The Flute of the Gods Part 12

"But it is true for all that!" he insisted. "And of all places we have crossed since Culiacan was left behind us, none seems more fitting than this for the telling of his story."

His eyes glanced over the men circled above the great pool. The stars were making little points of light in the rock bound water. Far below in the desert a coyote called to his intimates. Indians loitered at the edge of the circle. And at the rim of of the mesa, and high places of the natural fortress, armed sentinels paced;--dusk figures against the far sky. It was truly a place made for tales of adventure.

"Whatever evil your much hated Greek was guilty of, there is one question to ask:--in monk's cell, or in the battles for the wrong--left he the record of a coward?"

"No," acknowledged Don Diego--"but his zeal was d.a.m.nable in all things."

"I ask because various things which he endured could scarcely be understood if you put him in the list of the weak or the incapable."

"Often the strength of the Evil One is a stupendous force for his chosen people," agreed Don Diego. "That is widely known in Europe to-day when Paracelsus with infernal magic of the mind makes cures which belong by every right to the saints alone!"

"And the people are truly cured of their ills--truly healed?"

"Their bodies are truly healed for the life that is temporal, but each soul is doomed for the life that is eternal. No Christian doubts that the mental magic of the physician is donated by Beelzebub whose tool he is."

"He was a student of exceeding depth,"--agreed Padre Vicente--"and it may be he has found magic forbidden to man. But the Greek laid claim to no such power as that, however much it is said that the devil loved him! He had only a strong body, and the dislike to see it cut to pieces for a heathen holiday."

"De Soto, it is said, found a dirk of his when he crossed the land of Apalache years later, seeking empire. But the tribes could or would tell nothing of the lost Greek and the negro slave. The latter was killed by the people called Natchez, and the Greek, who had been among many things:--a sailor, escaped by the water, leaving no trail--not even the trail made by a white skin in a land of dusk people.

"From the Turks he had learned a trick of using stain of barks and herbs. His hair was of brown, but the eyebrows and lashes were heavy and dark. After using such concoction, a mirror of clear water showed him no trace of himself except the eyes--they were blue beyond hope, but the heavy lashes were a help and a shadow.

"With stolen arms of bow, hatchet, and a flint knife, the man went north--wading the river edge at night, and hiding by day until the land of the Natchez was left behind. A strong river came from the west--and an old canoe gave him hope of finding New Spain by the water course. That journey was a tedious thing of night prowlings, hidings, and, sometimes starvings. Then the end of solitude came, and he was captured by heathen rangers.

"They were a large company and were travelling west. Later he learned they were a war company and in a fight his master and most of the others were killed. At the rejoicing of the victors, he sang louder, and danced more wildly than all the others, so they did not kill him.

He was traded to other Indians further west for a painted robe and some clay pots. This last move brought him to the villages of the stream, named later by Coronado the Rio Grande, but called by the Indians another name, the P[=o]-s[=o]n-ge."

"The very villages where we are to go?" demanded Don Ruy.

"Possibly some of the same," said the priest. "How many of you remember the great comet of 1528?"

Several did, and all remembered the dread and horror it spread in Western Europe.

"Think you then what that same threat in the sky must have been to these wild people who seek magic ever from the stars and even the clouds. It was a threat and it called for some sacrifice propitiating the angry G.o.ds."

"Sacrifice? Do these infidels then practise such abominations?" asked Don Diego.

"To look at the mild eyes and hear their soft voices of these our guests it is not easy to think it," agreed Padre Vicente, "but these people are but the northern cousins of the men Cortez conquered--their customs differ only in degree. To both Venus and Mars were human G.o.d-offerings made--that day of sacrifice is not so long past, and in that day it was done here."

"And?"

"And your lucky Greek was the one to be chosen! He was fed well as one would fatten an ox for the knife. He had some knowledge of simple remedies, and in brewing herbs for their sick he had also stolen the opportunity for the further addition to his coat of color. He was to them an Indian of an unknown tribe, yet, since he was to be offered to the G.o.ds, he was made the very center of ceremonial dances, and infernal heathenish customs.

"Both men and women enter into certain sacred--or infernal orders, whose ceremonies are only known to those initiate. An inter-tribal connection is kept up in such societies between villages speaking a totally different language,--even though the tribes be at war, there is always a truce for these wild creatures who dance together for some magic, or some prayer to their false G.o.ds."

"And the truce is kept?"

"It would not be possible for a tribe to break truce of their diabolical things of their spirits. At the ceremonies for the sacrifice to the comet G.o.d was a girl of another tribe, and when the Greek noted that her desire was not to see him destroyed, he had the first glimpse of hope,--the only other he had was to remove the stain in some way, and convince them that their G.o.ds had made a miracle to save him."

The priest made a gesture towards the great sand drifts at every side of rock wall and column.

"To which of you would it occur, if hiding meant chance of life--to which of you would it occur to go under that sand for days so close to the trail that the women with the water jars would pa.s.s you scores of times in a day carrying water from this pool?"

"This pool?--this--"--the eyes of Don Ruy lightened--"this is then that place of the great danger?"

"A man could not hide in the sand like that--nor deceive these wild trailers of animals," decided Don Diego--"and of a certainty it could not be close to the trail!"

"So we would naturally think," decided Padre Vicente. "But the Indian girl was wiser than our wisdom, Senor, for she did aid his escape, and she did hide him there. To get breath, his face was touching a great wall of rock against which another was carelessly laid. The place had been chosen with a knowledge that seemed inspired--for only close to the trail where the sand was like to be disturbed by naked romping children,--only there in all these deserts could he have been hidden from their hunters."

