But it was Leoncia, looking at Francis with quiet wistfulness of pleading, seeming all but to say, “Please, for my sake,” who really caused Francis to reverse his decision.
CHAPTER XIII
A week later, out of San Antonio on a single day, three separate expeditions started for the Cordilleras. The first, mounted on mules, was composed of Henry, Francis, the peon and his ancient parent, and of several of the Solano peons, each leading a pack-mule, burdened with supplies and outfit. Old Enrico Solano, at the last moment, had been prevented from accompanying the party because of the bursting open of an old wound received in the revolutionary fighting of his youth.
Up the main street of San Antonio the cavalcade proceeded, passing the jail, the wall of which Francis had dynamited, and which was only even then being tardily rebuilt by the Jefe’s prisoners. Torres, sauntering down the street, the latest wire from Regan tucked in his pocket, saw the Morgan outfit with surprise.
“Whither away, senors?” he called.
So spontaneous that it might have been rehearsed, Francis pointed to the sky, Henry straight down at the earth, the peon to the right, and his father to the left. The curse from Torres at such impoliteness, caused all to burst into laughter, in which the mule-peons joined as they rode along.
Within the morning, at the time of the siesta hour, while all the town slept, Torres received a second surprise. This time it was the sight of Leoncia and her youngest brother, Ricardo, on mules, leading a third that was evidently loaded with a camping outfit.
The third expedition was Torres’ own, neither more nor less meager than Leoncia’s, for it was composed only of himself and one, José Mancheno, a notorious murderer of the place whom Torres, for private reasons, had saved from the buzzards of San Juan. But Torres’ plans, in the matter of an expedition, were more ambitious than they appeared. Not far up the slopes of the Cordilleras dwelt the strange tribe of the Caroos. Originally founded by runaway negro slaves of Africa and Carib slaves of the Mosquito Coast, the renegades had perpetuated themselves with stolen women of the tierra caliente and with fled women slaves like themselves. Between the Mayas beyond, and the government of the coast, this unique colony had maintained itself in semi-independence. Added to, in later days, by runaway Spanish prisoners, the Caroos had become a hotchpotch of bloods and breeds, possessing a name and a taint so bad that the then governing power of Colombia, had it not been too occupied with its own particular political grafts, would have sent armies to destroy the pest-hole. And in this pest-hole of the Caroos José Mancheno had been born of a Spanish-murderer father and a mestiza-murderess mother. And to this pest-hole José Mancheno was leading Torres in order that the commands of Thomas Regan of Wall Street might be carried out.
“Lucky we found him when we did,” Francis told Henry, as they rode at the rear of the last Maya priest.
“He’s pretty senile,” Henry nodded. “Look at him.”
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.
