“Let me see! My wife’s second cousin, Estevan Baca, wrote me last week that he had met her in Las Vegas. Everyone knows her, señor. If I can send any message for you——”
“No. Much obliged, all the same,” grunted the other. “I’ll probably be at the Aztec House for a few days. Let me know in case she comes to town, will you? I want to see her.”
With exactly the proper degree of bland eagerness, Coravel Tio assented to this, and Mackintavers departed heavily. The merchant accompanied him to the door and watched him stride up the narrow street, cursing the burros laden with mountain wood that blocked his way. Then, smiling a trifle oddly, the descendant of conquistadores returned to the waiting man from Cochiti pueblo.
“Do you know why that man wanted an interpreter?” he asked the Indian, in the latter’s native tongue. The redskin grinned wisely and shook the black hair from his eyes.
“Yes. But it is not a matter to discuss with Christians, my father.”
Coravel Tio nodded carelessly. The question was closed. The Pueblo folk are, of course, very devoted converts to the Christian faith; yet those who know them intimately can testify that they sometimes have affairs, perhaps touching upon the queer stone idols of their fathers, which do not bear discussion with other Christians. They do not pray to the old gods—perhaps—but they hold them in tremendous respect.
“You came to tell me something,” prompted the curio dealer, gently.
The Indian assented with a nod. He leaned against one of the wooden pillars that supported the roof, and began to roll a cigarette while he talked.
“Yesterday, my father, I was near the painted caves of the Colorado, and I stood above White Rock Cañon looking down at the river. There on the other side of the water I saw the strangest thing in the world. I went home and told the governor of the pueblo what I had seen, and it was his command that I come here and tell you also, for this is some queer affair of the white people.”
Coravel Tio said nothing at all. The Pueblo lighted his cigarette and continued: