But even his superstitious terror could not keep his eyes from that modest figure crouched in the angle of the strange wall. Truly, she was good to look at. In the soft olive of the cheeks a sweet, deep red was spreading. Under the downcast eyes the lashes drew dark lines across the translucent skin. A flood of hair poured into her lap, and from under its heavy waves peeped a slender hand. It was plain from her dress that she was none of the bárbaros, but a Pueblo. There was the same modest black manta of his people, the same fat, boot-like leg-wraps of snowy buckskin, the same dainty brown moccasins. Even the heavy silver rosary was about her neck, and from her ears hung strands of precious turquoise beads from the white, blue-veined heart of Mount Chalchihuitl. But even the white silver, and the stone that stole its color from the sky were not precious beside that sweet young face from which Pablo could not turn away.
And as he gazed with a strange warm tickling at his heart strings, the long lashes lifted timidly toward the handsome stranger, and on a sudden the bright face turned ashen, and the girl sank back upon a heap of fallen stones. Pablo stared with wide eyes, and a dizziness ran from head to knee, for there were dark drops upon the rocks, and amid the flowing hair he saw the notched ends of two arrows—his very own, feathered from the gray quills of Koor-níd-deh, the crane. He reeled, to fall, but the strong hand held him up and the strong voice said:
“Take the heart of a man, for it is not yet too late. Thou hast done this, unknowing; for the witches filled thine eyes with smoke, to fool thee. But we will yet make medicine to heal my daughter—for I am the wizard T’bó-deh, the last of the Hoo-máh-no, and precious to Those Above, who will help us. But thou hast still arrows in the quiver—go, then, till thou come to the first cliff on the west, and shoot three arrows strongly into the sky. And bring to me that which falls—for it needs that thou who hast shed her blood shouldst bring it again. Nay, tremble not, for the Trues will help thee; and with this amulet of the striped stone the witches cannot come nigh. Take the heart of a man, and go!”
Pablo looked at the pitiful little heap in the corner, and turning, manfully strode out through the broad portal and went stumbling westward in the darkness, over mounds and hollows and fallen walls. Down the long, steep ridge, across the undulant plain, knee-deep in dry and whispering grass, and up the western slope of the valley he trudged; and at last in the darkness ran up against a smooth, straight face of rock. “It is the cliff,” he shivered—for he feared greatly. But plucking up his soul, he backed away a few paces from the rock and notched a shaft and drew it to the head and sent it hurtling to the sky, and another and another. For a long time he waited, and then there was a soft whish! and an arrow stood in the earth at his feet. He groped and found it and drew back his hand quickly, for shaft and feathers were wet—with that soft, warm, ticklish wetness that never came from water yet. Another arrow fell and it was so, and so also was the third.
Shaken as are the leaves of the shivering tree,[35] Pablo put to his lips the amulet of the wizard and drew a long breath from it. Then, gingerly plucking the standing arrows one by one, he started running from the haunted spot, not resting in his stumbling flight until he found himself at the foot of the hill of Ta-bi-rá. In a few moments he was groping along the great wall, and at last stood again within the roofless temple.
Now there was a tiny fire there, and the old man was squatted by it chanting and snapping two long feathers together in rhythm with his wild refrain. And in the corner was the same dark, limp heap, which seemed to drift near or farther away on the waves of the firelight.
“It is well!” said the old man, rising; “for already I have blown away the evil ones, that we be alone. And I see that thou hast brought blood from above to pay for that which is lost.”
Taking from Pablo’s hand the arrows, still red-wet, he broke one over the fire and one he thrust upright in the hard earth at the maiden’s feet. Then he rubbed his hands with ashes and laid them upon her breast, chanting:
“Blood, water of life,
Come back in the brooks of the heart!