Zoraida laughed.
"And I am a spirit, a G.o.ddess to worship, the One who has always been, the power that created this spot and themselves!"
"They are captives and caretakers of a sort?" he supposed. "But when they are dead? Who then will keep up your elaborate gardens?"
"Wait. They are returning. There is your answer."
The six ancients filed back. Each man of them led by the hand a little child, the oldest not yet seven or eight. All boys, all bright and handsome; all filled with worship for Zoraida. For they broke away from the old men and ran forward, some of them carrying flowers, and threw themselves on their knees and kissed Zoraida"s gown. And then, with wide, wondering eyes they looked from her to Jim Kendric.
"Poor little kids," he muttered. And suddenly whirling wrathfully on Zoraida: "Where do they come from? Whose children are they?"
"There are mysteries and mysteries," she told him, coldly.
"Stolen from their mothers by your d.a.m.ned brigands!" he burst out.
She turned blazing eyes on him.
"Be careful, Jim Kendric!" she warned. "Here you are in Zoraida"s stronghold, here you are in her hand! Is act of hers to be questioned by you?"
She made a sudden signal. The six little boys withdrew, walking backward, their round worshipful eyes glued upon their G.o.ddess. Then they were gone, the old men with them, a heavy door closing behind them.
"Again I did not lie to you," said Zoraida. "Since though these have come recently, they are not yet men. Follow me again."
They went through the long room and into another. This time Zoraida thrust aside a deep purple curtain, fringed in gold. Here was a smaller chamber, absolutely without furnishings of any kind. But Kendric did not miss chairs or table, his interest being entirely given to the three young men standing before him like soldiers at attention.
Heavy limbed, muscular fellows they were, clad only in short white tunics, each with a plain gold band about his forehead. In the hand of each was a great, two-edged knife, horn handled, as long as a man"s arm.
"These came just before my father gave his keys to Zoraida," the girl told him: "There are three more of them who sleep while these guard."
Again Kendric saw in the eyes turned upon them a sheer worship of Zoraida, a wonder at him. Zoraida lifted her hand; the three bowed low. She spoke softly and they withdrew slowly to the further wall, walking backward as the children had done. Then one of them lifted down the five bars across a door, employing a rude key from his own belt. And when he had done so and stepped aside Zoraida with her own keys in five different heavy steel locks opened the way. She swung the door open and Kendric followed her. As in the adobe house here was a place where a curtain beyond the doorway hid from any chance eyes what might lie in this room. Only when the door was again shut and locked did Zoraida push the curtain aside. Another match, another big lamp lighted--and Kendric needed no telling that he was in an ancient treasure chamber.
There were long gleaming-topped tables of hardwood; there were exquisitely wrought and embroidered fabrics covering them; strewn across the tables were countless objects of inestimable value. Vases and pitchers and plates of hammered gold; golden goblets set with rich stones; ropes of silver; vessels of many curious shapes, some as small as walnuts, some as large as water pitchers, but all of the precious metals; knives with blades of obsidian and handles of gold; mirrors of selected obsidian bound around in gold; necklaces, coronets, polished stone jars heaped with gold dust. One table appeared to be heaped high with strange-looking books; ancient writings, Zoraida told him, heiroglyphs on the _mauguey_ that is so like the papyrus of the Nile.
"And look," laughed Zoraida. "Here is something that would open the greedy eyes of your friend Barlow."
She opened a cedar box and poured forth the contents. Pearls, pearls by the double handful, such as she had worn that night at Ortega"s gambling house, many times in number those which Barlow had declared would make Kendric"s twenty thousand dollars "look sick." In the lamplight their soft effulgence stirred even the blood of Jim Kendric.
"When the great Tzin Guatamo knew that he would die a dog"s death at the hands of the conquerors," Zoraida said, "he had as much of the royal treasury as he could lay his hands on brought here. The Spaniards guessed and demanded to be told the hiding place.
Guatamotzin locked his lips. They tortured him; he looked calmly back into their enraged eyes and locked his lips the tighter. They killed him but he kept his secret."
She had mentioned Barlow, and just now Kendric"s thoughts had more to do with the present and the immediate future than with a remote and legendary history.
"So," he said, "while Barlow and I made our long journey south, seeking the treasure of the Montezumas, you already had had it safe under lock and key for G.o.d knows how long!"
"Choose what pleases you most, Senor Jim," she said. "That I may make you a rich gift."
But though for a moment the glowing pearls, the gold and silver trinklets held his eyes, he shook his head.
"It strikes me," he said bluntly, "that you and I are not such friends that rich gifts need pa.s.s from one to the other of us."
"Then not even all this," and with a quick gesture she indicated all of the wealth that surrounded him, "can move you? Are you man, Jim Kendric, or a mechanical thing of levers and springs set into a man"s form?"
"I have never had the modern madness of l.u.s.ting for gold; that is all,"
he told her.
"Not entirely modern," she retorted, "since here are ancient h.o.a.rdings; nor yet entirely mad, since it is pure wisdom to put out a hand for the supreme lever of worldly power. You are a strange man, Senor Jim!"
"I am what I am," he said simply. "And, like other men, content with my own desires and dreamings."
She studied him, for a while in open perplexity, then in as frank a glowing admiration. That he should set aside with a careless hand that which meant so much to her, but made of him in her eyes a sort of superman.
