Hearts of Three 38

Hearts of Three 38

“They must be Lost Souls,” Leoncia whispered to Francis.

 

“Or real estate agents,” he smiled back. “At least the valley is

inhabited.—Torres, who’re your friends? From the way they regard you,

one would think they were relatives of yours.”

 

Quite ignoring them, the three Lost Souls drew apart a slight distance

and debated in low sibilant tones.

 

“Sounds like a queer sort of Spanish,” Francis observed.

 

“It’s medieval, to say the least,” Leoncia confirmed.

 

“It’s the Spanish of the conquistadores pretty badly gone to seed,”

Torres contributed. “You see I was right. The Lost Souls never get

away.”

 

“At any rate they must give and be given in marriage,” Francis quipped,

“else how explain these three young huskies?”

 

But by this time the three huskies, having reached agreement, were

beckoning them with encouraging gestures to follow across the valley.

 

“They’re good-natured and friendly cusses, to say the least, despite

their sorrowful mug,” said Francis, as they prepared to follow. “But did

you ever see a sadder-faced aggregation in your life? They must have

been born in the dark of the moon, or had all their sweet gazelles die,

or something or other worse.”

 

“It’s just the kind of faces one would expect of lost souls,” Leoncia

answered.

 

“And if we never get out of here, I suppose we’ll get to looking a whole

lot sadder than they do,” he came back. “Anyway, I hope they’re leading

us to breakfast. Those berries were better than nothing, but that is not

saying much.”

 

An hour or more afterward, still obediently following their guides, they

emerged upon the clearings, the dwelling places, and the Long House of

the tribe.

 

“These are descendants of Da Vasco’s party and the Caribs,” Torres

affirmed, as he glanced over the assembled faces. “That is

incontrovertible on the face of it.”

 

“And they’ve relapsed from the Christian religion of Da Vasco to old

heathen worship,” added Francis. “Look at that altar——there. It’s a

stone altar, and, from the smell of it, that is no breakfast, but a

sacrifice that is cooking, in spite of the fact that it smells like

mutton.”

 

“Thank heaven it’s only a lamb,” Leoncia breathed. “The old Sun Worship

included human sacrifice. And this is Sun Worship. See that old man

there in the long shroud with the golden-rayed cap of gold. He’s a sun

priest. Uncle Alfaro has told me all about the sun-worshipers.”

 

Behind and above the altar, was a great metal image of the sun.

 

“Gold, all gold,” Francis whispered, “and without alloy. Look at those

spikes, the size of them, yet so pure is the metal that I wager a child

could bend them any way it wished and even tie knots in them.”

 

“Merciful God!—look at that!” Leoncia gasped, indicating with her eyes a

crude stone bust that stood to one side of the altar and slightly lower.

“It is the face of Torres. It is the face of the mummy in the Maya

cave.”

 

“And there is an inscription——” Francis stepped closer to see and was

peremptorily waved back by the priest. “It says, ‘Da Vasco.’ Notice that

it has the same sort of helmet that Torres is wearing.—And, say! Glance

at the priest! If he doesn’t look like Torres’ full brother, I’ve never

fancied a resemblance in my life!”

 

The priest, with angry face and imperative gesture, motioned Francis to

silence, and made obeisance to the cooking sacrifice. As if in response,

a flaw of wind put out the flame of the cooking.

 

“The Sun God is angry,” the priest announced with great solemnity, his

queer Spanish nevertheless being intelligible to the newcomers.

“Strangers have come among us and remain unslain. That is why the Sun

God is angry. Speak, you young men who have brought the strangers alive

to our altar. Was not my bidding, which is ever and always the bidding

of the Sun God, that you should slay them?”

 

One of the three young men stepped tremblingly forth, and with trembling

forefingers pointed at the face of Torres and at the face of the stone

bust.

 

“We recognised him,” he quavered, “and we could not slay him for we

remembered prophecy and that our great ancestor would some day return.

Is this stranger he? We do not know. We dare not know nor judge. Yours,

O priest, is the knowledge, and yours be the judgment. Is this he?”

 

The priest looked closely at Torres and exclaimed incoherently. Turning

his back abruptly, he rekindled the sacred cooking fire from a pot of

fire at the base of an altar. But the fire flamed up, flickered down,

and died.

