Roy Norton

“ Wardy exclaimed, and for a moment the Indian looked troubled.
“There may be other gods than mine, and in which some of my people who work for the white man believe,” was his unanswerable argument. “For the sake of those, I do propitiate them. Listen! I do not know that beyond the great peaks are either mounds or ruins. I know that they are guarded by jungles more terrible than you have ever seen and through which my people believe that none may pass lest he incur the anger of our ancient gods. Not within the knowledge of man has any one ever gone through them. ”

“ Ixtual declared.
“He says there is a legend among his people that in a spur of the Sierra Chuchumatlane mountains are two peaks beyond which no living man has ever looked and that they were sacred to those who built the temples here,” the doctor answered concisely enough, and still speaking in Spanish as if to make certain that Ixtual might understand. But the latter was not satisfied.
“Señores,” he said gravely, “those peaks are sacred to my people and were once a part of their religion. A man does not betray his religion, does he?” ”

“ He, too, was staring contemplatively at the doctor and his companion with a speculative frown.
“That is one man—that chap Ixtual—I don’t quite understand and never shall,” he said thoughtfully. “I’ve never quite made him out. The Maya Indians that come down from up around Coban are the best and most industrious laborers I can hire. I pay them higher wages than have ever been paid here. I like them. I house some of them; but this Indian Ixtual has never yet worked for me. I don’t know what it is. He never works but always has money enough to pay his bills—if he ever makes any—which I doubt! ”

“ He mumbled hurriedly a long string of titles and dates. “‘And for the guidance of those who have not hitherto heard, the Place of Sacrifice is on this date abandoned and its priests and dwellers retired past the Mountains of the Mines—to the Sacred City, carrying with them to the Temple of Treasure all of value hitherto herein. ”

“ You as men would do this for your own. I beg you help me do it for mine.”
There was something almost pathetic about him as he stood there before us; something dignified as if he were a man ennobled by high purpose ”