dropping to mark the trail. And at the end of that time, I unbound his eyes and returned to him all the maize he had dropped, saying such a wasteful man would indeed not know how to use silver. And there I left him, discovering that he was no friend.
'The next time I went out from the pueblo, he was waiting for me and he took me and demanded that I show him the place of the silver. He had Mexican men with him, and at his word they built a fire to abuse the truth from me, as if the words would come from my feet; but I would not speak, so they left me to die.'
Juan Solo's eyes did not leave Struggles' hard-lined face. He went on, 'Now I have learned that friendship is not simply of words. Man, I will show you silver; as much as your burro can carry will be yours. And there will be no blindfold.'
Struggles cleared his throat and felt a flush of embarrassment. 'Juan, I didn't treat you for a fee.' And then was sorry he had said it when the Indian's sleepy eyes opened suddenly.
But his voice remained even when he said, 'To a friend, you offer a gift. You do not repay him.' He hesitated. 'And I say offer, for you need not accept it. Approaching El Sangre del Santo is not the same as entering the great city of Chihuahua. Often there is danger.'
Struggles' cigar almost slipped from his mouth. 'You know where it is?' he asked, amazed.
The Indian nodded his head.
Sketchily then, the story of the mine formed in the surgeon's head. He relaxed in his chair, putting the pieces together. He had almost forgotten the legend of Tomas Maria.
'What about the padre who acts as watchman?' he asked cautiously. 'Is he the danger you spoke of?'
Juan Solo smiled faintly. 'Here they say that he and I are good friends. No, the danger is from those who would take all the wealth from the poor padre.'
Struggles smiled at the Indian and said, 'I imagine he gets pretty lonely up there,' but Juan Solo only shrugged his shoulders. Struggles added, 'I mean your ex-friend, the American.'
The Indian nodded. 'After leaving me the thought would come to him that if I died his chance of discovering the mine would be remote. So he would return and find that someone had taken me. First he would curse, then inquire discreetly through one of his men if I had been brought to Soyopa; and finding this to be so, his choice would then be to wait for me to go out again and then to follow.'
'Well, you're just guessing now,' Struggles said.
Juan Solo shrugged again. 'Perhaps.'
On the fourth day after leaving the pueblo, Juan's conjecture came back to Struggles suddenly. From that afternoon on, there was little room in his mind for doubting the Indian's word.
They were in high, timbered country moving their horses and pack mules single file along a trail that cut into the pines, climbing to distant rimrock. Where the slope leveled, they came out onto a bench that opened up for a dozen yards revealing, down over the tops of the lower pines and dwarf oaks, the country they had left hours before. In the timber it was cool; but below, the sandy flats and the scattered rock eruptions were all the same glaring yellow, hazy through a dust that hung motionless. At first, Struggles thought he was seeing sun spots from the glare.
He blinked before squinting again and now he was certain there were no sun spots. Far off against the yellow glare, a confused number of moving specks were pointing toward the deep shadows of a barranca. Juan Solo was watching with the palm of his hand shading his eyes.
He looked at the surgeon when the specks passed out of sight. 'Now there is no doubt,' he said.
Struggles' rough face turned to him quickly. 'Why, that could be anybody.'
'Senor Doctor,' Juan said quietly. 'This is my country.'
AT SUNDOWN they stopped long enough to eat a cold supper, then moved on into a fast-falling gloom. The country was level now, but thick with brush; mesquite clumps which in the evening dimness clung ghostlike to the ground and were dead silent with no breeze to stir them. Struggles, riding behind the Indian, felt his eyes stretched open unnaturally and told himself to quit being a damn fool and relax.
He chewed on the end of the dead cigar and let his stomach muscles go loose, but still a tension gripped him which his own steadying words could not detach. They were being followed. He knew that now, and didn't have to close his eyes to picture what would happen if they were overtaken. But there was more to the feeling than that. It was also the country--the climbing, stretching, never-ending wildness of the country. The Sierra Madre was like the sea, he thought. Both of them deathless, monotonously eternal, and so indifferent in their magnitude that either could accept the dust of all the world's dead and not have the decency to show it in posture. He thought: Now I know what people mean about wanting to die in bed. But again he told himself to shut up, because it was foolish to talk.
There was only a soft squeak of saddle leather and the muffled clop of hoofs on sand, and ahead, the dim figure of Juan Solo moving silently, rhythmically to the sounds.
The dusk thickened into night, and later Struggles could feel the ground beneath him changing though he could make out nothing in the darkness. There was a closeness above him along with the more broken ground, so that he sensed rather than observed that they were passing into rockier country.
And when first morning light reflected in the sky, Struggles saw that they were deep into a canyon. Ahead, it twisted out of sight, but beyond the rim a wall of mountain rose a thousand feet into the sky, tapering into a slender pinnacle at one end of its unbalanced crest. It seemed close enough to hit with a stone, but it was at least two miles beyond the canyon.
Juan Solo reined in gently and raised his arm toward the peak, pointing a finger. 'Senor Doctor,' he said. 'Be the first American to observe El Sangre del Santo...and know it.'
Struggles was unprepared. 'That's it?' he said incredulously; then wondered why he had expected it to appear differently. Lost mines needn't look like lost mines. Looking at the peak he thought of the legend, trying to picture what had taken place here; but then he thought of the other that he had been thinking all night, and he glanced uneasily behind him.
Juan Solo watched him. 'They are many hours behind,' he said, 'since they could not follow in the night. So, if it is not abusive to you, I say we should go quickly to the mine and leave before they arrive, continuing on in the widest circle that ends again where we started. Thus they will not know that they have been to El Sangre and left it. And later, when they see us surrounded by seven hundred bottles of mescal--' the Indian could not keep from grinning--'they will scratch their heads and turn and gaze out at the mountains that say nothing, and they will scratch their thick heads again.'
Just past the canyon bend, Juan angled toward the shadowy vein of a crevice, the base overgrown with brush, which entered into a defile twisting through a squeezed-in narrowness to finally emerge in open country again at the base of the mountain.
From the ledge, Struggles' gaze lifted to the thin spire of rock, then dropped slowly, inching down with the speck that was Juan Solo descending the steep, narrow path of a rock slide that made a sweeping angle from the peak to the ledge where Struggles stood, then lost itself completely in a scatter of boulders on a bench fifty feet below. Struggles moved to the edge and glanced at the animals on the bench then on down the grade to the canyon they had left a few hours before, squinting hard, before looking back at Juan Solo.
And as the Indian reached the ledge, Struggles shook his head, then pressed his sleeve against his forehead and exhaled slowly. 'I'm worn out just watching you,' he said.
The Indian swung from his shoulder a blanket gathered into the shape of a sack. 'Climbing for such that is up there is never wearing,' he said. He untied the blanket ends and let them drop, watching Struggles, as the surgeon looked with astonishment at the dull-gleaming heap of candlesticks, chalices and crosses; all ornately tooled and some decorated with precious stones.
'These and more were placed in the sepulchre of Tomas Maria,' Juan Solo said. 'Along with the silver that had already been fashioned into bars when the restoration took place.'
Struggles picked up a slender cruciform and ran his fingers over the baroque carvings. 'It's unbelievable,' he said, looking at Juan Solo. 'These articles should be in a museum.'
Juan Solo shook his head and there was the hint of a smile softening the straight lips of his mouth. 'Then what would Tomas Maria have? These were only for if your mind doubted,' he said, gathering the blanket and swinging it over his shoulder. 'Now I will get your silver.' And started up the slope.
Struggles felt a tingle of nervousness now; a restless urge to move about or at least face the solidness of the
