Hearts of Three

CHAPTER XVII

DAYBREAK in the Valley of the Lost Souls, and the Long House in the village of the Tribe of the Lost Souls. Fully eighty feet in length was the Long House, with half as much in width, built of adobe bricks, and rising thirty feet to a gable roof thatched with straw. Out of the house feebly walked the Priest of the Sun an old man, tottery on his legs, sandal-footed, clad in a long robe of rude homespun cloth, in whose withered Indian face were haunting reminiscences of the racial lineaments of the ancient conquistadores. On his head was a curious cap of gold, arched over by a semi-circle of polished golden spikes. The effect was obvious, namely, the rising sun and the rays of the rising sun.

He tottered across the open space to where a great hollow log swung suspended between two posts carved with totemic and heraldic devices. He glanced at the eastern horizon, already red with the dawning, to reassure himself that he was on time, lifted a stick, the end of which was fiber-woven into a ball, and struck the hollow log. Feeble as he was, and light as was the blow, the hollow log boomed and reverberated like distant thunder.

Almost immediately, while he continued slowly to beat, from the grass-thatched dwellings that formed the square about the Long House, emerged the Lost Souls. Men and women, old and young, and children and babes in arms, they all came out and converged upon the Sun Priest. No more archaic spectacle could be witnessed in the twentieth-century world. Indians, indubitably they w T ere, yet in many of their faces were the racial reminiscences of the Spaniard. Some faces, to all appearance, were all Spanish. Others, by the same token, were all Indian. But betwixt and between, the majority of them betrayed the inbred blend of both races.

But more bizarre was their costume unremarkable in the women, who were garbed in long, discreet robes of homespun cloth, but most remarkable in the men, whose homespun was grotesquely fashioned after the style of Spanish dress that obtained in Spain at the time of Columbus' first voyage. Homely and sad-looking were the men and women as of a breed too closely interbred to retain joy of life. This was true of the youths and maidens, of the children, and of the very babes against breasts true, with the exception of two, one, a child-girl of ten, in whose face was fire, and spirit, and intelligence. Amongst the sodden faces of the sodden and stupid Lost Souls, her face stood out like a flaming flower. Only like hers was the face of the old Sun Priest, cunning, crafty, intelligent.

While the priest continued to beat the resounding log, the entire tribe formed about him in a semi-circle, facing the east. As the sun showed the edge of its upper rim, the priest greeted it and hailed it with a quaint and medieval Spanish, himself making low obeisance thrice repeated, while the tribe prostrated itself. And, when the full sun shone clear of the horizon, all the tribe, under the direction of the priest, arose and uttered a joyful chant. Just as he had dismissed his people, a thin pillar of smoke, rising in the quiet air across the valley, caught the priest's eye. He pointed it out, and commanded several of the young men.

"It rises in the Forbidden Place of Fear where no member of the tribe may wander. It is some devil of a pursuer sent out by our enemies who have vainly sought our hidingplace through the centuries. He must not escape to make report, for our enemies are powerful, and we shall be destroyed. Go. Kill him that we may not be killed."

About the fire, which had been replenished at intervals throughout the night, Leoncia, Francis, and Torres lay asleep, the latter with his new-made sandals on his feet and with the helmet of Da Vasco pulled tightly down on his head to keep off the dew. Leoncia was the first to awaken, and so curious was the scene that confronted her, that she watched quietly through her do wn— dropped lashes. Three of the strange Lost Tribe men, bows still stretched and arrows drawn in what was evident to her as the interrupted act of slaying her and her companions, were staring with amazement at the face of the unconscious Torres. They looked at each other in doubt, let their bows straighten, and shook their heads in patent advertisement that they were not going to kill. Closer they crept upon Torres, squatting on their hams the better to scrutinize his face and the helmet, which latter seemed to arouse their keenest interest.

From where she lay, Leoncia was able privily to nudge Francis' shoulder with her foot. He awoke quietly, and quietly sat up, attracting the attention of the strangers. Immediately they made the universal peace sign, laying down their bows and extending their palms outward in token of being weaponless.

"Good morning, merry strangers," Francis addressed them in English, which made them shake their heads while it aroused Torres.

