b9bd780c9c95 Administrator (the red fox clan .txt) 📖

the treasure of the Montezumas, you already had had it safe under lock and key for God knows how long!"

"Choose what pleases you most, Señor Jim," she said. "That I may make you a rich gift."

But though for a moment the glowing pearls, the gold and silver trinklets held his eyes, he shook his head.

"It strikes me," he said bluntly, "that you and I are not such friends that rich gifts need pass from one to the other of us."

"Then not even all this," and with a quick gesture she indicated all of the wealth that surrounded him, "can move you? Are you man, Jim Kendric, or a mechanical thing of levers and springs set into a man's form?"

"I have never had the modern madness of lusting for gold; that is all,"

he told her.

"Not entirely modern," she retorted, "since here are ancient hoardings; nor yet entirely mad, since it is pure wisdom to put out a hand for the supreme lever of worldly power. You are a strange man, Señor Jim!"

"I am what I am," he said simply. "And, like other men, content with my own desires and dreamings."

She studied him, for a while in open perplexity, then in as frank a glowing admiration. That he should set aside with a careless hand that which meant so much to her, but made of him in her eyes a sort of superman.

"The thing to do," said Kendric out of a short silence, "is to open your doors and let me go back to the States. I came here looking for treasure trove; your claim antedates mine and I am no highwayman."

Zoraida seated herself in a big carved chair by the long table whereon lay the ancient writings, folded like fans and protected between leaves of decorated woods of various shapes and colors.

"Let me tell you two things, my friend. Three, rather. You saw the sky just now and thought to yourself that all of my safeguards here would be foolish and unavailing if a man sought the way to make his entrance from above? Be sure the way is guarded there, too. Above us towers Little Quetzel Hill, which is a long dead volcano; the hole you saw was in the bottom of the cone. If a man sought to come to it, first he must climb a steep and dangerous mountain flank. The old kings did not forget so obvious a thing. Captives toiled up there while their fellows burrowed down here; the hazardous way through infinite labor continuing through many years, was made infinitely more hazardous.

There are balanced rocks of a thousand tons' weight that are secure in the outward seeming, placed to hurl to destruction the adventurer who sets an unwary foot on them; there is a spring, and it is death to drink of it; there are pits for a man to slide down into and in the bottoms of these pits are countless venomous snakes; there are traps set such as men of our time know nothing of. There have been chance travelers up yonder at infrequent intervals and for every such traveler there has been a death so that the mountain bears an evil name. And, further, should a hardy spirit once win to the hole in the bottom of the volcano's cone and find the way to lower himself hundreds of feet into the gardens, there is always, night and day, one of Zoraida's guards at the spot where he must descend, and that guard, night and day, is armed and eager to grapple with a devil whom he has been told to expect soon or late."

"I have told you," said Kendric, "that I have no wish to steal that which is another's."

"One thing I have told you; here is another. I speak it frankly because I may gain by it and am not in the least afraid of losing, since your destiny lies in my hands! It is that only a portion of the great treasure is here with us; another portion was hidden outside." She put her hand on one of the tinted manuscripts. "The tale is here. The treasure bearers were trapped in the mountains by the Spanish; they had no time to come here. One by one they were killed. They hid much gold where they must. That is the 'loot' of which your friend Barlow speaks; that is the treasure which the Spanish priests knew of and held accursed. And that, Señor Jim, I would add to what I have here!"

She amazed him. Her eyes glittered, the fever of gold lust was in her blood. With all this hers--his eye swept the wealth-laden tables and chests--she still coveted gold, other gold!

"The third thing," said Zoraida sharply, "that you may understand why I mention to you the second, is this: You will never go free until I say the word! And I shall never say the word until you and I have brought the rest and placed it here!"

So there was other treasure! Like this, rich, wrought vessels, fine gold, pearls perhaps! And Zoraida did not yet know where it was; Barlow had had enough sense to keep his mouth closed. Jim Kendric's thoughts flew back and forth rapidly; the strange thing was that at a time like this the vision which shaped itself, vivid and clear cut in his mind, was of little Betty Gordon with a double string of pearls around her throat!

"Of what are you thinking?" demanded Zoraida sharply. She had been watching him keenly. "There is a look in your eyes----"

For an instant she almost dared think that that look was for her; Jim flushed. Zoraida's black brows gathered, her eyes went as deadly cruel as ever were the eyes of her ancient forebears though they watched the priests at the sacrificial stone.

"You think of her!" she cried angrily. She stamped upon the stone floor, she clenched her hands and lifted them high above her head in a sudden access and abandon of rage. "You think