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Roy Glashan's Library
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Adventure, 10 July 1924, with "The Inca's Ransom"
RAIN in ropes, interspersed with sleet in hurricane sheets, smashed down on the high and desolate ravine known as the Barranca del Brujo, the Wizard's Gorge.
That great zigzag gash in the mountain flank reared its perpendicular cliffs of cold gray sandstone fourteen thousand feet high in the thin air—which was a good six thousand higher than where vegetation died, and was cold enough to feel like the very top of the bleak world. Yet it was dwarfed by the towering mass of the great ghost mountain which loomed blurry and white and vast over its twisted head.
Chocque Chullunkaya, the Indians called it. The Golden Snow. But why, they could not say. Their fathers had called it so. That was all they knew. Twenty miles distant at least it was from the gloomy gorge; yet it seemed to impend over its very brink, as if hungry to hurl its whole mass bodily into the chasm. The storm found its wild birthplace on the vast white slopes of the place of ghosts; and as it sprang shrieking from its caves and crevasses it lifted the snow in great blankets and whirled them down to plaster them like paste against the upper face of the great spur that thrust itself in a thin wedge into the landscape.
Like a letter V it was, thin and steep and towering. At its far foot, much too tumultuous to freeze, the mountain torrent ran that had cut the gorge in the early beginning of things. Five miles along the northwest face it raced to double round the sharp, unyielding nose of the wedge and go roaring and leaping almost five miles back on the lower side before it settled down to a more orderly onslaught on the spur of Sachsahuaman and the valley of Villcamayu, where the massive masonry of the ancient Inca city of Cuzco still defies the elements, as intact as the day it was raised—which distant day no man knows.
High up on the sharp edge of this great V a jutting excrescence impended hungrily over the gorge; an outcrop of pink and pale-green dolomite which had withstood the erosion of the years and hung now exposed and threatening over the torrent. On its flat top, worn smooth by the treading of ages, scoured clean by the lashing rain and swept smooth of snow by the fierce wind, a tiny crimson tent clung. Not more than three feet high at best, and perhaps two and a half feet across its irregular base. Just such a conical mound as might be made by draping a crouching figure with a red blanket.
At long intervals the thing moved; shifted position stiffly; and then for a long interval again remained motionless. The wind tore at the crimson covering and hurled its sleet against it like shot, molding the weather side to a stiff cast over a skeleton frame. But the ragged cone clung as a limpet clings, apparently by suction. Till at last the storm devils withdrew in disgust and retired temporarily for a rest; and then the thing moved again.
A slit in its top opened, and there protruded from it a head. A skull rather, with ancient parchment stretched over its bones. Parchment that was old and brown and bald and cracked in a thousand furrows. Over the bridge of the great eagle nose and the sharp angles of the high cheek-bones it looked as if the bone were surely about to break through; and the tight-drawn slit of the lips gave no indication that they could ever open and permit speech to issue forth. A dried trophy that might have been in the collection of some head-hunter.
But the eyes! Deep-sunken, of course, in their withered sockets, and shaded like windows under low-hanging eaves of osseous bald brows. Yet like windows lighted from within; extraordinarily bright and piercing and alert. Eyes uncannily young in that withered skull.
Like an aged tortoise the head protruded from its covering and craned a lean neck to gaze unwinking into the teeth of the storm. Then it nodded slowly and withdrew itself once more to wait.
This was Winter's last raging effort; and in some queer way the wizard of the gorge knew it. By intuition or by second sight or by faith—or perhaps by that same instinct that tells a turtle or a ground-hog that Spring has arrived—he knew that the sun, whose hereditary priest and servant he was, would that day shine upon him after an absence behind the mists of five clammy months.
Rain or sleet or snow made no difference to him. He had been born in a lofty hut on the mountain scarp where the snow whirled in under the eaves and salted his mother's blanket with a fine white powder. Of his fathers and of their fathers none that he knew even a legend of had ever descended below the ten-thousand-foot levels. Tremendous lungs and immunity to cold, therefore, were his heritage almost as much as the half-forgotten lore of the ancient priesthood. So with amazing hardihood and sublime faith he waited.
And since faith can move mountains, the storm presently exhausted its rage and passed. The snow devils retreated sullenly to their caves. The rain and the sleet spat their final fury as warmer air, rising from the vast plains beyond the Cordillera, whipped over the snow peaks and scattered the concentrated moisture. The heavy clouds first thinned; then were rent in ragged sheets which raced off down the valley; and presently the sun streaked through and a little later found a wide blue patch and sent a long, watery ray to find the outpost rock where his servant waited.
Incredibly old though he was, the priest sprang to his feet with almost the alacrity of a youth. He threw the faded crimson poncho from him and stood naked in the thin beam. Lean and withered and stringy; yet erect as on that distant day when he was first initiated. He threw his long arms out to his god and stared him unwinking in the face as he chanted the greeting:
"Illappa. Inti, Ccama arajpacha. Achachi-pa jampatinya. Lord Sun, Light of the Heavens! Thine ancient servant gives thee adoration. Thy servant calls upon thee—" and so on in a long, quavering chant which came to an end with the indomitable promise of service to come:
"Thy servant makes oath before thee to protect the sacred trust. To find the accursed writing of the treasure that must never come to light. Thine ancient servant swears. Help thy servant, Lord Sun."
It was a prayer and an oath such as any young man in the full pride of his youth might have made. But the ancient priest was the last of his kind. All the others had gone before him. The sacred stock had run dry. There was no stout son to take up the trust. Gone were his people from the face of the earth. Of the Incas-yocca remained only a not very authentic history and some broken shards—and the wisdom of his fathers which had come down to him. Yet the sacred trust must be guarded inviolate.
THIS trust was the ever-recurring story of Inca treasure. All the world knows that the priests of the Inca, when they found that they were helpless to defend themselves against the ravening gold-lust of the white conquerors, buried or cast into their sacred lakes vast treasures of the metal that attracted these ruthless strangers to their land.
Half the adventurers of the world have believed that legends of the casting have persisted through the years among Indians and witch-doctors and half-breed descendants of the conquerors, and have hoped some day to trace the forgotten clues to some of the lost hoards.
The fate of some of them has been to try. Some have been bold enough to go out on a lone prospect, following the trail of a rumor. Some have been lucky enough to get possession of a tattered chart left by some other earlier adventurer. Some have been wealthy enough to organize an expensive expedition. Some have even married squaws and have been taken into Indian families.
And all of them—or very nearly all—have been disappointed. They have hunted and dug and fished; and, while a few have been lucky, the sum total of their findings has amounted to less than a hundredth part of what has been spent in the search.
And why? Because of the sacred trust. The gold was accursed, the ancient priests declared. Because of it their country was laid waste and their people slaughtered by strangers. Therefore was the veil of the huaca, the tabu, laid upon it. Never must it be spoken of nor shown. And, though the people of the Inca have vanished and their civilization is little more than a rumor, and their language has utterly disappeared, still the ancient tabu persists.
Those who know—if they know anything—lower their eyes and become wooden-faced and sullen as soon as treasure is mentioned. The curse of the tabu holds even among the descendants of the peoples who used to be the Inca's slaves. There have been adventurers of many nations who have met Indians who, they were convinced, knew. They have bribed them; they have married them; they have even tortured them as the first conquerors did. But no Indian has ever told.
All that has ever been found has come from the stories and desultory records that have been handed down through the descendants of the conquistadors.
AS HAD happened to the old wizard of the gorge. In the lake that the mountain torrent formed far below his outpost rock a great treasure had been sunken; a hundred llamas loaded with gold. In some manner a rumor of the sinking had come to one of Pizarro's adventurers, whose memoirs had come through devious handing-downs to a half-breed descendant who, during the last Fall, had arrived with assistants and with equipment to drain the sacred lake and redeem the gold that was accursed, huaca forever.
Him the ancient priest had sacrificed to the sun god. But the document, the knowledge of the secret, remained. As long as that knowledge existed the secret was in imminent danger. Therefore must the knowledge be rooted out and destroyed forever.
Then the Winter had shut down on the scene with the suddenness of the first Andean snowfall and had imprisoned the guardian of the gorge in his cave for four long months. Like an aged turtle he had returned within its depths and had subsisted on his store of broad beans and frozen potatoes, isolated from all humanity and buoyed up by his indomitable resolve to find and destroy the last shred of evidence that threatened his sacred trust before he should go to join his fathers. And now he was making oath before his god to take up the search as soon as the trails should be passable.
In Cuzco, the new city that had sprung up under the shadow of the ancient Inca capital, the half-breed descendant of the old Spanish swashbuckler had lived. That was all that the wizard knew. In Cuzco, then, among some thirty thousand inhabitants the accursed document must be sought.
Rather a hopeless task, it would seem, for an old man, feeble and illiterate and alone—and above all an Indian, a person to be spurned and thrust aside. Yet for the old wizard not quite so hopeless as it might seem. His method was strikingly simple and direct.
With the perfection of faith he prayed to his god to clear the trails with speed; and the god heard him and shone with all the sudden ardor of the Andean Spring. Within a few days the tortuous goat-track that had once been a well-kept Inca road, and which passed the very front door of the ancient cave of mysteries, was clear of snow. Clear enough for the old wizard at any rate, to whom snow meant nothing. He scrambled along the sheer mountainside with an astonishing agility and with an uncanny memory for crumbly places now covered with the treacherous honeycomb slush of Spring.
Cuzco city lay twenty miles away at the head of its historic valley of Villcamayu. Yet in some wonderful manner the old man arrived there. With his bowl-shaped felt hat and his patchy crimson poncho and baggy llama-wool pants and grass sandals he looked just like any other old Aymara Indian shuffling about the market-place.
There were white men and mestizos who would have given large sums of money to know that they were looking at one of the last of the priests of the sun; for persistent legend had it that secrets of vast treasures had been handed down from father to son along the sacred line. But nobody paid any attention to the old man. So decrepit did he appear even that nobody kicked him roughly out of his way.
The wizard came to a halt before one of a row of women who sat behind brilliantly colored blankets spread upon the bare cobbles of the market-place, upon which were displayed little piles of garden truck, potatoes and okka and quinoa and chuno. The woman looked at him once and then hastily made up a package of coca-leaves, which she thrust into his hand.
"Auquiha," she muttered. "That my father cast the eye upon my poor produce."
The wizard extended a shrunken claw from under his poncho and held it a moment, palm down, over the blanket. After that a clamor ran all down the line, begging the old man to receive their gifts. He passed along the row of blankets, and what he needed for his sustenance he accepted and gave a brief flash of his hand in return.
A young priest of the Franciscans, assistant to the good father whose perquisite it was to bless the stalls of the market with a dash of holy water and to receive therefor the customary dole, asked indignantly of his Indian servant who carried his bag who might that old man be over whom the people made such a fuss.
The Indian immediately became a bovine incarnation of dullness and said that he did not know. How should he know? It was doubtless some beggar to whom the women gave charity.
Yet a little while later, to another Indian, a youth who asked him the same question, he replied:
"That is Mamu the Soothsayer, the wizard of the Chocque Chullunkaya. Go, boy, and stand in his path and hope that he may look favorably upon you."
And the youth said:
"But Mamu the Soothsayer is dead. My father, who is old, told me that no man had looked upon his face since he was a youth. Besides, why should I, who have been to the mission school and can read my own name, crave the favor of an old man?"
So the other Indian very naturally cursed him for a pert young know-all and went his way. And the youth, being a youth, with all the curiosity that belonged to his age, went and planted himself in the way of the old man. And the old man, seeing him to be a youth, alert as well as idle, laid his withered claw upon his arm and looked with frightening keenness into his eyes from under his bald bony brows and said:
"Son, I am old and feeble; alas, very feeble. It is necessary, therefore, that you find out for me the house of one Diego de Soto, who went not so long ago into the mountains and never came back. I wait yonder in the sun. Go, and return with speed."
So the boy, who would rather have loafed the pleasant morning away in the market-place, went to inquire about the de Soto who had disappeared, and grumbled at himself for going. Still, he went.
So the whole day passed. The wizard withdrew himself into his poncho tent and waited, crouched unnoticed under the blue-and-pink tiled wall of the house of Natalia de la Vieja, the chela woman who had made her fortune through selling German anilin dyes to those who wove blankets and ponchos. His knees drawn up to his chin, and the little mound of faded crimson poncho crowned by a shapeless felt hat, he was just an old Indian asleep in the sun.
Evening came, but no youth. Still the wizard sat motionless—waiting. Time meant less to him even than to the elements. Darkness came, and still he waited, unruffled, confident that his behest was being carried out. Then at last came a man who made obeisance.
"Auquiha yatina, Father of Knowledge," he said. "My son still seeks, having gathered the help of his friends. Through the night they will seek. Let the wise one come to my poor house and rest"
So the old man went with him and huddled in a corner of the hut, silent and mysterious—and waited. Throughout that night and the next day and the next night, wrapped in the mantle of his concentration. In the following morning the boy came. He was drawn-looking and weary.
"My father," he reported, "the man who was Diego de Soto lived in the street called del Coronel, in the third house from the end. There live now his woman and his mother and his woman's brother with his woman and eight children."
Mamu the Soothsayer half-lifted his head from his knees, so that just the piercing eyes gleamed over the poncho's edge.
"Good," he said. "It is now necessary to bring me a servant of that house."
The youth looked askance, and then mutinous.
"But, my father—" he began.
The wizard interrupted him.
"Go," he said.
So the youth went. And presently there came an Indian, wondering and sullen, who said that he was a servant in the house of Diego.
Once again the old wizard half-raised his head.
"It is necessary that we be alone," he said.
Without argument the owner of the hut arose, and his woman gathered up her two children and the inevitable blanket bundle of odds and ends which always lay ready to hand; and they went out and left the wizard alone with the servant of the house of Diego.
Without preliminary or explanation the wizard proceeded to give his inexorable orders about the "writing upon parchment" which must be found—somehow, some way—and delivered to him.
The servant began to raise the first of a hundred objections. But the wizard said simply:
"I wait here. It is necessary that you use speed."
The servant became aware of just two eyes boring into his soul from the dark space between the brim of the felt hat and the drawn-up knees under the poncho. So he went.
It was evening again when he returned with the information that there had indeed been a writing upon parchment, but that the Diego who had disappeared had taken it with him to show to a white man who was going to make his fortune for him; and neither Diego nor the writing had been seen since.
Old Mamu the Soothsayer squatted silent and motionless for an hour while the servant squirmed in uneasiness before him. Then he lifted his head and made a prophecy.
"It will happen," he spoke out of his wisdom, "that that white man will come again. Perchance soon; perchance not for many years. Perchance alone; perchance with others. It is not known to me at this speaking. But surely will he come; and he will seek servants and men with mules to go with him to the Barranca del Brujo. When that day comes let word be brought to me with speed."
Then he rose for the first time in three days from his corner and wrapped his poncho about his aged limbs and went from that place. He had reached a point where he was helpless. It was necessary now to make a big magic and to cast the omens and to pray to his Lord Sun for guidance against that coming.
For he was shrewd psychologist enough to know that, if that document about treasure still existed, there was no power on earth which could keep some hardy white man or other from reading therein the call of the Red Gods and embarking upon so joyous venture.
AS A matter of fact the white man was at that moment in far-away New York, engaged in that heartbreaking preliminary which faces all would-be adventurers—the raising of the necessary capital. He sat in the library of a coldly cautious coffee king, reviewing in his mind all the arguments which he would put forth to meet the objections that successful business men always produce against all joyous ventures that can not be reckoned at a safe six or ten or fifteen per cent.
Some of the arguments he had ready to hand. He had learned them by experience; for he had been to other successful business men before, and he had learned that business minds all ran in the same groove.
Whatever had not been done by somebody else before and proved to be profitable was to be regarded with disfavor. Until there came the thousandth man with vision, having also knowledge enough about matters outside of his own direct business to see the possibilities and take a chance. After which the rest of the herd would follow madly in the successful one's wake and try, by using all the tricks known to their craft, to catch up with the far-sighted leader.
In this case he had progressed beyond the first, most difficult, barrier. His experience had taught him the necessity of starting with a dramatic story to capture his prospective "angel's" interest; and he had learned well enough to succeed during a previous interview in interesting this financier to listen to his proposition.
He had survived the period of fretful waiting while the cold man of money was "thinking it over"—which meant that the man had shown the proposition to some of his friends to pick holes in. Now at last had arrived the second interview.
The white man was hopeful—he had at least hooked his big fish. Remained to play him.
"Well, Mr. Templar," said the big man genially, "I've had your document verified, and I'm assured it checks up with what you say. I believe it to be genuine. But it is more than vague about the position of the lake. Now go ahead and convince me, if you can, that you know where the lake is, and that the gold was actually dumped into it."
Templar was ready and full of the enthusiasm of youth. He ran his fingers through his tousled, mud-colored hair far inspiration.
"All right, Mr. King, I'll spill the yarn; and I want you to try and keep in your mind that this isn't any fool pirate-treasure story. You're satisfied that the parchment is genuine. Good. You'll admit then that it's reasonable to believe that it should have come down in the family till this Diego man had sense enough to read it?"
Mr. King nodded; but was ready with his objection.
"I hope you'll admit, young man, that it's reasonable to ask, why didn't anybody else read it during all those years and go after the boodle?"
"Surely. I'll admit they must have. But what would they know about the location of a nameless ravine and a little mountain lake? It was all too vague to do anything with—and they were all maņana folk.
"Now this Diego was a breed. Half-Indian. From that side of it he knew that there was this mysterious gorge with a tabu on it and that an old witch-doctor lived there who made magic with fiends and kept the other Indians scared stiff of the place. So he had sense enough to connect two and two."
"All right. I'll consider the point made," said Mr. King with a legal reserve. "But what evidence have you that it was the right place?"
"Well, gee whiz—" the young man ran his fingers through his hair again—"I told you before. This Diego man got in touch with an American who was down there for some reason—a couple of jumps ahead of the sheriff, I imagine—and he put up some money and hired me as engineer, and we went right there and saw for ourselves."
"Ah!" Mr. King was alert. "But what makes you think that the gold was there?"
He leaned back in his heavily padded chair and lighted a cigar with a smile indicative of having put a poser.
The young man grinned cheerfully back at him and took a long breath for his final assault.
"I've got nothing but my word for the rest, Mr. King. You can check up on all the foregoing at no very great expense by just sending your own representative with me, just as though I came to you with samples of a mine. But I hope to convince you that I'm not lying."
Mr. King just nodded for him to proceed.
"Well, lemme describe the locale, first. There's the big deep ravine; shaped like a V, it is. Melting snow from the mountain up at its head forms the little river, which in turn forms little lakes as it descends. Now there's a great wedge of a cliff of metamorphose sandstone, a quartzite formation, harder than the rest, which made the stream cut round it and form the V. 'Way up on the cliff is the old witch-doctor's lookout station, a dolomite outcrop. Back of that again, sheer along the cliff face, is an old Inca road, and back of that again is the cave in which the old man lives."