"They must be Lost Souls," Leoncia whispered to Francis.

"Or real estate agents," he smiled back. "At least the valley is inhabited. Torres, who 're your friends? From the way they regard you, one would think they were relatives of yours."

Quite ignoring them, the three Lost Souls drew apart a slight distance and debated in low sibilant tones.

"Sounds like a queer sort of Spanish," Francis observed. "It's medieval, to say the least," Leoncia confirmed.

"It's the Spanish of the conquistadores pretty badly gone to seed," Torres contributed. "You see I was right. The Lost Souls never get away."

"At any rate they must give and be given in marriage," Francis quipped, "else how explain these three young huskies?"

But by this time the three huskies, having reached agreement, were beckoning them with encouraging gestures to follow across the valley.

"They're good-natured and friendly cusses, to say the least, despite their sorrowful mug," said Francis, as they prepared to follow. But did you ever see a sadder-faced aggregation in your life? They must have been born in the dark of the moon, or had all their sweet gazelles die, or something or other worse."

"It's just the kind of faces one would expect of lost souls," Leoncia answered.

"And if we never get out of here, I suppose we'll get to looking a whole lot sadder than they do," he came back. "Anyway, I hope they're leading us to breakfast. Those berries were better than nothing, but that is not saying much."

An hour or more afterward, still obediently following their guides, they emerged upon the clearings, the dwelling places, and the Long House of the tribe.

"These are descendants of Da Vasco's party and the Caribs," Torres affirmed, as he glanced over the assembled faces. "That is incontrovertible on the face of it."

"And they've relapsed from the Christian religion of Da Vasco to old heathen worship," added Francis. "Look at that altar there. It's a stone altar, and, from the smell of it, that is no breakfast, but a sacrifice that is cooking, in spite of the fact that it smells like mutton."

"Thank heaven it's only a lamb," Leoncia breathed. "The old Sun Worship included human sacrifice. And this is Sun Worship. See that old man there in the long shroud with the golden-rayed cap of gold. He's a sun priest. Uncle Alfaro has told me all about the sun-worshipers."

Behind and above the altar, was a great metal image of the sun.

"Gold, all gold," Francis whispered, "and without alloy. Look at those spikes, the size of them, yet so pure is the metal that I wager a child could bend them any way it wished and even tie knots in them."

Merciful God! look at that!" Leoncia gasped, indicating with her eyes a crude stone bust that stood to one side of the altar and slightly lower. "It is the face of Torres. It is the face of the mummy in the Maya cave."

"And there is an inscription…" Francis stepped closer to see and was peremptorily waved back by the priest. "It says, 'Da Vasco.' Notice that it has the same sort of helmet that Torres is wearing. And, say! Glance at the priest! If he doesn't look like Torres' full brother, I've never fancied a resemblance in my life!"

The priest, with angry face and imperative gesture, motioned Francis to silence, and made obeisance to the cooking sacrifice. As if in response, a flaw of wind put out the flame of the cooking.

"The Sun God is angry," the priest announced with great solemnity, his queer Spanish nevertheless being intelligible to the newcomers. "Strangers have come among us and remain unslain. That is why the Sun God is angry. Speak, you young men who have brought the strangers alive to our altar. Was not my bidding, which is ever and always the bidding of the Sun God, that you should slay them?"

One of the three young men stepped tremblingly forth, and with trembling forefingers pointed at the face of Torres and at the face of the stone bust.

"We recognised him," he quavered, "and we could not slay him for we remembered prophecy and that our great ancestor would some day return. Is this stranger he? We do not know. W T e dare not know nor judge. Yours, priest, is the knowledge, and yours be the judgment. Is this he?"

The priest looked closely at Torres and exclaimed incoherently. Turning his back abruptly, he rekindled the sacred cooking fire from a pot of fire at the base of an altar. But the fire flamed up, flickered down, and died.

"The Sun God is angry," the priest reiterated; whereat the Lost Souls beat their breasts and moaned and lamented. "The sacrifice is unacceptable, for the fire will not burn. Strange things are afoot. This is a matter of the deeper mysteries which I alone may know. We shall not sacrifice the strangers… now. I must take time to inform myself of the Sun God's will.

