At that moment the soil broke away under his hands. In a flash, the whole soft slope on which they rested broke away, and all three were sliding and rolling down the steep slope in the midst of a miniature avalanche of soil, gravel, and grass-tufts.
The two men picked themselves up first, in the thicket of bushes which had arrested them; but, before they could get to Leoncia, she, too, was up and laughing.
'Just as you were saying we didn't have to go into the valley!' she gurgled at Francis. 'Now will you believe?'
But Francis was busy. Beaching out his hand, he caught and stopped a familiar object bounding down the steep slope after them. It was Torres' helmet purloined from the chamber of mummies, and to Torres he tossed it. 'Throw it away,' Leoncia said.
It's the only protection against the sun I possess,' was his reply, as, turning it over in his hands, his eyes lighted upon an inscription on the inside. He showed it to his companions, reading it aloud:
'DA VASCO.'
'I have heard,' Leoncia breathed.
And you heard right,' Torres nodded. 'Da Vasco was my direct ancestor. My mother was a Da Vasco. He came over the Spanish Main with Cortez.'
'He mutined,' Leoncia took up the tale. 'I remember it well from my father and from my Uncle Alfaro. With a dozen comrades he sought the Maya treasure. They led a sea-tribe of Caribs, an hundred strong including their women, as auxiliaries. Mendoza, under Cortez's instructions, pursued; and his report, in the archives, so Uncle Alfaro told me, says that they were driven into the Valley of the Lost Souls where they were left to perish miserably.'
'And he evidently tried to get out by the way we've just come in,' Torres continued, 'and the Mayas caught him and made a mummy of him.'
He jammed the ancient helmet down on his head, saying:
'Low as the sun is in the afternoon sky, it bites my crown like acid.'
'And famine bites at me like acid,' Francis confessed. 'Is the valley inhabited?'
'I should know, Senor,' Torres replied. 'There is the narrative of Mendoza, in which he reported that Da Vasco and his party were left there 'to perish miserably. 'This I do know: they were never seen again of men.'
'Looks as though plenty of food could be grown in a place like this,' Francis began, but broke off at sight of Leoncia. picking berries from a bush. 'Here! Stop that, Leoncia! We've got enough troubles without having a very charming but very much poisoned young woman on our hands.'
'They're all right, she said, calmly eating. 'You can see where the birds have been pecking and eating them.'
'In which case I apologize and join you,' Francis cried, filling his mouth with the luscious fruit. 'And if I could catch the birds that did the pecking, I'd eat them too.'
By the time they had eased the sharpest of their hungerpangs, the sun was so low that Torres removed the helmet of Da Vasco.
'We might as well stop here for the night,' he said. 'I left my shoes in the cave with the mummies, and lost Da Vasco's old boots during the swimming. My feet are cut to ribbons, and there's plenty of seasoned grass here out of which I can plait a pair of sandals.'
While occupied with this task, Francis built a fire and gathered a supply of wood, for, despite the low latitude, the high altitude made fire a necessity for a night's lodging. Ere he had completed the supply, Leoncia, curled up on her side, her head in the hollow of her arm, was sound asleep. Against the side of her away from the fire, Francis thoughtfully packed a mound of dry leaves and dry forest mould.
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
