“Myself, I think the Indian sky knowers had the prophet sight,” went on Doña Jocasta. “They make their eagle on the standard and they put the serpent there of the reason that some day a thing of poison would crawl to the nest of the eagle of Mexico to comrade there. It has crawled over the seas for that, Padre, and the beak and claws and wing of the eagle must all do battle to kill the head and the heart of it;––for the heart of a serpent dies hard, and they breed and hatch their eggs everywhere in the soil of Mexico. Señor Padre, the Indian women of Palomitas are right!––the girl Tula is a child of the eagle, and her stroke at the heart of the German snake will be a true stroke. I will not be one to give the weak word for mercy.”
Her gaze, through half-closed lids, was directed towards the far trail of the cañon where moving dots of dark marked the coming of the Palomitas women. A ray of reflected light touched the jewel green of her eyes like shadowed emeralds in their dusky casket, and the priest, constantly proclaiming the probable loss of her soul, could not but bring his glance again and again to the wondrous beauty of her. She had bloomed like a royal rose in the days of serene rest at Soledad.
“If the heretic Americano gives you these thoughts which are not Christian, it will be a day of good luck when you see the last of him,” was his cold statement as he watched her. “My mind is not well satisfied as to his knowledge of secret things here in Sonora. The Indians say he is an enchanter or Ramon Rotil would never have left him here as capitan with you,––and that belt of gold–––”
“But it was not the belt of the Americano!”
“No, but he knows! I tell you that gold is of the gold lost before we were born,––the red gold of the padres’ mine!”
“But the old women are telling me that the gold was Indian gold long before Spanish priests saw the land! Does the Indian girl then not have first right?”
“None has right ahead of the church, since all those pagans are under the rule of church! They are benighted heathen who must come under instruction and authority, else are they as beasts of the field.”
“Still,––if the girl makes use of her little heritage for a pious purpose–––”
“Her intent has nothing to do with that secret knowledge of the Americano!” he insisted. “Has he bewitched you also that you have so little interest in a mine of gold in anyone of the arroyas of your land?”
She smiled at that without turning her head.