Mr. King was leaning forward in his chair again, watching the young engineer's face with the interest of a hawk. Templar saw that his story held the man, and his heart thumped in his throat almost loudly enough to break the flow of his speech. He swallowed hard to get a hold on himself and continued:
"Now then, here's what happened. I started to cut off the inflow—the lake is right under the old road, you must understand—and to siphon the thing dry. Well, right from the start the old witch-doctor laid himself out to obstruct. He scared off our peons. He busted the flume. He—at least I think he did—he got rid of Diego. Anyway Diego started out to kill the old man, and he never came back."
The financier was gripping the arms of his chair, and his cigar had gone out.
"And then what?" he prompted as Templar paused to marshal his thoughts.
"Well, then—" Templar grinned in rueful reminiscence—"he beat me hands down. He turned an underground river into my lake."
"How d'you know that?" snapped the hard man of business.
"We went up into the cave and saw, that other white man and I. There was an awful chute, wet and slimy and spooky, 'way back in the bowels of the earth. The old witch-doctor was there, putting a spell on us or something; and, by golly, I believe it worked. Anyway the other man made a grab for him and slipped, and slithered into the mill-race, and in a second he was gone. In one swoop down that smooth, oily chute into the black bottom of nowhere. Then—then I got scared and ran."
There was a long silence. The cool man of far-sighted affairs slowly relaxed in his chair like a trance medium coming to life. At last, almost in a whisper—
"And then?"
Templar had no skill in spellbinding. But his very lack showed the straightforwardness of his story.
"Well, that was all," he finished lamely. "But that's how nobody else knows about the thing now but me. And that's why I believe—I mean, on account of the old wizard's determination to stop us—that the story in the parchment is true. I believe there was a huge load of gold coming along the road to pay the ransom of the Inca when Pizarro murdered him. And I believe that the priests dumped it right there. And I know that I can get it; 'cause now I know how I was beaten last time. There's no trick to cutting off the water supply, and then I can guarantee to drain the lake in a month."
Mr. King lighted himself another cigar. He had still an objection to make; one which seemed serious enough to wreck the whole project; and he was businesslikely brutal about its expression.
"Well, young man, I'm inclined to believe what you tell me. I don't think you could invent all that description; and your story sounds good enough to gamble on. But—from what you tell me, that gorge you speak of must be one of a nasty place, and I'm too old to go gallivanting about over the top of the earth on a wild treasure hunt. So if I grubstake you, as you call it, how am I to know that you won't just up and skip with the expense money?"
Templar was not hurt, or even offended—he had been meeting these men for several months. His answer was ready.
"Good enough, Mr. King. Your objection is sound, but not insurmountable. I come to you as a mining man. Now suppose this was a mine and I went to any promoter with samples. In the regular course of procedure he'd send his own representative with me to handle the funds. Half the mines in history have been opened up that way.
"Well, you can do the same thing. Don't give me any money. Send your own man along with me—anybody you want to trust. Let him hand me the expenses as they're needed."
The financier smoked furiously for some seconds. He could see no flaw in that proposal. Then he announced his decision—this one did have the faculty of making up his mind without calling a meeting of trustees and directors.
"Young man, you've sold me on that last. That sounds fair enough for anybody—provided my man can keep his end up once you've got him out there alone. But let that go for the present. Now tell me. How much will it cost? And how much do you expect for your end?"
Templar with difficulty restrained himself from grabbing his hat and throwing it up in the air and yelling. Yet in the midst of his exultation he was unable to restrain the reflection that comes to all men who risk their lives in the far corners of the earth in the pursuit of fickle fortune, and then come home to comfortably entrenched capital to look for "front-end money" to exploit their hard-won findings.
"Oh, I know the rules. Grubstake money takes half; and then five or ten per cent, more to hold control. I'm in no position to kick; and I bow before grubstake law. I dig up the knowledge. I do all the work. I take all the risk. You gamble about fifteen thousand dollars and take the better end of a split on some few millions profit."
The financier took no pains to restrain a grim smile.
"To him that hath shall be given," he quoted. "But why fifteen thousand?"
Templar was on sure ground here. He gave his details snappily and in short order. He was quoting an estimate for an engineering job now.
"About seven for equipment—that's cheap, 'cause some of my old pipe-line will be lying there and must be usable. Three in reserve in case of accidents; and five for expenses—that item comes heavy 'cause I'll have to take white labor, say four men, 'cause I'll never be able to get Indians to stay on that job.
"And what's more, if you're afraid I'm going to double-cross your man when I've got him out there, let him pick his own crew; friends of his or yours, if you like. They don't have to be horny-handed sons of toil. There's going to be no heavy labor involved in the thing; nothing that I wouldn't do myself. All I need is a little help."
The financier drummed with his fingers on the arm of his chair, reviewing in his mind the scanty list of people he had met during his business career whom he thought he could trust. Then he made his decision with the finality and swiftness which had placed him where he was in the business world.
"All right, young man; I'll play. I'll give you my nephew. A few months away from the bright lights will do the young scoundrel good. He's never done anything but play the ponies and run with a bunch of shady men and fast women. It'll be cheaper for me to send him with you than to pay his phony checks.
"Now, I'm going to be busy, and I won't have the time to go into details of this thing with you. So I'll send my nephew to get in touch with you, and you can make all further arrangements with him. You make out your papers and contracts with him, and he'll report to me whatever may be necessary."
Templar was not enthusiastic over the thought of shepherding a young waster of the bright lights. But no would-be adventurer who needs financing is ever in a position to pick and choose. Templar was glad to accept any terms. Though the sour reflection grew as he went home that there was a fine irony in the fact that this careful man of business was willing to trust a youth whom he himself condemned as a scamp, rather than himself, whose record was one of clean, hard work, simply because the former happened to be a relative. But such is the way of hard-headed men of business.
But for all that as he went down the street with long strides and began to add architectural details to the castles he would build with his half of the treasure, he suddenly did grab his hat and yell as he threw it high in the air.
SO IT came to pass that the wizard's prophecy was presently abundantly verified, to the great wonderment and awe of the peons of Cuzco marketplace. There came to him in a great flurry of excitement no less a person than a cacique, one who had acquired comparative wealth among his people through the cultivation of coca-leaf. He found the wizard crouched at the entrance of his cave, wrapped in his poncho, head and all withdrawn, as was his wont; a red mound of mystery in the sun, crowned with a battered, bowl-shaped hat. Without movement or inspection the wizard's voice came from beneath the covering.
"Be welcome, Jottua, cacique of Songo."
Whereat the cacique greatly marveled. How was he to know that the stones he dislodged as he scrambled along the precipitous path echoed like gun-fire back and forth along the top of the gorge and heralded his coming while he was still a mile away, and that the wizard from his vantage-point at the very apex of the V could peer between a split boulder created long ago by his forefathers for that purpose?
"My father," he began to report in an awed voice. "The prophesy is come true."
"I know," said the level voice beneath the poncho. "White men are in Cuzco."
The cacique clapped his hand over his mouth.
"Ow," he mumbled. "My father knows ail things. It is true. In the fica of Gomez they are, seeking mules to carry packs. Five of them. One who speaks Spanish, and four who are drunk."
"I know," repeated the wizard, and sat silent, motionless and mysterious.
It was one of the very first teachings out of the lore of the ancient priests, his forefathers, that a mantle of mystery covered many a period of indecision and thought—which is a much more effective trick of psychology than the custom of many civilized wise men who endeavor to make thinking time under cover of a flood of words. Another gem out of the observation of the ancient soothsayers was that if one sat still long enough the other would eventually speak in the sheer need of breaking the uncomfortable silence and would supply further information which could be preempted as no new thing.
The need with the squirming cacique became insistent. He dared to intrude upon the abstruse meditation of the seer with a clumsy offer.
"If my father needs the service of men those of my plantation—"
The seer interrupted him with a hasty negative. Men, open resistance, was the last thing that he desired; for then would the secret of his gorge be advertised to the world. No; he would have to contrive—somehow, someway—to outwit these white men. Five of them, with all modern science at their back. And he, a lone, feeble man with nothing but his native wit and the half-forgotten wisdom of an ancient cult.
Yet the secret of that sacred trust must be kept. It was the one dominating force in his life, as it had been in the lives of his grandfathers before him.
In some manner, quietly and without fuss, these white men must be persuaded that they followed a chimera, that there was no treasure—which would be difficult in the face of that accursed parchment. Still, somehow they must be dissuaded. Or if that should prove to be impossible—they must be utterly destroyed.
The old soothsayer made the gesture that signified that his visitor might go—it was evident that no further information was to be had. The cacique made obeisance before the huddled mound of mystery and went, unblessed, unthanked; yet satisfied with the importance of a great story to be told in the market-place about the supernatural wisdom of old Mamu the Soothsayer.
When he was alone the old man rose wearily and withdrew into the inner compartment of his cave, the chamber of mysteries where the ancient stone gods lived, and set about casting the omens of the coca-leaves to discover what craft an old and feeble man might devise against these terribly persistent white men whose strength and whose knowledge were so much greater than his own.
FOUR days later the white men arrived in the gorge below. The one who spoke Spanish and the four who were still drunk. With them came a train of mules bearing lengths of pipe and timbers and planking and tools and tents and all the mess of gear that is required for a camp in the wilderness where nothing grows at all.
The one who was sober left them all to their own devices while he jumped eagerly off his saddle mule and strode up the slope to the lip of the silver-surfaced lake in the depths of which lay his hopes.
He stood on the brink and made a quick survey of the scene; and a pleased grin began to chase the lines of harassment from his face. Things had not changed much since he was there last. The gorge was as gloomy and as grim and as desolate as ever.
Nothing other than the elements had endeavored to undo his work.
The flume that he had built to cut off the inflow from above had broken down in a few places, and the water splashed merrily into the lake. It was inconsiderable; yet from the lower end where he stood a small river roared out through the gap that he had blasted. The underground river was still doing business at the old stand. But that caused him no anxiety; he knew where to cut that off now.
His old pipe-line was almost intact. The pump had rusted beyond repair; but he had foreseen that. The proposition on the whole was very favorable. Encouragement, for the time being, took the place of worry, and he stepped down the rubble-strewn slope and set to with a will to direct the disposal of all the gear.
It was not so easy as it might have been. Each of the half-dozen mule-drivers bawled questions at him at once; and since he could not answer them all at the same time, they sat down to take things easy and let the mules wander while one of their number was being shown what to do.
Or when the busy white man yelled at them to get busy themselves and unload certain gear at a certain point, they would catch the wrong mule and deposit its load far from the spot where it was needed. Even in a narrow ravine a perfectly awful amount of labor can be expended in removing sundry mule-loads of tents and things from one place to another place where they should be set up. Templar had made camps often enough to know that he wanted a tent-mule, for instance, unloaded within three feet of the spot where the tent was to be set up; and he sweated in spite of the chill elevation as he wrangled with the mule-men, who were only one degree less stupid than their beasts.
The other four were of no assistance to him whatsoever. True, they could not—with perhaps one exception—make themselves understood to the drivers; but not one of them made the slightest effort to use his two hands and carry a package. For one thing, they were still wandering in the fog resultant upon their celebration of arrival in a country where prohibition was not; and for another, they were too appalled at the desolate prospect before them. They sat about on convenient boulders, washed-out and headachy, and mumbled their feeble disgust to one another while they absorbed consolation from their fat hip flasks.
"Holy gee, what a hole!" they told one another. And, "Sweet poppa, do we cotta live here a cola months?"
The desolate, forbidding ravine was in point of fact considerably different from the gay street of a million lights which was their ideal of existence.
However, Templar contrived to get all the confusion of gear stowed in due time, and paid off and dismissed the mule-men—who were glad enough to get out of that haunted place. Then he found time at last to stand with his hands deep in his breeches' pockets and feet wide apart and make a wry-faced survey of his crew in the environment in which they were going to work for the next few months. As he looked, the harassment and worry stole back into his face in concentrated form. They were a sorry-looking crew. On the steamer they had seemed not so very inferior to the nondescript gathering that travels on those West Coast boats; but here they surely did not fit
Not a one of the four showed the slightest promise of being a useful worker. But then, of course, they did not pretend to be. Templar had enlarged upon the fact that no really hard labor would be entailed; and these cronies of the nephew—men whom he could trust—had come along on a treasure-hunting picnic. They argued that they could easily put up with the discomforts of camp for a few months in return for the "share" of the gold which would accrue to them.
There was King, the nephew, who was just about what might have been expected from his uncle's recommendation of him. He was dressed, like all of them, in the prescribed camp costume, in nice new khaki shirt and cord breeches and high-laced boots. But he looked too much like what-the-young-man-will-wear-in-camp-this-Summer. In keeping with his costume was a face equally immaculate, bloodless and weak, physically and morally.
"Hah! Looks like a darn good dancer," was Templar's comment.
Then there was Baboon, a geologist. Tall, slender, and not ill-looking. Nothing actively bad about him. In fact the only visible thing that could be determined against him was that he was King's friend.
The other two were from a different class.
Docket, big and burly and densely ignorant; though with a certain natural cunning in his little eyes; running a little to stoutness from an easy living which he had not been brought up to. No mean portion of that easy income had been derived from tips on sure-fire winners which he had furnished for the investments of hopeful souls like King's.
Templar wondered how it came about that even a young rake like the financier's nephew could have selected this gross person for a companion. He did not know much about the life of a rake, or he would have guessed the common old story of the racetrack man who "had something on the young blood." As a matter of fact, the man held so many notes of the nephew's which the uncle must not know about that he had been able to force his client's hand and insist on being let in on the present gamble for fortune.
Then there was Marty—he had no other name—he was Jim Docket y's tout—and looked it.
A sorry looking crew indeed. Not to be utterly condemned, perhaps, in their proper sphere. But for an engineer with a job requiring manual labor they were distinctly not in the best of form.
Yet Templar—being but a young man with a project which needed finance—had not been in a position to pick and choose. The financier's nephew had the right to select his own men; and he had picked, as had his uncle, people whom he thought he could trust.
Templar's wry smile slowly contracted to one of ruminative worry. He had seen men herded together in close association in camps before. In good camps; and he had seen them go to pieces under the strain. For man, being a gregarious animal, is designed to live together in herds—not isolated by twos and threes together.
This was not going to be a good camp; and he had told them all so before they started. But their conceptions of a camp had been derived from a Saturday afternoon's automobile picnic. Templar looked them over and wondered. Very seriously did he wonder—even about himself.
His face was almost grim as he squared his shoulders and braced himself to face the first unpleasant task. He stood before them on wide-spread legs and delivered the little speech which he had thought over so often as he bad seen the necessity grow.
"Well, feelers, we're here. And here we're stuck for a couple of months. Tomorrow I'll tell you how we're going to set about the job. But there's one point I want to make clear right from the start. You feelers loaded up a mule with four cases of hooch to bring out here. Well—that mule didn't come!"
He waited for the outbreak. But the only immediate effect of his announcement was an incredulous dawning of understanding on the fuddled senses of the four.
"That's right, boys," he repeated. "I ordered it. And I'll tell you why. The last time I was here two white men got killed and the whole job flunked just because they kept themselves soused. The old wizard who lives up there isn't any kind of a fool; and he beat me out hands down. This time I'm not taking any chance of being beat."
The sense of what he was saying began to get home. As is the habit of weak men, three of them began to stir up their courage to the pitch of remonstrance by first complaining to each other about this dictator's gall. What did he think he was? Who gave him the authority to pull that line anyhow? etc. The fourth, Docket, remained silent; but much the more dangerous.
Templar showed a rare discernment in realizing that he must establish his ascendency now or not at all. He raised his voice over the growing clamor, and his jaw began to thrust itself aggressively to the fore.
"One more thing. I know that all of you shoved a couple of quarts apiece into your saddle-bags in case the baggage should be held up. Now I've seen men killed on less than that in a desert camp. And what's more, I want to get down to work tomorrow. So I'm going to frisk those bags and bust up the reserve."
This time the three were dumb with indignation. But Docket rose and stepped not very steadily up to the engineer.
"See here, sport," he growled in a habitually husky voice. "Lemme tell yuh 't you've got one — of a naive. Who the blasted — made you a boss around here? Now I'm telling yuh there ain't no — white-collar engineer coin 'to take no quart outa my bags. So whadda ya goin' ter do about it?"
He teetered back and forth as he threatened with the portentous ferocity of his kind and present condition. Templar knew enough to exercise restraint.
"Don't be a — fool, Docket," he said. "I'm going to do it; and I'm going to do it right now; and you're too drunk to put up a scrap about it. You've got too much of a load even to follow me up to where the bags are. So quit."
The cliff wall came down sheer to the ravine bottom on the side below the wizard's rock. But on the other side was a steep slope strewn with rubble and loose boulders. The tents had been pitched on a more or less flat ledge at the head of this, close up against the opposing cliff, as a natural protection against possible flood. It was quite an awkward climb at any time.
Templar scrambled up, and Docket started to follow him; bent on rescue at any price. But it was true. He was too drunk. He succeeded only in slipping and floundering about at the bottom of the slope in a series of self-created avalanches, where the other three were able to join him and help to voice the loud indignation while their self-established chief methodically ransacked their saddle-bags and smashed one after another of their precious store.
He completed the sacrifice to efficiency and stood once again wide astraddle to look down on them.
"Don't get sore about this, feelers," he urged. "You'll think differently tomorrow. Now I'm going to fix grub for tonight. Tomorrow we'll lay out a schedule. And let me give you a tip. The sun will be gone in an hour from now; and, believe me, it'll get so suddenly cold that you'll want your tents and blankets. So the tip is to lay off those hip flasks so you'll be sober enough by that time to get up here."
But they only clamored in impotent rage and mouthed curses at him.
A poor beginning for a long and dreary job.
AND Mamu the Soothsayer, flattened out on his rock high above them like a lizard, watched these things with the keenness of the great condors that circled with endless monotony high above him. And the thousand furrows of his dried-out parchment face agitated themselves; and, as he watched, they deepened; and as he watched more, they cracked; and finally spread ever so slightly; till it might almost have been said that the wizard smiled.
For full half an hour the expression remained set, almost as if the withered parchment had no resiliency of recovery in it; and at intervals he nodded, stiffly as a lizard nods in the sun. Then the sinking orb slanted coldly over the saddle-back crest of the mountain of the Golden Snow and threw the shadow of it on a deep groove carved in the hard dolomite just before his face. And suddenly, with the miraculous elasticity that his aged joints seemed capable of, he leaped to his feet and flung out his wasted arms to his god in thanksgiving for what he had seen.
"Illappa, Illappa," he called. "Inti, achachi-pa arunianva. Lord Sun! Thine ancient servant greets thee. Thy servant sees the omen of the dissension among the white ones. Great is the Lord Sun. Illappa. Ccama arajpacha!"
His thin voice carried down to them on the thin air in broken, fading echoes; and then, just as the last whisper died away, the returning waves thrown from the upper cliffs enveloped them in an eerie wailing of crescendo shrieks till all the rock-bound devils of the bleak ravine howled at them, and presently reluctantly drifted on down the gorge, whispering and whimpering, and threatening to return as some projecting angle caught the sound and flung it back.