With his hands he waved the tribespeople away, ceasing the ceremonial half-completed, and directed that the three captives be taken into the Long House.

"I can't follow the play," Francis whispered in Leoncia's ear, but just the same I hope here's where we eat."

"Look at that pretty little girl," said Leoncia, indicating with her eyes the child with the face of fire and spirit.

"Torres has already spotted her," Francis whispered back. "I caught him winking at her. He doesn't know the play, nor which way the cat will jump, but he isn't missing a chance to make friends. We'll have to keep an eye on him, for he's a treacherous hound and capable of throwing us over any time if it would serve to save his skin."

Inside the Long House, seated on rough-plaited mats of grass, they found themselves quickly served with food. Clear drinking water and a thick stew of meat and vegetables were served in generous quantity in queer, unglazed pottery jars. Also, they were given hot cakes of ground Indian corn that were not altogether unlike tortillas.

After the women who served had departed, the little girl, who had led them and commanded them, remained. Torres resumed his overtures, but she, graciously ignoring him, devoted herself to Leoncia who seemed to fascinate her.

"She's a sort of hostess, I take it," Francis explained. "You know like the maids of the village in Samoa, who entertain all travellers and all visitors of no matter how high rank, and who come pretty close to presiding at all functions and ceremonials. They are selected by the high chiefs for their beauty, their virtue, and their intelligence. And this one reminds me very much of them, except that she's so awfully young."

Closer she came to Leoncia, and, fascinated though she patently was by the beautiful strange woman, in her bearing of approach there was no hint of servility nor sense of inferiority.

"Tell me," she said, in the quaint archaic Spanish of the valley, "is that man really Capitan Da Vasco returned from his home in the sun in the sky?"

Torres smirked and bowed, and proclaimed proudly: "I am a Da Vasco!"

"Not a Da Vasco, but Da Vasco himself," Leoncia coached him in English.

"It's a good bet play it!" Francis commanded, likewise in English. "It may pull us all out of a hole. I'm not particularly stuck on that priest, and he seems the high-cockalorum over these Lost Souls."

"I have at last come back from the sun," Torres told the little maid, taking his cue.

She favored him with a long and unwavering look, in which they could see her think, and judge, and appraise. Then, with expressionless face, she bowed to him respectfully, and, with scarcely a glance at Francis, turned to Leoncia and favored her with a friendly smile that was an illumination.

"I did not know that God made women so beautiful as you," the little maid said softly, ere she turned to go out. At the door she paused to add, "The Lady Who Dreams is beautiful, but she is strangely different from you."

But hardly had she gone, when the Sun Priest, followed by a number of young men, entered, apparently for the purpose of removing the dishes and the uneaten food. Even as some of them were in the act of bending over to pick up the dishes, at a signal — from the priest they sprang upon the three guests, bound their hands and arms securely behind them, and led them out to the Sun God's altar before the assembled tribe. Here, where they observed a crucible on a tripod over a fierce fire, they were tied to fresh-sunken posts, while many eager hands heaped fuel about them to their knees.

"Now buck up be as haughty as a real Spaniard!" Francis at the same time instructed and insulted Torres. "You're Da Vasco himself. Hundreds of years before, you were here on earth in this very valley with the ancestors of these mongrels."

"You must die," the Sun Priest was now addressing them, while the Lost Souls nodded unanimously. "For four hundred years, as we count our sojourn in this valley, have we slain all strangers. You were not slain, and behold the instant anger of the Sun God: our altar fire went out." The Lost Souls moaned and howled and pounded their chests. Therefore, to appease the Sun God, you shall now die."

"Beware!" Torres proclaimed, prompted in whispers, sometimes by Francis, sometimes by Leoncia. "I am Da Vasco. I have just come from the sun." He nodded with his head, because of his tied hands, at the stone bust. "I am that Da Vasco. I led your ancestors here four hundred years ago, and I left you here, commanding you to remain until my return."

The Sun Priest hesitated.

"Well, priest, speak up and answer the divine Da Vasco," Francis spoke harshly.

