"Do you suppose," Dolores anxiously asked, "that we can ever move it?" as she saw how the ages had packed, and hardened the damp soil about the base of the boulder.
"We must." Elsa was resolved not to be defeated. "We absolutely must," she reiterated.
"How?" demanded Dolores.
Elsa's reply was to unstrap a bag from the burro's back, to take from it two trowels, and silently to offer one to Dolores. No explanation was necessary. For five days the girls scraped and dug away the hardened soil from the lower part of the cross-shaped stone, until at last the block began to tremble as though about to fall.
"Dolores! Dolores! It's top heavy, bless it!" Elsa was enthusiastically, insanely happy.
The fact that the stone was top-heavy made it possible for the girls, by dint of much tugging, heaving, and pushing, to roll it over the ledge, and to send it bumping down the mountainside. A narrow passage, wide enough to admit only one at a time, was thus opened. Pine torches were lit. Even Dolores was excited. They squeezed into the entrance, Elsa first. They rushed through the short tunnel, until, at the end, Elsa stumbled and sank to her knees.
"Oh, my! Dolores, just look!" she was holding her torch down to see what had caused her fall. "It's it," she remarked, disregarding rhetoric, while she pointed to a small turquoise-studded image of Tlaloc, the Neptune of the Aztecs.
The girls carried the idol into the little ante-room which was always a part of the burial grotto of an Aztec noble family. How pleasant, how cool, and damp it seemed in here, after their hot toil outside. The sisters had been in too many tombs to know any fear, to have any feeling of the presence of the dead. Their own breathing sounded loud and labored amid the silence of the cave.
Dolores sat down on the moist floor, and examined the statues; she was thinking of the treasure; but Elsa, now that she was sure of finding the gold, or the jewels, or whatever the promise might have meant, desired to explore the grotto.