The Flute of the Gods Part 11

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 circ.u.mstances 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.

Jose 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 pa.s.s 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 ash.o.r.e 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 G.o.dly 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 G.o.d:--" 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 h.e.l.l 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 a.s.signed.

"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 n.o.bles, 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. G.o.d:--G.o.d:--how mad I was when I was told the savages of the new world had done me wrong by sending him to h.e.l.l 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 G.o.dly 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 sh.o.r.es 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d'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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.ds, 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 l.u.s.t 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 ill.u.s.trious and much sought for Greek is without doubt serving his master as a flame in h.e.l.l, 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.