THE TOLTEC IDOL
"I was twenty-five when your mother died," this page began. "I had a
little ranch in the Pecos valley near Twin Pine crossing, and I had
just begun to taste prosperity. After your mother died things began to
go wrong. It didn't take me long to conclude that she had been
responsible for what success I had had, and that without her I couldn't
hope to keep things together. I didn't try very hard; I'll admit that.
I just gradually let go all holds and began to slip--began to drift
back into the sort of company I'd kept before I met your mother. They
were not bad fellows, you understand--just the rakehelly, reckless sort
that keep hanging on to the edge of things and making a living by their
wits. I'd come West without any definite idea of what I wanted to do,
and I fell in with these men naturally and easily, because they were of
my type.
"I had three intimates among them--a tall, clean-limbed fellow with the
bluest and steadiest eyes I ever saw in a man, who called himself
'Nebraska'; a rangy Texan named Quint Taylor, who maintained that
manual labor was a curse and quoted the Scriptures to prove it; and Tom
Taggart. Tom and I were thick. I liked him, and he'd done things for
me that seemed to prove that he thought a lot of me. He didn't like it
a little bit when I married your mother--her name was Mary Lannon, and
I'd got acquainted with her while riding for a few months for her
father, who owned a ranch near Eagle Pass, close to the Rio Grande.
She was white, boy, and so were her folks, and you can be proud of her.
And if she had lived you could be proud of me--she'd have kept on
making me a man.
"Taggart didn't like the idea of me getting hooked up. He didn't want
to break up the old associations. He and the others hung around for a
year, waiting for something to turn up, and when your mother died it
wasn't long before I was back with them. I left you in care of Jane
Connor--her husband, Dave, owned the Diamond Dot ranch, which adjoined
mine.
"During the year the boys had been knocking around without me they'd
fallen in with an Indian from Yucatan, from the tribe called the
Toltecs. This Indian called himself Queza--he'd been exiled because he
was too lazy to work. The boys got him drunk one night, and he blabbed
everything he knew about his tribe--how rich it was; how they'd
discovered a diamond mine, and that gold was so common that they used
it to make household ornaments. His story got the boys excited and
they pumped him dry. They found out where his tribe lived, how to get
there, and all that.
"Queza told them that the diamonds wouldn't be hard to get, that there
were altar idols and ornaments in a big cave which was hollowed out of
the face of a rock cliff, and that there was a bridge over to it, and
that the cave wasn't guarded because the tribe had a superstitious fear
of the priests who had charge of the idols and things, and that the
people didn't care for gold and diamonds, anyway, because they were so
common.
"The boys had got all this out of Queza about a month before I sold out
and joined them, and they'd rustled some money somewhere, and had
everything fixed up to go to Yucatan to bring home some of that gold
and diamonds. They wanted me to go along. I was in that frame of mind
in which I didn't care much about what happened to me, and they didn't
have to argue long. We dropped down the Rio Grande to a little place
on the Gulf coast near where Brownsville is now. We bought a little
boat from a fisherman--she wasn't more than thirty feet long and didn't
look like she could stand much weather; but Nebraska, who'd told us
that he'd done a little sailing on the California coast when he was a
lot younger than he was then, said she'd stand anything we was likely
to get in the Gulf. So we stocked her with provisions and water to
last a month or so, and Nebraska pointed her nose toward Yucatan.
"I didn't think then what a rank job it was that we were going to do,
but it won't do me any harm in your eyes to say that after we'd got
started and I began to realize what it all meant, I was ashamed. I
felt like a sneak and a coward all through the deal, but I couldn't
back out after I'd started, and so I went through with it.
"We run into a spell of bad weather and had to hug the coast mighty
close, and it was two weeks before we pulled into Campeche Bay, on the
northwest coast of Yucatan. We worked the boat about half a mile up a
little creek four or five miles south of Campeche, and worked half a
day hiding her, so that she'd be there when we got back. Then, taking
what grub was left, we struck out for the interior. It won't be any
use telling you about that journey--you couldn't imagine, and I
couldn't begin to tell you, what a miserable, slow, tortuous affair it
was. It gets hot in New Mexico, but we got a taste of hell in that
Yucatan jungle. That country wasn't built for a white man.
