At daybreak they went on.
There was something wrong with the men—you could not observe them and retain any doubt as to the fact. They moved slowly, silently, often with downcast eyes; the whole march was languishing. Dyke rode up and down the straggled column talking to the riders one after another; he was very jolly with them, full of fun and good fellowship, but resolutely determined to get to the bottom of the queer paralysing trouble.
At last one of them told him. The explanation was more fantastically absurd than anything he could have divined. They told him they were disturbed because they had heard him using a word—a bad word—an ominously bad word to use in these regions. Gold was a good word—a word to set one’s mind on fire, brace one’s muscles, and make one’s blood dance. But that other word, emeralds—oh, no. Merely to hear it, in the mountains, took the heart out of one. Surely everybody knew that the quest of emeralds was forbidden.
“Yes, that is the silly belief of these Indian boys,” and Manual Balda, voluble and discursive now that the secret was out. “It is their legends—how can I say how old? Oh yes, Missis, vairy silly. But an Indian is a child always. Not Christian-believing. Su-per-sti-tious!” And he indicated that he and the other three Spaniards held such nonsense in proper contempt.
“Then why didn’t you tell me the truth about it yesterday?” asked Dyke.
Why? Ah, that was difficult to answer. Manuel had felt timid, had not liked to carry tales, had feared that Don Antonio, instead of laughing and snapping his fingers, might be angry.
“Has he think I was su-per-sti-tious also, like those boys?” he inquired of Emmie. “See here, Missis. Why should I, Manuel Balda, fear the evil spirits? I am good Christian. I carry my charm.” He had pulled out of his clothes a little silver crucifix tied to a dirty string, and he held it up reverently. “No evil spirit will dare touch him who carries that.”
Dyke called an immediate halt, and gathering the men together he thrashed out the matter with them in jovial friendly style. First he made the Indians talk, encouraging them to say all that was in their minds; with much wisdom patiently listened to the long involved stories that they soon began to tell him. For a considerable time he denied nothing. Yet it was very difficult not to make mock. To stand there, at this late period of the world’s history, and hear such legends from the lips of strong grown men, no matter what their race or position in the social scale! But for the setting of the scene itself, it would have been impossible. The primeval ramparts, the forlorn grandeurs, the lonely unvisited pomp, that surrounded them, made what is real and what is incredible seem almost to join hands.
They told him stories as old as that of the famous River of Emeralds and its guarding dragon, who demolished with thunder and lightning every intruder that sought to steal the hidden richness. They told him stories as recent as that of the five travellers from Santiago, who were changed into five round stones only a few years ago. Then when Dyke thought the time had come to argue with them and jolly them, they said that perhaps they did not implicitly believe such tales; but this they did indeed believe—that a curse or ban had been laid on emerald-hunting, and that for their part they were averse from defying it. They vowed that at least this much was true: for hundreds of years no one had done any good by looking for emeralds, and many had come to grief at the game. The Spaniards nodded their heads in grave affirmation.
Dyke said that, accepting for argument’s sake the notion of a ban, or curse or bad luck, then anything of that sort would fall upon him, the leader of the expedition, and not on them his honest followers. It was he who made the defiance and wanted emeralds, not they. And on his head be all the consequences. He said this loudly and solemnly, looking about him with a majestic sweep of the eyes; and it had a great effect upon them. They cheered up visibly.