled by Padre Vicente himself.
It was the magic time of the year, when new leaves open to the sun,
and the moon, even in the bare desert stretches of the land, brought
dreams of Castile to more than one of the adventurers.
"Good Father," said Don Ruy with feigned complaint, "Think you not
that your rigid rules for the journey might have stopped short of
hopeless celibacy for all of us?--Why a moon like that and Venus
ascendent unless to make love by?"
"The brightness of that same moon saved you nothing of a cracked pate
the hour of fortune when we first met," observed Padre Vicente
drily.--"Maids or matrons on the journey would have caused broken
heads in the desert as handily as in the city streets."
"By the faith--your words are of wisdom and much to be valued by his
highness," agreed Don Diego. "Make note of that thought for the
Relaciones Chico, my son. This pious quest may be a discipline of most
high import to all of us. Wifeless should we ride as rode the
crusaders of an older day."
"Tum-a-tum-tum!" Don Ruy trolled a fragment of love melody, and
laughed:--"I have no fancy for your penances. Must we all go without
sweethearts because you two have elected to be bachelors for the
saving of souls? Think you the Indian maids will clamor for such
salvation? I lay you a wager, good father, that I win as many converts
with love songs and a strip of moonlight, as do you both with bell and
book!"
Around the camp fires of the nights strange tales were told--and
strange traits of character unconsciously given to the light, and to
all the far seeing Padre gave note;--in emergencies it is ever well to
know one's resources.
José the Te-hua slave--caught first by the Navahu--traded to the
Apaches--thence to neighbors of the south--after years of exile, was
the one who had but few words. All the queries of the adventurers as
to gold in the north gained little from him--only he remembered that
fine yellow grains were in some streams, and it was said that other
yellow metal was in secret places, but he did not profess to be a
knower of High Things--and it was half a life time since his eyes had
rested on his own people.
He was a silent man whose words were in the main for his Ysobel and
the boy secretary. But the gold nugget worn smooth in the pocket of
Padre Vicente was as a charm to find its parent stock in all good
time! Men were with them who knew minerals in other lands!--It would
go hard but that it should be found!
He willingly let the nugget pass from hand to hand:--it was restful as
sleep to make the trail seem short. To Don Ruy he had told somewhat of
its finding, and the story in full was promised some day to the
cavalcade.
And at Ah-ko where they rested--they had not halted at hostile
Ci-bo-la!--At Ah-ko where the great pool on the high mesa made glad
their eyes, and the chiefs came to pay ceremonial visits, and the men
felt they were nearing the end;--there, at the urging of Don Ruy who
deemed it worthy of the "Relaciones"--there was told the story of the
bit of gold, the Symbol of the Sun, as it had been told to Padre
Vicente years before.
"Yes--I did mean to tell you of the finding of it," he announced
amiably. "I have listened to all your discourses and romances on the
journey--and good ones there were among them! But mine would not have
been good to tell when seeking recruits, it might have lessened their
ardor--for a reason you will shortly perceive!"
"I plainly perceive already that the good father has saved us thus far
from a fright!" decided Don Ruy.
"Since a man lived through it you can perhaps endure the telling of
it--even here in the half darkness," said the priest, and noted that
Don Diego was sharpening a pen, and Chico taking an ink horn from his
pocket. The journal of the good gentleman had grown to be one of the
joyful things of the journey, and the more gay adventurers gave him
some wondrous tales to include.
"It is not a pretty tale, but it may teach you somewhat of these brown
people of the stone houses--and some of the meaning back of their soft
smiles! It is not a new tale of to-day:--it goes back to the time when
the vessels of Narvaez went to the bottom and a few men found their
way westward to Mexico."
"De Vaca and his men?" said Don Diego. But the priest shook his head.
"Earlier than that."
