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.'
CHAPTER XVIII
CONVOYED by the spearmen, the party of Leoncia, the two Morgans, and Torres, was led through the pleasant fields, all under a high state of primitive cultivation, and on across running streams and through woodland stretches and knee deep pastures where grazed cows of so miniature a breed that, full-grown, they were no larger than young calves.
'They're milch cows without mistake,' Henry commented. 'And they're perfect beauties. But did you ever see such dwarfs! A strong man could lift up the biggest specimen and walk off with it.'
'Don't fool yourself,' Francis spoke up. 'Take that one over there, the black one. I'll wager it's not an ounce under three hundredweight.'
'How much will you wager?' Henry challenged.
'Name the bet,' was the reply.
'Then a hundred even,' Henry stated, 'that I can lift it up and walk away with it.'
'Done.'
But the bet was never to be decided, for the instant Henry left the path he was poked back by the spearmen, who scowled and made signs that they were to proceed straight ahead.
Where the way came to lead past the foot of a very rugged cliff, they saw above them many goats.
'Domesticated,' said Francis. 'Look at the herd boys.'
'I was sure it was goat-meat in that stew,' Henry nodded. 'I always did like goats. If the Lady Who Dreams, whoever she may be, vetoes the priest and lets us live, and if we have to stay with the Lost Souls for the rest of our days, I'm going to petition to be made master goatherd of the realm, and I'll build you a nice little cottage, Leoncia, and you can become the Exalted Cheese-maker to the Queen.'
But he did not whimsically wander farther, for, at that ejaculaticn of appreciation from Torres. Fully a mile in length it stretched, with more than half the same in width, and was a perfect oval. With one exception, no habitation broke the fringe of trees, bamboo thickets, and rushes that circled its shore, even along the foot of the cliff where the bamboo was exceptionally luxuriant. On the placid surface was so vividly mirrored the surrounding mountains that the eye could scarcely discern where reality ended and reflection began.
In the midst of her rapture over the perfect reflection, Leoncia broke off to exclaim her disappointment in that the water was not crystal clear:
'What a pity it is so muddy!'
'That's because of the wash of the rich soil of the valley floor,' Henry elucidated. 'It's hundreds of feet deep, that soil.'
'The whole valley must have been a lake at some time,' Francis concurred. 'Run your eye along the cliff and see the old water-lines. I wonder what made it shrink.'
'Earthquake, most likely opened up some subterranean exit and drained it off to its present level and keeps on draining it, too. Its rich chocolate color shows the amount of water that flows in all the time, and that it doesn't have much chance to settle. It's the catch-basin for the entire circling watershed of the valley.'
'Well, there's one house at least,' Leoncia was saying five minutes later, as they rounded an angle of the cliff and saw, tucked against the cliff and extending out over the water, a low-roofed bungalow-like dwelling.
The piles were massive tree-trunks, but the walls of the house were of bamboo, and the roof was thatched with grassstraw. So isolated was it, that the only access, except by boat, was a twenty-foot bridge so narrow that two could not walk on it abreast. At either end of the bridge, evidently armed guards or sentries, stood two young men of the tribe. They moved aside, at a gesture of command from the Sun Priest, and let the party pass, although the two Morgans did not fail to notice that the spearmen who had accompanied them from the, Long House remained beyond the bridge.
Across the bridge and entered into the bungalow-like dwelling on stilts, they found themselves in a large room better furnished, crude as the furnishings were, than they would have expected in the Valley of Lost Souls. The grass mats on the floor were of fine and careful weave, and the shades of split bamboo that covered the window-openings were of patient workmanship. At the far end, against the wall, was a huge golden emblem of the rising sun similar to the one before the altar by the Long House. But by far most striking, were two living creatures who strangely inhabited the place and who scarcely moved. Beneath the rising sun, raised above the floor on a sort of dais, was a many-pillowed divan that was half — throne. And on the divan, among the pillows, clad in a softly- shimmering robe of some material no one of them had seen before, reclined a sleeping woman. Only her breast softly rose and softly fell to her breathing. No Lost Soul was she, of the inbred and degenerate mixture of Carib and Spaniard. On her head was a tiara of beaten gold and sparkling gems so large that almost it seemed a crown.
Before her, on the floor, were two tripods of gold the one containing smouldering fire, the other, vastly larger, a golden bowl fully a fathom in diameter. Between the tripods, resting with outstretched paws like the Sphinx, with unblinking eyes and without a quiver, a great dog, snowwhite of coat and resembling a Russian wolf-hound, stedfastly regarded the intruders.
'She looks like a lady, and seems like a queen, and certainly dreams to the queen's taste,' Henry whispered, and earned a scowl from the Sun Priest.
Leoncia was breathless, but Torres shuddered and crossed himself, and said:
'This I have never heard of the Valley of Lost Souls. This woman who sleeps is a Spanish lady. She is of the pure Spanish blood. She is Castilian. I am as certain, as that I stand here, that her eyes are blue. And yet that pallor!' Again he shuddered. 'It is an unearthly sleep. It is as if she tampered with drugs, and had long tampered with drugy-'
'The very thing!' Francis broke in with excited whispers. 'The Lady Who Dreams drug dreams. They must keep her here doped up as a sort of super-priestess or super-oracle. That's all right, old priest,' he broke off to say in Spanish. 'If we wake her up, what of it? We have been brought here to meet her, and, I hope, awake.'
The Lady stirred, as if the whispering had penetrated her profound of sleep, and, for the first time, the dog moved. turning his head toward her so that her down-dropping hand rested on his neck caressingly. The priest was imperative, now, in his scowls and gestured commands for silence. And in absolute silence they stood and watched the awakening of the oracle.
Slowly she drew herself half upright, paused, and recaressed the happy wolf hound, whose cruel fangs were exposed in a formidable, long— jawed laugh of joy. Awesome the situation was to them, yet more awesome it became to them when she turned her eyes full upon them for the first time. Never had they seen such eyes, in