"So I'm not going to try to tell you about the trip. We were tough and
eager, and we stuck it out, traveling mostly by night, setting our
course by the stars, about which I knew something. But we were a week
going a hundred miles, and we were beginning to get into that frame of
mind where we were noticing one another's faults and getting not a bit
backward in talking about them, when one night at dusk we got a glimpse
of the place we were looking for.
"Queza had called the place a town, and maybe that name fits it as well
as another. It made me dizzy to look at it. We'd been climbing the
slope of a mountain all afternoon--traveling in the daytime now,
because we were getting near the end of our journey--Nebraska in the
lead, the rest trailing him. We saw Nebraska stop and duck back into
some brush. Then we all sneaked up to him and got our first look at
the town.
"It looked to me as though the place had been made to hide in. The
mountain dropped away below us, straight down about a hundred feet, a
smooth rock wall. Another wall of rock joined it on the right, making
a big L. There was a level that began at the two walls and extended
both ways for probably half a mile, until it met the slope of the other
side of the mountain. It was nothing but two shoulders, joined, on the
top of the mountain.
"Just below us there was a break in the level--a wide gash about fifty
feet across, so deep that we couldn't see the bottom. There was a
ledge on our side about three or four feet wide, and a bridge stretched
from it across the canyon. We decided that the bridge was the one
Queza had told the boys about--it led to the cave where the treasure
was kept. We laid there for an hour, watching. The buildings were all
huddled together--a lot of flat, brown adobe houses. We could see the
natives moving down among them, but none of us noticed anything unusual
going on until Taggart calls our attention.
"'Did you notice?' he said.
"'Notice what?' we all answered.
"'That they're all women down there--I ain't seen a man!'
"That was a fact. There didn't seem to be a man anywhere about. We
talked it over and concluded that we'd got there at a most advantageous
time. We decided that the men were away, on a hunt, most probably, and
after we'd watched a while longer we decided that we'd sneak down some
way and go after the treasure about midnight. We figured they'd all be
sleeping about that time. After dark they lit fires and sat around
them.
"We watched until about eleven--until we saw that nearly all the fires
had gone out--and then we sneaked down the slope of the mountain. We
didn't make any noise; we were silent and slippery as ghosts as we made
our way through the timber on the slope. It was slow work, though; the
woods were full of tangled vines and prickly bushes, and we got clawed
up considerable and had all we could do to keep from cussing out loud
when a thorn or something would rip a cheek open. It was blacker than
any night I've ever seen before or since; we couldn't see a foot ahead,
and the sounds we heard in the woods didn't make us feel any too
comfortable, for all we'd got used to living in the open. We knew, of
course, that the sounds came from birds and bats and moths and such,
but when a man is out on a job like that his nerves are not what they
are at other times--every sound seems unusual and magnified. I didn't
like so much silence from the village down below us--it seemed too
quiet; and it appeared to me that the noises we heard in the woods were
most too continuous to be caused by only us four. We went in single
file, one man almost touching the other, to be sure we'd all stay
together. I'd hear a bird go whizzing away at a distance, and it
appeared to me that there was no call for it to light out with us two
or three hundred feet away from it; and then there were queer noises
which I couldn't just place as coming from birds. I don't know why I
noticed these things, but I did, just the same, though I didn't say
anything to the other boys, because they'd probably thought I was
losing my nerve. And, besides, there wasn't time to talk.
"It took us more than an hour to reach the level where the village was,
and it was long after midnight when we, keeping in the shadow of the
cliff, started toward the bridge over the canyon, which led to the cave
where we thought we'd find the treasure.
"We'd got pretty near the bridge, Taggart and me in the lead, Nebraska
and Taylor stringing along behind, when I heard a sudden scuffling and
looked around. It wasn't so dark on the level as it had been in the
woods, and I saw a dozen dark figures grouped around Nebraska and
Taylor. The dark figures were all about us, and more were coming from
the huts, all yelling like devils. And they were men, too; they'd been
hiding in the huts; they'd discovered us the day before and suspected
what we came for. I found that out later.