"Here?--in this place?" again said Don Ruy. "Holy father it is a good story--yet sounds a romance fantastic to fit this weird place of the pool and the star s.h.i.+ne of the night?"

"By the name of these people, the Queres, and the name of the village Ah-ko, this should be the place of the sacrificial intentions," said the priest. "By the careful account given, this is the pool to which the trail led, and it may even be that the ancient Cacique to whom, but now, I gave the cigarro, was chief priest of the sacrifice in that day."

"A truly delectable neighbor for a help to pleasant fancy," said Don Ruy and laughed. "If the amiable devil should be moved to sacrifice now, I would be the nearest to his hand--think you he would make ill use of my youth and tenderness?"

"His Sanct.i.ty, the padre was indeed wise that no word of this was breathed in the viceregal ears of Mexico," said Don Diego with a testiness not yet subdued over the question of utter d.a.m.nation for the souls unregenerate. "Piety would carry me far--but no warrant is mine to follow even the Highest where cannibals do wait for unholy sustenance!" and he arose and bowed to Don Ruy.

"Oh--Name of the Devil!" said his n.o.ble ward, and laughed and stretched his legs. "I may not be so unholy as your words would suggest. Give not a dog a bad name in the days of his youth!"

And at this the scandalized and pious dignitary multiplied words to make clear how far from such meaning were his devoted intentions. But if wild tribes must be fed ere their souls could be reached,--victims could be found other than the heir of a d.u.c.h.ess!

At which outburst Don Ruy suggested that he save his pious breath and devote it to prayers, and to take some of his own medicine by remembrance that soul of king and soul of peasant weighed the same before high G.o.d.

"After which devout exhortation from your servant, good father, we again give ear to the tale of that devil's disciple--the Greek Teo,"

he said, "Did they find him in the sand? And did the merciful dame hide in the sand also?--if so the prison might not be without hope.

Holy Saint Damien!--to think that the man walked these same stony heights--and drank from that pool!"

"They never found him in the sand." The priest ignored the other frivolous comment. "They never found him anywhere, and a slave from the Navahu people was made a sacrifice in his stead. The strange girl was a Te-hua medicine maid or magic learner of things from the wise men of Ah-ko. Her prayers were very many, and very long, and she made a shrine for prayer on the sand beside the stone wall where he was hidden. Their men set watch on her, she knew it, but not anything did they find but a girl who made her prayers, and gave no heed to their shadowings.

"When were ended her days of devotion to the false G.o.ds--then she ate, and drank, and took the way to her own people; with moderate pace she took that trail north, but when night came, she ran like the wild thing she was, again to the south, crept unseen again into this fortress, and led the rescued man as far to the west as might be until the dawn came. With the coming of the sun, came also a sand storm of great stress, and all trace of their steps were covered, and the medicine maid saw in that a mystic meaning.

"To Turk and Spaniard the refugee might be only Teo the Greek, a fugitive from all high courts. But to the Indian he was a lost G.o.d of the Great Star for whom even the desert winds did duty. When with moistened yucca root he rubbed his hands that the white skin showed, she bent her head to the sand, and was his slave until ... the end!"

"It moves well, and beautifully smooth:--this tale of the outlaw,"

agreed Don Ruy--"but it is that end we are eager for--and the how it was compa.s.sed--that she turned slave--or mistress--or both in one, as alas!--has chanced to men ere our day!--was the doom expected from the earliest mention of the pitiful and most devout lady--devout to her devils! But of the end--the end?"

"The end came to him long after they parted, and for one winter and one summer were their wanderings to the west. Of the Firebrand river deep between rock walls he had heard, and of the ocean far beyond, and of Mexico to the south. To reach the river they crossed dry leagues of desert and lived as other wild things lived. But the river was not a thing for boats or journeys, and they went on beyond it seeking the sea. Strange things and strange lives they pa.s.sed on the way. His skin had been stained many times and his beard was plucked out as it grew.

Enough of Indian words he learned to echo her own tale to the brown savages, and the tale was, that they were medicine people of Te-hua in the land of P[=o]-s[=o]n-ge, and that they travelled to the sh.o.r.es of the sea for dances and prayers to the G.o.ds there. And sometimes food was given them--and some times prayers were sent in their keeping.

Thus was their journey, until in the south, in the heart of a desert they found the place of the palms where the fruit was ripe, and the water comes from warm springs, and looks a paradise--but is as a h.e.l.l when the sand storms come:--and human devils live to the South and by the Sea of Cortez.

"They knew nothing of that, it was a place for rest, and a place of food, and they rested there because of that, and gathered food for the further journey.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PLACE OF THE PALMS _Page 94_]

"All medicine people of the tribes carry on their neck or in a pouch at the belt, some sacred things of their magic practices, and under the palms, when other amus.e.m.e.nt was not to be found, it pleased him to see what his brown girl carried hidden even from her master. It took much persuasions, for she felt that evil would happen if it was shown except it be a matter of ceremony. Then she at last took from the pouch, salt from a sacred lake, feather and claw and beak of a yellow bird, a blade of sharpest flint, and--this!"

He again held the piece of gold that they might see it. Even the Indians leaned forward and looked at it and then eyed the white men and each other in silence. To them it was "medicine" as the priest told the adventurers it had been to the Te-hua girl.

"Your Greek pirate of the good luck went close to madness at the certain fact that for months he had been walking steadily away from the place where this was found. To the girl it was a sacred thing hidden in the earth of her land by the sun--and only to be used for ceremonies. The place where it grew was a special hidden place of prayer offering."