“But you cannot send me away before giving me something to eat,” she persisted, slipping down the slope of the depression with pure feminine cunning in order to place the discussion on a closer and more intimate basis.
Aroused by their voices, the old Maya came out of a trance of prayer and observed her with wrath. And in wrath he burst upon her, intermingling occasional Spanish words and phrases with the flood of denunciation in Maya.
“He says that women are no good,” the peon interpreted in the first pause. “He says women bring quarrels among men, the quick steel, the sudden death. Bad luck and God’s wrath are ever upon them. Their ways are not God’s ways, and they lead men to destruction. He says women are the eternal enemy of God and man, forever keeping God and man apart. He says women have ever cluttered the foot-steps of God and have kept men away from travelling the path of God to God. He says this woman must go back.”
With laughing eyes, Francis whistled his appreciation of the diatribe, while Henry said:
“Now will you be good, Leoncia? You see what a Maya thinks of your sex. This is no place for you. California’s the place. Women vote there.”
“The trouble is that the old man is remembering the woman who brought misfortune upon him in the heyday of his youth,” Francis said. He turned to the peon. “Ask your father to read the knot-writing and see what it says for or against women traveling in the foot-steps of God.”
In vain the ancient high priest fumbled the sacred writing. There was not to be found the slightest authoritative objection to woman.
“He’s mixing his own experiences up with his mythology,” Francis grinned triumphantly. “So I guess it’s pretty near all right, Leoncia, for you to stay for a bite to eat. The coffee’s made. After that....”
But “after that” came before. Scarcely had they seated themselves on the ground and begun to eat, when Francis, standing up to serve Leoncia with tortillas, had his hat knocked off.
“My word!” he said, sitting down. “That was sudden. Henry, take a squint and see who tried to pot-shoot me.”