FROM BAD TO WORSE
When Cliff returned to his friends he saw that they had been joined by a
tall, cold-eyed Indian noble. He and the high priest were exchanging
frowning glances: it seemed evident that they disliked each other. Mr.
Whitley was whispering hurriedly to Bill. The high priest turned toward
Cliff with a sharp word but Bill advanced, held up his hand, and faced
the Inca.
“Oh, royal son of the Sun,” he began, loudly enough to be heard by many
nobles gathered nearby, “Chasca’s servant brings report. There was no
destruction of your corn by insects, as Huamachaco, your high priest,
told you. The corn grew sick because the earth it grows in has become
tired and must be made fruitful once more.”
“That is not so!” shouted the high priest, forgetting his dignity in his
anger.
Bill paid no attention.
“Oh, Inca,” he went on, “here, beside me, is one you trust. Is it not
so?”
He indicated the new arrival: the Inca glanced at him and smiled. “He is
my son, my oldest son,” he agreed, “I trust him.”
“Make report, oh, son of the Inca,” urged Bill.
“Make report,” chorused the nobles.
“I make report of this, oh, noble Inca and my father,” said the Indian.
“This servant of the messenger from the stars came to my fields soon
after Chasca appeared among us: he observed the corn and he took up the
earth and made magic with it.” The crude tests Mr. Whitley had been able
to make had seemed to be incantations to the untutored Indian. “Then
went he afar among the hills with one of my servants. They came back
with something borne in a sack and from that which they brought my
servants did make a magic fluid by mixing it with water.”
“Their earth is starving for nitrogen,” Mr. Whitley said in a low tone
to Cliff, “they do not rotate their crops here; that is they plant the
same crop until the earth is exhausted, instead of resting it by
changing the crop from one sort to another. I brought them some mineral
salts rich in nitrogen and saved time by sprinkling the earth around the
cornstalks. And we had to make tiny holes in a golden crock to sprinkle
with—imagine! A golden sprinkling can.”
“Already my corn begins to change and no longer does it droop.” The
Indian cast a triumphant look at the high priest: evidently there was
jealousy. “It was not the insects, as Huamachaco did tell you, oh, my
father, but the earth that starved the grain, as I have said to many.”
The high priest turned away, but as he did so Cliff, surprised, his eyes
bent on himself with a baleful glance. However, he simply stared
straight and level at Huamachaco whose eyes shifted aside.
“You have heard,” said Bill. “Let the Feast of Raymi go on, and let it
be a feast, indeed! When it is finished, all shall divide into bands,
some to fetch the magical earth, some to mix the powerful liquid, others
to fashion urns with which to make it fall like rain upon the corn, and
so, very soon, all of your dying earth will live again and make the corn
lift its tassels in joy to Raymi, whose humble messengers we are.”
Cliff had not dreamed that Bill could be so glowing in his speech, and
he saw that not only the Inca, but his younger son and all of the nobles
were impressed. The Inca evidently foresaw trouble between the two men,
and rather eagerly he waved his hand toward them all in dismissal.
“Let the feast go on,” he said. Then, turning to Cliff, he added: “Think
not, oh son of Venus, that I am ungrateful; when the feast to your
superior Lord and Master is done with I will give you tokens of my
grateful spirit.”
Cliff bowed, not quite sure what else to do. Bill, whose middle left
finger had again been caressing his ear, until his friends all gave
attentions, made a sign again for no speech, and they all allowed
themselves to be conducted to places of honor at a special board table,
rather crude but lavishly laden with gold and silver dishes, on which
were spread a feast of native roast meats, vegetables, a sort of bread
made of the maize—only rarely did the Incas make up bread; they used the
corn more often in a sort of porridge, or dried and sometimes parched.
“I am glad you came when you did,” Cliff told the former history
instructor. The others echoed his statement.
“We are not out of the frying pan yet,” Bill warned. “Or—if we are, it’s
most likely because we’re about to be dipped into the fire.”
“Why?” asked Nicky, thrilling a little with fear and quite a deal more
with anticipation of more adventure.
“You saw the priest and the noble glaring at each other?”
They all nodded.
“It was because of their enmity that the noble was so eager to help me,”
Mr. Whitley stated. “Naturally the chief priest will not like us too
well for showing that his judgment was so far wrong.”
