The old man, as he led the way, was forever pulling out the sacred tassel and mumbling and muttering as he fingered it.

“Hope the old gentleman doesn’t wear it out,” was Henry’s fervent wish. “You’d think he’d read the directions once and remember them for a little while instead of continually pawing them over.”

They rode out through the jungle into a clear space that looked as if at some time man had hewn down the jungle and fought it back. Beyond, by the vista afforded by the clearing, the mountain called Blanco Rovalo towered high in the sunny sky. The old Maya halted his mule, ran over certain strings in the tassel, pointed at the mountain, and spoke in broken Spanish:

“It says: In the foot-steps of the God wait till the eyes of Chia flash.”

He indicated the particular knots of a particular string as the source of his information.

“Where are the foot-steps, old priest?” Henry demanded, staring about him at the unbroken sward.

But the old man started his mule, and, with a tattoo of bare heels on the creature’s ribs, hastened it on across the clearing and into the jungle beyond.

“He’s like a hound on the scent, and it looks as if the scent is getting hot,” Francis remarked.

At the end of half a mile, where the jungle turned to grass-land on swift-rising slopes the old man forced his mule into a gallop which he maintained until he reached a natural depression in the ground. Three feet or more in depth, of area sufficient to accommodate a dozen persons in comfort, its form was strikingly like that which some colossal human foot could have made.

“The foot-step of the God,” the old priest proclaimed solemnly, ere he slid off his mule and prostrated himself in prayer. “In the foot-step of the God must we wait till the eyes of Chia flash——so say the sacred knots.”

“Pretty good place for a meal,” Henry vouchsafed, looking down into the depression. “While waiting for the mumbo-jumbo foolery to come off, we might as well stay our stomachs.”

“If Chia doesn’t object,” laughed Francis.

And Chia did not object, at least the old priest could not find any objection written in the knots.

While the mules were being tethered on the edge of the first break of woods, water was fetched from a nearby spring and a fire built in the foot-step. The old Maya seemed oblivious of everything, as he mumbled endless prayers and ran the knots over and over.

“If only he doesn’t blow up,” Francis said.

“I thought he was wild-eyed the first day we met him up in Juchitan,” concurred Henry. “But it’s nothing to the way his eyes are now.”

Here spoke the peon, who, unable to understand a word of their English, nevertheless sensed the drift of it.

“This is very religious, very dangerous, to have anything to do with the old Maya sacred things. It is the death-road. My father knows. Many men have died. The deaths are sudden and horrible. Even Maya priests have died. My father’s father so died. He, too, loved a woman of the tierra caliente. And for love of her, for gold, he sold the Maya secret and by the knot-writing led tierra caliente men to the treasure. He died. They all died. My father does not like the women of the tierra caliente now that he is old. He liked them too well in his youth, which was his sin. And he knows the danger of leading you to the treasure. Many men have sought during the centuries. Of those who found it, not one came back. It is said that even conquistadores and pirates of the English Morgan have won to the hiding-place and decorated it with their bones.”

“And when your father dies,” Francis queried, “then, being his son, you will be the Maya high priest?”

“No, senor,” the peon shook his head. “I am only half-Maya. I cannot read the knots. My father did not teach me because I was not of the pure Maya blood.”

“And if he should die, right now, is there any other Maya who can read the knots?”

“No, senor. My father is the last living man who knows that ancient language.”

But the conversation was broken in upon by Leoncia and Ricardo, who, having tethered their mules with the others, were gazing sheepishly down from the rim of the depression. The faces of Henry and Francis lighted with joy at the sight of Leoncia, while their mouths opened and their tongues articulated censure and scolding. Also, they insisted on her returning with Ricardo.

“But you cannot send me away before giving me something to eat,” she persisted, slipping down the slope of the depression with pure feminine cunning in order to place the discussion on a closer and more intimate basis.

Aroused by their voices, the old Maya came out of a trance of prayer and observed her with wrath. And in wrath he burst upon her, intermingling occasional Spanish words and phrases with the flood of denunciation in Maya.

