“Ah!––I suspected your eminence had been a gallant in your time,” remarked Don Ruy, amicably––“It is not easy to get out of the habit of noticing alluring things:––that is why I refused to do penance for my birth by turning monk, and shrouding myself in the gown! Now come––tell me! You seem a good fellow––tell me of the ‘Doña Bradamante’ of the silks and the spices.”
“The destiny of that person is probably already decided,” stated the priest of the wild tribes, “she is, if I mistake not, too close to the charge of the Viceroy himself for that destiny to be questioned. The mother, it is said, died insane, and the time has come when the daughter also is watched with all care lest she harm herself––or her attendants. So I hear––the maid I do not know, but the scarf I can trace. Briefly––the evident place for such a wanton spitfire is the convent. You can easily see the turmoil a woman like that can make as each ship brings adventurers––and she seeks a lover out of every group.”
“Jesus!––and hell to come! Then I was only one of a sort––all is fish to the net of the love lorn lady! Maestro Diego would have had the romance and the lily if he had walked ahead instead of behind me!––and he could have had the broken head as well!” Then he sniffed again at the bit of silk, and regarded the monk quizzically.
“You have a good story, and you tell it well, holy father,” he said at last,––“and I am troubled in my mind to know how little of it may be truth, and how 71 much a godly lie. But the gold at least is true gold, and whatever the trick of the lady may be, you say it will serve to win for me the privilege to seek the mines without blare of trumpets. Hum!––it is a great favor for an unknown adventurer.”
“Unknown you may be to the people of the streets, and to your ship mates,” agreed the Padre. “But be sure the Viceroy has more than a hint that you are not of the rabble. The broils you may draw to yourself may serve to disquiet him much––yet he would scarce send you to the stocks, or the service of the roads. Be sure he would rather than all else bid you god speed on a hunting journey.”
“But that you are so given to frankness I should look also for a knife in the back to be included in his excellency’s favors,” commented Don Ruy. “Name of the Devil!––what have I done since I entered the town, but hold hands with one woman in the dark––and be made to look as if I had been laid across a butcher block on a busy day! Hell take such a city to itself! I’ve no fancy for halting over long in a pit where a gentleman’s amusements are so little understood. If the Doña of the scarf were aught but an amiable maniac the thing would be different. I would stay––and I would find her and together we would weave a new romance for a new world poet! But as it is, gather your cut throats and name the day, and we’ll go scouring the land for heathen souls and yellow clinkers.”
Padre Vicente de Bernaldez was known by his wonderful mission-work to be an ecclesiastic of most adventurous disposition. Into wild lands and beyond the Sea of Cortez had he gone alone to the wild tribes––so far had he gone that silence closed over his trail 72 like a grave at times––but out of the Unknown had he come in safety!
His fame had reached beyond his order––and Ruy Sandoval knew that it was no common man who spoke to him of the Indian gold.
“Francisco de Coronado,” stated this padre of the wilderness, “came back empty handed from the north land of the civilized Indians for the reason that he knew not where to search. The gold is there. This is witness. It came to me from a man who––is dead! It was given him by a woman of a certain tribe of sun worshippers. To her it was merely some symbol of their pagan faith––some priestly circle dedicated to the sun.”
“It sounds well,” agreed Don Ruy––“but the trail? Who makes the way? And what force is needed?”