The Flute of the Gods Part 13

"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!"

Senor Don Brancadori sat up very straight and shook his head at the priest:--so well a.s.sured 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 G.o.d, for the gift of the seeds fitted some myth of her own land--some thing of one of their false G.o.ds 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 h.e.l.l 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. Ma.s.ses 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 ma.s.ses if the breath of life had kept him company."

"Who knows!--the high G.o.d 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 Jose 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 h.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.l be hers when she learned she had given the magic medicine of her G.o.d 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.

CHAPTER IX

YAHN, THE APACHE

"Brothers:--you of the life --Of also the fire divine!

You of the mountains Of also the Mother Mist!

Out of the mist is a voice.

It is not the voice afraid!

Out of the shadows, Out of the forests, Out of the deserts It is born!

In a good hour it is born.

The wind of the Sun sends it breath!

Brothers:--the Dawn drives the Darkness And in the mountain strong No one sings fear!

Out from far worlds it comes, With the strong Dawn it comes Brothers:--be mountain strong Sing not of fear!"

The rising sun tipped the terraces with gold and rose, and the nude brown men, and the men children, faced the east with hands lifted to greet the coming of the Great Power. This was as it had been since the time of most ancient days.

But the song chanted from the terrace by the Woman of the Twilight was a new song, and the men made their prayers, and wondered at the singer singing thus on the roof of her dwelling.

The dew of the hills was on her clothing and on her hair. She had dreamed a dream and walked in the night until the words of the dream had come to her lips, and when they came she sang them aloud and the people listened, and the men went from their prayers and thought about it.

Many were conscious of secret thoughts of dread at the coming of the strangers. The priestess had spoken of the thing no one had given voice to.

From the day when her son had been honored as Po-Ahtun-ho, the strife of existence seemed ended for S[=aa]-hanh-que-ah. The thing she had lived to see was now accomplished. Her days were now the gray days of rest and of mystery. She made many prayers alone in the hills, and forgot to eat.

She was not old, yet to Tahn-te she said, "It is over:--The time is come when you stand alone to be strong. Your work is now the work of the strong man, and I go to make prayers in the hills."

When she stayed over long, he sought her out lest ill should come to her, and more than once he had walked into the village with his mother in his arms as other people carried the little children. It was the Woman of the Twilight, and no one laughed. At any other woman they would have laughed to see her carried in the arms of a man.

And so, when she stood on her terrace and spoke of the voice of the Dawn and the Mountain Mists, all listened. The men talked of it in the kivas of each clan, and the women talked all together, and were glad.

They did not know quite what their fear had been, but it was no longer with them since the woman of the G.o.d Thoughts said the voices sang no fear.

Only Yahn Tsyn-deh on the terrace opposite, strung together claws of birds for a necklace, and scoffed warily.

"Only if you are mountain strong need you have no fear," she said.

"The promise that her son is maybe the Voice and the Dawn is a good promise--but the wise woman of the hill caves is double wise! Her song has double thoughts. Be you all mountain strong, as G.o.ds are strong, and no fear will come! But if the mountain strength waits not at your door--what then happens?"