Tom nodded, keeping from his face the qualms of unease that clutched at his heart. What would the test be? How could they meet it? When they were so close to recovering the sister he loved, must strange customs interfere? Nicky and Cliff were perturbed, too, but they kept their faces as impassive as they could. The Indians were not going to win! Cliff regretted that he had left the rifle in the hut across the clearing but he hoped they would not need it. However, he made a secret plan to get out and secure it if things began to look black.
One of the councillors stood up and spoke briefly: the girl listened and then turned to the white parties and translated.
“They say word has come to them that great doctors wished to come into their country to heal their people,” she began.
“How could word come—there isn’t any newspaper or telegraph or telephone,” cried Nicky, incredulously. The girl merely nodded toward the medicine men as though they had secured the message in some way, and continued her translation.
“They say they wish to see the great doctors heal their tribe and so they let them come.”
She turned again to listen, and once more she translated.
“They say that you bo—young men—may be evil doctors. They say the first doctors told the San Blas Indians evil doctors would follow——” Nicky glared at Henry and Henry looked uncomfortable.
“Now they await your answers,” she said, turning first to Henry.
Henry gave out a string of pleading to establish the fact that he and Mort were the good doctors but that if their medicines had no power it was because of some evil influence. He did not quite dare to denounce the boys. Margery, as Tom already called her in his thoughts, did her duty in translating, and then she turned toward Tom, and waited.
Tom glanced swiftly toward Nicky and Cliff. He wanted to be sure they had no message to guide him. They looked anxious and earnest, but they had not thought out any answer. Tom, bending his head on his hands, tried to think what reply would show that they were not evil doctors, for it would not help much to declare it and stop: the Indians would ask proof, and he could not think of any way to prove his claim. The chief, his councillors and the medicine men waited without movement. They were used to tedious conferences. The girl watched without expression.