Bill broke into a hearty laugh.
“All right for you!” grumbled Nicky. “They have some joke about me. If you don’t want to tell——”
“They have a name for you,” Bill chuckled. “Never mind the exact word, but it means He-Who-Sits-Down-Upon-Llamas!”
CHAPTER XII
CLIFF FACES A PROBLEM
“You fellows are having all the fun,” Cliff said ruefully, while the disguised five sat around after dinner the third day they spent in Quichaka. “You can go all over town and see all the sights and I have to sit like a judge, all alone in my temple.”
“It won’t be for long,” Nicky cheered him up. “Bill saw your father again—how was he, Bill?”
“He’s getting better every minute,” Bill informed them. “When they took me to see him first—at Chasca’s command—and I don’t think they suspected anything—I managed to get a chance to whisper to him that we were disguised friends. He chirked up right away. He isn’t so very sick—just weak. He lost hope and heart, I guess, and sort of pined away. But today I got a chance to whisper that his son is here—you ought to see him spruce up!”
“If I could see him——” Cliff said.
“It would be dangerous. Either he, or you, might get excited and spoil everything. No! Better wait till the Feast of Raymi. Then we can have him brought before you. He’s pretending that he is no better so that when you see him you can pretend to cure him.”
“I think that will be best,” counselled Mr. Whitley. “Now if you are ready, Tom, let us go out to the farm lands and inspect that corn crop again. I am something of a chemist and I think that if I can only find the ingredients to mix a good insecticide, we can show them what will seem like a marvelous destruction of the pests which are eating away the grain. We must search as quickly as we can because we want to be ready at the festival.”