“Do not go where the women are,” he said; “the wounded are there, and besides, they do not want us.”
Very softly we skirted the edge of the swale and climbed to the foot of a knoll overlooking it. Some oaks grew here, and the prostrate trunks were strong to lean against. The moon was gone on her last quarter, and the figures of men moving in the swale were large and vague against it. There was a wind stirring that kept up a whimpering whisper in the tops of the chaparral. It took the voices as they rose through it and rounded them to indistinctness; only by listening attentively could we distinguish between the acclamations of victory and cries of loss and pain.
“But tell me,” I insisted to Herman, “you have been among the men, have they brought back the King’s Desire?”
“Look,” he said, “at that man moving there as he turns against the moon; do you see the line of light that runs about his forehead? And there! what glitters on that outstretched arm? Hardly a man of them but has some gold about him, but they have not said a word.”
“And who has the Cup of the Four Quarters?”
“Noche took it from Oca’s son; I saw him studying it by the reflected moon, but when I came up he hid it in his bosom.”
“And the great rubies?”
“They have not come in.”
“Herman,” I said, after a long pause, “what do you think they will do with it—and us?”
“The King’s Desire? Bury it, I hope. With us? Do you know, Mona, I am no longer anxious about what they will do to us.”