“Just as you were saying we didn’t have to go into the valley!” she gurgled at Francis. “Now will you believe?”
But Francis was busy. Reaching out his hand, he caught and stopped a familiar object bounding down the steep slope after them. It was Torres’ helmet purloined from the chamber of mummies, and to Torres he tossed it.
“Throw it away,” Leoncia said.
“It’s the only protection against the sun I possess,” was his reply, as, turning it over in his hands, his eyes lighted upon an inscription on the inside. He showed it to his companions, reading it aloud:
“DA VASCO.”
“I have heard,” Leoncia breathed.
“And you heard right,” Torres nodded. “Da Vasco was my direct ancestor. My mother was a Da Vasco. He came over the Spanish Main with Cortez.”
“He mutinied,” Leoncia took up the tale. “I remember it well from my father and from my Uncle Alfaro. With a dozen comrades he sought the Maya treasure. They led a sea-tribe of Caribs, a hundred strong including their women, as auxiliaries. Mendoza, under Cortez’s instructions, pursued; and his report, in the archives, so Uncle Alfaro told me, says that they were driven into the Valley of the Lost Souls where they were left to perish miserably.”
“And he evidently tried to get out by the way we’ve just come in,” Torres continued, “and the Mayas caught him and made a mummy of him.”
He jammed the ancient helmet down on his head, saying: