“This is the way she looks at it, and the way old Fire Top looks at it. He’s the chief, and the head of the warriors, and in his way he has more power here than she has. She’s the religious leader, you see.
“Well, she and Fire Top believe that the only way to keep white men from coming here and driving out the Toltecs is for the Toltecs to kill all that do come, and so make others afraid to come. She says the white men love gold so that if they knew what was here they could not be kept back, so many of them would come. But the white people won’t trouble the place so long as they don’t know about the gold, and are made afraid to come nigh it. I suppose she’s right about that.”
His face was troubled.
“I’d do something if I could, Cody, and that’s a fact, though you may not believe it. I’m afraid I can’t do anything. I feel sorry about it, and feel a bit responsible, as I set out as your guide to this spot. I ought to have known better. But I meant well. Only I didn’t know Itzlan was living, you see!”
“I understand,” said the scout. “We are to be killed, at the order of this woman, so that knowledge of this place may not get to the world outside. But you may tell her, for me, that she is making a mistake in that, for if I and my friends do not return from this spot the United States government will surely send here a force strong enough to annihilate this whole tribe of Toltecs. I wish you’d make that plain to her, Conover, if she doesn’t thoroughly understand my words now.”
The woman’s face was still impassive.
Nor did it change in its expression even when Tom Conover began to translate to her in the Toltec language the threatening statement which Buffalo Bill had made.
The scout could see that the woman did not intend to relent.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE HEART OF TOM CONOVER.
The battle that raged in the heart of Tom Conover after that interview with Buffalo Bill can be but dimly indicated here.