Hearts of Three

by London Jack

But the old man started his mule, and, with a tattoo of bare heels on the creature's ribs, hastened it on across the clearing and into the jungle beyond.

"He's like a hound on the scent, and it looks as if the scent is getting hot," Francis remarked.

At the end of half a mile, where the jungle turned to grass-land on swift-rising slopes the old man forced his mule into a gallop which he maintained until he reached a natural depression in the ground. Three feet or more in depth, of area sufficient to accommodate a dozen persons in comfort, its form was strikingly like that which some colossal human foot could have made.

"The foot-step of the God," the old priest proclaimed solemnly, ere he slid off his mule and prostrated himself in prayer. "In the foot-step of the God must we wait till the eyes of Chia flash so say the sacred knots."

"Pretty good place for a meal," Henry vouchsafed, looking down into the depression. While waiting for the mumbo— jumbo foolery to come oft, we might as well stay our stomachs."

"If Chia doesn't object," laughed Francis. And Chia did not object, at least the old priest could not find any objection written in the knots.

While the mules were being tethered on the edge of the first break of woods, water, was fetched from a nearby spring and a fire built in the foot-step. The old Maya seemed oblivious of everything, as he mumbled endless prayers and ran the knots over and over.

"If only he doesn't blow up," Francis said. "I thought he was wild-eyed the first day we met him up in Juchitan," concurred Henry. "But it's nothing to the way his eyes are now."

Here spoke the peon, who, unable to understand a word of their English, nevertheless sensed the drift of it.

"This is very religious, very dangerous, to have anything to do with the old Maya sacred things. It is the death-road. My father knows. Many men have died. The deaths are sudden and horrible. Even Maya priests have died. My father's father so died. He, too, loved a woman of the tierra caliente. And for love of her, for gold, he sold the Maya secret and by the knot-writing led tierra caliente men to the treasure. He died. They all died. My father does not like the women of the tierra caliente now that he is old. He liked them too well in his youth, which was his sin. And he knows the danger of leading you to the treasure. Many men have sought during the centuries. Of those who found it, not one came back. It is said that even conquist adores and pirates of the English Morgan have won to the hiding-place and decorated it with their bones."