When he could make himself heard, Templar called down to the startled four, laughing at the alarm in their faces.
"That's him. That's the old boy himself saying hello to you. Come on up and take a look at him and get introduced. 'Cause you can bet your shirt that you'll see a heap more of him before you're through."
Docket, the big burly one, shuddered. He was ignorant enough to be densely superstitious and just befuddled enough to be wildly imaginative.
"Gee," he murmured as he looked affrightedly over his shoulders as if expecting to see demoniac faces grinning out at him from every dim crevice of the cliff. "Gee! Ain't that the limit!"
But he was sober enough now to climb the slope to the cheerful shelter of the camp-fire. And the other three followed him.
THE morning was by all standards of measurement quite the worst cold gray dawn after the night before that any one of the crew had known. The sun shone in a cloudless sky, as it
would do for the next few months without a break. But at fourteen thousand feet there is no cheerful warmth to the sun's rays; and it is appalling how cold a tent can be at night—and not one of the four knew how to make the most of blankets in camp.
A very sorry crew indeed they were when Templar woke them—and rewoke them half an hour later; and again an hour after that. In addition to the heads which they had legitimately earned, their limbs ached with the effort of trying to keep warm all through a chilly night.
But the aroma of coffee and bacon acquires a totally new and potent magic at eight A.M. and fourteen thousand feet. They dragged themselves out of their tents—lest these things, as Templar shouted to them, should grow rapidly cold—and gathered round the folding mess-table, a haggard and a very miserable quartet of treasure-hunters.
Templar showed generalship in substantiating his leadership while the others were yet in a chastened mood. While they ate, he laid down the simple rules of camp.
"Listen, fellows, and you can get some cheer out of this. I've looked over things, and I can tell you right away that there's not nearly so much of a job as I had expected. Quite most of my former work stands good. All it needs is a little repair.
"We've first got to cut off the intake. There's a half a week's work fixing up that old flume that you see there; and then there's an underground feed which we must dam off above. I'll tell you about that presently. When that's done, all we'll have to do will be to sit by and watch her siphon."
"What's siphon?" grunted Docket sulkily. "Thought it was a soda-water bottle."
Templar had to think a while in order to translate his explanation into words suitable for an intelligence quotient of twelve.
"Siphon means that that pipe-line thing you see running all the way down the valley goes up over the lip of the lake and forty feet under the surface—I laid it myself and I know. Well, when we've put in a couple of new lengths here and there and rigged a pump to start suction it'll keep on going of itself due to atmospheric pressure."
Docket was intrigued, though skeptical.
"D'ya mean," he asked obtusely, "that we don't cotta keep on pumping, an' the water'll just crawl up the pipe an' keep on goin'?"
"Exactly that," said Templar as patiently as might a teacher to a backward child. "It'll keep on going at about five thousand gallons per minute; and all you'll have to do will be sit by and see that nobody comes along and gums the works."
"Chee! An' then we gets the boodle?" piped up Marty.
"Not yet. The lake is more than forty feet deep. When it empties that far we'll have to join on another length of pipe. Two more lengths ought to do it."
Even the tipster's tout had vision. He could picture to himself a lake bottom paved with gold.
"Chee!" he murmured again. "An' then we kin go in an' scoop it up?"
Templar was not cut out for a teacher; he was a doer. He was getting weary of lecturing in this kindergarten language. He took a long breath.
"No, not yet," he explained. "The gold will have been covered over with a certain amount of sludge deposit. We'll have to dig a little soft dirt. I don't imagine there'll be any need to screen it, because all this Inca gold was in ingots. But what I want you fellows to understand is that there's no real hard work to tackle; mostly waiting and keeping watch."
"Huh, suits me," growled Docket, whose resentment about yesterday's affair was beginning to reassert itself as his vitality revived under the stimulus of the coffee and bacon cooked by Templar while he slept. "Suits me; 'cause I ain't figurin' on doin' no labor."
"Not a stroke more than your share," said Templar quietly.
Docket pushed back his chair threateningly and half-rose, employing the age-old bluff of the lower grades of intelligence, indicated by ferocious demeanor accompanied by loud tone of voice.
"Not a stroke more'n I want, Mr. White-Collar Engineer; an' I don't see nothin' in sight to make me, neither."
He seemed to be imbued to an unusual extent with that resentment against all persons of a more refined station in life which marks many of his kind. Templar was unable to keep the innuendo out of his voice.
"I wonder what gentleman mishandled you at some time?" he asked.
The point was utterly lost on the man. But he bellowed a loud denial of ever having been mishandled by anybody, and added emphasis by leaning over the table and glowering down at Templar, who sat quite still with both hands in full view. It was, according to the bully's experience, the next move in the purely animal instinct of intimidation.
At this juncture his employer and his employer's friend rose to avert what impressed them as the impending slaughter of their only engineer. But the burly tipster was enjoying the full flush of confidence in the success of his bluff. He threw the restraining arms from him and enlarged upon his determination to assert his independence.
"Lay off o' me now. This flossy bird an' me's cotta come to a showdown. 'F he figures he kin come the prohibition agent on me, like he done yestiday when I wasn't feelin' good, an' then put up a play like he was a boss here, we cotta argue it out, 'n' that's all ther' is to it."
Templar squared his shoulders, as was his habit when about to embark upon action. He was still young enough to enjoy a dramatic situation, and he affected a bored tone of voice in order to accentuate it.
"Let him be, King. I don't want to call on you to control any one of the men you picked to bring here; though it's your funeral by rights. But I'd like all of you to remember one thing. What you fellows don't seem to realize is that there's not a gun in camp among you."
The burly Docket shrank visibly as the high pressure of his belligerence oozed from him, and he sat down slowly. The others followed suit, their wide eyes and nervous, picking hands registering the dawning of realization that they had come to the kind of place they had read about, where policemen were not and where they were face to face with one another as individuals uncurbed by law.
Templar grinned at them.
"Never thought of that, did you? Just came out like babes in the wood. Not a gun among you—oh, yes, I made sure of that long ago. Well—" he rose and pushed back his chair and stood over them, suddenly aggressive in his turn—"neither have I any! I don't carry a gun. For the same reason I don't allow liquor in camp."
He let the words soak in.
"Now, Mr. Docket, if you want to be sure who runs this camp, we'd better decide right now."
Docket y's mind was slow to assimilate new impressions. His little eyes flashed to the faces of the others and up to Templar's stern gaze and then back to the others, never meeting any single look and holding it—the animal uneasy. He met no encouragement. They were cowed by the coup, as he was himself. His eyes fell before the challenge in Templar's.
King relieved the situation and accepted the position by appealing to all.
"Of course there's got to be a nominal head or director or something over the work; and after all, I'm only my uncle's financial representative. So of course the boss should be Templar, who knows all about what's got to be done and all that." And he added, "Dontcher know."
"You're right," said Templar with emphasis. "And it isn't nominal either. I've been through this thing before, and I've learnt a heap; and I know how to run camp. So let's cut out the arguments and arrange schedule."
He sat down and grinned at them in all amity, now that his point was established; and they smiled back weakly—some of them. The cheerful grin faded slowly from Templar's face. He was not meeting with the straightforward response which he had been accustomed to find among the kind of men he had been accustomed to meet. He had known quarrels in other camps; but those, when they had once been decided one way or the other, had closed the incident. Nothing had been held back to rankle. But here somehow he felt that the incident was by no means closed. An uncomfortable premonition of future trouble came to him; and he wondered—very hard indeed.
The great condors circling in the thin blue ether high above craned their bald heads and turned their cold yellow eyes to watch those strange doings in the ravine. And as the condors watched, so did old Mamu the Soothsayer crane his withered neck over the edge of his rock and watch every gesture; and watching, he drew inferences of the character of each one and tabulated them against his future need to play upon them as he might contrive—which was another of the very astute teachings out of the lore of the ancient priests of the sun—as it was of the priesthood of many other peoples who had never heard of the people of the Inca.
The dominant one, he knew, of course. They had met before; and he knew him to be resourceful and terribly persistent as well as equipped with fearful magics known to the white men. Him Mamu regarded as his most dangerous adversary.
Three of the others he put down as of no account. They were weak and irresolute. Their only danger was that they had knowledge of that which must be kept secret.
But the fourth. The wizard judged him with keen attention. He was boastful; therefore vain. Loud and quarrelsome; yet controllable by a stronger will. Obviously evil-tempered. So much he could determine from the man's actions, without hearing or understanding more than varying tones of voice. A tool, the wizard counted him. To be used perhaps if need be and if the sun god would help, to destroy the others.
A situation not so hopeless for one who knew how to make use of the passions of men. In the meanwhile he could watch as tirelessly as did the great birds, the messengers of the sun god.
TEMPLAR let his amateur crew finish breakfast and light up their various selections of smoke before he introduced the distasteful subject of manual labor.
"One of the first things we've got to arrange," he began with a sly contracting of the eye-corners, "is about who takes first crack at cooking." It was a bombshell.
"Cooking? Holy gee, I don't know a thing about cooking."
"Nor me."
"Me neither."
"Aw, —, I yain't gonna do no pot-wrastlin' fer nobody."
Templar was in the delightful position of complete independence.
"All right, fellows; I don't care. I told you before we started that this camp was going to be one of the worst I've ever known. I told you you'd never be warm. I told you there was no firewood within forty miles, and all you'd ever see to bum would be chips from our scantlings. I told you there'd be no labor available. I told you you'd better bring a white cook; but you all figured you'd have to split shares with him and wouldn't do it. You all made your agreements with Mr. King with open eyes, and now it's your funeral.
"You can make any arrangement about grub you like. I'm wide open. We can each rustle our own if you want—it's inefficient; but as far as I'm concerned I'd be sure of good grub. Or, I'm willing to take my turn of eating what you fellows cook. I've been in camp before, and I've eaten worse grub than you fellows know how to spoil. Grub is the last thing to make me unhappy. I'm no sybarite."
There followed a silence full of consternation. Cooking in camp over a kerosene stove had appeared a sort of picnic idea to them from the viewpoint of far Broadway. But it took on a sinister aspect when they found themselves faced with the hard and immediate fact that somebody had to get up in the cold morning to make coffee and bacon.
Templar was human enough to enjoy the situation. There were a thousand men whom he would have chosen to bring with him rather than any one of the companions whom necessity had thrust upon him, and it gave him a sour satisfaction to see them suffer from their own deficiencies.
He let them reflect on the gloomy prospect while he went on to outline the vastly more important matter of the work that was to be done.
"Well, think over the grub prospect as we work, fellows. Here's what to do; and I'm aiming to get a start on it today. First there's the cut-off of that inflow. The flume. Half a week's work on that, and nothing that'll be heavy on your lily-white hands. Then the pipe-line. A little bit harder; but you'll be getting used to it. Three days on that. Then the big job—but no, 't isn't such a big job either—though I've more than a heap of respect for the old man of the mountain who lives up there."
Sheepish uneasiness was on the faces of all of them as they recollected the panic of the evening before. The desolate, steep-walled gorge, coupled with all its attendant discomforts, did, in point of fact, carry the impression of imprisonment in close proximity with a mysterious being of occult powers about whom they had heard so much. Docket and his tout, who sat with their backs to the wizard's outpost, both stole glances over their shoulders.
"No, not right behind your ear, Marty. It's 'way up. See that pink-and-green-streaked rock up there? And back of it the remains of the Inca road? Well, the cave mouth is just behind that hidden by the rock. Now here's the job; nothing in itself, but I've an idea it's going to be the toughest of the lot, 'cause the only place we can get at the underground flow is inside that cave."
"What underground feed?" from Baboon, the geologist.
"Well, it's this way —excuse the elementary stuff, Baboon. You fellows can all see that there's a heap more water coming down 'way up the ravine than flows into the lake here. See that big fall up there? Well, most of that runs into a natural fissure in the sandstone, which is just an arm or a tunnel of the same system of underground drainage which formed the cave where the old man lives. It runs right along through the cave and then ducks under again and comes out somewhere under the surface of this lake. I've a theory that that is why the old Incas thought this to be something queer and made it sacred, and that's why they dumped the treasure into it."
That magic word! It chased the gloom which had settled over all of them at the dismal prospect of cooking and of—to them—hard labor. They brightened up amazingly and showed immediate interest. All except Baboon. The elementary mysteries of geology had no interest for him, and the explanations were merely boring.
"What we want to know," he interrupted impatiently, "is how you're going to put a cork in that underground system and keep it out of here. I don't see any divide or watershed or anything. Suppose you do cork it up; it's got nowhere else to go. It'll just fill up the hole or the cave or the tunnel or whatever it is, and then overflow and keep right on coming."
"Just what I'm coming to," said Templar. 'The old Inca engineers cut an artificial channel and side-tracked that water. Built a stone dam right across the edge of an awful hole where the river plunged down to connect with our lake, and side-tracked the whole stream down another fissure. My guess is that they ran it off as part of their wonderful water-supply system of old Cuzco."
"Well. How'd it get back in here then?"
"That's where the old wizard came in with trumps. I had everything fixed up here; siphon going fine; and I'd reduced the water-level by nearly twenty feet when he busted the dam and flooded me out. So our job is to repair the dam. Not such an awful job in itself. Yet—I don't know—that old wizard—he's a darned shrewd old man."
Docket y's belligerent scowl came very easily to his face.
"Aw, —!" he grunted. "There ain't no old man gonna keep me from gettin' at that dough. 'F he gives any trouble leave 'm to me."
"Yah! Yuh wasn't dat noivy yestid'y," Marty jeered at him.
Docket flared out. The more readily since here was safe opportunity to reestablish some of his lost prestige.
"You shut right up. I wasn't in no shape yestid'y. I yain't scared o' that boid. No, nor nobody else neither."
The last with sulky bravado. Templar affected not to have noticed the implication. Work was to be done. He broke up the conference and tried to infect his crew with some of his own enthusiasm.
It was no very brilliant success. Work, physical labor, was an effort that was foreign to all of these people—except perhaps to Docket. But that had been a long time ago; and since those days he had developed that "line of graft" which accounted for his present comfortable condition.
Still, by dint of strenuous example, progress of a sort was achieved, though the few days estimate for the repair of the flume dragged on into ten. It was not a very shipshape job, and would never have passed the scrutiny even of an inspector of street-cleaning. But Templar let it go; after all it would not have to stand for more than a month or so, and then the gold would be theirs.
It was only the constant promise of the rich reward that kept the crew at their job at all. Each succeeding day saw them grumbling louder and snarling more readily at one another, as the soreness of their hands kept pace with the soreness of their digestions.
The food, in truth, was awful. The first lot had fallen upon the geologist, and his very best efforts seemed to indicate that he was earnestly striving to perpetuate specimens of his profession. Tempers suffered accordingly. There was nothing new about any of it. It has happened in all camps, and will so continue to happen.
"Feed the brute" is one of the wisest of our maxims; for the men are few whose souls can rise above the discomforts of a continuously unsatisfactory cuisine. Those who go out into far-away camps know it. The most Christian and forbearing of men will disclose a savage temper after a poor dinner.
In this camp all the dinners were below the minus mark of imperfection; and these men were of the great metropolitan order of sybarites, except Templar, who could eat, when occasion demanded—as can all the brethren of his craft—anything at all.
But the others. They came to mess reluctantly, with an anticipatory grumble which developed into the growling of bears as they viewed the mess which was spread before them. Baboon growled back and challenged those who didn't like it to take on the job themselves. But loudest growlers as is the custom of camps, shrank from drawing upon their own heads a similar measure of disapproval—and growled the louder therefore.
And on the top of it all, it was cold. Permanently cold—and no satisfying warmth of recuperation in meals. Quite the worst camp he had known, as Templar had warned them. He began to be uneasy about the sullen tempers of his crew.
AND as ceaselessly as the ill-omened condors, old Mamu the Soothsayer watched. He haunted them. All day the round bald dome of his skull could be distinguished peering over the edge of his rock. And every evening with the setting of the sun, just as the swift darkness was beginning to swoop down on the narrow gorge, he would leap to his feet, a ragged portent the color of a smear of blood in the last rays, and would call upon his god for inspiration to save the sacred trust of his fathers from these white men who profaned the place of the tabu.
The wailing echoes crawled up and down the ravine and added a chill premonition of their own to the prevailing dissatisfaction.
Docket the superstitious remembered some half-forgotten tale of his youth about the last of the harpists, perched upon a high crag, cursing some English invader, and he experienced an uneasy prickling of his spinal hair. He shook his fists up at the wizard and shrieked curses back at him; and then, half-ashamed at his display of nerves, growled:
"Gee, that boid gimme the willies. I'd liked to see 'm miss his step jes' oncet. Haw, haw! He'd sure flatten out some."
"If he was to miss right now, he'd likely flatten you," said King sourly. "It's a clear drop from up there."
But the old wizard had no nerves. He stood on his dizzy brink and looked down with the same beady-eyed scrutiny as did the great carrion birds from the crags. His only concern was keen observation of everything that these white men did.
Queer, the old man thought, how they quarreled and snarled at one another over their work. If they hated it so, why then did they work? There was no overseer with a whip driving them. Yet they drove themselves for the sake of the gold they coveted. How they mucked and scrabbled for that poor metal which could be used only for ornament, these white men! Of a surety they must all be mad for that metaL
Old Mamu was quite unable to conceive the extent of the physical discomfort to which they were subjecting themselves—what with the perennial cold and the high elevation that caught at their starved lungs and the wretched food that gnawed at their starved stomachs—all for the sake of the gold. But he could see the effect of their privations on their tempers.
"What wouldn't these white men do for gold?" he cogitated aloud to himself. "What had not those other white men whom the legends of his fathers told of done for gold? If the ancient records written in knotted strings were true, they had suffered inconceivable hardships and committed unthinkable crimes for that yellow stuff which could serve no useful purpose, but which seemed to have the power to make them mad."
If these men became so affected by the mere hope of finding gold at the bottom of the lake, what would they not do if they could see some of the hoard that he knew about?
Once again there came over his face the slow deepening of the thousand furrows and the thin stretching of the lips which indicated that the old man chuckled inwardly.
"Ha!" he muttered to himself with cold satisfaction. "There was a sacred trust which I am quite sure is known to no living creature but myself—and perhaps to the great condors, the sun birds, that have watched unceasingly from the beginning of time."
As if to remind him that arrogation of all knowledge to himself was a presumption, an enormous king condor—with the white bands under its wings—dropped from above in a vast volplane and hurtled down the ravine on motionless pinions in one grand, glorious swoop; so close that he could hear the swish of the wind through its great feathers and could see the cold glitter in its yellow eye.
The bird turned its bald, wattled head to look at him as it swept past and croaked sepulchrally, hoping doubtless, as did Docket, that the frail old man would lose his balance and so furnish a meal.