"Earlier? Holy Father:--how could that be when no others--"
"Pardon me:--you are about to say no others escaped, are you not? Have
you forgotten De Vaca's own statement as to two other men who went
ashore before the sinking of the vessels, and who were never heard of
again?"
"I have heard of it with great special interest," announced Don
Ruy--"heard it in the monastery on the island of Rhodes where the
white man you speak of (for one of the lost ones was a negro) had as a
boy been trained in godly ways by the Knights of St. John. There the
good fathers also educated me as might be and tried with all zeal to
make a monk of me! Ever before my mind was held the evil end of the
other youth who fled from the consecrated robe,--for he had made a
scandal for a pretty nun ere he became a free lance and joined hands
with Solyman the Magnificent against Christendom,--oh--many and long
were the discourses I had to listen to of that heretic adventurer! He
was a Greek of a devout and exalted Christian family, and his name was
Don Teodore."
Juan Gonzalvo--called Capitan Gonzalvo in favor of his wide experience
and wise management of camp, had been resting idly on the sands, but
sat up, alert at that name.
"Holy name of God:--" and his words were low and keen as though bitten
off between his teeth--"is he then alive? Good Father--was it he? and
is he still alive?"
While one might count ten, Padre Vicente looked in silence at the
tense, eager face of his questioner, and the others stared also, and
felt that a spark had touched powder there.
"Yes:--it is true. It was that man," said the priest at last. "But why
do you, my son, wake up at the name? May it be that the Greek was dear
to you?"
"He should be dear should I find him, or any of his blood!" But the
voice of the careless adventurer was changed and was not nice to hear.
"All the gold the new land could give me would I barter but to look on
the face of Don Teo, the renegade Greek!"
"But not in friendship?"
Juan Gonzalvo laughed, and Don Diego crossed himself at that
laugh,--it had the mockery of hell in it, and the priest turned and
gave the heretofore careless fellow a keener attention than had
previously occurred to him. By so little a thing as a laugh had the
adventurer lifted himself from the level where he had been idly
assigned.
"You will not look on his face in this world, my son," said the
priest, "and enmities should cease at the grave. The man is dead. You
could have been but a child when he left Spain, what evil could have
given him your hate?"
"My father was one of the Christian slaves chained by him to the oars
of Solyman the infidel Turk! Long days and horrible nights was he
witness to the lives of Solyman the magnificent, and Don Teodore the
fortunate. When the end came,--when the magnificent patron began to
set spies on his favorite lady of the harem, the tricky Greek escaped
one dark night, and brought up in Barcelona as an escaped slave of the
Turk, pretending he had eluded the swords of the oppressor after
dreadful days of bondage."
"I remember that time," said Don Diego. "He was entertained by the
nobles, and plied with questions, and was offered a good office in the
next crusade against the unsanctified infidels."
"So it was told to me," said Juan Gonzalvo--"told by a man whose every
scar spoke of the Greek wolf! I was told of them as other children are
told the stories of the blessed saints. My first toy sword was
dedicated to the cutting down of that thrice accursed infidel and all
his blood. God:--God:--how mad I was when I was told the savages of
the new world had done me wrong by sending him to hell before I could
even spell his name for curses!"
"My son! You are doing murder in your heart!" and Padre Vicente held
up the crucifix with trembling hand.
"That I am!" agreed Gonzalvo and laughed, and laid himself down again
to rest on his saddle.--"Does it call for penance to kill a venomous
thing?"
"A human soul!" admonished the priest.
"Then he came by such soul later in life than his record shows trace
of!" declared Juan Gonzalvo, and this time the priest was silent.
"In truth, report does stand by our friend in that," agreed Don Diego.
"He lived as a Turk among the Turkish pirates, and was never so much a
Christian as are those who serve as devils, in the flames of the pit.
To slay the infidel is not to slay a soul, good father,--or--if you
are of that mind," he added with an attempt at lightness which sat ill
on him--so stiff it was as he eyed the still priest warily,--"if you
are of that mind, we can never grow dull for argument in the desert
marches. In the Holy Office godly men of the Faith work daily and
nightly on that question even now in Christian Spain."
