The Flute of the Gods

by Marah Ellis Ryan

“In that way was made the exchange of medicine for medicine beside some pool by the palms, and well it was it was made that day, else never would we have this golden guide! For:––it fell out that a day later as he was hunting to the south, he was 99 surrounded and taken prisoner by the savages who range by the inland sea of California. The gold had a hole as you see, he pulled hair from his head, tied the nugget in the braid, and thus hid it for the next two years of his life. The girl he never again heard of. She would die of a certainty alone in the desert.

“A missionary of our order found the man in the wilderness. They were exiles, the two for the length of a winter, and the Greek listened to the tales of the lost fleet on which Don Teo sought the new world, and also of the royal order for his arrest following on the next ship. For a prisoner of Solyman the Magnificent had escaped from the galleys of the Turk, and wild tales were told of princes of the North who gave aid to the traffic in Christian slaves. Don Teo was by all means to be taken back to Spain that the Holy Office learn through him the names and numbers of the offenders!”

“Good it is to hear that the varlet was not let sleep sound all the night!” decided Don Ruy.

“It appears there were many nights when sleep kept from him––to judge by his confessions!” said the priest. But to go into deeper hell while he was yet alive did not march with his wishes, and while he half inclined to the desert again, that he might die quietly there as any other starved wild thing does die:––a thing came which he had not thought:––the padre died of a serpent’s sting, and he, Teo the Greek, was alone, and apart from the world again!

“It was the gown for which the savages had reverence––and he took the consecrated robe from the dead padre and wore it––he had been driven by misfortune back to Holy Church!

“He lived under the name of the padre as a priest in holy orders. His reports to his superior were well 100 counterfeited as the writing of the man he had buried. He held that mission as the extreme outpost for three years. He died there of a fever, but not until I had found him, and confessed him. The gold and the tale of his wanderings he gave to me. Much of it he told me more than once, for when men are exiles as he was for those several years, the things of the old life loom up big with significance. He felt that he was the finder of the way, and that mayhaps, Mother Church, so long forgotten by him, would be the richer that he had lived. Masses were said for the girl dead in the desert. She had saved him, and for a little while of life––he had given her love!”

“He may have made a most righteous end––since it was no longer in his power to do evil!” commented Don Ruy––“But your pirate priest would never have let go the nugget for masses if the breath of life had kept him company.”

“Who knows!––the high God does not give us to see in the heart of the other man,” said Padre Vicente––“In the years of his trial he was made to feel his sins against Holy Church––and when the girl died in the desert, another life died with her. Even men of sin do give thought to such matters.”

But Juan Gonzalvo who hated him, swore at the ill luck of his escape by death, and no one felt any pity for that first white pilgrim across the Indian lands. All of them however gave speech of praise to the priest’s telling of the story. Don Ruy gave him leave to tell romances in future rather than preach sermons.

The men were vastly interested to learn at last the exact region of their destination––and that the province where the yellow metal had been hidden by the 101 sun was but a matter now of a few days more of journeying––since the people of Ah-ko had brother Queres in settlements adjoining the settlements of the Te-huas.