"Well, for a few minutes there was plenty of excitement. Taylor and
Nebraska had got pretty well behind us, and the Toltecs had cut them
off. Taggart showed yellow. I started back to help Nebraska and
Taylor, who had their knives out--I could see them shining--when
Taggart grabbed me.
"'Let's run for the bridge, you fool!' he said. 'It's every man for
himself now!'
"While I was scuffling with Taggart, trying to get away from him and
get back to the boys, a figure detached itself from the bunch around
them and came flying toward us. It was a woman, I could see that in an
instant. Taggart saw her coming, too; he must have known it was a
woman, but he pulled out his knife, and when she came close enough to
us he drove at her with it. He missed her because I shoved him away.
He fell, and, while he was on the ground, the woman--or girl, because
she wasn't more than eighteen or nineteen--grabbed me by the arm and
jabbered to me in Spanish, of which I'd learned a little.
"'They're going to kill all of you!' she said. 'They've been watching
you for two days. They left me to watch you yesterday. I don't want
them to kill you--I like you! Come!'
"She pulled at me, trying to drag me toward the bridge. I didn't have
any objections to her liking me as much as she pleased, for she was a
beauty--I found that out afterward, of course; but though I couldn't
see her face very well just them, I liked her voice and knew she must
be good to look at. But I didn't like the idea of leaving the other
boys, and told her so.
"'You'll all be killed, anyway,' she said, all excited. 'They might as
well die now as later. They'll kill you, too, if you go back!'
"That was logic, all right, but I'd have gone back anyway if I hadn't
heard Nebraska and Taylor working their guns just then. The Toltecs
broke and scattered--some of them. Three or four of them couldn't
after the boys began to shoot. Soon as the Toltecs broke away a
little, Nebraska and Taylor made for where we stood. I saw them coming
and told the girl to lead us. The three of us--the girl, Taggart, and
me--got to the bridge, which was a light, flimsy, narrow affair made of
two long, straight saplings lashed together with vines, with a couple
of strips of bark for a bottom--and crossed it. Then we stood on the
ledge in front of the mouth of the cave, watching Nebraska and Taylor.
They were coming for all they were worth, shooting as they ran and
keeping the bunch of Toltecs at a respectable distance, though the
Toltecs were running parallel with them, trying to bring them down with
arrows.
"Nebraska and Taylor made the bridge. They had got about half way over
when a dozen or so of the Toltecs threw themselves at the end of the
bridge which rested on the village side of the canyon, grabbed hold of
it, and pulled it off the ledge on our side. I yelled to the boys and
jumped for the end of the bridge. But I was too late. The bridge
balanced for an instant, and then the end on which the boys were
standing started to sink. Nebraska saw what was coming, off and jumped
for the ledge on which we were standing. He missed it by five feet.
There wasn't a sound from his lips as he shot down into the awful
blackness of the canyon. I got sick and dizzy, but not so sick that I
couldn't see what was happening to Taylor. Taylor didn't jump for the
ledge. He turned like a cat and grabbed a rail of the bridge, trying
to climb back to the level. He'd have made it, too, but the Toltecs
wouldn't let him. They jabbed at him with their spears and arrows and
threw knives at him. One of the knives struck him in the shoulder, and
when I heard him scream I pulled my guns and began to shoot across the
canyon. I hadn't thought of it before; there are times when a man's
brain refuses to work like he'd like to have it. But the Toltecs
didn't mind the shooting a little bit.
"Three or four of them got hit and backed away from the edge of the
canyon, but there were enough others to do what they were trying to do,
and they did it. I stood there, helpless, and saw them shove Taylor
off the bridge with their spears. When he finally let go and went
turning over and over down into the black hole, my whole insides fanned
up into my throat. That sensation has never left me; I wake up nights
seeing Taylor as he let go of the bridge, watching him sink, tumbling
over and over into that black gash, and I get sick and dizzy just as I
did that night.
"But just then I didn't have much of a chance to be sick long. While I
was standing there wondering what to do I saw a Toltec priest come out
of the cave. He had a spear in his hand and was sneaking up on
Taggart--who stood there almost fainting from fright. There was murder
in the priest's eyes; I saw it and bent my gun on him. The trigger
snapped on dead cartridges, and I yanked out my knife. I'd have been
too late, at that. But the girl saw the priest, and she dodged behind
him and gave him a shove. He pitched out and went head first down into
the canyon.
