After much patient delving had Ka-yemo learned that this was so, for the thing was not a tribal matter, but a thing of high medicine in the Po-Ahtun order. Not even the governor knew who held the secret. When the time came for certain religious ceremonies, some of the yellow stone was placed on the shrine of the weeping god with other prayers, but it was a sacred thing, as was the pollen of the corn, and no man asked from whence it came. To be told meant that the person told was made guardian until the death blankets wrapped him. It was a great honor. No man could ask for it. A brother might not know that his brother was the keeper of the trust. Only 226 the head men of the secret order of Spirit Things could know.
In vain Juan Gonzalvo swore, and Padre Vicente used diplomacy and made wondrous fine impression as the ambassador for the king of all Spain and the Indian Island!
Don Ruy took the secretary and Yahn Tsyn-deh, and went to the governor of Kah-po where his reception was kindly, but the information given him was slight.
That dignitary told him that his men of Mexico might dig great caves if they chose in search for the yellow metal of the sun symbol, but that to Povi-whah had been given the secret of the gold at the time when Señor Coronado had burned the two hundred men at the stake in Tiguex. All the old men knew that gold was the one thing the men of iron searched for. Before that time all villages had men who knew where it was hidden by the Sun Father. But a council of head men had been called. It had been a great council and long. At the end of it, one village was chosen, one order of that village, and two members of that order, and in the ears of those two alone was whispered the hiding place. No man could know who the two keepers of the secret might be, for it had to do with sacred things and with strong magic, and in that way did the villages decide to guard the secret of the High Sun.
“No chance here for whispers of courtiers and king’s counselors to get abroad in the land,” decided Don Ruy as they mounted their horses for the home ride and Yahn lingered to gossip with neighbors. “In the south the conquerors could fight for gold and win it––but in this land of silence with whom is one to fight?”
“Need you the gold so much that you must come between these poor people and their god in the sky?” asked the secretary doubtfully, for the attitude of the two had been of extreme politeness and not so much of comradeship since that morning of confession when the lad had owned himself a deficient page in the bearing of love messages,––“Is the finding of the gold a matter of life or of death?”
“It pays for most good things,” stated Don Ruy. “How know you that I do not beggar myself on this expedition? And to go back with empty hands would win little of favor for me from even the well-guarded Doña of the Mexic tryst.”
“You forget, Excellency,” said the lad and smiled, “she is called mad you know––and to a mad maid you might return in a cloak of woven grasses, or of shredded bark, and lack nothing of welcome.”
“Humph! Only to a mad maid dare I return coatless, and find an open gate? And suppose it be another than the gentle maniac whom I seek?––a cloak of grasses would be a sorry equipment to cover my failure.”