“But if he can’t?” said Nicky desperately.
Cliff shrugged helplessly.
“I don’t know,” he said.
CHAPTER XIII
THE GAMES
“Come on, you Tom! Oh, Tom—come on!” Nicky shouted and screeched above the roar of excitement. Neck and neck, down a circling path beaten in the stubby grass, Tom and an Indian raced, stride for stride; behind them came a fleet following.
“Come on, Tom,” said Cliff, under his breath; he had to fight down his desire to shout; he was Chasca and must remember his pose.
Near the finish came the racers. Shouts and cries of encouragement drowned Nicky’s shrill yells.
But Tom put forth his remaining burst of strength and with scarcely three inches to his credit, flitted over the mark—winner in the race in which all the young nobles contested except the Inca’s son alone.
Not far beyond Quichaka there was a sudden rise of the hills in front of whose sharp slope a large tract had been leveled off. From early dawn the lesser natives had streamed to their places on the hillside, and after an early and ample breakfast Cliff and his companions had gone forth with the Inca and his retinue, Cliff being honored by a seat in a hamaca, as had been his fortune on their arrival. He and Bill, Mr. Whitley and Nicky, sat near one another, watching Tom in the foot races. Cliff sat in the place of honor at one side of the Inca whose other place on the further side was given to the high priest of the temple of the Sun. Below them, among the nobles, were his friends.
By his victory over the nobles Tom eliminated all competition and would, after a rest, have to race Challcuchima—and it had been privately agreed among the youths of Cliff’s party that they might all best the nobles but it would be an act of wisdom to allow the Inca’s favorite son to be the final victor in any contest except those in which Cliff, himself a “son of the stars” would compete—there, since the Inca was claimed to be of celestial descent, the contest might fall to whom the Fates and skill should decree. So, later, Tom failed to exert his utmost speed, although he felt that by doing so he might have tied, if not outdistanced, Challcuchima.