CHAPTER IV.
Somehow all our individual positions were altered when, at sunrise, our party left the rich loamy lowlands of the Montagua River and swung off over a bullock trail toward the west. We had hurriedly packed our belongings, bought pack burros and saddle ponies, hired a muleteer, paid our bills, and now blindly followed Ixtual, our Maya guide. He, the despised—no, not despised, but regarded tolerantly as an inferior—had been lifted to a plane equal if not above ours. He rose in front, a man broad shouldered and graceful, with stiffly held head. That he was in laborer’s garb with a straw mushroom of a hat on his head, and bare feet that swung limply beneath stirrups that he scorned did not detract from his dignity. He was leading us by suffrance and not through either compulsion or tolerance. We were off to the Sacred Peaks in the care of a master guide who had decided to show us the coveted way.
It was a marvelous journey, sometimes through beautifully fertile and, cultivated lands, and again through dense jungles where we were compelled to ride in single file. Sometimes we stopped in a village posada, and other times we slept in the open; but always considering that we had a rather good-sized pack train to look after, we made fair progress. At first, the natives we met were all friendly; but, stage by stage, we could discern an alteration not only in the regard of those we passed but in the people themselves. Friendliness gave way to indifference, then to curious stares, and at last to pronounced disregard followed by black and sometimes threatening looks. I was convinced that we had entered a country which would have been extremely unpleasant, difficult, and, as we advanced, nearly impossible to travel had it not been for the presence of Ixtual.
Moreover, as we got clean away from the lowland tribes, we entered a land where the Maya stock was altogether in evidence. In the lowlands Ixtual had been treated as a workman; but now we began to note that he was accorded a subtle deference as if among his own people he was a man of importance. I cannot say that his demeanor toward us at all altered; save that now he quietly insisted on certain things, such as the places we must make for our next camps, routes we were to take that plainly brought us into wide and tiring detours through bad trails, and once I heard him caution the doctor to betray no knowledge of the Maya tongue if our camp was visited that night.
The five days indicated by the doctor’s glyphs had stretched to twelve on that afternoon when, emerging from a jungle trail, the Maya stopped until we were all huddled together and then pointed impressively toward the north.
“There, señores,” said he in Spanish, “are the Sacred Peaks. It is to those we must make our way, if you still insist.”
Far away, rising dimly against the afternoon sky we saw a chain of mountain tops and, towering above them, two singular peaks that were of such needlelike sharpness as to suggest twin Matterhorns, and of such regularity, as seen from that distance, as to suggest the handiwork of man rather than nature. They were twins! They appeared to have the same height, shape, and regularity. I have seen many twin peaks, so-called, in the course of a wandering life, but never have I seen two such as these. Their tops were white, as if shrouded in dull silver, verging gradually to blue-gray, to pale blue, and then to purple, dense and solid, at their base.
“By George!” exclaimed Wardy, “they’re wonderful. Worth coming to see, all right, if there isn’t anything to shoot.”
Benny said something in Arabic that I fancy was to suggest that these peaks reminded him of others they had seen, for Wardrop nodded and said: “But not so fine as these.” And then turning to me: “What do you think of them?”
“If the trails aren’t too bad, we should be there by day after to-morrow night,” I said.
“Philistine!” Wardy chuckled. “Aren’t they beautiful?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “But somehow I have never felt that I came here to look at the scenery. I’m seeking something more substantial. If I find what brought me here, I shall have ample time to admire my surroundings. If I don’t, the finest view in the world will look pretty rotten to me!”
I discovered that Ixtual and the doctor had drawn ahead of us to sufficient distance to be out of earshot, and that the Indian was evidently giving impressive, if not emphatic instructions or admonitions to his companion, who listened attentively and frequently nodded his head as if to emphasize that he understood. And now he turned back to us, leaving Ixtual alone, staring at those distant peaks.
“Ixtual says,” the doctor imparted, and then stopped and took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair as if in considerable perplexity, “Ixtual says that it is necessary for all of you to camp here until—until he and I return.” He blurted the last in desperation as if eager to have it out.
“He says that he must take me to meet some of his people who, as far as I can gather, live about four or five leagues from here—in a sort of village, I think. He says that we can’t go any farther without getting permission from a council, whatever that is.”
“He means the town council—the village burgomasters, or maybe the constabulary,” said Wardrop, taking his monocle out, polishing it carefully, and then staring at the imperturbable Ixtual, who was still gazing, as if in a reverie, at the distant peaks. “Well, mate,” he said, addressing me in English, “what do you think of it? Is it safe to let the doctor go along with this bally chap to some place where maybe they’ll do things to him?”
“I don’t see what else we can do,” I replied thoughtfully. “That is, if Doctor Morgano is willing to accept the risks. In a way, we are rather at the mercy of this Indian; but he seems to be fond of the doctor, so I don’t suppose means him any harm. What do you think?”
Wardrop for a long time appeared to be considering the situation. Now he shifted his eyes from the savant to the imperturbable Ixtual, then back to me, then to Benny, and at last said: “It looks to me as if it were for Morgano to decide, rather than us. Doctor, how do you feel about it?”
“Just the same as when I was beginning to be seasick,” said the doctor. “But I can’t reason him out of it. He says it’s necessary to get their consent. He assures me that all I have to do is to tell the men we have to meet that all I wish is to decipher the lost history of the Mayas. He says he will be personally responsible that no harm will come to me.”
“Humph! Jolly lot of good his personal guarantee would be if they took you to some place and skinned, hanged, and then fried and ate you!” growled Wardrop.
“If you think they would do that, perhaps I had better not go,” said the doctor; and I rather agreed with him that this might prove unpleasant.
Ixtual interrupted us.
“Come, brother,” he said to the doctor. “We have far to travel. It grows late. You can not pass to those peaks without doing as I say. Perhaps not then. If it is still your wish to continue the quest”
“It is still my wish!” interrupted the doctor with quick emphasis. “I must learn what the secret of the lost”
“Then,” suavely interjected Ixtual, “it is time we started.”
The doctor suddenly came to a decision.
“I’m going,” he said. “I can’t let an opportunity like this pass by. I trust Ixtual.”
But just the same, I noted that he spoke in French, which this adopted brother of his couldn’t understand. Then he turned and said something in the Maya, and Ixtual gravely listened, then addressed us in Spanish.
“No harm shall come to my brother,” he said quietly. “Of that I give you my word, which is never broken. You are to remain here until we return, if it be a week.” And with that he remounted his horse, the doctor crawled painfully into his saddle, and they rode away, leaving us to pitch camp.
That night we speculated rather aimlessly and anxiously as to what had befallen our companion, and finally went to sleep. The next day we passed much time in watching for Ixtual’s and the doctor’s return. But they didn’t come. The next day Wardy took Benny and turned into the jungle in the hope of finding something to shoot. He got a small deer, which helped out the larder. I fished, and got nothing, although I had excitement enough at one time with a devilishly aggressive snake that I killed and whose diamond-shaped head warned me that it was a deadly type. That evening we began to be apprehensive lest the doctor be in trouble, and sat up late. Finally we turned into our hammocks, and Wardy snored exasperatingly; but I couldn’t sleep. I was just turning over to stretch my limbs when I heard a noise, and sat up, reaching for my rifle, which I had hung on hooks under the hammock shrouds. Then I piled out and kicked the camp fire into a blaze, having recognized the voices of the doctor and Ixtual as they approached. Wardrop rolled out, as did Benny and the muleteer, just as the missing members of our party dismounted and came stiffly toward the fire.
The doctor’s face, habitually skinny and cavernous, looked inordinately drawn and tired.
“Brandy! For the love of the Virgin, give me a drink of brandy!” he exclaimed to me in French. “I’ve been through a purgatory! They’ve made me take oaths! Compelled me to swear by all sorts of awful, horrible things, that I seek nothing other than the decoding of their lost history. I have been frightened—terribly frightened. I have been tempted to renounce all desire to continue my research. Nothing save the fact that I alone might ever reach the secrets of the lost civilization could have induced me to do what I have done. I am now a member of their accursed tribe, renouncing all other allegiance! Brandy—give me”
And I believe he was on the verge of swooning when I poured him a drink which he gulped, raw and hot, as if it were water. As he lifted his arm I observed that he gave a sudden twitch as if in pain; but I did not learn until later that upon his breast above the heart and extending diagonally upward over the muscles of his right arm and shoulder were sacrificial wounds into which had been rubbed red and purple pigments that were to brand him until death and dissolution. We never knew what he experienced in that initiation into the Maya tribe. Sometimes Wardrop and I speculate vainly as to what took place. We never knew from his lips; but this we do know, that there are martyrs in science as well as in religion; that it is possible for a man to become so immersed in the great quest for knowledge that he will sacrifice even his body, or his life, to gain the knowledge which he seeks. I am certain that Doctor Morgano was one of these.
The situation wasn’t altogether unimpressive. I sometimes think of it. I see again the edge of the jungle, the vivid stars overhead, the agitation of rank verdure moved by a gentle breeze, the lift of torn flame from the fire, the shadowy background in which squatted Beni Hassan Azdul and the stolid muleteer, and near me, Wardrop, huge and intent, as he looked from one to another. And then I see myself staring at the doctor and Ixtual as they two munched, like men famished, the food I had put before them. But I do not remember spoken words. As far as I can recall the conversation was almost trivial, confined to polite inquiries, recountals of how we in camp had passed the time, and finally, of Ixtual’s admonitions that we must get to rest and fail not to be on our way at dawn.
Thinking it over, I seem now to understand that he was apprehensive lest some decree of his tribe be revoked, and we be prevented from farther advance. Somehow I conjecture that all he passed through in our behalf was not precisely beer and skittles for him; that he had given pledges that might terrify the souls of less steadfast men. But I do know that he was desperately intent on our early departure; for it was still dark with the blackness preceding the dawn when he aroused us, and curtly insisted that we must lose not an instant’s time in preparing for the march forward toward the Sacred Peaks.