But to the wizard it was no other than a warning against presumption. He amended his chuckle therefore. The secret was known, of course, to the Lord Sun and to the sun birds, his messengers; but of all living human beings, to himself alone. For the ancient records knotted into colored strings had it that the priests of the sun, when they had once come to the inexorable decision that never must the fatal knowledge come to the white men, had killed off all those others, slaves and weaker vessels, who knew and might be tempted or tortured to tell.
There was a power to render a world of white men mad! There was a latent force, hidden in the heart of his hills! If these men reverted so easily toward the animal at the thought of a mere small consignment of the Inca's ransom, what would they not do if—
The old man's muttering suddenly ceased. He stood tense, quivering throughout his body, while his thin, claw-like fingers slowly closed like the grip of a raptorial bird and his beady eyes glittered as had the eye of that condor. A tremendous thought began to take form in his brain.
That condor! The sun bird!
It was a message. Lord Sun had sent his messenger with that thought! That was why the bird had come so close and had spoken so ominously. It was an inspiration direct from his god!
The ancient priest flung out his arms and cried his worship aloud.
"Illappa! Inti, Ccana arajpacha! Lord Sun, Light of the Heavens! Thine ancient' servant hears. Glorious is the Sun. Lord over all the earth!"
He left the shrill echoes to drift up and down the ravine and scuttled back into his cave, into the inner chamber of mysteries, to make a mighty wizardry.
"— OLD scarecrow!" and, "I'm gonna twist that boid's neck one o' them days," and, "What the is he crowing about now?" were some of the growls that went up from the toilers below.
Templar seized upon the opportunity to improve the shining hour with a crude attempt to play upon the psychological reactions of his crew.
"He's cussing us out, fellows, 'cause we've got the flume done and we're that much nearer to the treasure. Let's dig in on the pipe-line and fix up the siphon. Just a three-day job"—he still clung to his hopeless estimate of their capabilities—"and then we'll tackle the dam. Just a dozen blocks of stone to be put back in place. They're lying ready to hand. An easy afternoon. Then, boys, nothing to do but sit down and wait for the yellow ingots to shine up through the bottom."
A crude attempt. So might a schoolteacher have exhorted wayward pupils. How much keener a juggler of men's minds was that untutored old wizard!
The response was not so enthusiastic as might have been hoped; though quite as much as might have been expected. Dyspeptic men do not rush merrily to labor, and they are inclined to be sourly argumentative.
"Thought you said there'd be some digging to be done. How about the sediment of a few hundred years?"
"Sediment, shucks."
Templar belittled the dismal thought. "This is a rock formation. There's nothing coming down from above to settle. Sure, there'll be a little muck; must be. But, gee whiz, I can see you fellows licking that off when you get a ten-pound ingot of gold in your hands."
It was beginning to work in spite of its crudeness. That magic word was sure of response.
"—!" Docket breathed. "Ten pounds! At how much d'ja say an ounce? Twenty bucks? I'm a sonuva gun! Ther' ain't noth'n' I wouldn't lick off'n a ten-pound ingot o' gold."
"I'll bet you there ain't," was an acid comment to this. Aggravated by—
"Nor ther' ain't noth'n' yuh wouldn't do for a dozen of 'em."
The innuendos began to soak in.
Docket y's temporary flash of good humor turned to instant belligerence.
"Say!" he bellowed. "What 'n — youse guys think you're doin'? Makin' a monkey outa me? I seen you do worse than lick mud, Tommy King; and don't yuh ferget that I knows them as'd like to know it neither. Yeah, yuh don't cotta look sideways at me, brother. An' you, Marty, shut yer face right up, or—"
"Oh for —'s sake!" Templar shouted. "Let's cut out this scrapping and get down to work. Here, grab that Stillson, King, and gimme a hand; and you two fellows carry pipe. Come on, get busy."
King came meekly enough. The very thought of possible disclosures by the other cowed him. Docket, however, glared rebellion. Once started, he was the pigheaded type that hated to be foiled of his say-so. But Templar had already turned his back and was busy with the couplings of the rusted old pump.
Docket y's belligerence was the kind that required wordy argument and loud invective to rouse it to the point of active hostility—dogs show a high development of the same tendency. Lacking the counter irritation, Docket moved off to do as he was told, but satisfied his honor, as is the habit of his type, by mumbling audibly what he would do one of these days to that stuck-up louse who tried to come the boss over him.
Templar was wise enough to let it pass. Work was more important than fruitless quarreling. Some day, he knew, the inevitable conflict would come to a head; but he hoped to postpone it to the time when the work would be finished and they would be sitting waiting for the siphon to empty out the lake. Nor was he very sure what the result of that conflict would be—Docket was a big man and burly, though soft—yet it was a prime necessity that he should maintain his ascendency till the work was accomplished. After that it would not matter.
He set himself to taking out leaky sections of the heavy six-inch pipe and replacing them with new ones, affecting not to hear Docket y's slighting remarks each time he came near.
The pipe-line ran from the lip of the lake close under the cliff edge and continued on down the gorge. It rounded the sharp angle of the cliff and extended for a couple of miles in order to drop sufficiently below the lake bottom to exert the siphon suction. It was here that even Docket had to admit a grudging appreciation of Templar's foresight in having his mules unloaded exactly where he said and nowhere else; for the new sections of pipe lay close to hand where they were needed.
Otherwise it was certain that the repairs to the pipe-line would have taken very much longer than the estimated three days; for ten-foot lengths of six-inch pipe are no pretty toys for tender hands and chilled fingers to carry. As it was, the carriers worked in relays and cursed the heavy lengths of metal and one another as they panted in the unaccustomed elevation and sweated in the cold. Tempers were awful. An acrid argument between King and Baboon resulted in blows; all because one had dropped his end of the pipe they were carrying and had jarred the frozen fingers of the other.
Docket circled the scuffling pair as a malemute circles a dog fight, itching for half an excuse to join in. Templar separated the combatants with difficulty; though neither of them were fighting men by inclination. It was just that their systems had reached the point of explosion. Cooking had fallen to Marty; and his feeble-witted efforts were so bad that even Templar would have growled had it not been for his boast that food made no difference to him.
But he saw wisdom in removing Marty from office and putting the burden on King, who at least could apply intelligence to his attempt. He would more than gladly have taken over the job himself; and he knew at least the elements of palatable camp cooking.
But with his wretchedly inept crew, what could he do? There was not one of them who had even the ability of the average handy man. Their lives had been in sheltered paths where there had always been somebody else to find the hammer and drive the tack. It was as much as he could expect of them to pull half-heartedly when he said so, and to push with a feeble will at his insistent word.
Yet the job was completed at last. The pipe-line was repaired and the new pump installed. It was a double-lever hand pump which required but fifteen minutes of labor to suck the water over the lip of the lake and below the level on the other side; after which, atmospheric pressure, as Templar had vainly tried to explain to the obtuse Docket, would do the rest. Yet even Docket had to believe his ears when he heard the tinkly, rushing sound of water coursing through the pipe at high speed; and he looked eagerly from the pipe to the lake, as if expecting to see it dwindle before his eyes.
Templar was a weary man. Not because of the physical work which had fallen upon him; he was young enough and strong enough to enjoy action. But the anxiety and strain of keeping his sullen crew on the job and keeping them from flying at one another's throats had worn him out. There was no joy left in accomplishment.
"Let it rest, fellows," he said as he straightened his back stiffly. "It won't make any difference to the lake, with all that underground flow coming in. But, gosh, I wanted to make sure that the darned thing would run. Let's call it a day. Tomorrow I'll show you the way up to the cave, and we'll fix the dam; and then, thank —, we're through. And I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll cook dinner. C'm on, let's go. Marty, it's your turn to collect up tools."
Like children he had to humor them along.
The rest needed no urging to scramble down from the lake edge and up the opposite slope to the tents. Marty stayed back and sulked. He thought—and said so with shrill revilingsi—that since Templar was going to relieve King of his job, the latter ought to collect tools. He, Marty, had done his bit all morning, hadn't he?
But his was a soul as pusillanimous as it was petty. He dared not rebel. So he sat himself down by the pipe-line in the single shaft of sunlight which found its way down into the ravine and showed his defiance by smoking a cigarette instead of gathering the tools. And so isolating himself and finding no sympathy among the others, he very naturally developed a bad case of grouch. Even when they hailed him from across the way to come and partake of the first eatable meal they had had in three weeks he preferred to revel in the luxury of feeling himself ill-used. The grouch took the form of a food grouch.
He'd show them, he would. He'd come when he was good and gol durned ready. What did he care for bacon and beans? He was sick of bacon anyway. A peevishly childish mentality had Marty.
And so it happened that the tragedy that was shaping itself fell upon him. Fell with appalling swiftness out of a clear sky. Surely the direct machination of the sun god.
OLD Mamu the Soothsayer, who had seen every move of the work below and had watched the installation of the pump, knew that the second step toward the uncovering of the trust that was in his frail old hands had been accomplished. He knew nothing about the theory of a siphon or of the use of a hand pump. But he had no need to scramble back along the old road to look down and see what was happening at the other end of that long black snake of a pipeline. He had done all that the first time that this so terribly persistent engineer man had invaded his solitudes.
He knew that a solid six-inch stream of water was spouting far out from the distant nozzle and that it was all coming from his sacred lake. How it was done, he did not know. It was one of the magics that these white men possessed. Time and high time, therefore, to introduce his counter magic which he had prepared out of the wisdom that had come down to him with the lore of his forefathers. The shrewd magic of playing upon men's minds.
Ripe time to send a message of that magic which Lord Sun had put into his mind through the medium of the great bird, his messenger.
Old Mamu, therefore, staggered from his cave and stood erect upon his rock, bearing the message. An oblong thing about the length of his forearm and as thick as the span of his hand, roughly squared, with ancient tool-marks showing upon its surface; so old that the edges were softened and nibbed down. He held the thing aloft to his god's scrutiny—though it was all his frail old arms could accomplish—and cried aloud for guidance.
"Ccana arajpacha, Lord of the Heavens, is it well? Behold the message of the power that is. Is the time propitious, Lord Sun?"
"What the is the old fool up to now?" growled King, looking up with irritation from his view-point by the mess-table.
"Cussing us out because we've got the next step finished," said Templar happily. "He knows that all we've got to do is dam the underground channel in his cave; and then the treasure will be ours."
"Lord Sun, advise thy servant," the old man shrilled high above them, standing motionless, presenting his burden on stiff arms above his rapt face.
His crimson poncho flared out again with that startling effect of an ominous splotch of blood painted against the cliff face; and from below they damned him for the uneasy impression it gave.
A dark speck that floated in the thin air—surely at the very feet of the sun—watching with its telescopic eyes every little thing that happened upon the god's footstool, dropped with closed wings like a plummet to see what possible food the old man held in his hands as if about to cast it from him.
It was the direct response to the prayer. The sign that the priest awaited. He knew from many years of watching that the sun sent a shaft far down into the ravine to claim it as his own. It was proper that the message drop in that sacrosanct patch. He had no need to look. He knew exactly where it was—just below his rock.
"Lord Sun!" he cried in an ecstasy of adoration. "Thy servant sends thy message of the hidden power. Let Lord Sun guide it aright."
And he let his arms come down stiff as they were, and dropped the thing over the edge of his rock to hurtle down the path of light into the patch that the sun had chosen—the patch in which sat Marty nursing his grouch!
"MY —! Look out! Jump, for—"
Marty was aware only of a horror-stricken confusion of shrieks before the thing struck him, square between the neck and shoulders as he sat humped up beside the pipe.
For a petrified second the others caught their breath; then rushed to the spot. To their credit it must be said that not one of them gave a thought to the possibility of more deadly missiles from above. They jumped, rolled or scrambled down the rubble-strewn slope below the tents; and not one of them felt his bruises.
Templar was the first to reach the spot. He snatched the blood splashed block from the crushed thing that had been Marty and tossed it aside—receiving even in his haste a wondering impression of its weight. In the next second Docket limped up beside him, cursing with the same unconscious fury as he rubbed a wet rent above his knee. King was eager to help lift the mangled mess; but the hot red smear in his hand and the grate of mashed bones overcame him, and he turned away to be horribly sick. Baboon shrank away from the sight.
Templar arose, ash-colored and trembling.
"It's—it's no use, fellows. He's—"
He felt the surge of his bowels up to his throat and broke off to grip his jaws together and swallow hard several times.
Docket y's fiber was too coarse to feel any squeamishness, but was the more open, therefore, to fierce rage. It was not that he had any particular affection for his tout; he was but responding to the primitive man's resentment at one of his very own kind being done to death by a member of another tribe. He shook his fists up at the sacred rock and frothed threats of appalling profanity about what he would do to that old man when be should catch him. Never a very coherent person, his voice was unequal to the vehemence of his fury, and he spluttered and stammered his epithets in senseless repetition.
His rage began to affect the others as the first sick horror of the sight passed and left room for anger. Explosive growls of minor passion began to mingle with the fouler invective.
Even Templar swore that this was the limit of what could be borne. Twice before had the wizard accomplished the death of white men who sought to wrest his treasure from its hiding. And now this one. The spirit of retaliation was strong within him. As a matter of self-protection, he was persuading himself, this menace must be removed.
Yet as he framed the words and harbored the thought without any definite plan of its accomplishment, there forced itself into his intemperate anger the insinuating proviso—if possible. That wizard, feeble and helpless old man though he was, somehow seemed to win every time.
Then he shook the insinuation from his mind with angry impatience and vowed again that this tragedy must be atoned. Instinctively with his decision his reaction was to look up to the place associated with the object of his proposed vengeance.
And there the ancient bald head was visible against the sky, craning over the edge and looking down on the group.
Old Mamu, at first complimented by the eager rush of the white men to gather in the message of his god, was looking anxiously now to discover what the uproar was about that floated up to his perch. Something was wrong. This was not the reaction that the wisdom of his fathers had taught him to expect from such a message. He saw them bunched together over something. He could detect agitation, anger. But about what?
Then somebody moved and gave him a clearer view, and his keen old eyes could see it all; the whole hideous mess that his message had made. For a moment he lay as he was, thunderstruck, appalled at the result of his magic. Then understanding came to him, and he leaped to his feet with a shriek.
His long arms flung out to the sun, and his thin voice broke into high falsettos as he screamed his conviction of his faith.
"A sign! An omen! It is the sign of my fathers of old! Lord Sun has taken his sacrifice!"
Then he turned from his rock and fled.
Down in the horrible ravine the men shivered, as they always did at the cold, crawling echoes of his cry; then covered their confusion with renewed curses and angry threats of vengeance.
Babson's voice checked them. There was a choked, hysterical note in it which caused them to turn quickly. He was kneeling by the fatal message,the square-hewn block which lay where Templar had tossed it.
"Say, boys! This—this is something that's queerer than all—Say, come and look at this."
They moved toward him, half-expecting some further gruesome detail. But Baboon held the thing on his knee and regarded it with avid incredulity. He was not master of his voice.
"This—this thing. It's—Here, Templar, you take a look. You ought to know. It's—Looks to me like it's solid gold!"
"Wha-at?"
Templar remembered his impression of the weight of the thing and knelt quickly to examine it again.
It was dull yellow—where it was not smeared sticky red—and had that peculiar soft appearance which is a distinguishing mark of the virgin metal.
"Great —!" he breathed. "It—I almost believe it is! Turn it over and let's look."
Their elbows clashed as they both rubbed impatient sleeves over the stained surface, all careless of the gruesome film that hid the thing. Templar snatched for his clasp-knife and picked blindly at the blade, unable to take his eyes off the wonder, cursing softly as his thumb-nail tore. With a grunt of impatience he opened it with his teeth and picked at the soft metal. He rubbed his sleeve and picked again; then scratched tentatively at a darker, harder portion.
Slowly he lifted his head and met the eyes of Baboon, who was looking at him with the same wondering incredulity. Both whispered the same hoarse thought together.
"It isn't possible."
"If it was solid I'd believe it."
Templar spoke in excited defense of his unbelief.
"It would just be a smelted ingot. But—But, good —, man, this is ore!"
Baboon nodded.
"Friable smoky quartz," he added.
"More than three-quarters of it pure metal!" murmured Templar. "About thirty-five pounds of it!"
"And chiseled out!"
Baboon nodded at his portentous discovery.
"Cut clear out of the parent ore body!"
"Gosh! There isn't any ore that rich!" from both together again. "This is three-quarters solid gold!"
The others crowded in on the two technicians—the five-minute-old tragedy already taking a second place in the presence of that magic word—demanding translation of this incredible thing into terms fit for laymen.
"It means," said Templar, "that this isn't an ingot. It hasn't been melted and poured into a mold. That would mean nothing more than that we had a thirty-five pound lump of gold. No, this thing is native ore! It grew like that. It's been cut—not blasted, mind you, but cut—with cold-chisels out of the lode. D'you get what that means?"
"How big a body?" asked King. "Lemme see."
He dared in his eagerness to crowd Docket. That one swept him aside with a ferocious snarl.
"Git outa me road, ye louse. Hey, lemme see. Gimme it."
He pushed a large paw between Templar and Baboon and took the unbelievable sample to himself and turned it over, eying it with dull avidity. His eyes glinted up from under corrugated brows to demand clearer understanding.
"Yuh say there's more o' this?"
"These must be a vein of it. Or at least a pocket."
"How big?"
"Lord knows. But even if it's no more than a pocket, that stuff'll run over four-hundred thousand dollars to the ton! That'll be a lump about as big as a cord of wood!"
Baboon, as well as Docket and King, gasped at the visualization of what would have been mere figures otherwise.
"Gee!" muttered Docket. "Gee! An' that boid up there knows where it's at?"
The thought startled them all
"Phe-e-ewt"
A thin whistle from Baboon.
King licked a dry mouth and swallowed noisily. Templar found his voice first, though it was only a whisper.
"By —, I believe he must! Fellows, this must be the Inca mine. The lost mine—where the ransom was coming from—all of it! If we—Maybe we can bribe the old man and—if we treat him nice, maybe he'll—"
"Aw, —!"
Docket interrupted him with a short, ugh/ laugh.
"If that boid knows where it is, there ain't nothin' kin keep me from findin' out."
King mumbled agreement.
"Yeah, we'll have to find out, by hook or by crook."
Baboon nodded.
THE magic was beginning to work. Thoughts of vengeance had gone from the minds of all four; swept into oblivion by the vastly more important considerations of the possibility of propitiation.
A mine of that unbelievable richness that the old Spanish conquerors spoke of! Perhaps the mine; the source of the fabled wealth of the Incas! If that could be possible! Somewhere up in these barren mountains. A force to make a world of white men mad.
Docket broke the hard-breathing silence.
"C'm on. Let's start. How kin we get up there?"
"Out by the lower end of the gorge; then there's a place where it isn't so steep, and we can climb up to the old Inca road."
"All right. Let's get a move on."
Faces turned down the gorge, and there was a general movement, though undecided, waiting for some one to take the initiative. But Templar's engineer mind turned instinctively to the work accomplished with such difficulty.
"Somebody's got to stay and guard the works," he said. "We can't risk getting all this busted,up. And"—as an afterthought—"we've got to do something about—about Marty."
