Also sitting solitary at his basket, weaving on the isolated island, Pedro had still observed much. Each trifle was an event to him, and of late these trifles had gathered thick about him. With annoying frequency Ferd, the dwarf, had invaded and contaminated his solitude. The hints which the misshapen creature had dropped, though receiving no outward attention, had, nevertheless, remained in the Indian’s mind to disturb it. It was to hunt for this wretched fellow, as well as to prove his “secret,” that he was now in the canyon, believing that when he was found, there would be Jessica also.
When morning came he rose and tightened his belt about him and set out afresh. The long sleep had restored his vigor and his eye gleamed with satisfaction. The muscles that had stiffened from long disuse––he would not have admitted that the stiffness came from age––were limber as of old, and he felt that, after all, it was good to be once more upon the trail. But even his confidence would have been rudely shaken could he have foreseen the peril wherein that trail would end.
Little one.
CHAPTER IV.
DELIVERANCE
A second night of fruitless search upon the rocky wall passed before the old Indian came to the spot which he had thought so near, full twenty-four hours before. He had fed his hunger upon the few wild plums he had found, and more than once he had descended to the flume to slake his thirst; then reclimbed the height again, for there he knew lay the road of his goal. Again and again he tapped the solid rock or the scant earth about it for a response to that magical tip upon his rod; and now, as the second day lightened the gulch, the response came.
The staff forsook his hand, as it had been a creature of volition, and stood upright upon a smooth-faced bowlder. It needed all the man’s strength to wrest it thence, and, grasping it securely, he carefully descended, for the last time, the precipitous wall. Always the staff tugged at his grasp, seeking the earth, but he carried it still toward a clump of gnarled trees which appeared to him like the faces of long-lost friends. It seemed to him that in all the half century since he looked upon them, neither branch nor twig had altered. So had they been on that sad day when the last of the padres had brought him hither and shown them to him. Beneath their roots lay the secret he had kept so well.