“But the priest won’t dare do anything,” Tom volunteered. “The people
think we are heroes, don’t they?” Bill nodded.
“Just now they do,” he agreed. “But—there is no telling—I saw Huamachaco
talking to that mysterious stranger as we came—.” He paused and suddenly
changed his tone, as he added, “Be careful!” and immediately raised his
voice again. “Did you ever see so much gold on a table, Chasca, since we
left the halls of the dwellers in the skies?”
They saw at once what caused his sudden change. The dark stranger was
approaching. By his shifting gaze and the first words he spoke under his
breath they knew him to be Sancho Pizzara, the Spaniard who had offered
to join them and then had deserted them in the white pass, only to come
to grief himself.
“_Buenos di_—Ah, senors!—and you, noble Chasca! Noble Cleeford Gray
Chasca!” There was a curl to his lip and Nicky thrust a hand against the
table to push himself erect, but Mr. Whitley put a foot against his
ankle none too gently in warning as the Spaniard proceeded. “But that is
fine, that you shall be Chasca! You can help me.”
“You weren’t ambushed?” demanded Tom. “We thought——”
“There was some—how you say?—some ‘ta-ra-boom-te-ay’ in the pass of
snow. My men all run away back. Me, I am desert in snow to freeze. But I
get here—late. You are already fix up very nice.”
“I warned you about the pass,” Bill reminded him.
“_Si!_” He dismissed it with a wave of his hand and bent close and
motioned to them to listen. “That we shall forget. Now it is to know—is
there plenty of gold? But I see it.”
“What did you tell these people?” Mr. Whitley demanded. “We heard that
you came with some message.”
“Tell—? Oh! I tell that I am send by other men of the hills to seek
white faces of those who come this way.”
“You told them that?” Bill scowled.
“_Si._ But I have not yet tell that you are men I seek.”
“No, and you had better not!” said Tom sharply. Bill warned him with a
look.
“Why shall I tell that when you can take me to the gold?”
“We are not here for gold,” Cliff said evenly. “We told you about my
father.”
“Then there is that gold for me alone!” smiled Pizarra.
“Do you think we would help you steal it?” asked Cliff very quietly. “If
you do, you are wrong. We won’t even take away any to pay back Mr.
Whitley, because my father’s books will make enough to do that. We came
here intending to take enough gold away for expenses, but that was
before we knew that my father was alive and able to go with us.”
“If you go—” said Pizarra, softly, his eyes flashing.
“Do you mean to threaten that you will endanger the life of the man we
came here to rescue?” asked Mr. Whitley coldly. “And put these young men
in danger?”
“Oh, no,” Sancho Pizzara assured him with a shrug. “I am very kind man.
Senor el Venus, here, he will guide me safe to the gold. I shall then
not put danger to any.”
“And—if we refuse?” asked Bill. “Then—will you?”
“Then perhaps I find the white _hombres_ hiding under red dye.”
“And of course we would sit right still and let him,” Nicky could not
control his anger. “We wouldn’t say he was a disguised Spaniard trying
to steal their treasure—” He stopped Cliff had nudged him sharply. But
his statement daunted Pizarra. He turned thoughtful. Then he smiled.
“There is for you too much danger,” he declared. “You will not dare!”
“As surely as you open your mouth—” began Bill.
“If you do, we do!” Tom snapped.
“Tit for tat!” That was Nicky.
“But it cost you nothing to show me where is the gold hide,” Pizarra
said, rubbing his hands.
“These people have been kind to us,” Mr. Whitley said. “We do not like
to help you rob them.”
“I am mak’ friends to his Huamachaco,” Pizarra said meaningly. “He is
already suspect something.”
That was bad, Cliff reflected, then he brightened.
“He has just been discredited by the Inca’s son,” he stated. “If it came
to a test of power——”
“You see what it come to!” Pizarra wheeled and stalked off.
“We ought to—” Mr. Whitley rose; he had in mind the danger to which
their move exposed his charges.
“But we can’t—” began Cliff.
“He certainly has put us in a tight corner,” Bill admitted, “but we
can’t let him dictate and threaten——”
They followed his staring eyes as he paused. The Inca, his two sons, the
high priest and Pizzara were approaching.
“Sit tight,” whispered Bill. “Let me do the talking!”