Docket whirled on him with a snarl.
"Yuh poor blasted simp! Ain't yuh got no sense? We cotta git that man. When we done that we kin fool around fixin' things."
The weight of opinion was clearly with him. A new factor had come into the uneven tenor of their way, a force that transcended all other considerations. A magic that inflamed men's brains.
Templar was stung by Docket y's aggressive tone; but he said nothing, casting about in his mind for a compromise. Docket was quick to grasp the ascendency which came with majority opinion.
"'F yuh wanna guard, go ahead and stick yourself. There ain't none of us gonna take no risk o' losin' that mine on account o' this junk you says is in the lake. We cotta look out for ourselves, ain't we? Whadda we get outa the gol durn lake? Jes' chicken-feed, that's all. More'n half of it goes to old man King. If we finds a mine independent, we splits four ways. Ain't it so?"
"You're durn right," and, "You bet," came the hearty support of the majority.
Neither Templar nor any one of the others was in any frame of mind to give sober thought to a question of ethics. The evil magic of gold by the ton was coursing hot and fast through their blood. In a more sober mood Templar would probably have compromised with his conscience by allotting a fifth share to the financier of the expedition. But just now ready irritation lay close under the surface of hysterical excitement. Wherefore Templar went beyond the just proportion in his stand for grubstake law. His shoulders squared characteristically.
"Oh! So that's how you crooks think? You'd double-cross your uncle, yeh? What difference does it make where we find gold? He grubstaked the outfit, and he gets his half of all findings."
This was direct invitation to conflict. The assertion was received with a scream.
"What? More'n half of our mine, that he never even heard of? Not while I can kick!"
"Nor I, by —!"
"No, nor me neither."
Docket thrust his face aggressively close to Templar's, his jaw protruding and his lips curled down at the corners. Battle for the gold that he considered his was in evidence in every line of his body.
"See here, feelers, this here's cotta come to a showdown. Now listen. Me, I ain't gonna give up no half o' my share to no man. Git that! I'm square, I am. I gits an even quarter of what we makes outa our mine. 'F youse guys wants ter make presents to your uncles an' friends, go ahead an' make 'em But me—" his jaw thrust itself out, ferociously threatening—"I keeps my quarter. Now whadda ya gonna do about it?"
The other two came into the argument with loud approval. In spite of the aggressive one's blatant assertion of self-interest pure and simple, they were ready to accept him as champion of a principle by which they hoped to profit.
The aggressive challenge of the jaw was more than excited nerves could resist. What Templar did was to hit it. It was not so heavy a blow as he had intended; for one reason because he had never learned to hit effectively, and effective punching requires skill; and for another, because his toe, which was to give lift to the punch, slipped with the loose gravel which rolled from under it, and so lost most of its weight.
Docket y's reply was the throaty arrgh of any other animal coming to the grapple, rage and pain and lust of long-deferred battle combined. He swung both hands heavily, inexpertly. The one, Templar guarded with his own outflung arm; the other got home on his face. He drove a hard left which stopped Docket y's rush for a moment; and then his foot slipped again over the gravel, and he fell fortunately inside of the arc of the next ferocious swing. They locked in a clinch and wrestled.
There was no skill in the method of either of them. They fought just as any other two of the many millions who have never had a glove on in their lives. Neither knew how to break from a clinch with advantage and unscathed. So they clung and stamped and pulley-hauled till the treacherous gravel gave way from under their boots, and they fell, clinging still and dragging each other to the ground. There they wrestled and rolled and ground each other's elbows and shoulder-blades into the knobbly stones.
It was just the rough-and-tumble of two big men who had no skill. They panted and grunted with effort as they struggled to snatch free an arm every now and then to deliver a blow. And they rolled. Like scuffling cats they rolled till the slope they came to was steeper than where a pair of struggling men could control themselves. So they rolled on down, panting and snarling, into the icy little river that was the overflow from the lake.
Which was quite sufficient to put an end to the conflict. Both men were bruised and shaken enough by the fall to be glad of a respite; and the sudden gasping chill of a plunge into that icy water was sufficient to dampen the hottest ardor of battle.
So that when King and Baboon helped them to scramble out and took upon themselves the belated role of peace-makers, neither of the combatants found himself sufficiently a winner to be anxious to push the matter to a finish.
It was all very unsatisfactory and indecisive and very inglorious. Just another added to the long lost of similar outbursts that have been part of the history of most gold strikes. The only point that was settled by the struggle was that they would now not be able to make the proposed surprise visit on the wizard till the next day. For the way was roundabout and long; and time had been lost; and it was very urgently necessary that the combatants strip and warm their chilled circulations and change into dry clothes as the first immediately necessary precaution against the fierce pneumonia of those Andean altitudes which strikes at a white man's starved lungs with the sudden virulence of a clammy snake.
For the rest, nothing was settled. Docket was not satisfied that he could not make himself boss of the camp. Nor had Templar succeeded in establishing his own ascendency. Both remained dissatisfied and bellicose, and neither had the complete support of the other two.
Surely was the magic working that the old wizard had made.
Templar was able to understand it to some extent. He had seen gold camps before. He laughed sourly as he rasped at his back with a rough towel.
"We're a bunch of fools, fellows; scrapping about the division of a mine which we haven't got; something we're only guessing about. Maybe the old man doesn't know anything anyhow."
But the others were loth to give up their sudden brilliant dream.
"He must know. Everybody says that those old witch-doctors have all kinds of secrets.
"Sure he knows; else why would he have thrown that brick? He wasn't aiming to mash Marty, or he'd have used any old rock.
"You bet he knows; and what's more, he wants us to come up."
"Maybe there's a trap in it somewhere; but I, for one, am darn well going to see."
"Ah, now you're talking," Templar agreed with them. "I'm willing to believe that he may know something; but nothing on earth will persuade me that he wants to tell us. I know that old man; and I'm telling you that he's nobody's fool. There's a trap in it somewhere, I'll lay my hat. I'm game to start right out tomorrow with the rest of you and see what we can do to persuade him to talk. But take it from me, he's got a trick up his sleeve."
"Betcha life we'll persuade him to talk," was Docket y's grim obsession. "Leave'm to me, gents. All I says is, get ahold of him. Youse kin try your moral-suasion stuff all yuh likes, W then give'm to me. I'll make 'm talk; an' I don't want no more'n my quarter share neither. I'm square."
Templar was willing to let it go at that, for the present at all events.
"All right; let's cut out the arguments and call it a go. Suits me. And now, fellows, there's a job on hand. I don't know about you; but I'm going to use a digging-tooL"
He took a spade, and with a set face, without turning his head, went down to the stream bed where a patch of sand showed. Baboon and King followed him, and presentLy Docket.
When it was all over and they were back at the tents, cheerfulness amounting almost to cordiality reasserted itself. It was impossible to refrain from rosy speculations about the possibility of the wizard knowing something about the location of that miraculous mine that furnished the Inca's ransom, and the further possibility then of inducing him to reveal the stupendous secret; and from that, in a single bound, to ways and means of removing all that mass of gold without being robbed of an ingot or two, or without paying a just tax to the Government of the country—for such is the way of that magic metal that has the power to make men mad.
"Well!" Templar ruffled his hair and sat back and ended the futile discussion with:
"Let's sleep on it. Tomorrow we'll have a showdown of the old man's tricks."
So they turned in and slept, wearily enough, for they had had a strenuous day; yet not too wearily to be regaled with the wildest of dreams. It was a more contented camp than it had been since the day of its inception.
AND while they slept and dreamed of the vast treasure that would be theirs old Mamu the wizard crouched in his cave and planned how to keep from them even the little treasure that lay in the sacred lake. For he had no tricks at all—yet.
His god had sent him a message and an idea, and he had obeyed. Perhaps—if he helped himself to the utmost of his poor power—his god would help him again to maintain the trust that his fathers had handed down through the long years.
In the great inner chamber of his cave he crouched before the feet of two gigantically tall stone figures which towered up into the gloom beyond the flickering light of his torch of yareta moss from the high slopes below the snow line. Between the two monoliths—which looked surprisingly like totem poles—was a great slab or seat of stone, square-hewn with the scrupulous care of the old workmen of the Inca.
The old man muttered a long half-hour of prayers or incantations or something, and then rose with reverence and pressed with all his feeble strength upon the farther edge of the stone slab. With a harsh grating of stone upon stone it pivoted upon its middle and swung downward, disclosing a dark, square hole. A fine dust of ages floated up as the lid jarred back against its counterpoise.
The wizard brought his torch and peered into the ancient coffer. With solemn veneration he made the sign of the circle and the square, and then he reached his wasted arm into the depths and brought forth a mass of colored strings, knotted in long lengths and short lengths with knots of many queer shapes and designs. Carefully he sorted the mass into individual bundles.
Held in the hand, they looked like mere tangles of string. But the wizard selected three out of the indistinguishable mess and laid them out on the floor. Before these he knelt and sorted out the lines and laid them in set designs according to some sort of formula which he muttered constantly to himself.
The individual bundles, starting each with its thicker main stem, and branching out into minor lines and leaders, formed, when the rite was completed, a design for all the world like the pattern of a family tree. Over them the soothsayer pored and traced the designs with a skinny forefinger and muttered his findings to himself.
These were the quipus of the Inca, the lore of the ancient priests before him, recorded in the string writing of their craft. Others in the general tangle were the history of his lost people. With these he was not concerned. What he studied now was the wisdom of his fathers. The three books he had chosen dealt with the treasure in the lake, the cave of mysteries in which he lived, and the mine; and he read in them the tale of their beginnings and the precautions and incantations and curses which the wise ones before him had discovered and laid down for their keeping.
For long hours he read, far into the night. And then at last he lifted his head and sat staring out into the farther blackness, motionless for another hour, till slowly, by the dying light of the last of seven torches, it might have been seen that the thousand furrows of the aged parchment face wrinkled and spread and cracked yet a little deeper. The wizard smiled.
THE morning broke cold and crisp and propitious. The sun shone, of course—though it would be full four hours before it would climb high enough to send its feeble warmth into the ravine. But for all that Templar was not compelled to wake each sleeper three or four times before the party gathered, grouchy and shivering, round a belated ten-o'clock breakfast.
Today they were up and eager. Nobody cursed the coffee nor slandered the bacon. The meal was no more acrimonious than that of any party of amateur auto-campers on a chill Fall morning in the Adirondacks. It was accomplished without a quarrel; and the party was ready to start out on the glorious prospect by seven A.M.
Every man was heavily armed with a brace of flashlights in addition to a patent miner's lamp which burned carbid and fastened by a spring to the front of their hats—Templar's canny provision against the work he had expected to do in the cave. He suggested in addition a length of rope.
"That old Inca road is little more than a legend, and some of it will be Alpine climbing," he said. "We may find a rope darn useful to tie ourselves together with."
"Yeah, bring a rope," Docket agreed with a gruff laugh. "We'll be needin' it to tie somebody up with—an' I could mebbe use the end of it too—with a cola knots tied in p'r'aps, if yer gentle Christian 'suasion don't work. What all presents yer figurin' on showin' him?"
"Darned if I know really."
Templar frowned as he pushed his hat back to run his fingers through his hair for inspiration.
"I've got a compass and a radio dial watch that buzzes an alarm and a mess of sardines and such. But I don't know what more to offer."
"More? Say, what more dja wanna give that boid? He's noth'n but a naked cannibal, ain't he? An' here's you givin' up the only grub 'at we kin eat. Lay offa that. Give 'm a shoit an' a hat an' a prayer-book. That's what those guys always gits."
"Oh, let him have the sardines." This from Baboon. "After all, that isn't much to give for an Inca mine."
"Not a clasp-knife or something instead of grub," was King's contention.
The question was already developing into an argument. Templar took swift measures.
"Oh, for Pete's sake, let's take it all and see what he wants."
And so, loaded down with the whole collection, they set out to make their propitiatory visit on the old wizard who had lived a hundred years—or possibly more—without any of these things.
The way up to the ruined path was not very far. After debouching from the gorge the sheer cliff began to change to a softer formation. Falls of eroded sandstone and long slides scarred the steep face every now and then till, some two miles farther, a steep, boulder-stream slope offered the possibility of a stiff climb up to where the thin, almost defaced thread showed where had once been a proud highway.
Such slopes have a way of looking quite easy of negotiation from the bottom. Templar regarded it with skepticism; but the others loudly insisted that the thing offered no difficulties for them—they were all young men, not cripples; and they were in much too impatient a mood to go scouting several miles farther till they should find a more favorable place.
They reckoned without the heart-breaking effect of an altitude of fourteen thousand feet on unaccustomed lungs—to say nothing of dyspeptic stomachs. Still, the climb was accomplished—for the incentive was great. Something over a thousand feet it was, at an average angle of eighty degrees—and it took them an hour and a half. They reached the path with no worse physical hurt than sundry bruises. But in the inverse ratio had their tempers suffered.
King, physically in the poorest condition, was particularly savage—though all of them, for that matter, lay on their stomachs on the path, which was hardly more than a ledge, and gasped for breath in great shuddering sobs, straining their bursting lungs for the oxygen that thin air had little of to offer. But King's plight was more serious. Nearly an hour passed—while the others growled their impatience at him—before the acute pain in his lungs and the pounding in his overstrained heart subsided sufficiently to permit him to proceed.
And then it was found that he was one of those people whose nervous systems were unable to face altitudes. The narrow, crumbling path with its sheer slides and appalling precipices made him dizzy to the extent of compelling him to shrink against the cliff wall and cover his eyes and shriek that he could never take another step. The rope proved to be a godsend. They tied him between two of themselves, Alpine fashion, and dragged him with them—all of which was no sort of restorative for ragged tempers.
The quite unreasonable reaction of the three who were not too terrified to be vindictive was an impulse to vent their spleen on the poor old wizard who was the direct cause of all this effort. Baboon merely damned indiscriminately with King at each alternate check. Docket of course was savagely animal.
"I'm a mutt if I come this here hike for nothin'," he swore through gritted teeth as he longed to kick King, whose place in the line was before him. "'F that old duck don't wanna talk, an' durn quick, too, you watch me. Gosh blast yuh, Tommy King, ye yellow pup, if yuh don't get on I'll cut loose. Wait till I git me hands on that bald-headed old coot. It'll cost him two mines to pay for this. Git on there, ye louse."
Even Templar was exasperated to the point of being in accord with stern measures if the old man should prove to be recalcitrant. Three times before had the old wizard, feeble and old and untutored though he was, foiled him in spite of all his youth and modern science. But not this time, he swore to himself with set teeth and outthrust chin.
When at last they came round the sharp bend and found themselves looking into the dark mouth of the great cave, they were a crew of men much too grim and determined to experience any of that creepy hesitation which comes to those about to plunge into the black bowels of the earth.
They waited only to adjust their lamps before entering—and found that each of them had brought a nice new shiny carbid lamp, and that Templar had shoved a can of carbid in with the sardines; but none of them, in the excitement of the start, had thought of water.
"There's water in there, of course," said Templar. "But it's 'way back in the inner chamber and—Good Lord!
He checked himself in dismay.
"There was a stone door or something. I don't know whether it closed or not—was too scared to look. Maybe it's—"
"Aw, —!" Docket snarled his impatience. "What in blazes does it matter? We got flashlights, ain't we? C'm on."
The mouth of the great cave was wide enough to admit light to a considerable depth. What had once been a broad, well-trodden floor was now littered with fallen stalactites. Baboon was quick to notice that stalagmite formations were entirely absent, and his early training impelled him to put the question to Templar.
"Must have been," said the more practical engineer briefly, occupied as he was in picking his way between fallen columns after Docket, who blundered ahead into the growing dimness. "But they must have been cleared away. This place was a meeting-place for the old witch-doctors, or a temple or something. There's queer carvings and gods and things inside. A weird, spooky place. But, my gosh, I hadn't time to examine anything."
The cave widened rather than narrowed as they progressed. A high-vaulted chamber it became, extending away and losing itself in the farther gloom. Dark angles behind protruding crags of its walls opened out into jagged grottos or black passages leading away Heaven knew where.
A hundred wizards might hide in those gloomy fissures and never be found. Templar voiced the warning that possibly an ambush might await them in the dark; that that might have been the object of the cunning old man in sending the golden lure. But Docket only snarled and plunged on. He was like a questing hound, hot on the scent of far-followed game.
"Well, bear to the right then," Templar called. "The door to the inner chamber is somewhere that side."
They stumbled along in pitch blackness now, and of necessity drew closer together; for flashlight illumination at best throws false perspective and deceptive shadows. Unconsciously, too, they lowered their voices. The black silence of the inner earth was beginning to have its effect on them. Docket y's growling expletives at each fresh hindrance of fallen obstacles died down to low mutterings and exasperated hisses of expelled breath. The cave began to narrow down, and the air was oppressive in its eery stillness.
"It seems to me," Templar ventured uneasily, "that we've come an awful long way. That door ought to have been somewhere before this."
Docket turned on him with his ready snarl.
"Well, gosh blast yuh, whyn't yuh keep yer eyes open? You've been here before, ain't yuh? Do I cotta run this show all by meself?"
Unconsciously, it seemed, the more aggressive one had assumed the leadership. Templar resented the usurpation as well as the domineering tone; but somehow unconsciously in turn he seemed to feel a queer lack of authority over this expedition after the projection into it of that potent metal that turns things so topsy-turvy. Instead of asserting himself he began to offer an excuse.
"Well, gee whiz, when I was here last I wasn't in any condition to take notes. I tell you, that old man had me scared so I was—"
"Wh oo-oo-oo-ie-ee-ee-ee!" The sudden thing that shrieked at them out of the blackness was answered by the high-pitched scream of King's overwrought nerves as he dropped his flash torch and made a wild plunge to cling to the arm of the nearest man; and his shuddering sobs mingled with the ensuing cluck and gurgle of demoniac laughter.
The instinctive reaction to fear caused them to bunch together and stand frozen, shooting wavering rays in every fearful direction and expecting attack by they didn't know what.
The chill silence that followed was dense, almost a thing tangible.
"What was that?"
It was Docket y's hoarse whisper, forgetting for once to swear.
Since nothing moved. Their frozen pulses began to return to normal and thump in their extremities to recover lost time.
"Bats," hazarded Baboon hopefully.
"Devils," said Templar. "The Indians last time swore that the old Inca priests kept them here to eat up intruders."
Docket believed implicitly in the spiritual power of priests and in a personal deviL But they had to be his own priests; and in foreign spooks he believed not at all—for his priests had told him there weren't any. Beyond that his imagination was unable to go. His courage began to ooze back to him. He was as brave as any other animal. With his courage his normal speech returned to him.
"I'll bet it's a gosh blasted trick o' that lousy sonuva crooked — ter scare us off. An' if he's pullin' a game to scare us, he's in there somewheres to do it. An' I'm — well goin' in after him, an' when I ketch him%mdash;"
The threat culminated in an oath, and he plunged forward again, shooting his flash beam into the darkness, full of vindictive aggression once more.
