He put his hand to his throat as if a lump choked him there. But the woman sat impassive, without moving her face, on which the red light of the fire flickered. To all seeming, she did not hear or understand a word Conover was saying. Yet her bright, dark eyes were fixed on the scout, as if she sought to read the emotions displayed in his countenance.
“I think I can understand your feelings somewhat,” said the scout to Conover.
“Thanks for that,” said Conover, his face brightening; “I was afraid you couldn’t.”
“The Morgan boy is here—still here?” the scout asked.
“I’m coming to that,” said Conover. “As you’ve heard, every twenty or thirty years a white child is stolen by these Toltecs, or, rather, by their priest. This woman was stolen that way, when she was a child. She was brought up here, and became the priestess of these Toltec sun worshipers; that’s what she was stole for.
“They’ve got some kind of legend, or teaching, which directs that their priest must be white, or nearly white. I suppose before there were any white people in the country they took a very white Indian. It teaches, too, that one priest must be a boy, and the next a girl, and so on, and that they must be stolen from some place by the priest.
“It’s supposed that the Great Spirit picks out the child that is to be taken. So when the priest or priestess thinks his or her death isn’t far off, it becomes a duty for him or her to go out and find the child that is pointed out by the Great Spirit.”
His voice choked again.
“She—Itzlan—that’s her Indian name”—he nodded to the woman—“thought her time was near, and, believing with the Indians, she set out to find the child, a boy this time, and she got this child of Morgan’s, and set out to bring him here.
“She will teach him how to be a priest of the Toltecs, and so well that he will want to be that, and never will go back to his people; that’s the way it always is; she wouldn’t go back to the white people; she is a Toltec through and through, believing everything they do. And it will be that way by and by with this Morgan kid—he will be in time the white priest of these Toltecs.