“Faith!––we all must learn prayers enough to get our share!––if prayer will do the work!” said Don Ruy.––“Chico, it means that you get an Indian primer,––and that you find for me a brown enchantress. His reverence will grant us all a special indulgence for hours of the schooling!”
Señor Don Brancadori sat up very straight and shook his head at the priest:––so well assured was he that enough liberties would be taken without the indulgences of holy church. Moreover it was not well to put the deviltries of camp in the mind of so good a lad as Chico.
“And the girl gave to him the gold and told him its hiding place?” he asked.
“We may say she gave it––thought in truth she declared it could not be given––it could only be made a barter of for other medicine, but it must be strong medicine. The blade of flint was to guard her magic symbols if need be, and the man, her master, saw in that moment that the mind he had to deal with in this matter was an Indian mind, in which there is not reason. And to find a ‘medicine’ potent for charms was a task set for a man in the place of the palms.”
“Then a forgotten thing came into his mind. It had been a vow made to an enticing creature of San Lucar. She was also devout as a young nun. The vow was of a return––and no doubt of other meetings. The end of it was that she gave him a rosary––(his first captors coveted that and took care of it). But also they ate together of fruit, and as both ladies and gallants do strange things at strange times, the lady divided the seeds, and counted them seeking a lucky number or some such freakish quest. And by the rosary, and by his mother, she made him swear that when he had found fortune and a plantation in the new world, he would plant with his own hands the seeds there, and send for the lady to come by ship as chatelaine! Failing the plantation, he was to return, and her own relatives would find on land or sea an office fit for his talents:––only he was to faithfully guard the seed of the fruit eaten in a happy hour, and her prayers would meet his own across the waters.
“It may be that women with prayers for him had not been plentiful––whatever the vow was it was made and sealed with the prayer of the lady. When the savages took her rosary they gave no heed to some brown seeds in a leather pouch––no more of 98 them than you could count on your fingers! A man alone for long in a wilderness gives meaning to things he would not remember at happier times. And the training of the Holy Church returns to even the most gardened men in their hours of stress! So it was that the prayer of the willing dame kept him company, as he looked on the seeds. They had become his rosary––and were the last evidence of the nightly prayers promised by the lady.
“Thus:––because of their smallness had they been unnoted of his several captors. Having slipped between the lining and the cover of the pouch he had ceased to remember them after the Indian maid lessened his loneliness. But he went searching for them now––even one peach seed was still with them––and some grains of the bearded wheat––that by a special grace had fallen into a pocket on ship board while handling grains, and as a jest on himself he had added it to the others for the plantation to be made for the waiting dame.
“He could truly say they were ‘medicine’ given with prayers. But with forgetfulness of truth, he also added much as to their divine origin––and the wondrous power they held.
“Gladly the Indian girl let go the gold for the unknown seeds! She further signified that now she could know always that he was a God, for the gift of the seeds fitted some myth of her own land––some thing of one of their false gods who brought seeds and fruits and great good to the people.