“You are vile!” cried Mr. Gray. “To use them as hostages!”
“Cease grumbling, my little llamas,” Pizzara said sarcastically. “Come and let the loads be put on your little backs—or!——” he crooked his trigger finger significantly.
The situation was too desperate for argument: when they sullenly filed into the room beneath the sun temple, Caya and her brother showed signs of mutiny but Bill whispered to them that if they raised an alarm there it would result in death for them all: he hinted that some way would be found to save the treasure—and they could take only a few choice carved and moulded pieces. Pizzara could not always be on guard.
Strangely enough the whites were all in sympathy with the Indians: they were not mercenary or lustful. The safety of Cliff’s father, their own escape and a clear conscience were of more worth to them than the risk of a few thousand dollars and the feeling that they were thieves.
They were in such a situation that they had to help a thief but they felt sure that at some time when his vigilance was relaxed they could leave him to dispose of his gains, secured by coercion, as best he might.
He had chosen his loot wisely; they saw that as he indicated the lighter statues, beautifully worked, the animals, flowers and a few urns. He made them tear apart woolen weaves that were as fine and as soft as silk to make bundles and thongs with which to carry more than they could handle loose.
Cowed but sullen Caya and her brother did what they could to delay, but finally Pizzara had as much as he thought they could care for, and off they started, down the long tunnel, laden heavily. Even Mr. Gray, feeble as he was, had to carry the statue of Chasca, which weighed only about five pounds but which was a marvelously well wrought bit of purest gold: small though it was, for gold is heavy, every feature, every line, was perfect.
Herding them before him like the llamas he called them, Pizzara drove his bearers along, prodding the morose Indians with his two ready weapons.
They reached the outlet into the dry aqueduct: it was still a tunnel for the distance it ran under the temple gardens, but its stones were carefully fitted and joined with some hard, glasslike cement to help retain the water if the emergency ever arose in which it would inundate the underground ways: and, thought most of them, here was the emergency—if the truth were discovered by the Incas!
The first beginnings of dawn were in the Eastern sky when the party, their torch flung aside, came to the point where the water way was no longer under the gardens but ran, as an open, deep cut, to the mighty cistern which distributed the water from the mountain reservoirs.