precipice, one sloping less steeply we had
climbed from the pine trees and the well, one of a like descent we
would take to-morrow down to the plain, but the fourth was mountain
head hanging above us and thick wood,--dark, entangled, pathless. And
it chanced or it was that Juan Lepe lay upon the side toward the peak,
close to forest. The Indians had no thought to guard me. We lay down
under the moon, and that bronze host slept, naked beautiful statues, in
every attitude of rest.

The moon shone until there was silver day. Juan Lepe was not sleeping.

There was no wind, but he watched a branch move. It looked like a man's
arm, then it moved farther and was a full man,--an Indian, noiseless,
out clear in the moon, from the wood. I knew him. It was the priest
Guarin, priest and physician, for they are the same here. Palm against
earth, I half rose. He nodded, made a sign to rise wholly and come. I
did so. I stood and saw under the moon no waking face nor upspringing
form. I stepped across an Indian, another, a third. Then was clear
space, the wood, Guarin. There was no sound save only the constant sound
of this forest by night when a million million insects waken.

He took my hand and drew me into the brake and wilderness. There was
no path. I followed him over I know not what of twined root and thick
ancient soil, a powder and flake that gave under foot, to a hidden,
rocky shelf that broke and came again and broke and came again. Now we
were a hundred feet above that camp and going over mountain brow, going
to the north again. Gone were Caonabo and his Indians; gone the view of
the plain and the mountains of Cibao. Again we met low cliff, long stony
ledges sunk in the forest, invisible from below. I began to see that
they would not know how to follow. Caonabo might know well the mountains
of Cibao, but this sierra that was straight behind Guarico, Guarico
knew. It is a blessed habit of their priests to go wandering in the
forest, making their medicine, learning the country, discovering,
using certain haunts for meditation. Sometimes they are gone from their
villages for days and weeks. None indeed of these wild peoples fear
reasonable solitude. Out of all which comes the fact that Guarin knew
this mountain. We were not far, as flies the bird, from the burned town
of Guarico, from the sea without sail, from the ruined La Navidad. When
the dawn broke we saw ocean.

He took me straight to a cavern, such another as that i