Rhodes understood no word of her lamentations, chanted now loudly, now lowly, at intervals hour after hour that day. He set grimly to work digging a grave in the lower part of the ravine, gathering dry grass for lining as best he could to make clear to the girl that no lack of care or honor was shown the last man of Cajame’s stock.
The work took most of the day, for he carried stone and built a wall around the grave and covered it with slatelike slabs gathered from a shattered upheaval of long ago.
Tula watched all this gravely, and with approval, for she drew with her finger the mark of the sun symbol on one of the slabs.
“It is well to make that mark,” she said, “for the sons of Cajame were priests of the sun. The sign is on the great rock of the trail, and it is theirs.”
With the chisel he carved the symbol as she suggested, glad to do anything for the one mourner for the dead man who had offered the treasure of the desert to him.
“That is how he made choice,” she said when it was marked plainly. “Me, I think he was leading us on the night trail to this place––I think so. He is here to guard the gold of El Alisal for you. That is how it will be. He has made choice.”
Kit got away by himself to think over the unexpected situation. The girl climbed to a higher point, seated herself, and continued her chant of mourning. He knew she was following, as best she knew, the traditional formalities of a woman for the death of a chief. He found himself more affected by that brave fatalistic recital, now loud and brave, now weirdly slow and tender, than if she had given way to tempests of tears. A man could comfort and console a weeping stray of the desert, but not a girl who sat with unbound hair under the yucca and called messages to the ghosts until the sun,––a flaming ball of fire,––sank beyond the far purple hills.
And that was the first day of many days at the hidden treasure place of the red gold.