GOLD, AND A SURPRISE
“Four days more and you will see your father,” Bill told Cliff. “He is
much better. I saw him today.”
“If only I could slip away and see him, just for a minute.” Cliff spoke
wistfully. Bill shook his head.
“I am afraid they would suspect something,” he said. “It was easy for me
to see him, as I told you before; I pretended to know that there was a
great, pale scholar from beyond the mountains whose knowledge I wanted
to compare with mine. The chief priest often talked with your pa and he
was glad to take me; and now I can go alone. You are supposed to be
spending all your time pleading with the Sun-god to save their corn. I’m
afraid to have you caught going through the tunnels.”
Quichaka was a city modeled very closely along the pattern of the
ancient capital, Cuzco. As in that old place, so in Quichaka, the
grounds beneath the temples were honeycombed with secret passages,
tunnels that led to underground chambers.
In the fifteenth century Topa Inca Yapanqui had extended the borders of
the flourishing empire of the Incas to the Maule River and his son had
later subdued Quito and made it a part of his possessions; then the
Spaniards had come into the country. Observing that these invaders had
confiscated treasure, one of the many sons of the reigning Inca of the
period had gathered much treasure and many of his nobles and their
subjects and had found a way to the hidden valley where they had built
up Quichaka during long years of labor until it almost duplicated the
ancient glories of Cuzco, their former home.
“They don’t keep Cliff’s father in a dungeon, do they?” Tom asked Bill.
Mr. Whitley was away, alone, in the foothills, searching for certain
minerals. Bill shook his head in reply to Tom.
“Not a dungeon,” he explained. “They have some cells down under the
ground but he is in a sort of chamber, a good, big room.”
“Why isn’t he allowed to be in a house?” Nicky demanded.
“Huamachaco, the high priest, is to blame for that,” Bill said. “Cliff’s
pa heard in some way that there was a secret pass or some way to get out
of the valley and he tried to find it; they caught him and brought him
back and then he tamed the eaglet and when they discovered that it was
missing and found some torn scraps of paper which he had tried to
destroy after he had spoiled the letter he had started on them,
Huamachaco, who isn’t any man’s dummy, decided to have the white man
watched.”
It was because the chief priest was so clever that Bill feared to take
the least chance of upsetting their plans.
Challcuchima, who had become very much attached to Cliff and to his
chums, in a respectful awed way, came to visit them while they discussed
their plans.
“Holy Chasca,” he said to Cliff in quichua dialect at which Cliff was
only fairly proficient, covering up his deficiency by saying very
little. “As successor to the Inca rule I have been shown the mysteries
of the secret ways beneath the city. Among our hidden treasure is a
statue which is like you and yet not like you. My father, the Inca, has
permitted me to show it to you that you may say if it is truly your
image and if it should be set in the Temple of the Stars.”
Cliff consulted Bill with his eyes and Bill, with a very tiny wink and
nod, bade him go. The chums, not invited, looked downcast as Cliff
walked across the gardens of gold and silver with his young guide; but
Bill soothed them by telling them what he had seen underground.
Cliff was to see far more than was permitted to the eyes of his supposed
scholarly servant.
Taking him to the Inca, who greeted him with a mixed respect and good
feeling, Challcuchima led Cliff through a tapestried and hidden opening
in the private rooms of the palace; then they went down many steps;
Cliff had brought a flashlight, an implement which caused Challcuchima
much awe and wonder when he was allowed to operate it. Mostly, they used
torches as they traversed long passages, twisted around sharp bends,
slipped through cross-cuts.
Finally the two came to a huge chamber cut out of the rock. Servants,
carrying torches, held their lights high and Cliff had to suppress his
tendency to gasp. He had never seen a sight to compare with that which
met his eyes.
“This is the room beneath the Temple of the Sun,” Challcuchima informed
him, “this is sacred ground.” He and Cliff removed their sandals for
everyone of the few permitted access to the Temple or its underground
counterpart, went unshod.
Wide and long was the chamber. The light, flaring and flickering as the
torches leaped up and burned down, was filled with gold and silver
objects. There were utensils of every sort, from plates, cups and rude
pots, to wonderful statues and urns and placques of precious metal. It
was a very treasure-house.
Challcuchima led Cliff, his eyes dazed by the glories of the objects
which he dared only to examine briefly in passing, to a statue depicting
a youth cast and moulded in purest gold, a lithe, poised figure of a
young man in the action of running, poised on the toes of one foot, the
other leg thrust out and lifted as though it had just taken a step.
“It is like to you and yet not like,” said Challcuchima.
Cliff thought quickly. It could not be a trap, this effort to discover
whether or not he knew the figure. Or could it. And why a trap at all?
Was anyone suspicious of his pose and of the part he played?
If he said it was Chasca and the Incas knew differently, he mused, he
would disclose his ignorance: if he denied that it was the image of
Venus as they imaged the god of that star, what might they answer?
He was spared the need for an answer.
Huamachaco, the high priest, coming down the passage with a torch, said
something in quite an excited manner. Challcuchima grasped Cliff’s arm.
“There is something new—come,” he urged, “this can wait!”
Cliff hurried after the servants with their torches and his royal young
guide turned swiftly into a passage they had not used, which brought
them out into one of the small houses just beyond the Sun temple, a
dwelling of one of the priests.
There was a crowd assembled near the Temple of the Stars and Cliff saw
at once that Bill, Nicky and Tom were on the way to join the gathering
crowd. With Challcuchima and Huamachaco he went quickly toward them.
“What goes on?” he asked. Huamachaco did not answer. He was rather stout
and the climb had taxed his wind.
Cliff met his comrades at the edge of the group: some fell back
respectfully to give passage to the young Inca-to-be and to Chasca and
the high priest. They pressed to the point of interest.
A native, much more stocky than the others they had seen, and of a far
deeper reddish complexion, seemed to be a captive; but so rapid was the
exchange of conversation, so sharp the questions which Huamachaco asked
and so hasty the replies that Cliff and his fellows were completely at
sea.
Finally the crowd grew so thick that, at the high priest’s order
soldiers formed a quick wedge and began to disperse them. The stranger
stared fixedly for a while at the group facing him, while he replied to
Huamachaco’s sharp demands with fluent quichua dialect. The priest
seemed puzzled. Finally he made a sign to Challcuchima who turned and
hurried toward his father’s palace. Huamachaco, taking the stranger by
the arm, with the soldiers closing in behind them, apologized to Chasca
for leaving so abruptly, and Huamachaco led the stranger away toward
another building.
“He claims that he has an important word for Manco Huayna, who was, he
says, the fellow who went out into the mountains to find out about the
eaglet,” Bill explained as they returned soberly to their own place. “Do
you know who I think he is?”
“The Spaniard,” said Nicky promptly, “Did you see his shifty eyes?”
“Did he recognize us?” Tom asked, “I know he stared.”
“I think he suspected,” Bill answered.
“What word do you think he has? About us?” Tom mused.
“I hope not,” said Bill, dubiously. “He’s after gold, of course. I don’t
know how far that fellow would go in an effort to get it.”
And not even Chasca could tell him.