“He says that women are no good,” the peon interpreted in the first pause. “He says women bring quarrels among men, the quick steel, the sudden death. Bad luck and God’s wrath are ever upon them. Their ways are not God’s ways, and they lead men to destruction. He says women are the eternal enemy of God and man, forever keeping God and man apart. He says women have ever cluttered the foot-steps of God and have kept men away from travelling the path of God to God. He says this woman must go back.”

With laughing eyes, Francis whistled his appreciation of the diatribe, while Henry said:

“Now will you be good, Leoncia? You see what a Maya thinks of your sex. This is no place for you. California’s the place. Women vote there.”

“The trouble is that the old man is remembering the woman who brought misfortune upon him in the heyday of his youth,” Francis said. He turned to the peon. “Ask your father to read the knot-writing and see what it says for or against women traveling in the foot-steps of God.”

In vain the ancient high priest fumbled the sacred writing. There was not to be found the slightest authoritative objection to woman.

“He’s mixing his own experiences up with his mythology,” Francis grinned triumphantly. “So I guess it’s pretty near all right, Leoncia, for you to stay for a bite to eat. The coffee’s made. After that....”

But “after that” came before. Scarcely had they seated themselves on the ground and begun to eat, when Francis, standing up to serve Leoncia with tortillas, had his hat knocked off.

“My word!” he said, sitting down. “That was sudden. Henry, take a squint and see who tried to pot-shoot me.”

The next moment, save for the peon’s father, all eyes were peeping across the rim of the foot-step. What they saw, creeping upon them from every side, was a nondescript and bizarrely clad horde of men who seemed members of no particular race but composed of all races. The breeds of the entire human family seemed to have moulded their lineaments and vari-colored their skins.

“The mangiest bunch I ever laid eyes on,” was Francis’ comment.

“They are the Caroos,” the peon muttered, betraying fear.

“And who in——” Francis began. Instantly he amended. “And who in Paradise are the Caroos?”

“They come from hell,” was the peon’s answer. “They are more savage than the Spaniard, more terrible than the Maya. They neither give nor take in marriage, nor does a priest reside among them. They are the devil’s own spawn, and their ways are the devil’s ways, only worse.”

Here the Maya arose, and, with accusing finger, denounced Leoncia for being the cause of this latest trouble. A bullet creased his shoulder and half-whirled him about.

“Drag him down!” Henry shouted to Francis. “He’s the only man who knows the knot-language; and the eyes of Chia, whatever that may mean, have not yet flashed.”

Francis obeyed, with an out-reach of arm to the old fellow’s legs, jerking him down in a crumpled, skeleton-like fall.

Henry loosed his rifle, and elicited a fusillade in response. Next, Ricardo, Francis, and the peon joined in. But the old man, still running his knots, fixed his gaze across the far rim of the foot-step upon a rugged wall of mountain beyond.

“Hold on!” shouted Francis, in a vain attempt to make himself heard above the shooting.

He was compelled to crawl from one to another and shake them into ceasing from firing. And to each, separately, he had to explain that all their ammunition was with the mules, and that they must be sparing with the little they had in their magazines and belts.

“And don’t let them hit you,” Henry warned. “They’ve got old muskets and blunderbusses that will drive holes through you the size of dinner-plates.”

An hour later, the last cartridge, save several in Francis’ automatic pistol, was gone; and to the irregular firing of the Caroos the pit replied with silence. José Mancheno was the first to guess the situation. He cautiously crept up to the edge of the pit to make sure, then signaled to the Caroos that the ammunition of the besieged was exhausted and to come on.

“Nicely trapped, senors,” he exulted down at the defenders, while from all around the rim laughter arose from the Caroos.

But the next moment the change that came over the situation was as astounding as a transformation scene in a pantomime. With wild cries of terror the Caroos were fleeing. Such was their disorder and haste that numbers of them dropped their muskets and machetes.

“Anyway, I’ll get you, Senor Buzzard,” Francis pleasantly assured Mancheno, at the same time flourishing his pistol at him.

He leveled his weapon as Mancheno fled, but reconsidered and did not draw trigger.