"The Toltecs on the other side were watching, and they saw the priest
go. Until now they hadn't shot at us, probably afraid of hitting the
girl, but when they saw her push the priest over the edge of the canyon
they saw that her sympathies were with us, and they let drive at us
with their arrows. We were all slightly wounded--not enough to
mention--and we got back into the cave where their arrows couldn't
reach us. Three or four times the Toltecs tried to swing the bridge
back into position, but they couldn't make it because there was no one
on our side to help them, and Taggart and me made things mighty
unpleasant for them with our sixes. They finally went away and held a
council of war, which seemed to leave them undecided. They evidently
hadn't figured on the girl turning traitor. If she hadn't they'd have
got me and Taggart in short order.
"We'd got where the treasure was, all right, but it was a mighty bad
outlook for us. We were kind of anxious about the bridge, being afraid
the Toltecs would get it back into place; but the girl, who called
herself Ezela, showed us that getting the bridge back wasn't possible
without help from our side. She said that the priest she'd dumped down
into the canyon was the only one with the tribe at the time; the others
had gone to a distant village. She said, too, that there was a secret
passage from the cave; she'd discovered it, and no one but her and the
priests knew anything about it, but that the Toltecs would send runners
for the priests and we'd have to get out before they came, or they'd
lay for us at the outlet.
"Well, we hustled. We felt bad about Nebraska and Taylor, and were
determined not to leave without some of the treasure, and after Ezela
showed us where it was I kept her busy talking while Taggart got about
as much as he could carry. Ezela offered no objections; on the other
hand, when Taggart came back she told me to get some of the treasure
too. Taggart hadn't taken enough to miss; there were millions of
dollars' worth of gold and diamonds in the room, where they'd raised a
kind of an altar, and I had my choice.
"I took some of the gold, but what attracted me--not because it was
pretty, but because I saw in a minute that it was valuable--was a
hideous image about six inches high. I had had an idea all along that
Queza had been lying about the diamonds, but when I saw the image I
knew he'd told the truth. There were about a hundred diamonds on the
image, stuck all around it, the image itself being gold. The diamonds
ran from a carat to seven or eight carats, and there was no question
about them being the real thing. I stuck the thing into a hip pocket,
figuring that with the few other ornaments I had I would have plenty to
carry. Then I went back to where Ezela and Taggart were waiting for me.
"Ezela led us through a long, narrow passage, down some steps to
another passage, and pretty soon we were sneaking along this and I
began to get a whiff of fresh air. In a little while we found
ourselves on a narrow ledge in the canyon, about thirty or forty feet
below the level where the bridge had been, and it was so dark down
there that we couldn't see one another.
"Ezela whispered to us to follow her, and to be careful. We had to be
careful, and after what had happened, crawling along that ledge wasn't
the most cheerful job in the world. It would have been a ticklish
thing to do in the daytime, but at night it was a thousand times worse.
I kept thinking about poor Taylor and Nebraska, and there were times
when I felt that I just had to yell and jump out into the black hole
around us. Taggart showed it worse than me. It took us an hour to
traverse that ledge. We'd strike a short turn where there wouldn't be
more than six or eight inches of ledge between us and eternity, and we
couldn't see a thing--I've thought since that maybe it was a good thing
we couldn't. But we could feel the width of the ledge with our feet,
and there were times when my legs shook under me like I had the ague.
Taggart was pretty near collapse all the time. He kept mumbling to
himself, making queer little throaty noises and grabbing at me. Two or
three times I had to turn and talk to him, or he'd have let go all
holds and jumped.
"We finally made solid ground, and it was a full hour before me or
Taggart could get up after we'd sat down, we were that tuckered out.
The girl didn't seem to mind it a bit; she told me she'd discovered the
secret passage that way. She'd been nosing around the mountain one day
and had crept along the edge, finding that it led to the treasure cave.
"There wasn't any time lost by us in getting away from that place.
Ezela told us there wasn't any use hoping that Nebraska and Taylor were
alive, because the canyon was over a thousand feet deep and there was a
roaring river at the bottom. I don't like to think of that fall.