"The thing to do," said Kendric out of a short silence, "is to open your doors and let me go back to the States. I came here looking for treasure trove; your claim antedates mine and I am no highwayman."
Zoraida seated herself in a big carved chair by the long table whereon lay the ancient writings, folded like fans and protected between leaves of decorated woods of various shapes and colors.
"Let me tell you two things, my friend. Three, rather. You saw the sky just now and thought to yourself that all of my safeguards here would be foolish and unavailing if a man sought the way to make his entrance from above? Be sure the way is guarded there, too. Above us towers Little Quetzel Hill, which is a long dead volcano; the hole you saw was in the bottom of the cone. If a man sought to come to it, first he must climb a steep and dangerous mountain flank. The old kings did not forget so obvious a thing. Captives toiled up there while their fellows burrowed down here; the hazardous way through infinite labor continuing through many years, was made infinitely more hazardous. There are balanced rocks of a thousand tons" weight that are secure in the outward seeming, placed to hurl to destruction the adventurer who sets an unwary foot on them; there is a spring, and it is death to drink of it; there are pits for a man to slide down into and in the bottoms of these pits are countless venomous snakes; there are traps set such as men of our time know nothing of. There have been chance travelers up yonder at infrequent intervals and for every such traveler there has been a death so that the mountain bears an evil name. And, further, should a hardy spirit once win to the hole in the bottom of the volcano"s cone and find the way to lower himself hundreds of feet into the gardens, there is always, night and day, one of Zoraida"s guards at the spot where he must descend, and that guard, night and day, is armed and eager to grapple with a devil whom he has been told to expect soon or late."
"I have told you," said Kendric, "that I have no wish to steal that which is another"s."
"One thing I have told you; here is another. I speak it frankly because I may gain by it and am not in the least afraid of losing, since your destiny lies in my hands! It is that only a portion of the great treasure is here with us; another portion was hidden outside."
She put her hand on one of the tinted ma.n.u.scripts. "The tale is here.
The treasure bearers were trapped in the mountains by the Spanish; they had no time to come here. One by one they were killed. They hid much gold where they must. That is the "loot" of which your friend Barlow speaks; that is the treasure which the Spanish priests knew of and held accursed. And that, Senor Jim, I would add to what I have here!"
She amazed him. Her eyes glittered, the fever of gold l.u.s.t was in her blood. With all this hers--his eye swept the wealth-laden tables and chests--she still coveted gold, other gold!
"The third thing," said Zoraida sharply, "that you may understand why I mention to you the second, is this: You will never go free until I say the word! And I shall never say the word until you and I have brought the rest and placed it here!"
So there was other treasure! Like this, rich, wrought vessels, fine gold, pearls perhaps! And Zoraida did not yet know where it was; Barlow had had enough sense to keep his mouth closed. Jim Kendric"s thoughts flew back and forth rapidly; the strange thing was that at a time like this the vision which shaped itself, vivid and clear cut in his mind, was of little Betty Gordon with a double string of pearls around her throat!
"Of what are you thinking?" demanded Zoraida sharply. She had been watching him keenly. "There is a look in your eyes----"
For an instant she almost dared think that that look was for her; Jim flushed. Zoraida"s black brows gathered, her eyes went as deadly cruel as ever were the eyes of her ancient forebears though they watched the priests at the sacrificial stone.
"You think of her!" she cried angrily. She stamped upon the stone floor, she clenched her hands and lifted them high above her head in a sudden access and abandon of rage. "You think that, having made mock of me, you shall turn to her? Fool! Seven times accursed fool! I will show you the doll-faced, baby-eyed girl--and you will see, too, what fate I have reserved for her. To cross the path of Zoraida means---- But what are words? You shall see!"
With a strange sick sinking of his heart Kendric followed her, forgetting the treasure about him.
CHAPTER XVI
HOW TWO, IN THE LABYRINTH OF MIRRORS, WATCHED DISTANT HAPPENINGS
An oppression such as he had never known fell upon Kendric. Nor was the depressing emotion an emanation alone of his growing dread on Betty"s account; the atmosphere of the place through which he moved began to weigh him down, to crush the spirit within him. They left the treasure chamber which was six times doubly locked after them. They went through the ancient empty rooms and out into the gardens.
Kendric, looking up, saw the small ragged patch of sky and felt as though upon his own soul, stifling him, rested the weight of the hollow mountain. To him who loved the fresh, wind-swept world, the open sea with its smell of clean salt air, the wide deserts where the sunshine lay everywhere, this pleasure grove of a long dead royalty was become musty, foul, permeated with an aura of a great gilded tomb. His sensation was almost that of a drowning person or of one awaking from a trance to find himself shut in the narrow confines of a buried coffin.
The air seemed heavy and impure; he fancied it still fetid with all the blood of sacrificial offerings which the ravening soil had drunk.
But he knew that now was no time for sick fancies and he shook them off and bent his mind to the present crisis. Zoraida was retracing the steps which had led them here; she had spoken of Betty. It was likely then that they were returning through the long pa.s.sageways to the house. Dark hallways to thread, the dark mind of his guide to seek to read. Now, while darkness outdoors was well enough, the black gloom of a maze at any corner of which Zoraida might have placed one or a dozen of her hirelings, had little lure for him. She did not mean to let him go free; she had kept him all day immured in his own room; she would no doubt seek to lock him up again.