“Quick! There is no time for explanation. Down on your knees to Torres and pretend you are his slave——and don’t talk Spanish; talk English.”
Henry could not comprehend, and, while Leoncia reassured him with her eyes, he saw Francis prostrate himself at the feet of their common enemy.
“Gee!” Henry muttered, as he joined Francis. “Here goes. But it’s worse than rat poison.”
Leoncia followed him, and all the Lost Souls went down prone before the Capitan Da Vasco who received in their midst celestial messengers direct from the sun. All went down, except the priest, who, mightily shaken, was meditating doing it, when the mocking devil of melodrama in Torres’ soul prompted him to overdo his part.
As haughtily as Francis had coached him, he lifted his right foot and placed it down on Henry’s neck, incidentally covering and pinching most of his ear.
And Henry literally went up in the air.
“You can’t step on my ear, Torres!” he shouted, at the same time dropping him, as he had dropped the priest with his right hook.
“And now the beans are spilled,” Francis commented in dry and spiritless disgust. “The Sun God stuff is finished right here and now.”
The Sun Priest, exultantly signaling his spearmen, grasped the situation. But Henry dropped the muzzle of his automatic pistol to the old priest’s midrif; and the priest, remembering the legends of deadly missiles propelled by the mysterious substance called “gunpowder,” smiled appeasingly and waved back his spearmen.
“This is beyond my powers of wisdom and judgment,” he addressed his tribespeople, while ever his wavering glance returned to the muzzle of Henry’s pistol. “I shall appeal to the last resort. Let the messenger be sent to wake the Lady Who Dreams. Tell her that strangers from the sky, and, mayhap, the sun, are here in our valley. And that only the wisdom of her far dreams will make clear to us what we do not understand, and what even I do not understand.”