The priest shuddered, and fingered his beads. Well they knew in those
days the "question" and "Holy office" in Christian Spain. The rack
loomed large enough to cast its shadow even to the new found shores at
the other side of the world!
And plainly he read also that two otherwise genial gentlemen of the
cavalcade were equipped well for all fanatic labor where Holy Cross or
personal hates were to be defended. It is well to know one's comrades,
and the subject of the Greek had opened doors of strange revelation to
him.
"The mind which is of God and of the Holy Mother Church is the mind
for the judgments of souls," said Padre Vicente after a silence. "We
may thank the saints that we are not called on to condemn utterly any
of God's children."
"But what of the Devil's?" asked Don Diego plainly not satisfied with
the evasive reply where he had least expected it. "What of the
children of the darkness and the Evil One?"
Padre Vicente, of the wild tribes, looked around the group and smiled.
Scarce a man of them without at least one lost life to his record--and
more than one with murders enough on his list to have won him
sainthood if all had been done for the Faith:--which they were not!
Back of them crouched dusky Indians of the village, watching with
eager yet apparently kindly interest, this after supper talk of the
strange white men of the iron and the beasts, who had come again to
their land. The priest made a cigarro--then another one, lit both and
passed the first made to the oldest chief--the Ruler of the Indian
group. The Indian accepted it with a breath of prayer on the hand of
the reverend father, and the latter sent out smoke in a white cloud
ere speaking.
"Every brown skin here is a worshipper of false gods, and is therefore
a son of Beelzebub--yet to slaughter them for that won no favors for
the last Capitan-General who led an army across this land," he
remarked, "and mine must not be the task to judge of their infidelity
to the Saints or to Christ the Son who has not yet spoken to them!"
The words were uttered with an air of finality. Plainly he did not
mean to encourage blood lust unless necessary to the work in hand. Don
Diego sulkily made the sign of the cross at the Name, and Don Ruy
noted that the good father was good on the parry--and if he could use
a blade as he did words, he would be a rare fencer for sport. One
could clang steel all day and no one be the bearer of a scratch!
"Since the illustrious and much sought for Greek is without doubt
serving his master as a flame in hell, it would add sweetness to a
fair night if you would tell us how he fared at the hands of his brown
brothers," suggested Don Ruy--"and how the Devil found his own at
last. These others will be much entertained to hear what share he had
in the finding of the gold. Strange it is that I never thought to ask
the name of the man--or you to tell it!"
The priest hesitated ever so slightly. Was he of two minds how much
to tell these over eager adventurers? Especially that one of the
curses! But the truth, as he had told Don Ruy in part, was an easier
thing to maintain, and keep memory of, than a fiction dressed up for
the new man. And the man was watching him with compelling eyes, and
the boy Chico, with eyes agog, was also alert for his endless notes.
"Yes, he had to do with the gold--much!" he said at last. "He was the
only white man who had been told the secret of it."
"Ah-la-la!" murmured Don Ruy, plainly suggesting that such evidence
would be the better for a trusty witness.--Padre Vicente heard him,
and puffed his cigarro, and half closed his eyes in his strange
patient, pale smile.
"But it is true for all that!" he insisted. "And of all places we have
crossed since Culiacan was left behind us, none seems more fitting
than this for the telling of his story."
His eyes glanced over the men circled above the great pool. The stars
were making little points of light in the rock bound water. Far below
in the desert a coyote called to his intimates. Indians loitered at
the edge of the circle. And at the rim of of the mesa, and high places
of the natural fortress, armed sentinels paced;--dusk figures against
the far sky. It was truly a place made for tales of adventure.
"Whatever evil your much hated Greek was guilty of, there is one
question to ask:--in monk's cell, or in the battles for the
wrong--left he the record of a coward?"
"No," acknowledged Don Diego--"but his zeal was damnable in all
things."
"I ask because various things which he endured could scarcely be
understood if you put him in the list of the weak or the incapable."
"Often the strength of the Evil One is a stupendous force for his
chosen people," agreed Don Diego. "That is widely known in Europe
to-day when Paracelsus with infernal magic of the mind makes cures
which belong by every right to the saints alone!"
"And the people are truly cured of their ills--truly healed?"
"Their bodies are truly healed for the life that is temporal, but each
soul is doomed for the life that is eternal. No Christian doubts that
the mental magic of the physician is donated by Beelzebub whose tool
he is."
"He was a student of exceeding depth,"--agreed Padre Vicente--"and it
may be he has found magic forbidden to man. But the Greek laid claim
to no such power as that, however much it is said that the devil loved
him! He had only a strong body, and the dislike to see it cut to
pieces for a heathen holiday."
"De Soto, it is said, found a dirk of his when he crossed the land of
Apalache years later, seeking empire. But the tribes could or would
tell nothing of the lost Greek and the negro slave. The latter was
killed by the people called Natchez, and the Greek, who had been among
many things:--a sailor, escaped by the water, leaving no trail--not
even the trail made by a white skin in a land of dusk people.
"From the Turks he had learned a trick of using stain of barks and
herbs. His hair was of brown, but the eyebrows and lashes were heavy
and dark. After using such concoction, a mirror of clear water showed
him no trace of himself except the eyes--they were blue beyond hope,
but the heavy lashes were a help and a shadow.
"With stolen arms of bow, hatchet, and a flint knife, the man went
north--wading the river edge at night, and hiding by day until the
land of the Natchez was left behind. A strong river came from the
west--and an old canoe gave him hope of finding New Spain by the water
course. That journey was a tedious thing of night prowlings, hidings,
and, sometimes starvings. Then the end of solitude came, and he was
captured by heathen rangers.
"They were a large company and were travelling west. Later he learned
they were a war company and in a fight his master and most of the
others were killed. At the rejoicing of the victors, he sang louder,
and danced more wildly than all the others, so they did not kill him.
He was traded to other Indians further west for a painted robe and
some clay pots. This last move brought him to the villages of the
stream, named later by Coronado the Rio Grande, but called by the
Indians another name, the P[=o]-s[=o]n-gé."
"The very villages where we are to go?" demanded Don Ruy.
"Possibly some of the same," said the priest. "How many of you
remember the great comet of 1528?"
Several did, and all remembered the dread and horror it spread in
Western Europe.
"Think you then what that same threat in the sky must have been to
these wild people who seek magic ever from the stars and even the
clouds. It was a threat and it called for some sacrifice propitiating
the angry gods."
"Sacrifice? Do these infidels then practise such abominations?" asked
Don Diego.
"To look at the mild eyes and hear their soft voices of these our
guests it is not easy to think it," agreed Padre Vicente, "but these
people are but the northern cousins of the men Cortez conquered--their
customs differ only in degree. To both Venus and Mars were human
god-offerings made--that day of sacrifice is not so long past, and in
that day it was done here."
"And?"
"And your lucky Greek was the one to be chosen! He was fed well as one
would fatten an ox for the knife. He had some knowledge of simple
remedies, and in brewing herbs for their sick he had also stolen the
opportunity for the further addition to his coat of color. He was to
them an Indian of an unknown tribe, yet, since he was to be offered to
the gods, he was made the very center of ceremonial dances, and
infernal heathenish customs.
"Both men and women enter into certain sacred--or infernal orders,
whose ceremonies are only known to those initiate. An inter-tribal
connection is kept up in such societies between villages speaking a
totally different language,--even though the tribes be at war, there
is always a truce for these wild creatures who dance together for some
magic, or some prayer to their false gods."
"And the truce is kept?"