"How do I know that he is divine?" the priest countered quickly. "Do I not look much like him myself? Am I therefore divine? Am I Da Vasco? Is he Da Vasco? Or may not Da Vasco be yet in the sun? for truly I know that I am man born of woman three-score and eighteen years ago and that I am not Da Vasco."

"You have not spoken to Da Vasco!" Francis threatened, as he bowed in vast humility to Torres and hissed at him in English: "Be haughty, damn you, be haughty."

The priest wavered for the moment, and then addressed Torres.

"I am the faithful priest of the sun. Not lightly can I relinquish my trust. If you are the divine Da Vasco, then answer me one question."

Torres nodded with magnificent haughtiness. "Do you love gold?"

"Love gold!" Torres jeered. "I am a great captain in the sun, and the sun is made of gold. Gold? It is like to me this dirt beneath my feet and the rock of which your mighty mountains are composed."

"Bravo," Leoncia whispered approval.

"Then, divine Da Yasco," the Sun Priest said humbly, although he could not quite muffle the ring of triumph in his voice, "are you fit to pass the ancient and usual test. When you have drunk the drink of gold, and can still say that you are Da Vasco, then will I, and all of us, bow down and worship you. We have had occasional intruders in this valley. Always did they come athirst for gold. But when we had satisfied their thirst, inevitably they thirsted no more, for they were dead."

As he spoke, while the Lost Souls looked on eagerly, and while the three strangers looked on with no less keenness of apprehension, the priest thrust his hand into the open mouth of a large leather bag and began dropping handfuls of gold nuggets into the heated crucible of the tripod. So near were they, that they could see the gold melt into fluid and rise up in the crucible like the drink it was intended, to be.

The little maid, daring on her extraordinary position in the Lost Souls Tribe, came yp to the Sun Priest and spoke that all might hear.

"That is Da Vasco, the Capitan Da Vasco, the divine Capitan da Vasco, who led our ancestors here the long long time ago."

The priest tried to silence her with a frown. But the maid repeated her statement, pointing eloquently from the bust to Torres and back again; and the priest felt his grip on the situation slipping, while inwardly he cursed the sinful love of the mother of the liftle girl which had made her his daughter.

"Hush!" he commanded sternly. "These are things of which you know nothing. If he be the Capitan Da Vasco, being divine he will drink the gold and be unharmed."

Into a rude pottery pitcher, which had been heated in the pot of fire at the base of the altar, he poured the molten gold. At a signal, several of the young men laid aside their spears, and, with the evident intention of prying her teeth apart, advanced on Leoncia.

"Hold, priest!" Francis shouted stentoriously. "She is not divine as Da Vasco is divine. Try the golden drink on Da Vasco."

Whereat Torres bestowed upon Francis a look of malignant anger.

"Stand on your haughty pride," Francis instructed him. "Decline the drink. Show them the inside of your helmet."

"I will not drink!" Torres cried, half in a panic as the priest turned to him.

"You shall drink. If you are Da Vasco, the divine capitan from the sun, we will then know it and we will fall down and worship you."

Torres looked appeal at Francis, which the priest's narrow eyes did not fail to catch.

"Looks as though you'll have to drink it," Francis said dryly. "Anyway, do it for the lady's sake and die like a hero."

With a sudden violent strain at the cords that bound him, Torres jerked one hand free, pulled off his helmet, and held it so that the priest could gaze inside.

"Behold what is graven therein," Torres commanded.

Such was the priest's startlement at sight of the inscription, DA VASCO, that the pitcher fell from his hand. The molten gold, spilling forth, set the dry debris on the ground afire-, while one of the spearmen, spattered on the foot, danced away with wild yells of pain. But the Sun Priest quickly recovered himself. Seizing the fire pot, he was about to set fire to the faggots heaped about his three victims, when the little maid intervened.

"The Sun God would not let the great captain drink the drink," she said. "The Sun God spilled it from your hand."

And when all the Lost Souls began to murmur that there was more in the matter than appeared to their priest, the latter was compelled to hold his hand. Nevertheless was he resolved on the destruction of the three intruders. So, craftily, he addressed his people.

"We shall wait for a sign. Bring oil. We will give the Sun God time for a sign. Bring a candle."

