“Not anything,” said Tahn-té. “It was a long time I was with them. Some men had one book, or two, other men had papers that came in great canoes from their land in Spain. Some had writings from their fathers or their friends. These I heard read and talked of around the camp fire. When they went away some things were thrown aside or given to the padres who were to stay and talk of their gods. All I found I hid in the earth. The people of Ci-bo-la killed Padre Juan, and I traded a broken sword for his books and his papers. The sword I also had buried. They were afraid of the books, I had learned to read them, and I was not afraid.”
“And you came from Ci-bo-la alone?” asked the governor,––“it is a long trail to carry a load.”
“All was not carried from there. I came back to Ci-cu-yé to learn more from Padre Luis who meant to live there. He did not live so long, but while he lived he taught me.”
“The men of Ci-cu-yé killed him too?”
“They made him die when they said I must not take beans or meal to him where he lived in a cave, and where he made prayers for their shadow spirits.”
“You wanted that he should have food?” asked the Ruler.
“I wanted that he should live to teach me all the books before the end came,” said the boy simply. “It is not all to be learned in two winters and one summer.”
“That is true,” said K[=a]-ya-fah the Ruler. “All of a man’s life is needed to learn certain things of magic. It is time now that you come back and begin 51 the work of the Orders. You have earned the highest right a boy has yet earned, and no doors will be closed for you on the sacred things given to people.”
“We think that is so,” said the governor––“no doors will be closed for the son of S[=aa]-hanh-que-ah, the Woman of the Twilight.”
This was the hour he had dreamed of through the months which had seemed horrible as the white man’s hell. One needs only to read the several accounts of Coronado’s quest for the golden land of the Gran Quivera in 1540-42 to picture what the life of a little native page must have been with the dissatisfied adventurers, by whom all “Indians” were considered as slaves should their service be required.