"It would not be possible for a tribe to break truce of their
diabolical things of their spirits. At the ceremonies for the
sacrifice to the comet god was a girl of another tribe, and when the
Greek noted that her desire was not to see him destroyed, he had the
first glimpse of hope,--the only other he had was to remove the stain
in some way, and convince them that their gods had made a miracle to
save him."
The priest made a gesture towards the great sand drifts at every side
of rock wall and column.
"To which of you would it occur, if hiding meant chance of life--to
which of you would it occur to go under that sand for days so close to
the trail that the women with the water jars would pass you scores of
times in a day carrying water from this pool?"
"This pool?--this--"--the eyes of Don Ruy lightened--"this is then
that place of the great danger?"
"A man could not hide in the sand like that--nor deceive these wild
trailers of animals," decided Don Diego--"and of a certainty it could
not be close to the trail!"
"So we would naturally think," decided Padre Vicente. "But the Indian
girl was wiser than our wisdom, Señor, for she did aid his escape, and
she did hide him there. To get breath, his face was touching a great
wall of rock against which another was carelessly laid. The place had
been chosen with a knowledge that seemed inspired--for only close to
the trail where the sand was like to be disturbed by naked romping
children,--only there in all these deserts could he have been hidden
from their hunters."
"Here?--in this place?" again said Don Ruy. "Holy father it is a good
story--yet sounds a romance fantastic to fit this weird place of the
pool and the star shine of the night?"
"By the name of these people, the Queres, and the name of the village
Ah-ko, this should be the place of the sacrificial intentions," said
the priest. "By the careful account given, this is the pool to which
the trail led, and it may even be that the ancient Cacique to whom,
but now, I gave the cigarro, was chief priest of the sacrifice in that
day."
"A truly delectable neighbor for a help to pleasant fancy," said Don
Ruy and laughed. "If the amiable devil should be moved to sacrifice
now, I would be the nearest to his hand--think you he would make ill
use of my youth and tenderness?"
"His Sanctity, the padre was indeed wise that no word of this was
breathed in the viceregal ears of Mexico," said Don Diego with a
testiness not yet subdued over the question of utter damnation for the
souls unregenerate. "Piety would carry me far--but no warrant is mine
to follow even the Highest where cannibals do wait for unholy
sustenance!" and he arose and bowed to Don Ruy.
"Oh--Name of the Devil!" said his noble ward, and laughed and
stretched his legs. "I may not be so unholy as your words would
suggest. Give not a dog a bad name in the days of his youth!"
And at this the scandalized and pious dignitary multiplied words to
make clear how far from such meaning were his devoted intentions. But
if wild tribes must be fed ere their souls could be reached,--victims
could be found other than the heir of a duchess!
At which outburst Don Ruy suggested that he save his pious breath and
devote it to prayers, and to take some of his own medicine by
remembrance that soul of king and soul of peasant weighed the same
before high God.
"After which devout exhortation from your servant, good father, we
again give ear to the tale of that devil's disciple--the Greek Teo,"
he said, "Did they find him in the sand? And did the merciful dame
hide in the sand also?--if so the prison might not be without hope.
Holy Saint Damien!--to think that the man walked these same stony
heights--and drank from that pool!"
"They never found him in the sand." The priest ignored the other
frivolous comment. "They never found him anywhere, and a slave from
the Navahu people was made a sacrifice in his stead. The strange girl
was a Te-hua medicine maid or magic learner of things from the wise
men of Ah-ko. Her prayers were very many, and very long, and she made
a shrine for prayer on the sand beside the stone wall where he was
hidden. Their men set watch on her, she knew it, but not anything did
they find but a girl who made her prayers, and gave no heed to their
shadowings.
"When were ended her days of devotion to the false gods--then she ate,
and drank, and took the way to her own people; with moderate pace she
took that trail north, but when night came, she ran like the wild
thing she was, again to the south, crept unseen again into this
fortress, and led the rescued man as far to the west as might be until
the dawn came. With the coming of the sun, came also a sand storm of
great stress, and all trace of their steps were covered, and the
medicine maid saw in that a mystic meaning.