Pouring the jar of oil over the faggots to make them more inflammable, he set the lighted stub of a candle in the midst of the saturated fuel, and said: "The life of the candle will be the duration of the time for the sign. Is it well, People?"

And all the Lost Souls murmured, "It is well."

Torres looked appeal to Francis, who replied:

"The old brute certainly pinched on the length of the candle. It won't last five minutes at best, and, maybe, inside three minutes we'll be going up in smoke."

"What can we do?" Torres demanded frantically, while Leoncia looked bravely, with a sad brave smile of love, into Francis' eyes.

"Pray for rain," Francis answered. "And the sky is as clear as a bell. After that, die game. Don't squeal too loud."

And his eyes returned to Leoncia's and expressed what he had never dared express to her before his full heart of love. Apart, by virtue of the posts to which they were tied and which separated them, they had never been so close together, and the bond that drew them and united them was their eyes.

First of all, the little maid, gazing into the sky for the sign, saw it. Torres, who had eyes only for the candle stub, nearly burned to its base, heard the maid's cry and looked up. And at the same time he heard, as all of them heard, the droning flight as of some monstrous insect in the sky.

"An aeroplane," Francis muttered. "Torres, claim it for the sign."

But no need to claim was necessary. Above them not more than a hundred feet, it swooped and circled, the first aeroplane the Lost Souls had ever seen, while from it, like a benediction from heaven, descended the familiar:

"Back to back against the mainmast, Held at bay the entire crew."

Completing the circle and rising to an elevation of nearly a thousand feet, they saw an object detach itself directly overhead, fall like a plummet for three hundred feet, then expand into a spread parachute, with beneath i^ like a spider suspended on a web, the form of a man, which last, as it neared the ground, again began to sing:

"Back to back against the mainmast, Held at bay the entire crew."

And then event crowded on event with supremest rapidity. The stub of the candle fell apart, the flaming wick fell into the tiny lake of molten fat, the lake flamed, and the oil-saturated faggots about it flamed. And Henry, landing in the thick of the Lost Souls, blanketing a goodly portion of them under his parachute, in a couple of leaps was beside his friends and kicking the blazing faggots right and left. Only for a second did he desist. This was when the Sun Priest interfered. A right hook to the jaw put that aged confidant of God down on his back, and, while he slowly recuperated and crawled to his feet, Henry slashed clear the lashings that bound Leoncia, Francis, and Torres. His arms were out to embrace Leoncia, when she thrust him away with:

"Quick! There is no time for explanation. Down on your knees to Torres and pretend you are his slave and don't talk Spanish; talk English."

Henry could not comprehend, and, while Leoncia reassured him with her eyes, he saw Francis prostrate himself at the feet of their common enemy.

"Gee!" Henry muttered, as he joined Francis. "Here goes. But it's worse than rat poison."

Leoncia followed him, and all the Lost Souls went down prone before the Capitan Da Vasco who received in their midst celestial messengers direct from the sun. All went down, except the priest, who, mightily shaken, was meditating doing it, when the mocking devil of melodrama in Torres' soul prompted him to overdo his part.

As haughtily as Francis had coached him, he lifted his right foot and placed it down on Henry's neck, incidentally covering and pinching most of his ear.

And Henry literally went up in the air. "You can't step on my ear, Torres!" he shouted, at the same time dropping him, as he had dropped the priest with his right hook.

"And now the beans are spilled," Francis commented in dry and spiritless disgust. "The Sun God stuff is finished right here and now."

The Sun Priest, exultantly signaling his spearmen, grasped the situation. But Henry dropped the muzzle of his automatic pistol to the old priest's midrif; and the priest, remembering the legends of deadly missiles propelled by the mysterious substance called "gunpowder," smiled appeasingly and waved back his spearmen. "This is beyond my powers of wisdom and judgment," he addressed his tribespeople, while ever his wavering glance returned to the muzzle of Henry's pistol. "I shall appeal to the last resort. Let the messenger be sent to wake the Lady Who Dreams. Tell her that strangers from the sky, and, mayhap, the sun, are here in our valley. And that only the wisdom of her far dreams will make clear to us what we do not understand, and what even I do not understand."