The cave closed in rapidly. The walls of both sides could dimly be discerned ahead in the ray of a single torch. They seemed to be smoother, and the stalactite formations seemed to have ceased. Templar called on Docket to wait.
"Hold on a minute. I think I hear water trickling somewhere. Lemme listen."
They halted and listened to the beating of their own hearts. Though there was a drip of water somewhere in front. Then suddenly, almost in their faces—
"Whee-ee-ee-ee-ee!"
Another wild voice shrieked the agony of tortured ghosts, and then chuckled scummy glee at their impulsive bunching together.
It was Baboon who laughed, though shakily still.
"Shucks, it's the old cistern trick. We might have known it."
The relief was tinged with irritation at his own obtuseness. Templar was able to laugh weakly with him.
"Sure, that's it. They do the same thing in Borneo in the tabu-groves, only there they use bamboos. If we hadn't been so jumpy, all of us, we'd have thought of it right away."
"What cistern trick?"
Docket demanded elucidation, thrusting his heavy shoulders and heavier face into the white circle of Templar's torch.
"Tanks in the rock with a float gadget to empty it out with a whoosh when it's full. Same thing as you've got at home. Suction through a smaller hole in the rock or through a reed pipe causes the whistle. Witch-doctors over half the world make their devil talk that way."
Docket was quite unable to visualize the thing. But he turned eagerly to plunge forward again.
"All righto. Here's where I runs this rat to earth."
"He won't be there. It's automatic. We've got to scout back and find the opening into the inner chamber."
Docket y's singleness of purpose was that of a carnivore engaged in the business of its life—which is hunting prey. Until he found resistance he wasted no time in argument. He about-faced and plunged forward on the back trail.
"C'm on then," was all he growled over his shoulder. But Templar shouted after him: "Hey, wait a minute. We've got to find that trickle of water and fill our carbid lights."
Docket growled bearishly at the delay. But he retraced his steps and permitted his lamp to be filled morosely as though granting a favor, and grumbling at Templar the while for not having kept his eyes open.
Templar let it pass. He was busily anxious, speculating on reasons and motives.
"Those tooters don't run forever," he said to Baboon, as being the only one who could offer any intelligent advice. "They'd wear out or choke up. There must be a plug or a cork or something that the wizard pulls out when he wants to work the devil-devil. Now why'd he want to pull that silly trick on us? I give him credit for more cleverness than to imagine we'd be scared clean away. What's back of it?"
Docket allowed Baboon no time to theorize. He was fretting over the delay as it was.
"Aw, —, what's it matter?" he jeered with pointed insult. "What you lice gettin' cold feet about? C'm on. Do I cotta git this boid all be meself?"
Templar's irritation at the overbearing manner was reaching a climax. His fists slowly began to clench as the sting went home. He looked at Babson's face, clear and white in the glare from his own headlight. Hot resentment was there too; but Baboon was not a physical type. He could do nothing to avenge insult; and for that reason was all the more prone to nurse an ingrowing anger. Templar felt constrained to let the thing pass once more.
"Oh, all right. Go ahead," he said shortly and let Docket take the lead.
Perhaps it was just that that the shrewd old wizard was playing for. Perhaps Templar was not giving him credit enough for an uncanny cleverness in playing upon the raw edges of jangled nerves and losing no smallest chance of rasping them just a little bit more.
At all events, whether by accident or design, the effect was surely there, and growing apace. Templar and Baboon followed in morose silence. King stumbled along, physically miserable to the point of peevish desperation.
And then, on the top of all the dissatisfaction, came the climax of the door. They found it easily enough with their brilliant carbid head-lights; but they found with it another frenzied delay.
The living rock wall had been hewn down to the form of a massive gateway, upon the lintel and the frames of which were carved in bold relief the emblems of the disk and the square and the serpent; and in the gateway was set the door, fitted with all the accurate skill of the old Inca labor.
And the door was a single great block of stone.
"Argh!"
Docket shouted a throaty snarl as he threw his weight against it and looked for a handle or a key-hole or something.
"How in does this accursed thing open?"
And he kicked at it savagely—and squealed his immediate rage again and pain as he cast about rapidly for something to hit it with.
With a growling oath he snatched up a block of fallen stalactite and smashed it against the obstructing face. It did not even sound hollow. Massive and square and immune it stood, fitted like the everlasting walls of ancient Cuzco, so closely that the blade of a knife could scarcely be inserted between it and the solid wall of which it was almost a part.
"There must be a lever or a counterweight or something somewhere," Templar suggested with quick anxiety. "If only we can find it! Scout around."
So they scouted, diligently and with such patience as they could control. But the lever or whatever it might have been had been constructed by the cleverest stone-workers that the world has known, and it had not been intended in that constructing that it should be found by the uninitiated.
Docket whined a continuous stream of blasphemy and tore at the thing with his nails. The rocks that he hurled at it formed a little pile at its base.
"How thick is this blasted thing?" he shouted at Templar at last.
Templar caught the inference. He was beginning to be affected by the other's crazy impatience.
"See here, fellows, there's another way down," he told them. "There's a fissure out near the mouth of this condemned cave; and that opens up into a crack, and then a chimney. It comes out a little above the lake. It's a stiff climb; but I made it once before. I think maybe Docket can make it too; so—"
"Say!" Docket flared out at him. "If youse kin do it I kin. But I ain't gonna. See? I'm gonna set right here an see that this son uva mutt don't git outa here with my billion-dollar mine. Yuh beat it on down an' fetch up a bunch o' sticks, an' we'll blow this blasted thing clean outen the other end o'—."
SO TEMPLAR left them to snarl at one another and made his way down the fissure he spoke of. It was a long, thin crack where the cliff face was preparing some day to peel off and thunder down into the ravine. A stiff climb, as he had said, and quite impossible for the two weaker members; probably also for Docket, who was heavy and whose muscles bad grown flabby during his recent years of easy living; which was the reason why Templar had not suggested that route in the first instance. But for an active man the descent was not too dangerous.
The long crack—like a giant knife-cut that had not completed the slice—was partially filled with rubble. It was at the lower end that the knife-cut, had reached bottom and formed the chimney. By pressing one's back against one face and one's feet into little ledges and niches in the other which had obviously been cut for that purpose long ago, it was quite possible to reach the ravine in half an hour.
Templar reached the camp safely in spite of the excited hurry with which he negotiated the chimney. His first thought was to satisfy his original suspicion about the possible object of the sending of that golden lure which had so effectively cleared the camp of defenders. But everything was exactly as it has been left. Nobody had been there. No little animal had nosed about the cook-tent—there were no little animals.
The silence and desolation of the place caught at Templar's imagination and almost frightened him. He shivered. The worst camp he had known. Worse by far than he had expected when he had told that to his crew.
A malignant influence surely haunted the place. Never had he worked with any group of men who had so consistently shirked. Never had he seen nerves frazzle out so completely under the influence of physical discomforts. It was true, he had never known any other camp where the cold was so terribly persistent, or that was quite so barren and desolate, or where the food had been so impossible. But even so, he could not understand—he was more phlegmatic himself—why those other less evenly balanced ones should have gone to pieces so easily; so out of hand that there remained no authority but that of force.
Instinctively he looked up to the wizard's rock, almost as if expecting to see some visible evidence of the influence which he felt sure came from there. But the painted outpost was as desolate as the sacred—or was it accursed?—ravine itself.
He shivered again and made haste to gather up a dozen sticks of dynamite with a box of percussion caps and the necessary fuse—and as an afterthought a couple of hand drills and single-jack hammers, with a pair of steel-tipped levers and a coil of line.
Then he scrambled back up the watercourse with a haste as if something might be clutching at his heels. Nor did his uneasiness leave him till he was once more at the foot of the deep crack that grinned menacingly down upon the ravine which it would one day smother beneath itself.
He tied his bundle of tools to one end of the line and fastened the other to his belt, and tackled the long ascent without delay. It was in point of fact easier than the descent—since he could see the niches and cracks before his face—but it was much harder on the lungs. On the ledge which marked the top of the chimney he lay and rested till his breath came easily again. Then he pulled the bundle up and swung it on his back. Fifteen minutes later he rejoined the others.
Without wasting time in futile questions as to whether everything was all right he marked out the points in the door face where he proposed to plant his charges and forthwith attacked one of them himself.
"There's a job for one of you fellows," he said shortly.
For the first time since the expedition had started Docket did not hang back to see whether somebody else would not offer to take on the job.
"Gimme," he growled, and snatched up the other drill and hammer; and for the first time he worked to the best of his ability.
He was inexpert and clumsy with the tools; but he had strength, and he employed it with a savage grunt to each stroke.
Time sped on, and Docket only grunted the harder, though his hammer arm must have ached frightfully. Babson's offer to take a spell was refused with an insulting jeer at his slender frame. King merely sat about and whined that it was long past the lunch hour. Templar curtly ordered him to shut up.
"Guess five shots will do," he said to Docket. "Keep it up, old-timer."
Docket y's reply was only his habitual snarl. He worked with the frenzied energy of a terrier at a rat-hole, desperate lest the rat escape before the hole should be large enough. Templar's experience was much the greater; yet he finished drilling only three holes to the other's two.
At long last the five were completed.
Templar planted his charges with critical care and stood with match ready to light the fuses.
"We'd better get clear out of the cave," he warned, "because stalactites are liable to fall with the explosion."
"But, I'll be gol durned if I do," swore Docket. "What, git out an' give that boid a chancet to escape? Not by a sight. I sticks right where I kin keep my eye on the hole."
And he did.
The explosion roared and thundered through the cave in rolling billows of sound which spread and diffused, and then came pressing back as if projected independently by the walls and ceilings. From distant passages echoes crackled back with startling reports as loud as the crash of falling stalactites, which in turn started the echoes off again.
A careful labor contractor would have forbidden entry for full fifteen minutes for fear of loosened masses of lime formation being jarred free by the mere vibration of footsteps. But the three rushed in before even the first wave of echoes reached them, and found Docket crouching like a baseball catcher before a jagged hole through which filtered a dim light.
His little eyes were gleaming with avid excitement, and Templar noticed for the first time that his long upper lip was as mobile as an ape's.
"He's in there," he whispered—as if precaution were necessary after that explosion. "I kin see a light."
He cast a hurried glance over his shoulder and then started to crawl through the opening.
"Maybe he's waiting there with a gang or a club or something?" suggested Baboon.
But, "Aw, —!" was all the muffled derision that came back from the hole.
Docket y's legs followed his shoulders in an entirely natural manner. There was no sound resembling a dull thud followed by the rapid disappearance of his limbs. His voice spat profanity from within quite up to the normal. The others scrambled through after him without mishap to their heads as they came through the hole. No gang confronted them with upraised clubs or spears.
In fact, nobody confronted them at all.
The dim light was daylight. High up on their right-hand side as they stood with their backs to the door, blinking astonishment, was a crevice in the chamber wall, through which a thin shaft of sunlight streamed and formed an oval patch on the floor.
By its radiation they could distinguish, directly opposite to them, the tall stone gods which towered up into the dimness. Behind these, carved deep in the rock face, the symbol of the sun, the disk with the radiating wavy lines, cut with extraordinary craft and polished so that the utmost possible light reflected from its thousand facets. The thing caught up the beams of their acetylene head-lights and seemed to glow with uncanny radiance; so that the stone gods stood out against it, black and towering and menacing.
Stone seats hewn out of the rock face and carved with queer figures ran the length of the chamber as far as they could see. Away to the gloomy right, from the direction of the source of the light—which meant in the direction of the cliff face—came the sound of rushing water. To the left the chamber stretched away as vast and as irregular as the outer cave, and as full of deep hiding-places.
Vast and solemn and empty it stood, with the added touch of menace imparted by the great stone gods. Those persons are few who do not experience a sense of creepy awe at entering an ancient and deserted place of worship; the impression of haunting ghosts is irresistible.
But Docket felt none of these things any more than would a jaguar of the lower plains. He leaped in the air and stamped both feet on the ground together in his fury and shook his clenched fists above his head and cursed through gritted teeth. The additional check left him with no more control over his temper than that same jaguar.
But his fury had to pass. That kind of spasm could not last. Sheer exhaustion brought him to a pause, and he stood breathing stertorously. If he could have laid hands on the old man at that moment neither age nor decrepitude would have protected him from hideous violence. His unbridled rage gave him authority.
"We're goin' ter search every gosh-blasted hole in this here cave," he announced. "We'll separate an' take 'em systematic. An' you, Tom King, you're no blamed good f'r anythin' else, you'll set here an' watch this door, an' if yuh see'm, yell."
King was ill-advised enough to demur that be did not want to be left alone while the others searched. Docket leaped at him with the roar of a charging cougar and shook him by the throat till his head lolled limp.
"Yuh poor gosh-blasted louse, yell stay where ye're darn well told. An' if yuh quit an' he gits by, I'll tear the guts outa yuh with me two hands. Now git that."
He left King in a chattering heap by the door and strode off into the upper gloom, calling curtly to Templar to take the lower end and ordering Baboon to go with himself. Neither felt like inviting a similar exhibition of savagery upon themselves, and they obeyed—though Templar, for one, burned with hot indignation.
IT WAS hours later when Templar and Baboon met again in the same place, both dispirited and sullen.
"There's miles of twisty passages leading into the middle of the world," said the former. "We could grow old looking for him; and then I believe he'd outlive us. Take it from me, Baboon, that old man is hardly human."
Baboon sat down without a word and buried his head between his knees. He was very tired. Presently he lifted his head and suggested sourly that King might as well do some searching if he wanted to earn a share in the hoped-for wealth. To which pleasant thought there was no answer.
Truly was that shrewd old wizard hardly human in his wisdom.
A far bellowing for help roused them from their dangerous introspection. Templar shrugged sullenly and rose to his feet without enthusiasm.
"I'll bet a hat I know what's the matter. That — fool has just carried on like a gorilla till his light's gone out on him, and now he's stuck. Do him good to leave him."
But he relighted his lamp and went to the rescue; and found it exactly as he had guessed. The carbid in Docket y's lamp was exhausted, and he had dropped his flash torch in his impetuous haste and smashed as well as lost it. His first thanks to his rescuer was—
"Why in — didn't yuh tell me't these blank-blasted things didn't run no more'n an hour?"
Templar led him back to the light—which was slanting very pale now through the far crevice. He was too dispirited to argue; and he slumped down on a stone seat. But Docket y's energy in pursuit of the wealth which he already considered his was astounding. His shirt was torn; his knees were scraped; his face haggard from the wearing force of his own passions and streaked with grime; a thin trickle of dried blood clung to his forehead where he had bumped it in the dark. But he called loudly for the carbid can and proceeded to replenish his lamp.
"Oh, gee, what's the use?" Templar remonstrated. "There's a million passages and back alleys, and this guy has lived here for a hundred years. He could dodge us forever. But I've got an idea that'll fetch him—if he hasn't beaten it already. I'm thinking maybe he up and quit yesterday when he saw that he had killed Marty."
The thought struck Docket like a blow. He stood, feet wide apart, arms hanging from loose shoulders, head thrust forward, while his face went the whole gamut of evil emotions—from its existing high tension of avarice with its wide eyes and twitching nostrils, through loose-lipped incredulity while the dull mind battled with a new and unwelcome idea; back to the dominant one of twisted, heavy-jowled rage.
"Y-Yuh—yuh!" he stuttered, advancing on Templar with hands curling and uncurling tike talons, while he tried to set his tongue to some epithet which would do justice to the occasion. "Yuh—Blast yuh! 'F yuh'd 'a' come yest'day right away when I wanted 'stead o' pullin' the movin'-pitcher hero stuff 'bout plantin' out a stiff that wouldn't give a — one way or t'other, we'd a got him."
Templar remained sitting as he was. He was too dispirited to quarrel; and since, even in the case of so bellicose a person as Docket, it takes two to make a fight, conflict was averted.
"For Pete's sake, shut up!" he snapped. "It was as much your fault as mine. If you hadn't raised objections we'd have got a start anyhow. So cut out that line of stuff. Now if you fellows want to listen to the idea I've been chewing on for the last hour or so, shut up and listen.
"It's this: Down there is the underground stream that's keeping the lake full; and there's the busted dam. I've just been looking it over. It isn't much of a job; there's all the stone blocks lying right to hand. Well, let's fix up the dam. That'll mean that with this inflow cut off and our siphon working, the lake is going.to keep emptying out. Getting closer to that treasure, see? Now, if the old man hasn't quit the country he'll sure come along some time or other to gum the works. So two of us can watch up here and the other two can guard camp, and we'll get him both ways—and if we don't, anyway we'll get the other stuff."
Ring and Baboon grasped the strategy at once. The only fear they expressed was as to who would have to keep guard in that awful cave. Docket was slower to assimilate the idea, standing with loose Up and vacant stare as it soaked in. Then he gave as much grudging acquiescence as he was capable of.
"Say, bo, that's the foist wise thing yuh said since I known yuh. I ain't scared o' stayin' here; an' I don't care who watches with me neither—even if it's King."
A cunning gleam began to come into his eyes as an idea of his own grew; and he proceeded to endorse the plan with enthusiasm. If the party were divided up into two, he began to see; and if he should be one of the two who might catch the wizard and wring the knowledge of the fabulous mine from him, why then what need that the other two should ever know anything about it at all? A half-share was just twice as much as a quarter-share. And the probability was that the wizard would come to wreck the repaired dam.
Cunning, once given a start, multiplies itself apace. So Docket restated his assertion under the camouflage of braggadocio. He wasn't afraid of staying in that cave a week. And since a good man would be needed at the other end too, let Templar guard his — old pipe-line, and let him have King here. He was an old friend of Tommy King's, and they'd get on splendidly together.
For just a moment the horrible thought assailed him: What if the wizard should be caught at the camp? But he dismissed it in the next instant. With Templar there it would be all right; the poor fool would probably play straight—though that again might mean a fifth share for old man King. Still—
"WeLL, all right then, youse guys, let's get a move on an' fix them sluiceways," he bellowed with boisterous cordiality and a resumption of his energy. "The sooner the better, I says. C'm on, Mr. Engineer, an' show us the works."
Templar scrambled through the shattered doorway and brought back with him the steel-tipped levers which they had left outside in the hurry of their eager entry. With a short warning as to the need of precaution against slipping he led the way.
At the far end of the cave, parallel to where they knew the cliff face must be, ran a swift stream. From a black fissure to the left it came, and followed the same great cleft through to the right. A clammy path of roughly -cut steps followed it. Within some seventy yards or so the stream suddenly disappeared.
Their lights showed them buttresses of square-hewn stone against which the dark water swirled and piled up on itself before converging to the middle and plunging with an oily schloop through a space of some five feet. From there it glided in a silent, continuous toboggan-slide down a long, steep chute that lost itself in the black depths. From far below somewhere the muffled roar of subterranean waters came up to them.
"That's what comes up in the bottom of our lake somewhere," Templar told them. "Here are the blocks that used to be in the center of the dam before the old man pulled them out—though how he managed to handle them is a miracle. When we've put 'em back the water will run along this artificial channel and follow the fissure down to the right wherever the old Inca engineers wanted it to go when they built it."
