Released from the enthusiastic arms of the noblemen who had carried him in triumph to their king, de Sancerre was now following the royal litter toward the City of the Sun, walking the well-beaten path with the mincing step of a courtier whose feet, though swifter than the winds, pay homage gayly to Grace as a worthier deity than Speed. On either side of the victorious runner, whose eyes still glowed with the joy of triumph, walked Noco and Katonah. The latter, downcast and apprehensive, gazed gloomily toward the city, whose roofs could now be plainly seen, while she listened apathetically to the Frenchman’s encouraging words. Changing the tongue he used from French to Spanish, de Sancerre, turning toward Noco, who looked, in the twilight, like a hideous heathen idol carved in mahogany, said:
“I trust, señora, that your courageous grandson, my very worthy opponent, will bear me no ill-will because my slender body was less a burden than his giant frame.”
Noco, to whom de Sancerre’s overthrow of the erstwhile invincible Cabanacte had appeared like a miracle wrought by some mysterious moon-magic, gazed reverentially at the Frenchman with beady, black eyes, which seemed to be fully half a century younger than the other features of her wrinkled face. Her countenance was a palimpsest, with youth staring out from beneath the writings made by time.
“My grandson, Cabanacte, O Son of the Full Moon, will ever do your bidding with a loyal heart. According to the customs of our land, your triumph in the race entitles you to service at his hands until his feet wax swift enough to fly away from yours.”
“Caramba!” exclaimed de Sancerre, whose expletives bore testimony to the cosmopolitan tendencies of his adventurous career, “your words, señora, rejoice my heart! I stand in sore need of a servitor to save me from the nakedness which one more heated foot-race would beget. If Cabanacte can repair the rents which make my costume such a marvel to the eye, I’ll free him from his villein socage and make him proud again.”
Enough of this the old hag understood—enlightened, to a great extent, by the Frenchman’s eloquent gestures—to emphasize the grin upon her ugly but intelligent face.
“Cabanacte is a warrior, not a maker of flowing robes!” she exclaimed, with a raucous chuckle. “But to-night old Noco will repair the holes in the Son of the Full Moon’s garb. Look at this.” Fumbling at her waist, she presently held out to de Sancerre’s gaze a needle made of fish-bone. Lowering her voice, she said: “Coyocop, the spirit of the sun, has not disdained to let my needle prick her sacred dress. She weeps, and cares for nothing but to lie upon her couch and whisper secrets to the mother of the sun. ’Tis sad, but so she must fulfil her mission to our race. Our nation’s wise men and the priests who tend the temple-fire had told us she would come. My grandson, Cabanacte, bore her from the sea.”
De Sancerre listened attentively to the old crone’s words. He recalled Noco’s assertion that Coyocop had scrawled his inamorata’s name upon the mulberry bark, though, at the time, he had not grasped the full significance of her mumbled, mongrel Spanish words, rendered less clear to him by the use of the meaningless name, Coyocop. But now, as they hurried on behind the porters who carried the King’s litter, followed by a hundred chattering noblemen, a veil seemed to be lifted from de Sancerre’s mind. His heart beat with suffocating rapidity, and his voice trembled as he looked down at Noco, trying to catch her eyes in the darkening twilight, and exclaimed:
“’Twas Coyocop who scratched that name upon the bark? But why, good Doña Noco? Tell me why.”
The old woman glanced over her shoulder, to assure herself that they could not be overheard. Then she whispered: