Hearts of Three 58

Hearts of Three 58

“You would better keep your parasol between you and the sun.”

 

The Queen passed round in front of her, facing her and staring down at

her with woman’s wrath compounded of such jealousy as to be speechless.

 

“Why?” Leoncia was the first to speak, after a long pause. “Why am I a

vile woman?”

 

“Because you are a thief,” the Queen flamed. “Because you are a stealer

of men, yourself married. Because you are unfaithful to your husband——in

heart, at least, since more than that has so far been impossible.”

 

“I have no husband,” Leoncia answered quietly.

 

“Husband to be, then——I thought you were to be married the day after our

departure.”

 

“I have no husband to be,” Leoncia continued with the same quietness.

 

So swiftly tense did the other woman become that Leoncia idly thought of

her as a tigress.

 

“Henry Morgan!” the Queen cried.

 

“He is my brother.”

 

“A word which I have discovered is of wide meaning, Leoncia Solano. In

New York there are worshippers at certain altars who call all men in the

world ‘brothers,’ all women ‘sisters.’”

 

“His father was my father,” Leoncia explained with patient explicitness.

“His mother was my mother. We are full brother and sister.”

 

“And Francis?” the other queried, convinced, with sudden access of

interest. “Are you, too, his sister?”

 

Leoncia shook her head.

 

“Then you do love Francis!” the Queen charged, smarting with

disappointment.

 

“You have him,” said Leoncia.

 

“No; for you have taken him from me.”

 

Leoncia slowly and sadly shook her head and sadly gazed out over the

heat-shimmering surface of Chiriqui Lagoon.

 

After a long lapse of silence, she said, wearily, “Believe that. Believe

anything.”

 

“I divined it in you from the first,” the Queen cried. “You have a

strange power over men. I am a woman not unbeautiful. Since I have been

out in the world I have watched the eyes of men looking at me. I know I

am not all undesirable. Even have the wretched males of my Lost Valley

with downcast eyes looked love at me. One dared more than look, and he

died for me, or because of me, and was flung into the whirl of waters to

his fate. And yet you, with this woman’s power of yours, strangely

exercise it over my Francis so that in my very arms he thinks of you. I

know it. I know that even then he thinks of you!”

 

Her last words were the cry of a passion-stricken and breaking heart.

And the next moment, though very little to Leoncia’s surprise, being too

hopelessly apathetic to be surprised at anything, the Queen dropped her

knife in the sand and sank down, buried her face in her hands, and

surrendered to the weakness of hysteric grief. Almost idly, and quite

mechanically, Leoncia put her arm around her and comforted her. For many

minutes this continued, when the Queen, growing more calm, spoke with

sudden determination.

 

“I left Francis the moment I knew he loved you,” she said. “I drove my

knife into the photograph of you he keeps in his bedroom, and returned

here to do the same to you in person. But I was wrong. It is not your

fault, nor Francis’. It is my fault that I have failed to win his love.

Not you, but I it is who must die. But first, I must go back to my

valley and recover my treasure. In the temple called Wall Street,

Francis is in great trouble. His fortune may be taken away from him, and

he requires another fortune to save his fortune. I have that fortune,

and there is no time to lose. Will you and yours help me? It is for

Francis’ sake.”

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XXVII

 

 

So it came about that the Valley of the Lost Souls was invaded

subterraneously from opposite directions by two parties of

treasure-seekers. From one side, and quickly, came the Queen and

Leoncia, Henry Morgan, and the Solanos. Far more slowly, although they

had started long in advance, did Torres and the Jefe progress. The first

attack on the mountain had proved the chiefest obstacle. To blow open an

entrance to the Maya caves had required more dynamite than they had

originally brought, while the rock had proved stubborner than they

expected. Further, when they had finally made a way, it had proved to be

above the cave floor, so that more blasting had been required to drain

off the water. And, having blasted their way in to the water-logged

mummies of the conquistadores and to the Room of the Idols, they had to

blast their way out again and on into the heart of the mountain. But

first, ere they continued on, Torres looted the ruby eyes of Chia and

the emerald eyes of Hzatzl.