An awesome place it was, as Templar recollected with a shudder, for a man alone in the black bowels of the earth. But for four white men together, well supplied with lights, there was no mystery; nor, as he had said, much of a job.
The blocks that had been hastily taken from the center of the little dam had been merely tossed to the right to fill up the channel. A reversal of the process was all that was required.
Though it was not without danger; for the surface on which they stood was smooth rock, scummy with the undried spray of ages; and a misstep or a slip would have meant one swift, awful swoop into the bottom of nowhere.
"Right here," Templar told the others, "is where the old wizard somehow managed to slide that other white man. So watch your step."
The warning was scarcely necessary. The place held sufficient suggestion of dread in itself to urge the very extremity of care. King and Baboon, as a matter of fact, shuddered at sight of that swirling, swift current, and all they would do was to lever the blocks of stone to the edge of the dam and leave them there for the other two who had the stronger nerves to work into place, thereby giving Docket the splendid satisfaction of jeering to his heart's content at their pusillanimity.
But it was done at last, and without mishap. The long, black chute was dry. The stream boiled up against the rebuilt dam and surged round into the artificial channel, to disappear into some other far fissure that the ancient Inca engineers had found a use for.
Somewhere out and far down Templar knew that his siphon was emptying out the lake at the rate of five thousand gallons per minute. And he knew that the wizard would know it too, very shortly if not already; and then, if he still existed, he would surely be lured to one of the two places to do his feeble utmost to protect the sacred trust of his fathers.
And then they discovered that they were very weary men indeed. Stiffly they made their way back to the lighted shrine of the stone gods—and found that the light was gone from the cleft in the roof. A series of disquieting realizations began to break upon their weary souls.
It was night. They could never get back to camp in the darkness. They were hungry—famished with the ache of dyspeptic stomachs. They were wet. It was cold—gosh, how clammily cold! They had no change of raiment. No blankets. No fire!
And the only offset to all these chill discomforts was cold sardines!
Their faces supplied a study of emotions. Sheer, stark misery on King's. Fear, imaginings of sickness, on Babson's. The apathy of utter weariness—he had climbed most—on Templar's. Furtive consideration of self-protection at the expense of everything else on Docket y's.
Gradually all the expressions merged into one—the fretful ill temper of cold, tired, hungry men. A word, a look or a gesture would have been a spark sufficient to flare up into a savage quarrel—and each man knew it—and nobody cared very much. Their nerves were on the extreme edge of hysterical explosion, careless of results. And there was but one saving factor. And that was that they were too tired to fight.
Templar had long ago given up hope of controlling his crew in amity together. In fact, since the arrival in their midst of that death-dealing mass of the metal that has the power to make men mad, he had hardly been able to regard them as his crew any longer. Their condition had by some invisible transition grown to be that of four individuals who had nothing in common to band them together except a mutual dependence on one another for the achievement of a common gain—and some of them were not so very necessary at that. They had reached the point—which other people who have hunted that same metal have known—of each man for himself.
Templar smiled a smile that was twisted and grim.
"Well, fellows," he said wearily, "I don't know what you're going to do. It doesn't seem to be up to me to make arrangements any more anyway. But I've got to have some sleep. When I freeze I'll get up and run about. If any one of you knows a better hole, hop to it."
King was beset with anxious fears.
"What about keeping watch? What if the old man comes and murders us in our sleep?"
Docket y's reaction was the exact opposite.
"What if the son of a mutt was to creep outa the door?"
"I don't know," said Templar. "And I don't care. If anybody wants to watch, let him. If he'll wake me in a few hours, I'll take a spell—I'll be frozen enough to be awake anyhow. But right now I'm dead."
And with that he stretched himself out on a stone bench. He was the only one who was willing to own up to it that he was too weary of body and soul to care about consequences. The others were just as weary, or more so. And so it happened that presently, in spite of the cold and the wet and appalling discomfort, they all slept somehow in snatches somewhere.
THEY groaned and cursed their several ways back to a numbed consciousness to find a dim light filtering once again through the cleft in the high ceiling. Reflected light, from which they knew it was still morning; for it was the afternoon sun that cast its direct ray upon the floor.
Painfully they stretched and shivered, and peevishly they swore. With motion and the awakening of their sluggish vitality hunger immediately reasserted its presence. Forlorn instinct made them look about their cheerless surroundings in the vain hope of discovering something to eat. Suddenly Baboon gripped Templar by the arm.
"My God, what's that?"
He pointed.
With a unanimous nervous start all faces turned in the direction of the tall stone gods.
In the dimness upon the stone coffer between their feet a figure crouched. Shrunken and shapeless and indistinguishable except for a pair of extraordinarily bright eyes that seemed to glow with internal fire while they regarded the group with motionless impassivity.
"By goshalmighty, it's him!" Docket shouted.
All his rabid desire was instantly to the fore; and he rushed to lay hands on the ghostly bundle before it should suddenly vanish into the surrounding shadows.
But like a hound that charges with loud outcry upon a coldly confident cat which refuses to budge, something in the chilly glitter of those uncanny eyes restrained him. His impetuous rush slowed up, and his eager, clutching hands dropped to his sides, and he remained standing in foolish indecision a few feet distant. The others came up and joined him in a respectful half-circle. It was like a monarch giving audience.
Then the ancient wizard performed a miracle.
"Buenos dias,seņores," he said in Spanish.
That was something nobody had thought about in their frantic rush to capture the old man and extort the knowledge they so avidly desired. How would they have communicated? Templar knew Spanish; and Baboon had picked up a working knowledge of the same during the desultory practise of his profession. But it was surely miraculous that the old hermit had lived through some far chapter of his life in which he had acquired a knowledge of the tongue.
They stood in foolish silence, nobody knowing just what to say; till Docket y's dominant urge took the form of—
"Ask him what he wants."
All his intemperate resolutions of the day before had melted down to that. He had come raging, filled with the savage determination of laying down the law of what he wanted. And now the best he could produce was a husky whisper of—
"Ask him what he wants."
The bald dome of the withered head was faintly visible against the darker background of rock. The crimson poncho merged into it. Only the eyes glowed out of the dimness; and from somewhere below them the voice came again. It seemed to have understood, or at least to have expected, the question.
"The white men have a writing which tells of the treasure in the sacred lake. They have come with the white men's magics and have builded a tube which sucks the water out of the lake. They have come with their youth and their strength and have closed the way of the underground water. The magic of the white men is greater than my poor magic, and their strength is greater than my strength, who am old; alas, very feeble and very old."
Templar's heart leaped. That much then at least was sure. There was a treasure in the lake. But quick suspicion followed after. What was it that the old man wanted? Why was he apparently willing to capitulate, when he might comfortably have murdered them—or at all events, some of them—in their sleep?
"What's he say? What's he talkin' about? Blast yuh, why dontcha tell us?"
Docket y's insistent clamor was at his ear, working himself up to a frenzy of suspicion that vital information was being withheld.
"Shut up," Templar told him testily. "I'm finding out."
And he found his tongue at last to answer the old man.
"Even so it is, wizard. But why have you made resistance? Why may we not by virtue of our magics take that treasure that lies unused? Why should the wizard fight with the white men? It is our desire to be at peace. We bring gifts. Look, I will show."
The voice lost some of its passionless monotony, though the dim heap remained motionless still. It was a bitter cry from the depths of a dejected soul
"What are your gifts, white man, to me who have failed in my old age to keep the trust that my fathers handed down to me? Faithfully have I wrought to keep that trust; but, alas, I am old. I am old and my strength has gone from me. The treasure that I have failed to guard will be taken by the white men; the gold that my fathers cursed."
The cracked old voice assumed the rhythm of a chant, a prescribed litany of his faith.
"Accursed is the gold for all time; as my fathers cursed it when it came to pay the ransom of that holy one whom the white men slew for its sake. For the sake of gold did they slay the holy one, the last of the Inca stock. For the sake of gold did they ravish the land. For the sake of gold are my people a forgotten legend. Therefore is the gold accursed. Therefore—" sudden determination fired the frail accents, and the eyes glowed with the menace of lusty youth—"never must the white men find the gold. Nor will they ever find it."
Templar was half-mesmerized by the jeremiad chant, and then suddenly taken aback at the change of tone.
"Gee whiz!" he murmured. "Gee whiz!"
And he ran his fingers with nervous hesitation through his hair. But antagonism began to grow in response to the threat of foreordained failure.
"Well, dientro, viejo, What's to prevent us going ahead and taking it, now that the magic machinery is all working?"
Weary resignation was in the old man's voice.
"Lord Sun has sent a message, and his servant obeys. In exchange for that writing, says the Lord Sun, must I show the place, the mother of the gold that was coming as a part of the price of that holy one's life."
"Whoop! Whee-eel" came a simultaneous yell from both Templar and Baboon. "He's going to show us the mine!"
And in their hysterical elation they shook hands exultantly all round; even with Docket, their smoldering hate for the moment forgotten. The latter had to express his glee more boisterously. He thumped King, good old pal Tommy, in the back, and gave vent to incoherent bellows while he seized Baboon to force him round in an ungainly dance.
The old man sat motionless and regarded these antics of the superior white men with impassive silence, "though perhaps—in the prevailing dimness it was not possible to see the deep furrows of the parchment face—there was some expression, possibly in the eyes, of a cold, passionless amusement.
Templar, in spite of his wild elation, was assailed again by swift suspicion—he had more than a considerable respect for the old wizard's cunning. His decision to pit his wits against the old man's in adroit cross-examination was instant.
"But, wizard, tell me. If the gold is indeed accursed and never to be found by the white men, why then are you willing to show us many times more gold than is in the lake? Is not that other also a trust?"
The old man's answer was a simple and direct statement of his abiding faith.
"Lord Sun has sent the message, and I have spoken with the spirits of the wise ones who were before me. The matter is beyond my hands—which are old and feeble. Lord Sun will protect his own from the white men."
Templar translated the oracle. The others laughed in careless amusement. Docket growled:
"Huh! 'F that's all that's stoppin' us I ain't worryin' none. But yuh tell the old monkey if he tries to pull any monkeyshines I'll take an' handle him like he won't fergit. An', hey, ask him if there's plenty of it."
Templar felt that the old man was antagonistic enough; that he was doing what he did only as some mysterious sort of duty which he hated. There was nothing to be gained by antagonizing him further. He translated only the last.
"It is as a bone in the teeth of the mountain, white man. Far up in the mountain called Chocque Chullunkaya, the Golden Snow, though the reason for the name has been forgotten. It is a long journey, and I am old. When the Lord Sun stands in the middle of his heaven we start from here. Ask no more. I must make preparation. I am old and very feeble."
He withdrew into his poncho and remained a mute, shapeless bundle.
"Golly!" Templar reported in an awe-stricken voice. "There must be an outcrop of the vein right in sight."
He would not have been human if he could have kept his mind from racing away into a brilliant future of automobiles and mansions and servants. A dozen pictures formed and faded in his wildly careering brain in the fractional space of time before Docket demanded explanation of the technical phrase.
"What 'zat mean" in dollars?"
"Lord knows!" Templar replied. "Anything you can think of. If the vein is as rich as the sample, and if there's anything of it at all, you can figure a billion easy."
Docket had no very accurate conception of what a billion was. But he knew it meant a vast sum of money. He guffawed and went into his dreams of affluence. Only his were verbal.
"Gee," he gloated. "Gee! One-quarter of a billion plunks! Watch me knock 'em cold in Luigi's with me layout! Me with a brace o' swell Janes an' the sky bein' the limit. Me, presidin' over the political club; district leader with a cola dozen cops on me payroll. Me, with the biggest diamond in me shoit in Broadway. Say, feelers, with a quarter share of a billion berries you'll think I was the fire department comin' along."
"A fifth share," Templar cut in coldly on his rhapsody.
Instantly the other bristled, and his voice changed from the coarse gloating to the loud intimidative. Almost in the dim light did he bulk huge and hairy.
"Say now, bo. Yuh cut that line right out. Old man King ain't got nothin' to do with this here mine, and he don't get no cut-in. How about it, Tommy? Whadda yuh say? Yer uncle ain't done nothin' to help us on this deal."
Tommy King would have been foolhardy indeed to gainsay that commanding appeal. And in any case the gross god of avarice had already fired him with drunken dreams. He was perfectly willing to double-cross his uncle—nor would it be the first time. Backed by Docket, he felt brave enough to raise his voice in angry assertion of his rights.
"Quarter-share, sure. How d'you get that way, Templar? If you want to make the old man a present, you can stay behind and give him the whole blamed lake; that's what he paid for. But we aren't going to give up our legitimate findings."
"There y' are. See? That's how we all thinks."
Docket shouted his triumph. Then his voice rose louder and more menacing as he advanced upon Templar.
"Now git this straight, young fella. There ain't yuh nor no other —— son of a weak-livered mutt gonna do me outa my share o' my own findin's. Now whadda yuh say?"
THE psychology of authority is a queer thing. Templar, vested with authority as leader of the expedition, would have fought to maintain his dominion. Now as a single unit in a disorganized gang—which was what they had sunk to—and with the majority opinion against him, he shrank from conflict with the more belligerent animal over a question of ethics which—it seemed more and more as the fabulous wealth grew more tangible—was not so very important after all. In fact this shrinking from assertion of himself was what he had been doing all through the previous day.
"Oh, for Pete's sake, don't let's argue," he growled. "We've got other things to do. We've got to get down to camp and fetch grub and blankets and what-not. If we're going to start at midday we haven't time to scrap about anything. Time enough to argue about division when we begin to get the stuff out. So what's the use of scrapping now?"
Docket was quick to grasp his usurped domination.
"Yeah, yuh better say that," he growled with derisive complacency. "There ain't no use o' scrappin' with me, buddy, an' don't yuh fergit it neither. And what's more, if there's any orders given around here it's me that's givin' 'em. Git that."
Templar, having permitted his spirit to submit to the first challenge, was inevitably started on the swift road to subjection. It would require a considerable effort of will to rouse himself to that self-conception of equality which would entail struggle for mastery. He burned hot with shame for his own weakness; but he left the triumph to Docket—temporarily at all events. He rose to his feet to cover his confusion and announced:
"Well, I'm going down to camp by the short cut—that's all there's time for; and somebody's got to come with me"—aimed at Docket with an attempt at self-assertion. "I've got to fetch that chart that he wants and grub and blankets and stuff, and I can't carry all that stuff up alone."
Docket got it all right.
"Huh? S'pose yuh mean me, yeah? Well, there ain't no cotta. But I'll come, 'cause these poor lice can't make it.
"An' listen, youse two. Ye'll set right here an' see't the old man don't git away. 'F he ain't here when we gits back, youse hadn't better be neither."
Already he was showing his domination The two said no word. Their thoughts were their own, and the blacker for repression. Templar was already crawling through the hole in the door. Docket looked round once, swelled his shoulders and chest in emphasis and lumbered after him, actually looking as he felt—twice as large as he had been.
His demeanor during the stiff descent was more grossly domineering than ever. For it began to be forced on his perception that Templar was in much the better physical condition. His own breath was coming in painful gasps while the latter was in no particular distress.
In the camp he became insufferable. His crude tendency was to hold ascendency and display authority by mere volume of words. His tone was loud and bullying. He couched his conversation in the form of orders. He entered violent controversies against every article that Templar selected—and Templar stood it all with short answers and a hardening of the face and a squaring of the shoulders. Much too dense was Docket to understand that there was a point beyond which a man whose spirit had not been entirely broken could not be driven.
The ascent was a further revelation to him, amounting to a shock. He decided to negotiate the chimney first, Templar below him. He found himself painfully winded at sixty feet; and there was fully half that distance to go yet before he could swing himself over the ledge that offered comparative safety. His back began to grow limp and his legs wabbled with the strain of the upthrust. There came an occasion when one foot, pushing unsteadily against the shallow niches, found no hold, and the weight of his body, sustained only by the other and by thrusting his back against the opposite face of the chimney, became too much for his muscles. He began to sink, clawing at the cliff face before him till Templar from below was able to find his free foot and thrust it securely into a hold.
Docket began to realize the unstable foundation of his domination. He reached the ledge finally and lay loose-lipped and panting, utterly played out. A growing fear was in his eyes; and with its grew the extreme cunning of desperation.
He lay in the direct path and panted, affecting to be unable to move, while he kept Templar in the strained position of sitting on nothing. This was strategy. When at last he rolled over and left room for Templar to scramble up, he lay and panted loudly still and let Templar pull up the heavy load of gear. No sooner was it up, and Templar panting now from his exertions, than Docket rose to his feet with alacrity and made his way along the ledge to where it merged into the deep crack in the cliff face.
Here he turned. His time was ripe and his opportunity to establish his ascendency once and for all was at hand. He stood on higher ground than Templar, in a more favorable position, and the latter had had no opportunity for rest. His face assumed the brutal expression of intimidation as he faced the other.
"See here, bo," he growled. "Yuh been pretty fresh down there in the camp; and I figure the time has come fer a showdown. We might's well settle it right here an' now as any other time. Now, what about them shares? Four or five?"
"Five," snapped Templar without a second's hesitation.
"Yeah? I don't think. Now listen, yuh poor son of a gun. What I'm telling yuh goes."
He added a string of the invectives that no man may accept.
Templar's spirit had been schooling itself during the last smoldering hour to a reassertion of its lost self-respect. The flash point had been reached. Docket y's jaw was thrust invitingly forward; and Templar was deluded in his access of fury into swinging for it with all his force.
It was what Docket had played for. His ready arm parried the blow and his equally ready fist smashed a counter into Templar's forehead. Then he closed. The advantage was all his. He was rested, and the slope added to his weight. Templar was borne backward, his spine bent at an excruciating angle. There was hardly space enough in that narrow cleft to turn the tables, even if he had had the strength.
He fought back with desperate pluck, and an occasional half-arm jolt found the savage face which gritted down so close above his own.
But the blows were ineffectual—the position was too strained—and they served only to rouse the fighting animal in his opponent to that state of insensate fury where thought ceases and the only conscious desire is the savage impulse to rend, to tear, to gouge.
He battered Templar's face. He used the foul trick of the knee. He dashed the other's body or head, as opportunity offered, against the rock wall. Anything to inflict hurt.
He felt his opponent begin to sag, and he knew that the crafty victory was his. He was exhausted enough with his own vicious efforts to feel the need of a respite. He threw the limp figure from him, therefore, with a last triumphant grunt of:
"There, that'll teach yuh. Ye lousy son of a mutt! I'll show yuh who's boss around here."
Templar reeled back from the thrust, dazed and staggering. Back he lurched, and back. In the scuffle they had come very near to the ledge—perhaps that was strategy too. There were not more than four or five paces to go altogether.
Templar, dizzy, limp, and reeling, went!