"Taggart objected to Ezela going with us, but I couldn't think of
letting her stay to be punished by her tribe for what she'd
done--they'd have burned her, sure, she said. Besides, I may as well
tell the truth, I'd got to liking Ezela a good bit by this time. She
was good to look at, and she'd been hanging around me, telling me that
she wanted to go with us, and that she'd done what she had for my sake,
because she liked me. All that sort of stuff plays on a man's vanity
when it comes from a pretty girl, and it didn't take me long to decide
that I was in love with her and that, aside from humane reasons, I
ought to take her with me. So I took her.
"We reached the boat after a week of heart-breaking travel, and we
hadn't got over two miles out in the bay when we saw that we hadn't
left any too soon. A hundred or so Toltecs were on the beach, doing a
war dance and waving their spears at us. We had a pretty close call of
it for grub, but we made a little town on the gulf and stocked up, and
then we headed for the mouth of the Rio Grande. We camped one night a
week later on United States soil, and that night while I was asleep
Taggart tried to knife me. I'd showed Taggart the diamond image one
day while Ezela was asleep in the boat, and he'd got greedy for it.
Ezela screamed when she saw him getting close to me with the knife, and
I woke in time to grab him before he got a chance to get the knife into
me. He finally broke away, leaving all the treasure he'd brought
except a little that he had in his pockets--he'd had a bundle of it
strapped to his belt besides that--and I didn't see him again for four
years.
"I took Ezela up the Pecos to the Connors', where I'd left you, bought
a wagon and horses and a few things--bedding and grub and such
stuff--and lit out for New Mexico. I figured that I had enough of the
kind of friends I'd been keeping, and I didn't want to be ridiculed for
tying up to an Indian girl--white folks don't like to see that. I came
here and took up this land, figuring that I wouldn't be disturbed. I'd
been here four years when Taggart came. I'd sold some of the treasure,
but, for some reason which I've never been able to figure out, I kept
the idol. I think I was afraid to try to sell it on account of the big
diamonds in it.
"I gave Taggart the treasure he'd left behind the night he tried to
knife me, but he wasn't satisfied; he wanted more, wanted me to sell
the Toltec image and split with him. Of course I wouldn't do that
because of the way he'd acted, and he swore to get it some day.
"He took up some land about fifteen miles down the river, and he's
stayed there ever since. I've been afraid to go anywhere with the idol
for fear he'd waylay me and get it. One day while I was away somewhere
he came here and told Ezela about me having the idol. From that time
on I led a life of hell. Ezela turned on me. She said I'd desecrated
the altars of her tribe, and she kept harping to me about it until I
got so I couldn't bear the sight of her.
"I discovered soon after we came here that I had been mistaken in
thinking I had loved her--what I had thought was love was merely
gratitude. My gratitude didn't last, of course, with her hounding me
continually about the idol. Finally I discovered that she and Taggart
were plotting against me. Of course, Taggart was after the image
himself. He didn't care anything about her religious scruples, but he
made her believe he sympathized with her, and made a fool of her. I
tried to kill Taggart the day I found that out, but he got away, and
after that he never traveled alone and I didn't get another chance. I
ordered Ezela away, but she said she wouldn't go until she got the
image. Many times I debated the idea of putting her out of the way,
but there was always the knowledge in my mind that she had saved my
life, and I hadn't the heart to do it.
"You know how we lived. My life was constantly in danger, and I became
hardened, suspicious, brutal. You got the whole accumulation. Taggart
and Ezela bribed my men to watch me. I had to discharge them. After
Ezela died I thought Taggart would leave me alone. But he didn't--he
wanted the image. One day he and his boy Neal came over and ambushed
me. They shot me in the shoulder. I was in the house, defending
myself as best I could, when Malcolm Clayton came. By this time Betty
has told you the rest and you know just what you can expect from the
Taggarts.
"That is the whole history of the Toltec idol. I am not proud of my
part in the affair, but Tom Taggart must never have the idol. Remember
that! I don't want him to have it! Neither do I want you to have it,
or the money I leave, unless you can show that you forgive me. As I
have said, I don't take your word for it--you must prove it.
"I know you are coming home, and I wish I could live to see you. But I
know I won't. Don't be too hard on me. Your father,
"JAMES MARSTON."