 

Meanwhile, with scarcely any delays, the Queen and her party penetrated

to the Valley through the mountain on the opposite side. Nor did they

entirely duplicate the course of their earlier traverse. The Queen,

through long gazing into her Mirror, knew every inch of the way. Where

the underground river plunged through the passage and out into the bosom

of the Gualaca River it was impossible to take in their boats. But, by

assiduous search under her directions, they found the tiny mouth of a

cave on the steep wall of the cliff, so shielded by a growth of mountain

berries that only by knowing for what they sought could they have found

it. By main strength, applied to the coils of rope which they had

brought along, they hoisted their canoes up the cliff, portaged them on

their shoulders through the winding passage, and launched them on the

subterranean river itself where it ran so broadly and placidly between

wide banks that they paddled easily against its slack current. At other

times, where the river proved too swift, they lined the canoes up by

towing from the bank; and wherever the river made a plunge through the

solid tie-ribs of mountain, the Queen showed them the obviously hewn and

patently ancient passages through which to portage their light crafts

around.

 

“Here we leave the canoes,” the Queen directed at last, and the men

began securely mooring them to the bank in the light of the flickering

torches. “It is but a short distance through the last passage. Then we

will come to a small opening in the cliff, shielded by climbing vines

and ferns, and look down upon the spot where my house once stood beside

the whirl of waters. The ropes will be necessary in order to descend the

cliff, but it is only about fifty feet.”

 

Henry, with an electric torch, led the way, the Queen beside him, while

old Enrico and Leoncia brought up the rear, vigilant to see that no

possible half-hearted peon or Indian boatman should slip back and run

away. But when the party came to where the mouth of the passage ought to

have been, there was no mouth. The passage ceased, being blocked off

solidly from floor to roof by a debris of crumbled rocks that varied in

size from paving stones to native houses.

 

“Who could have done this?” the Queen exclaimed angrily.

 

But Henry, after a cursory examination, reassured her.

 

“It’s just a slide of rock,” he said, “a superficial fault in the outer

skin of the mountain that has slipped; and it won’t take us long with

our dynamite to remedy it. Lucky we fetched a supply along.”

 

But it did take long. For what was the remainder of the day and

throughout the night they toiled. Large charges of explosive were not

used because of Henry’s fear of exciting a greater slip along the fault

overhead. What dynamite was used was for the purpose of loosening up the

rubble so that they could shift it back along the passage. At eight the

following morning the charge was exploded that opened up to them the

first glimmer of daylight ahead. After that they worked carefully, being

apprehensive of jarring down fresh slides. At the last, they were

baffled by a ten-ton block of rock in the very mouth of the passage.

Through crevices on either side of it they could squeeze their arms into

the blazing sunshine, yet the stone-block thwarted them. No leverage

they applied could more than quiver it, and Henry decided on one final

blast that would topple it out and down into the Valley.

 

“They’ll certainly know visitors are coming, the way we’ve been knocking

on their back door for the last fifteen hours,” he laughed, as he

prepared to light the fuse.

 

* * * * *

 

Assembled before the altar of the Sun God at the Long House, the entire

population was indeed aware, and anxiously aware, of the coming of

visitors. So disastrous had been their experiences with their last ones,

when the lake dwelling had been burned and their Queen lost to them,

that they were now begging the Sun God to send no more visitors. But

upon one thing, having been passionately harangued by their priest, they

were resolved; namely, to kill at sight and without parley whatever

newcomers did descend upon them.

 

“Even Da Vasco himself,” the priest had cried.

 

“Even Da Vasco!” the Lost Souls had responded.

 

All were armed with spears, war-clubs, and bows and arrows; and while

they waited they continued to pray before the altar. Every few minutes

runners arrived from the lake, making the same reports that while the

mountain still labored thunderously nothing had emerged from it.

 

The little girl of ten, the Maid of the Long House who had entertained

Leoncia, was the first to spy out new arrivals. This was made possible

because of the tribe’s attention being fixed on the rumbling mountain

beside the lake. No one expected visitors out of the mountain on the

opposite side of the valley.

 

“Da Vasco!” she cried. “Da Vasco!”

 

All looked and saw, not fifty yards away, Torres, the Jefe, and their

gang of followers, emerging into the open clearing. Torres wore again