I turned my head. A man was standing at my side.
He was one of our guides, a native of the region, who, with an indescribable expression of terror depicted on his face, strove to drag me away with him and to cover my head with the hat which I still held in my hands.
My first glance, half astonishment, half anger, was equivalent to a sharp, though silent, interrogation.
The poor fellow, without ceasing his efforts to withdraw me from that place, replied to it with these words which then I could not comprehend but which had in them an accent of sincerity that impressed me:—“By the memory of your mother! by that which you hold most sacred in the world, señorito, cover your head and flee faster than flight itself from that cross. Are you so desperate that, the help of God not being enough, you call on that of the Devil?”
I stood a moment looking at him in silence. Frankly, I thought he was a madman; but he went on with equal vehemence:
“You seek the frontier; well, then, if before this cross you ask that heaven will give you aid, the tops of the neighboring mountains will rise, in a single night, to the invisible stars, so that we shall not find the boundary in all our life.”
I could not help smiling.
“You take it in jest?—You think perhaps that this is a holy cross like the one in the porch of our church?”
“Who doubts it?”
“Then you are mistaken out and out, for this cross—saving its divine association—is accursed; this cross belongs to a demon and for that reason is called The Devil’s Cross.”