But the thought once planted in the mind of Yahn did not die. The face of Tahn-té held a trouble new and strange. He walked apart, and the old men said he made many prayers that the Great Mystery send a sign for the going of the white strangers.
In her heart Yahn thought as Tahn-té thought. The eyes of the man of the priest gown went like arrows through her at times––he looked like a man who knew all things. To Ka-yemo he talked until she was wild with desire to know the things said between them. It angered her that Ka-yemo was flattered by such attention. Padre Vicente she hated for his keen eyes and his plain speech of her. Don Ruy and the boyish secretary had too many moments of laughter when her name was spoken of to Juan Gonzalvo––as it often was! Their gifts she took with both hands, and did the talking for them as agreed, but she sulked at times even under their compliments, and Don Diego instructed Säh-pah to strive that the 224 unruly beauty be brought within the Christian fold.
The success was not great, for Säh-pah was brave in a new gift of silver spurs––worn on rawhide about her neck, for it was the time of the Summer dance when the women choose companions, and love is very free. If the man prefers not to share the love of the dame who makes choice of him––he makes her a gift––or she chooses one.
The pious Don Diego had the secretary give many lines in the “Relaciones” of this strange custom where the fair fond ones offered marriage––or accepted a gift as memento. He even strutted a bit that the poor heatheness offered to him what best she could afford in exchange for the divine grace of a good sprinkling of holy water. But Yahn said things of the baptism not good for ears polite, or for the “Relaciones,” and Säh-pah scuttled back in fear to her new master, and told him,––and told Juan Gonzalvo, that the veins of Yahn Tsyn-deh must be cut open to let out the Apache blood, before they could hope she might be one of the heaven birds in their angel flock!
But Säh-pah did not tell them that the thing of torment awaking Yahn to wrath had been the knowledge that Ka-yemo was somewhere across the mesa, and the old people laughed that he could not stay longer from the new wife, but had gone to seek her in the place of the old ruins.
After that, divine grace had not shielded Säh-pah from vituperation, and when Juan Gonzalvo came wooing, Yahn told him that across the hills was a woman waiting for a man, and dressed in fine skins and many beads:––when he or his men had won Koh-pé the daughter of Tsa-fah, to come back and tell her. She did not mean to be won easier than the other, and without a price!
Which was also a novel statement for the truthful record of the adventurers, and the secretary, on a terrace above, heard it, and rolled on the flat roof in laughter, and wrote it down most conscientiously. By such light matters was the dreariness of waiting days lessened.
For plainly the days were to be of waiting. All the good will of gift-bought friends helped the strangers not at all to the finding of the trail of gold. In the sands of the streams some fragments no larger than seeds of the grass were found, and in the cañon of Po-et-se some of the adventurers dug weary hours in the strange soil where the traces are yet plain of black ashes, and charred cinders far beneath the sagebrush growth of to-day.
But while the Te-hua men gave good will for their digging, yet more than that they could not give, for the reason that no more than two persons could hold in trust that secret of the Sun Father’s symbol––and only certain members of the Po-Ahtun order knew even the names of those two people.