"To Turk and Spaniard the refugee might be only Teo the Greek, a
fugitive from all high courts. But to the Indian he was a lost God of
the Great Star for whom even the desert winds did duty. When with
moistened yucca root he rubbed his hands that the white skin showed,
she bent her head to the sand, and was his slave until ... the end!"
"It moves well, and beautifully smooth:--this tale of the outlaw,"
agreed Don Ruy--"but it is that end we are eager for--and the how it
was compassed--that she turned slave--or mistress--or both in one, as
alas!--has chanced to men ere our day!--was the doom expected from the
earliest mention of the pitiful and most devout lady--devout to her
devils! But of the end--the end?"
"The end came to him long after they parted, and for one winter and
one summer were their wanderings to the west. Of the Firebrand river
deep between rock walls he had heard, and of the ocean far beyond, and
of Mexico to the south. To reach the river they crossed dry leagues of
desert and lived as other wild things lived. But the river was not a
thing for boats or journeys, and they went on beyond it seeking the
sea. Strange things and strange lives they passed on the way. His skin
had been stained many times and his beard was plucked out as it grew.
Enough of Indian words he learned to echo her own tale to the brown
savages, and the tale was, that they were medicine people of Te-hua in
the land of P[=o]-s[=o]n-gé, and that they travelled to the shores of
the sea for dances and prayers to the gods there. And sometimes food
was given them--and some times prayers were sent in their keeping.
Thus was their journey, until in the south, in the heart of a desert
they found the place of the palms where the fruit was ripe, and the
water comes from warm springs, and looks a paradise--but is as a hell
when the sand storms come:--and human devils live to the South and by
the Sea of Cortez.
"They knew nothing of that, it was a place for rest, and a place of
food, and they rested there because of that, and gathered food for the
further journey.
[Illustration: THE PLACE OF THE PALMS _Page 94_]
"All medicine people of the tribes carry on their neck or in a pouch
at the belt, some sacred things of their magic practices, and under
the palms, when other amusement was not to be found, it pleased him to
see what his brown girl carried hidden even from her master. It took
much persuasions, for she felt that evil would happen if it was shown
except it be a matter of ceremony. Then she at last took from the
pouch, salt from a sacred lake, feather and claw and beak of a yellow
bird, a blade of sharpest flint, and--this!"
He again held the piece of gold that they might see it. Even the
Indians leaned forward and looked at it and then eyed the white men
and each other in silence. To them it was "medicine" as the priest
told the adventurers it had been to the Te-hua girl.
"Your Greek pirate of the good luck went close to madness at the
certain fact that for months he had been walking steadily away from
the place where this was found. To the girl it was a sacred thing
hidden in the earth of her land by the sun--and only to be used for
ceremonies. The place where it grew was a special hidden place of
prayer offering."
"Faith!--we all must learn prayers enough to get our share!--if prayer
will do the work!" said Don Ruy.--"Chico, it means that you get an
Indian primer,--and that you find for me a brown enchantress. His
reverence will grant us all a special indulgence for hours of the
schooling!"
Señor Don Brancadori sat up very straight and shook his head at the
priest:--so well assured was he that enough liberties would be taken
without the indulgences of holy church. Moreover it was not well to
put the deviltries of camp in the mind of so good a lad as Chico.
"And the girl gave to him the gold and told him its hiding place?" he
asked.
"We may say she gave it--thought in truth she declared it could not be
given--it could only be made a barter of for other medicine, but it
must be strong medicine. The blade of flint was to guard her magic
symbols if need be, and the man, her master, saw in that moment that
the mind he had to deal with in this matter was an Indian mind, in
which there is not reason. And to find a 'medicine' potent for charms
was a task set for a man in the place of the palms."
"Then a forgotten thing came into his mind. It had been a vow made to
an enticing creature of San Lucar. She was also devout as a young nun.
The vow was of a return--and no doubt of other meetings. The end of it
was that she gave him a rosary--(his first captors coveted that and
took care of it). But also they ate together of fruit, and as both
ladies and gallants do strange things at strange times, the lady
divided the seeds, and counted them seeking a lucky number or some
such freakish quest. And by the rosary, and by his mother, she made
him swear that when he had found fortune and a plantation in the new
world, he would plant with his own hands the seeds there, and send for
the lady to come by ship as chatelaine! Failing the plantation, he was
to return, and her own relatives would find on land or sea an office
fit for his talents:--only he was to faithfully guard the seed of the
fruit eaten in a happy hour, and her prayers would meet his own across
the waters.
"It may be that women with prayers for him had not been
plentiful--whatever the vow was it was made and sealed with the prayer
of the lady. When the savages took her rosary they gave no heed to
some brown seeds in a leather pouch--no more of them than you could
count on your fingers! A man alone for long in a wilderness gives
meaning to things he would not remember at happier times. And the
training of the Holy Church returns to even the most gardened men in
their hours of stress! So it was that the prayer of the willing dame
kept him company, as he looked on the seeds. They had become his
rosary--and were the last evidence of the nightly prayers promised by
the lady.
"Thus:--because of their smallness had they been unnoted of his
several captors. Having slipped between the lining and the cover of
the pouch he had ceased to remember them after the Indian maid
lessened his loneliness. But he went searching for them now--even one
peach seed was still with them--and some grains of the bearded
wheat--that by a special grace had fallen into a pocket on ship board
while handling grains, and as a jest on himself he had added it to the
others for the plantation to be made for the waiting dame.
"He could truly say they were 'medicine' given with prayers. But with
forgetfulness of truth, he also added much as to their divine
origin--and the wondrous power they held.
"Gladly the Indian girl let go the gold for the unknown seeds! She
further signified that now she could know always that he was a God,
for the gift of the seeds fitted some myth of her own land--some thing
of one of their false gods who brought seeds and fruits and great good
to the people.
"In that way was made the exchange of medicine for medicine beside
some pool by the palms, and well it was it was made that day, else
never would we have this golden guide! For:--it fell out that a day
later as he was hunting to the south, he was surrounded and taken
prisoner by the savages who range by the inland sea of California. The
gold had a hole as you see, he pulled hair from his head, tied the
nugget in the braid, and thus hid it for the next two years of his
life. The girl he never again heard of. She would die of a certainty
alone in the desert.
"A missionary of our order found the man in the wilderness. They were
exiles, the two for the length of a winter, and the Greek listened to
the tales of the lost fleet on which Don Teo sought the new world, and
also of the royal order for his arrest following on the next ship. For
a prisoner of Solyman the Magnificent had escaped from the galleys of
the Turk, and wild tales were told of princes of the North who gave
aid to the traffic in Christian slaves. Don Teo was by all means to be
taken back to Spain that the Holy Office learn through him the names
and numbers of the offenders!"
"Good it is to hear that the varlet was not let sleep sound all the
night!" decided Don Ruy.
"It appears there were many nights when sleep kept from him--to judge
by his confessions!" said the priest. But to go into deeper hell while
he was yet alive did not march with his wishes, and while he half
inclined to the desert again, that he might die quietly there as any
other starved wild thing does die:--a thing came which he had not
thought:--the padre died of a serpent's sting, and he, Teo the Greek,
was alone, and apart from the world again!
"It was the gown for which the savages had reverence--and he took the
consecrated robe from the dead padre and wore it--he had been driven
by misfortune back to Holy Church!
