"See here, m" boy, there"s one thing we can do; wait for _them_ to make a move. Sit down an" make yerself comfortable an" see what happens."
They gathered the six burros into a circle, tied them with their heads together and then squatted back to back upon the ground beside them.
Stubbs drew out his pipe, filled, and lighted it.
"Keep yer gun within reach," he warned in an undertone to Wilson.
"Maybe they don"t mean no harm; maybe they does. We"ll make "em pay heavy fer what they gits from us, anyhow."
The surrounding group watched them with silent interest, but at the end of a half hour during which nothing happened more exciting than the relighting of Stubbs" pipe, they appeared uneasy. They found the strangers as stoical as the burros. Many of the men lounged off, but their places were promptly filled by the women and children so that the circle remained intact. Wilson grew impatient.
"It would be interesting to know whether or not we are prisoners," he growled.
"When yer feel like beginnin" the row we can find out that."
"I should feel as though shooting at children to fire into this crowd."
"Thet"s what they be--jus" so many naked kids; but Lord, they can swing knives like men if they"re like sim"lar children I"ve seen."
"We"re losing valuable time. We might make another move and try to shoulder our way through until the knives appear and then----"
He was interrupted by a movement in the crowd. The men fell back to make a path for a tall, lank figure who stepped forward with some show of dignity. Both Wilson and Stubbs exclaimed with one breath:
"The Priest!"
To Wilson he was the man who had tried to kill him in the dark, the man again whom he in his turn had tried to kill. He reached for his holster, but he saw that even now the man did not recognize him. The priest, however, had detected the movement.
"There are too many of us," he smiled, raising a warning finger. "But no harm is meant."
Save for the second or two he had seen him during the fight, this was the first time Wilson had ever had an opportunity to study the man closely. He was puzzled at first by some look in the man"s face which haunted him as though it bore some resemblance to another face. It did not seem to be any one feature,--he had never before seen in anyone such eyes; piercing, troubled dark eyes, moving as though never at ease; he had never seen in anyone such thin, tight lips drawn over the teeth as in a man with pain. The nose was normal enough and the cheek-bones high, but the whole expression of the face was one of anxious intensity, of fanatical ardor, with, shadowing it all, an air of puzzled uncertainty. Everything about the man was more or less of a jumbled paradox; he was dressed like a priest, but he looked like a man of the world; he was clearly a native in thought and action, but he looked more like an American. He stared at Stubbs as though bewildered and unable to place him. Then his face cleared.
"Where is your master?" he demanded.
"The cap"n?" growled Stubbs, anything but pleased at the form and manner of the question. "I"m not his keeper and no man is my master."
"Does he live?"
Briefly Wilson told of what had been done with Danbury. The Priest listened with interest. Then he asked:
"And your mission here?"
Before Wilson could frame a reply, the Priest waved his hand impatiently to the crowd which melted away.
"Come with me," he said. "I am weary and need to rest a little."
The Priest preceded them through the village and to an adobe hut which stood at a little distance from the other houses and was further distinguished by being surrounded by green things. It was a story-and-a-half-high structure, thatched with straw.
On the way Wilson managed to whisper to Stubbs:
"Let me do the talking."
The latter nodded surlily.
Before entering the hut the Priest gave an order to two of his followers to look after the animals. He caught a suspicious glance from Stubbs as the native led them away.
"The brutes look thirsty and I told the boy to give them food and drink. The Sun G.o.d loves all dumb things."
The room in which they found themselves contained no furniture other than a table, a few chairs, and against one wall a bunk covered with a coa.r.s.e blanket. The floor was of hard clay and uncovered. From one side of the room there led out a sort of anteroom, and from here he brought out a bottle of wine with three wooden goblets.
The afternoon sun streamed in at the open windows, throwing a golden alley of light across the table; the birds sang without and the heavy green leaves brushed whisperingly against the outer walls. It was a picture of summer peace and simplicity. But within this setting, Wilson knew there lurked a spirit that was but the smile which mocks from a death"s head. There was less to be feared from that circle of childlike eyes with which they had been surrounded outside, burning with however much antagonism, than from this single pair of sparkling beads before them, which expressed all the intelligence of a trained intellect strangely mixed with savage impulses and superst.i.tion. The Priest poured each of them a cup of sparkling wine and raised his goblet to his lips.
"If my children," he said, almost as though in apology, "do not like strangers, it is after all the fault of strangers of the past. Some of them have respected but little the G.o.ds of my people. You are, I presume, prospecting?"
"After a fashion," answered Wilson. "But we prospect as much for friends as gold."
"That is better. You people are strange in your l.u.s.t for gold. It leads you to do--things which were better not done."
"It is our chief weapon in our world," answered Wilson. "You here have other weapons."
"With but little need of them among ourselves," he answered slowly.
"But you go a long way to protect your gold," retorted Wilson.
"Not for the sake of the gold itself. Our mountains guard two treasures; one is for whoever will, the other is for those not of this world."
"We go for a treasure very much of this world," answered Wilson, with a smile; "in fact, for a woman. She has ventured in here with one Sorez."
Not a line of his lean face altered. He looked back at Wilson with friendly interest--with no suspicion of the important part he had already played in his life.
"This--this man searches for gold?" he asked.
"Yes--for the great treasure of which so many speak."
There was the very slightest tightening of the lips, the merest trace of a frown between the brows.
"He is unwise; the treasure of the Gilded G.o.d is well guarded. Yes, even from him."
A big purple b.u.t.terfly circled through the sunshine and fluttered a moment above the spilled wine upon the table; then it vanished into the dark. The Priest watched it and then glanced up.
"The maid--what part does she play?"
"She is under some strange spell the man has cast over her, I think, for she has been led to believe the wildest sort of a yarn--a tale that her father, long missing, is somewhere about these mountains."
"Her father--missing?" repeated the Priest, his face clouding uneasily.
"The girl loved him as a comrade as well as a father. The two were alone and very much together. He was a captain, and some fifteen years ago disappeared. It was thought that he sailed for some port along the western coast, but he never came back. In time the report came that he was dead, though this was never proven."
The Priest rubbed a brown skinny hand over his eyes.
"But the maid did not believe the rumor?" he asked.