 

“The Sun God is angry,” the priest reiterated; whereat the Lost Souls

beat their breasts and moaned and lamented. “The sacrifice is

unacceptable, for the fire will not burn. Strange things are afoot. This

is a matter of the deeper mysteries which I alone may know. We shall not

sacrifice the strangers ... now. I must take time to inform myself of

the Sun God’s will.”

 

With his hands he waved the tribespeople away, ceasing the ceremonial

half-completed, and directed that the three captives be taken into the

Long House.

 

“I can’t follow the play,” Francis whispered in Leoncia’s ear, “but just

the same I hope here’s where we eat.”

 

“Look at that pretty little girl,” said Leoncia, indicating with her

eyes the child with the face of fire and spirit.

 

“Torres has already spotted her,” Francis whispered back. “I caught him

winking at her. He doesn’t know the play, nor which way the cat will

jump, but he isn’t missing a chance to make friends. We’ll have to keep

an eye on him, for he’s a treacherous hound and capable of throwing us

over any time if it would serve to save his skin.”

 

Inside the Long House, seated on rough-plaited mats of grass, they found

themselves quickly served with food. Clear drinking water and a thick

stew of meat and vegetables were served in generous quantity in queer,

unglazed pottery jars. Also, they were given hot cakes of ground Indian

corn that were not altogether unlike tortillas.

 

After the women who served had departed, the little girl, who had led

them and commanded them, remained. Torres resumed his overtures, but

she, graciously ignoring him, devoted herself to Leoncia who seemed to

fascinate her.

 

“She’s a sort of hostess, I take it,” Francis explained. “You know—like

the maids of the village in Samoa, who entertain all travellers and all

visitors of no matter how high rank, and who come pretty close to

presiding at all functions and ceremonials. They are selected by the

high chiefs for their beauty, their virtue, and their intelligence. And

this one reminds me very much of them, except that she’s so awfully

young.”

 

Closer she came to Leoncia, and, fascinated though she patently was by

the beautiful strange woman, in her bearing of approach there was no

hint of servility nor sense of inferiority.

 

“Tell me,” she said, in the quaint archaic Spanish of the valley, “is

that man really Capitan Da Vasco returned from his home in the sun in

the sky?”

 

Torres smirked and bowed, and proclaimed proudly: “I am a Da Vasco.”

 

“Not _a_ Da Vasco, but Da Vasco himself,” Leoncia coached him in

English.

 

“It’s a good bet—play it!” Francis commanded, likewise in English. “It

may pull us all out of a hole. I’m not particularly stuck on that

priest, and he seems the high-cockalorum over these Lost Souls.”

 

“I have at last come back from the sun,” Torres told the little maid,

taking his cue.

 

She favored him with a long and unwavering look, in which they could see

her think, and judge, and appraise. Then, with __EXPRESSION__less face, she

bowed to him respectfully, and, with scarcely a glance at Francis,

turned to Leoncia and favored her with a friendly smile that was an

illumination.

 

“I did not know that God made women so beautiful as you,” the little

maid said softly, ere she turned to go out. At the door she paused to

add, “The Lady Who Dreams is beautiful, but she is strangely different

from you.”

 

But hardly had she gone, when the Sun Priest, followed by a number of

young men, entered, apparently for the purpose of removing the dishes

and the uneaten food. Even as some of them were in the act of bending

over to pick up the dishes, at a signal from the priest they sprang upon

the three guests, bound their hands and arms securely behind them, and

led them out to the Sun God’s altar before the assembled tribe. Here,

where they observed a crucible on a tripod over a fierce fire, they were

tied to fresh-sunken posts, while many eager hands heaped fuel about

them to their knees.

 

“Now buck up—be as haughty as a real Spaniard!” Francis at the same time

instructed and insulted Torres. “You’re Da Vasco himself. Hundreds of

years before, you were here on earth in this very valley with the

ancestors of these mongrels.”

 

“You must die,” the Sun Priest was now addressing them, while the Lost

Souls nodded unanimously. “For four hundred years, as we count our

sojourn in this valley, have we slain all strangers. You were not slain,

and behold the instant anger of the Sun God: _our altar fire went out_.”