"He lived under the name of the padre as a priest in holy orders. His
reports to his superior were well counterfeited as the writing of the
man he had buried. He held that mission as the extreme outpost for
three years. He died there of a fever, but not until I had found him,
and confessed him. The gold and the tale of his wanderings he gave to
me. Much of it he told me more than once, for when men are exiles as
he was for those several years, the things of the old life loom up big
with significance. He felt that he was the _finder_ of _the way_, and
that mayhaps, Mother Church, so long forgotten by him, would be the
richer that he had lived. Masses were said for the girl dead in the
desert. She had saved him, and for a little while of life--he had
given her love!"
"He may have made a most righteous end--since it was no longer in his
power to do evil!" commented Don Ruy--"But your pirate priest would
never have let go the nugget for masses if the breath of life had kept
him company."
"Who knows!--the high God does not give us to see in the heart of the
other man," said Padre Vicente--"In the years of his trial he was made
to feel his sins against Holy Church--and when the girl died in the
desert, another life died with her. Even men of sin do give thought to
such matters."
But Juan Gonzalvo who hated him, swore at the ill luck of his escape
by death, and no one felt any pity for that first white pilgrim across
the Indian lands. All of them however gave speech of praise to the
priest's telling of the story. Don Ruy gave him leave to tell romances
in future rather than preach sermons.
The men were vastly interested to learn at last the exact region of
their destination--and that the province where the yellow metal had
been hidden by the sun was but a matter now of a few days more of
journeying--since the people of Ah-ko had brother Queres in
settlements adjoining the settlements of the Te-huas.
So, seeing that the guard was good, and that each arquebus was near,
and in readiness if need be for dusky visitors, the company fell
asleep well content. Only Don Ruy strolled over the path through the
sand and tried to fancy how the girl and the Greek had managed the
hiding there. A little of the story had been told him in the monastery
when the great plan had been made, but no names were given, and the
telling of it this night had been a very different matter--he had so
lately crossed the desert where those two refugees had wandered, that
the story had now a life unknown before. Even the sand billows and the
rock walls of the mesa spoke as with tongues. The mate to this
wonderful Ah-ko could not, he thought, be in the world any where, and
the romance of the young priestess and the Greek adventurer fitted the
place well and he felt that the priest of the wild places had chosen
rightly in keeping the story until they had climbed to this place
where the story of the gold had its beginning.
As he retraced his steps, they took him past the sleeping place of
José and his wife of Mexico. Beside them was spread the blankets of
Chico, but the lad was not there,--he was standing apart, at the edge
of the sheer cliff, looking out over the desert reaches where the sand
was blue grey in the star light.
"Hollo!"--said Don Ruy and halted in surprise, "do you select sentry
duty when you might sleep soft on the sand? Must I send you another
blanket to woo you to a bed?"
"Your Excellency has been most generous in the matter of the
blanket--one has been enough to keep record of your kindly heart."
"Then why not enjoy your sleep as a hearty lad should? Has this place
of wonder bewitched you--or has the story of the Greek and the gold
stirred you into ambitions beyond repose?"
The lad might have retorted by reminding Don Ruy that he also was
abroad while his company slept,--usually a glib pertness would have
answered his employer, but the answer came not readily, and when it
did,--his excellency saw in a surprised moment that the boy was not
such a child as the careless company fancied him.
"I have thought nothing of the Greek--and little of the gold," he
said. "But the woman who followed the love and the man across the
deserts--and who died alone somewhere in the sands like a starved
dog--of her I was thinking! All the magic she had learned could not
save her from hell when that one man came in her path!"
"But--you are only a lad and may not understand these things,"--said
Don Ruy--"The girl may have died like that, it is true, but the hell
in the life she perhaps never got glimpse of,--since she loved the
man!"
"But if the dead do know, would not a sort of hell be hers when she
learned she had given the magic medicine of her God for the idle
gift--bestowed by another mistress?"
Then the lad marched to his blankets and wrapped himself in them,
leaving Don Ruy the question to ponder.