_ CHAPTER XIX. The Spider and the Fly
The sun came warmly out of a clear sky as they filed out of the sleeping town. To the natives and the guide they passed readily enough as American prospectors and so excited no great amount of interest. The first stage of their journey was as pleasant as a holiday excursion. Their course lay through the wooded foothills which lie between the shore and the barren desert. The Cordilleras majestic, white capped, impressive, are, nevertheless, veritable hogs. They drink up all the moisture and corral all the winds from this small strip which lies at their feet. Scarcely once in a year do they spare a drop of rain for these lower planes. And so within sight of their white summits lies this stretch of utter desolation.
It was not until the end of the first day's journey that they reached this barren waste. To the Spanish looters this strip of burning white, so oddly located, must have seemed a barrier placed by Nature to protect her stores of gold beyond. But it doubtless only spurred them on. They passed this dead level in a day and a half of suffocating plodding, and so reached the second lap of their journey.
The trail lies broad and smooth along the lower ranges, for, even neglected as it has been for centuries, it still stands a tribute to the marvelous skill of those early engineers. The two men trudged on side by side climbing ever higher in a clean, bracing atmosphere. It would have been plodding work to any who had lesser things at stake, but as it was the days passed almost as in a dream. With each step, Wilson felt his feet growing lighter. There was a firmness about his mouth and a gladness in his eyes which had not been there until now.
On the third day they reached the highest point of the trail and started down. Both men had felt the effects of the thin air during the last twelve hours and so the descent came as a welcome relief. They camped that night among trees and in an atmosphere that relieved their tired lungs. They also built the first fire they had lighted since the start and enjoyed a hot meal of coffee and toasted porkscraps. They found the steep downward trail to be about as difficult as the upward one, as they were forced to brace themselves at every step. By night they had come to the wooded slopes of the table-lands below, supported by the mighty buttresses of the Andes. It was a fair land in which they found themselves--a land which, save for the vista of snow-capped summits and the lesser volcanic peaks, might have passed for a fertile Northern scene. It was at about sunset that they stopped and Gaspar, the guide, pointed to a spindle lava top against the sky.
"Up there," he informed them, "is the lake of Guadiva. Some say it is there that the great treasure lies."
"So? What treasure?" asked Stubbs, innocently.
"The treasure of the Gilded God which these people worship."
Stubbs listened once again to the story which he had already heard a dozen times. But it came with fresh interest when told within sight of its setting. Then he stared at it until the dark blotted it out. And after that he lighted his pipe and stared at where he had last seen it. Below them a few fires burned in the darkness showing through the windows of the adobe huts.
The next morning they dismissed their guide, as it would be impossible to use him further without revealing the object of their journey. Both Stubbs and Wilson were anxious to push forward to the lake without delay and resolved to reach if possible their goal by night. They figured that as the crow flies it could not be more than twenty-five miles distant. The trail was direct and well enough marked and finally brought them to the village of Soma which is within eight miles of the base of the cone. Here, for the first time since they started, they had a glimpse of the natives. As they entered the small village of adobe huts they were surrounded by a group of the beardless brown men. In a few minutes their number had increased till they formed a complete circle some ten men deep. They did not seem unfriendly, but as they stood there chattering among themselves they made no motion to open a path for the travelers. They were ordinarily a peaceful people--these of the valley of the Jaula--and certainly in appearance looked harmless enough. Yet there was no doubt but what now they had deliberately blocked the path of these two.
Wilson looked to Stubbs.
"What does this mean?"
"Looks as though we had been brought to anchor. D' ye know 'nuff Spanish to say 'Howdy' to 'em?"
"Perhaps a few presents would talk better?"
"Too many of 'em. Try your parley-vous."
"Might move ahead a bit first and see what happens."
"Then get a grip on your gun, m' boy."
"No," objected Wilson, sharply. "You'd have a fight in a minute. Move ahead as though we did not suspect we were checked."
He flicked the haunches of the leading burro and the patient animal started automatically. But soon his nose reached the breast of an impassive brown man. Wilson stepped forward.
"Greeting," he said in Spanish.
He received no response.
"Greetings to the chief. Gifts for the chief," he persisted.
The eyes of the little man in front of him blinked back with no inkling of what lay behind them. It was clear that this was a preconceived, concerted movement. It looked more serious. But Stubbs called cheerily to him:
"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 God 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 coarse 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 superstition. 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 gods 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 lust 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 God is well guarded. Yes, even from him."
A big purple butterfly 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.
"No--she did not believe."
Wilson did not dare tell him of the crystal gazing for fear that the Priest might jump to the conclusion that it was this power Sorez was using and so would associate the girl too closely with the treasure hunt. Yet he wished to tell him enough to protect the girl from any scheme of vengeance this man might be planning against Sorez himself.
"She is very immature," explained Wilson, "and so believed the older man easily."
"And you?"
"We have come in search of her--to take her back."
"But does she wish to return?"
"If I can make her see----"
"It is difficult to make a woman see sometimes. It is possible that she was led to come to Bogova in search of her father--but that would not bring her over the mountains. There are other things--like all women she is fond of gold and jewels?"
"That may be," answered Wilson, with heat. "But if you knew her, you would understand that no such motive would lead her to venture so much and endure so much. Nothing could blind her eyes to common sense but such a motive as this which drove her on."
The Priest smiled; he detected the underlying incentive in Wilson's own hazard, but there was still Stubbs and his relation to Danbury. He suspected treachery of some sort.
Wilson grew impatient.
"Night is coming on and we ought to be on our way. I suppose you are in authority over these people. Without your consent we cannot proceed."
"No--but it is far from my intention to interfere with so worthy a mission as yours. I might even assist you. I am always glad to do anything that will help strangers to leave. Sometimes this is done in one way and--sometimes in another. I expected this Sorez to leave by to-morrow."
"To-morrow? Why, he can't have more than reached the lake."
"No, but strangers do not remain long by the lake."
For the last few moments the Priest had seemed more normal, but now the uncanny, fanatical look returned to his eyes. Stubbs nudged Wilson to rise.
The three moved towards the door.
"I shall not interfere with you--at present," said the Priest. "But--a word of advice--work quickly. As far as the girl is concerned I think she will be ready to return by to-morrow."
"You have seen her?"
"Not myself, but I have a thousand eyes seeing for me in these mountains. They have seen the girl and they tell me she is well,--so much for your comfort."
But there was a smile still about the corners of the mouth which Wilson did not like.
The Priest shifted his eyes to the caravan itself. He made a note of the picks and shovels.
"You have the implements," he remarked, "for grave digging. I trust you will not need to use them.
Adios, my friends."
He watched them until they disappeared into the woods with a sinister, self-confident smile like a spider watching a fly take the path into his web; a smile that gave him an expression strangely like that of the image itself. Before he turned into the hut again he gave several orders. Three of the brown men melted into the shadows after the caravan. _