“With stolen arms of bow, hatchet, and a flint knife, the man went north––wading the river edge at night, and hiding by day until the land of the Natchez was left behind. A strong river came from the west––and an old canoe gave him hope of finding New Spain by the water course. That journey was a tedious thing of night prowlings, hidings, and, sometimes starvings. Then the end of solitude came, and he was captured by heathen rangers.
“They were a large company and were travelling west. Later he learned they were a war company and in a fight his master and most of the others were killed. At the rejoicing of the victors, he sang louder, and danced more wildly than all the others, so they did not kill him. He was traded to other Indians further west for a painted robe and some clay pots. This last move brought him to the villages of the stream, named later by Coronado the Rio Grande, but called by the Indians another name, the P[=o]-s[=o]n-gé.”
“The very villages where we are to go?” demanded Don Ruy.
“Possibly some of the same,” said the priest. “How many of you remember the great comet of 1528?”
Several did, and all remembered the dread and horror it spread in Western Europe.
“Think you then what that same threat in the sky must have been to these wild people who seek magic ever from the stars and even the clouds. It was a threat and it called for some sacrifice propitiating the angry gods.”
“Sacrifice? Do these infidels then practise such abominations?” asked Don Diego.
“To look at the mild eyes and hear their soft voices of these our guests it is not easy to think it,” agreed Padre Vicente, “but these people are but the northern cousins of the men Cortez conquered––their customs differ only in degree. To both Venus and Mars were human god-offerings made––that day of sacrifice is not so long past, and in that day it was done here.”
“And?”