Docket caught at his breath. His heart pounded in his head as he steadied himself against the rock wall and stared at the empty place where the other had been. Horror was in his eyes. The deadly fear that comes to a man who has killed. But presently as his breath came more regularly thought began to return; and with thought, a comforting reflection that they had come where policemen were not. Horror began to be tinged with satisfaction; and satisfaction in turn with a growing greed. Slowly he went to the edge and knelt to look down. Ninety feet it was to the bottom, and the tumbled rocks were jagged.
He rose and collected up the bundle of gear. A twisted grin was on his loose lips, and in his little eyes was only greed, full-grown and unrepentant. A one-third share, after all, was considerably better than a fifth.
He swung the bundles on to his back and scrambled on up the cleft to rejoin the wizard who would show him a vast store of that metal which has the power to make men mad, and of which one-third was his.
HIS truculence as he entered the inner chamber was repellent of questioning. "Gee!" King told him with relief. "We thought you were never coming. The old man's fussing to get started. He says it's a long hike."
"Well, I'm here now, ain't I?" Docket snarled back at him. "I'm ready. 'F you're in such a blasted hurry, y' kin eat as we go along. I ain't keepin' nobody waitin'."
King subsided into sulky repression. But Baboon asked him with a sly satisfaction:
"Who hit you in the eye and cut up your face like that? And where's Templar?"
Docket slouched close up to him and thrust his face within a foot of the other's.
"Templar's gonna guard camp 'cause I told him to. Now 's there anythin' else yuh wanna know?"
Babson's eyes fell, and he moved away. Docket swaggered up to the wizard, who still crouched between the feet of his gods as if he were a part of the altar vestments.
"All right, old buzzard," he bellowed. "I'm ready. Get a move on an' show us the boodle."
The wizard remained as motionless as the stone upon which he sat. Only the voice came from somewhere near the apex of the huddled heap.
"The writing?"
Baboon called the translation sulkily from where he stood.
"Oh, the chart."
Docket showed confusion.
"Tell'm Templar stuffed it in's shoit an' he's got it yet."
The wizard never moved. Only the extraordinarily brilliant eyes which missed no detail of anything gave a sign of life. They bored into the black soul of the bully with piercing keenness for a long minute. Then at last the old man nodded with slow satisfaction, and a wasted claw emerged from under the poncho and beckoned to Baboon. He came obediently to the summons. The claw pointed at Docket y's chest.
"Tell him," said the wizard enigmatically, "that the omen is proof that the wisdom of my fathers is a true wisdom. The magic of the golden message that their wisdom taught me to make works as their wisdom prophesied. It is well; for that other one was clever and might have saved you. Now am I satisfied that the Lord Sun will utterly destroy all of you who seek to lay bare his secrets."
"What 'z he say?" growled Docket.
"Oh, I don't know," grumbled Baboon. "He always talks in riddles. Something about all of us going to get sunstroke or something."
Docket laughed in bearish derision. But speech without a threat was not possible for him. The loud laugh changed to the habitual growl.
"Tell'm we ain't worryin' about no sunstroke; an' all he's cotta do is don't try no funny business—yeah, an' hurry up. I'm all set."
The blood-red bundle stirred at last. Stiffly and with many cracks of the joint a wasted leg unfolded itself from beneath the poncho and lowered itself to the ground. There was a rest, as if to restore circulation, and then the other leg followed. With the extremity of deliberation the wizard set about his preparations, which were astonishingly simple for the long journey promised.
Out of a dim corner he took an embroidered bag, faded and threadbare and apparently as old as himself. He peered into it and pawed over its contents. Then he nodded with the slow reflection of age.
From another recess he produced an ancient drum and squatted with it between his knees to test its resonance. Light, swift taps with bony fingers which seemed suddenly to be imbued with an extraordinary vitality produced a booming roar which reverberated through the cave. Again the old wizard nodded slow satisfaction. There was an ominously impressive air of inevitable finality about everything the old man did, an absolute conviction that events would come out according to preordained schedule. The dim, uncertain light added a momentous significance to each deliberate action.
Baboon felt the uneasy impulse to ask—
"What are all the trappings for, old man?"
The wizard squinted up at him from under hairless brows.
"I do not know, white man," he answered Babson's query. "The matter is outside of my hands—I, who am old and have failed. The wisdom of my fathers which has come down to me tells me how to invoke the Lord Sun, and the Lord Sun will then surely protect his own. So it is written."
The man's simple faith was appalling. He seemed to have no fear at all now that anything could make any difference. The wisdom of his fathers had told him of the power of gold, and their wisdom had worked true to every detail so far. So would it continue to work according to the forecast.
The white men had the promise of gold, and nothing would now hold them from going after it. To their own terrible cost had his fathers learned that truth, and in dying desperation had they evolved their magic to hide the curse of their country forever. The ancient wizard, therefore, was satisfied in his unshakable conviction. Nothing would stay the swift march of fate.
But Docket guffawed his confidence.
"Yuh tell 'm, bo. All he's cotta do is show us the mine. 'N' then he kin cuss us out all he likes. 'T won't faze us any with a billion plunks in sight. Tell 'm tuh git a move on."
Baboon gave an expurgated translation. The old man slung his implements of magic about his neck and rose to his feet.
"I am ready," he said.
He scuttled out before them and traversed die outer cave like some burrowing rodent trotting in accustomed paths round obstacles, and stood then blinking in the sunlight. In some amazing manner he had known exactly when the sun would be at its zenith. Without a halt he trotted on across the ancient road and on to his rock. There he flung up his arms to greet his god, and stood in full view, a wild augury of impending fate.
It was the first time that any one of the white men had seen him close up in the light, and even Docket was startled at the extraordinary figure. The yellow, skull-like head was thrown back in rapt adoration. The skeletal arms, stretching from under the ragged poncho, spread it on either side tike a pair of great red wings. Below it protruded a pair of baggy pants, torn and fringed at the ends like the leg feathers of an eagle. Below them again, legs thinner than seemed possible even for the shriveled weight above them. The whole gave the impression of some vast and sinister bird about to leap up and wing its way to the god it called upon.
"Illappa, Illappa," the priest sent his wailing cry of supplication to echo among the high crags. Illappa, Lord Sun, thine ancient servant goes to perform thy bidding. Illappa, take thou the sacrifice."
Like an ungainly bird he hopped down from his rock, his eyes alight with a queer exaltation. His movements were sure and swift now. With the quick dart of a monkey's paw his hand shot into the embroidered bag and produced a palmful of coca-leaf. With swift-moving, expert fingers of the one hand, for all the world like an exhibition cigarette-roller, he laid the leaves into a neat pack and stuffed the whole load into his mouth. Then he started off up the path at an astonishing speed, calling over his shoulder:
"Make speed, white men, make speed. The way is far, and the sacrifice must be at the time when the Lord Sun plunges from his heaven into the hole behind the mountains."
Baboon alone was sensitive to the eery menace implied in the old man's incontrovertible faith in the power of the wizardries which be had culled from the lore of his fathers. He suggested carrying food and blankets. If the journey was six hours up into the everlasting snows, how about return? But Docket jeered at his nervousness.
"Aw, —, whatcher fussin' about? 'F this old cripple kin make it, we kin go there an' back on our knees. C'm on or he'll outrun yuh, yuh poor goat."
But the "old cripple" scurried along the path with a tirelessness that covered mile after mile while the white men panted along in the rear. The ancient highway was but the relic of what it had been in the old days of its glory, when long llama trains and a hundred slaves carried the loads of gold that were destined to pay the ransom of the last of the Incas.
In parts the old buttresses had broken away, and it was necessary to scramble down the dizzy mountainside to find a possible crossing, and up again to the goat-track that marked where the road had once been. In parts again there was no evidence of trail at all, and the old wizard led them over sharp ridges where the wind cut into their bones, and down rubble-strewn slopes where their loins ached with the strain of holding back. From these, along sheer precipices again.
And ever he mounted. And the higher the white men followed, the harder became the strain on their unaccustomed lungs. To their guide, born in the thin altitudes, nothing seemed to make any difference. Ever he scrambled ahead, and ever he called over his shoulder—
"Hurry, white men, hurry."
PRESENTLY snow began to fleck the bare gravel ridges; and presently no gravel was visible any more. Only vast slopes of snow. Mushy snow, which soaked through their boots and chilled their feet. To Baboon came the recurring fear of nightfall and lack of shelter and frozen feet. He remembered the frightful discomfort of the previous night in the cave; and this would be a million times worse. Still, if the old man led them, surely he would need some sort of shelter if return should be impossible. He stilled his misgivings for fear of Docket y's savage derision and plowed on through the wet snow, which was beginning to numb his feet already. Yet the old wizard shuffled on through it with only grass sandals for protection.
On the crest of a long slope Docket, plunging avidly ahead with no thought in mind except a mountain of gold, slipped on a treacherous something that rolled under the white covering, and would have gone careering down on a miniature avalanche but for Babson's quick rescue. He swore at Baboon for thanks.
"Better watch your step here," Baboon advised. "This snow is all mush. The Spring sun is strong enough to melt it, and the water seeps through and loosens it all up 'way underneath. Slip here and you'll go a mile."
Docket swore at him again for his advice, and snarled that he would darn well walk how he liked. But he was more careful. He had need to be; for the snow began to be deep and the slopes ever steeper. His temper reached the savage point at which he found it necessary to swear at the tireless old man and yell to him to stop for a rest. But the wizard pointed to a cleft between the mountains away to his right.
"There, white men," he called back. "Over that pass that is known to none but me. There lies the bone of gold in the teeth of the mountain. Hurry, white men, hurry! The Lord Sun awaits his sacrifice."
With such an incentive even the flagging King acquired a new burst of energy and was able to keep pace with the others. Their lungs tore at their straining chests till each breath was a torture. But they gasped and groaned and kept on. At every hundred yards or so now it was necessary to rest for breath and to relieve the ache in their calves.
The day began to wane. They had good cause to know that the journey was as long as the wizard had said—longer, in fact, for them, whose legs were unused to the mountain slopes and whose lungs were unused to that thin air. Yet no one of them spoke now about the difficulty of return in the dark which would presently be upon them. King, indeed, was assailed by horrible fears; yet he dared say nothing; for if he should not be in at the finish he felt no confidence in either of the companions he had chosen to bring all the way from New York. He felt now that neither of these men whom he had chosen as men whom he could trust would ever give him a share if they could avoid doing so.
So he struggled on with the other two, who struggled on together for the same reason; and all panted and groaned and suffered agonies together!—the agonies of bursting lungs and raw nasal passages and freezing feet.
For gold, a mountain of gold to be counted in millions, lured them on.
Clear against the sky-line of the pass the wizard waited for them and shrieked down to them to hurry, for their doom was ready. Even Docket had no breath to curse back at him.
Yet finally they arrived at the crest of the narrow pass, and sank down, all of them, in the wet snow, almost ready to die. The wizard plucked at their sleeves.
"Look, white men," he cried with a wild note of triumph in his voice. "Look below! There is the place that is known to none but me; that will remain known to none but me. The bone of gold in the teeth of the mountain from which came the ransom of that holy one whom the white men slew. Up, white men. Come down and I will show you that I have spoken true in this matter—as even in the matter of the sacrifice. Speed, white men, speed! The Lord Sun waits low in his heaven."
Baboon lay on his stomach with a hand pressed against an agonizing stitch in his right side and gasped. But it was awe, not pain, that put the low, strangled note into his voice.
"My good lord!" he whispered hoarsely. "I—I believe it's all true! That looks like—like gold!"
Beyond the lip of the pass a little bowl-shaped valley opened out, hedged with towering cliffs to left and to right. The sun, slanting low over their left shoulders, glistened blindingly on a long slope of snow; but at its foot, almost in the center of the bowl, was a dark patch where the slope had been undercut and no snow could cling.
Like a giant ski-jumper's take-off came the fleeting thought to Baboon; only to be supplanted immediately by the incredible consideration of that dark patch. The white reflection from the vast, steep snow-bank made it difficult to distinguish things clearly; yet the dark face of the patch seemed—it was unbelievable, a miracle—it seemed to be flecked and splashed with yellow.
"Look upon it, white men," the wizard shrilled. "Look upon the lost treasure of the sacred race that is no more. Come down and look clearly and see that my word is true. Speed, white men, speed; for the Lord Sun waits."
He led the way, skirting close under the beetling cliff that towered black and menacing on their left, following what seemed to be a causeway of rough stone steps. This time the white men were able to keep up with him. They outstripped him, in fact, in their eagerness to cover the short half-mile, and they arrived with a rush at the foot of the cutting. There they stood and stared—and gaped—and breathed hard through wide nostrils, and stared again in awed silence.
Baboon was the first to put out a trembling forefinger and touch it.
"My lord!" he breathed. "Lord of heaven, it—it's true! It's the same as the sample. Look:—good gosh, they haven't blasted it or split it or anything. It's so rich that they've just cut it out with cold chisel! Friable quartz, and two-thirds gold smeared on like butter!"
Then Docket went mad. He had been standing entranced, splay-lipped, avid eyes bulging, waiting for the confirmation of the expert. Now he leaped up into the air and howled as an animal howls who has found his prey and made his kill.
"Yee-ow! One billion plunks! Whee-ee-ow! Mine! All of it! Whoop-ee-ee! Wow, watch my smoke! Keep your eye on Jimmy Docket! I'll buy the hull — — street! Every swell Jane in every swell joint in Broadway! Whoo-oo-pe-ee! Yow!"
He took breath to paw at the stuff, to pat it with his hands, to pick at it with his finger-nails.
"Wow, looky! I kin pick it off with me hands! Oh, yuh lovely li'l yaller goo! Honey, I love yuh sure. An' ye're sure mine! One billion bucks of yuh, sweetie! Whie-ee-ee!"
His madness transmitted itself to Baboon.
'Two billion!" he yelled in chorus. "—, there's ten billion bucks in sight!"
And he seized upon Docket to dance with a grotesque kicking of the heels and an accompaniment of shrill yelps.
King wept silently and danced an uncouth pas seul round the two.
The wizard had to shriek his malediction above the clamor.
"Look upon it, white men! Wrap yourselves in it! Eat it; it is yours! Look well upon it; for never shall white men look upon it again!"
The direct menace impinged upon Babson's consciousness even through his delirium. He let go of his capering partner for long enough to cast an apprehensive glance round for impending danger. Seeing only the old wizard, he shrieked his derision.
"What threatens, old man? What does your Lord Sun think he's going to do?"
The wizard returned his look with cold calm and answered his ribald question with inexorable conviction.
"I do not know, white man. I go to make the magic that my fathers wrote in their wisdom, and Lord Sun will then protect his own."
"What 'z he say?" demanded Docket. "Let'm go. He's crazy. Run along, old man. Git outa here an' cuss all yuh wants. We ain't worryin' about nothin' in the woild never no more."
He fell to his uncouth capering again, while he apostrophized the miracle vein of gold with his endearments.
The wizard left them and climbed with deliberation—though speedily, for the sun was low—up the rough causeway to the foot of the beetling cliff which frowned from the left side of the pass squarely down upon the miraculous vein of the metal which must never be found by white mm, since it had been the curse of the land from that far day when the white men first came.
At the cliff base was an outstanding rock, a few feet in front of it. The top of the rock had been roughly leveled at some ancient period. The wizard knew about it; for it was the magic rock that the string writing of his fathers spoke of. He clambered up to the level surface and squatted himself down on it. Then he began the incantation that the wisdom of his fathers had prescribed.
"Illappa," he screamed. "Inti, Ccana arajpacha! Lord Sun, Light of the Heavens, thy servant calls. Protect the secret that is thine, Lord Sun. The sacrifice is prepared. Lord Sun, make manifest thy power."
And he banged an accompaniment with a rising crescendo on his ancient drum.
Tum-tum ta-tum tum-tum-tum ta-tum-ta-tum tum Tum TUM! He banged, and screamed his invocation as he had read it in the record of knotted strings.
Down in the bowl the waltzing white men heard it. The cliff behind the old man's platform curved over to form a regular sounding board that amplified and projected his yells in waves which carried down to them with startling clearness. They howled back at the old man and waved derisive arms and wafted uncouth kisses to him; and then fell once more to their crazy capering.
Tum ta-tum tum TUM TUM! banged the wizard again, and his shrill yell rose to the Lord Sun to take the sacrifice that was prepared for him and to protect his secret from these profaners and their kind for ever. Almost like some wild evangelist upon a pulpit he looked, with the great black sounding-board behind him to broadcast his exhortation.
Lord Sun smiled serenely through the gap between the cliffs and reflected the beauty of his waning brilliance from a myriad facets of the vast snow-bank and dripped icy water upon the capering white men. That was all.
But the ancient wizard never faltered in his sublime faith. The wisdom of his fathers had promised a manifestation, he did not know what; and the ancient wisdom had worked true in every detail. Surely would the Lord Sun protect his secret which his servant was too feeble to guard.
He screamed, therefore, again as he had read in the ancient record, and banged the reverberating crescendo to culminate with the highest pitch of his yell.
Tum Tum. Illappa! Achachi-pa sutima! Tum-ta-tum. Tum Tum TUM! Illappa! TUM TUM TUMM-MM-MM-MMMI!!!
The echoes boomed and crackled from the sounding-board across to the great snowbank and back again with sublimated, softened vibrations.
And then the Lord Sun heard, and spoke his answer to his priest.
At first it was a whisper, wafting softly from somewhere out on the snow. Then a sigh, a long, slow, wet sigh. Then silence! Then a trickling running sound; and a little cascade of icy water drenched the demoniac white men who leaped and danced before the secret that must be hid.
They ducked away from under with oaths and looked up angrily to see who had done this thing to them. Then they heard it
The voice of Lord Sun rose in its might. The whispering, sighing, trickling merged into a sound of rushing; and the rushing to a roaring; and a sudden icy wind screamed round the bowl of the valley.
Above that scream rose a scream of awful fear from the white men and another scream of mingled awe and triumph from the wizard.
Then all other sounds were drowned in the roar and thunder and crash of the whole glistening snow-slope as it whirled down from the face of the mountain in one vast, all-engulfing avalanche.
The wizard threw himself on his face and clung to the surface of the rock with all his fingers and toes—as he had once before clung to his own rock; while the icy hurricane tore at his limbs and the mountain crests shook all round him to the crash and thunder and roar of the manifestation of Lord Sun's might.
For many minutes the dread revelation continued, till finally it rumbled and moaned and whispered again and died away in a cool, clammy silence.
When the wizard dared to look again the bowl of the valley was full, almost to the base of his rock, and a fine white mist hung over it all.
Then the Lord Sun, having blotted out the secret that had caused his people to vanish and having covered it all with a clean white mantle, plunged into that hole behind the mountain-tops.
Old Mamu the wizard crept shakily from his magic rock and traversed the pass once more. He muttered frightened incantations to himself and chanted an awe-stricken paean to the glory of his god; and then he made for himself another wad of the coca-leaf and girded up his bins for a long hike to do his part in the utter effacement from the knowledge of white men of the secret that was the sacred trust of his fathers.
There was that writing to be rescued from a body which lay somewhere in the ravine above his sacred lake. And a siphon to be broken.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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