is pocket with scarcely other
thought than that it might get lost if left on the floor. Then he took
the still unconscious man in his arms and dragged him back to the
fire.

CHAPTER IV

_The Golden God Speaks_

For a while the man on the floor in his weakness rambled on as in a
delirium.

"Ah, Dios!" he muttered. "There's a knife in every hand." Then
followed an incoherent succession of phrases, but out of them the two
distinguished this, "Millions upon millions in jewels and gold." Then,
"But the God is silent. His lips are sealed by the blood of the
twenty."

After this the thick tongue stumbled over some word like "Guadiva,"
and a little later he seemed in his troubled dreams to be struggling
up a rugged height, for he complained of the stones which fretted his
feet. Wilson managed to pour a spoonful of brandy down his throat and
to rebandage the wound which had begun to bleed again. It was clear
the man was suffering from great weakness due to loss of blood, but as
yet his condition was not such as to warrant Wilson in summoning a
surgeon on his own responsibility. Besides, to do so would be
seriously to compromise himself and the girl. It might be difficult
for them to explain their presence there to an outsider. Should the
man by any chance die, their situation would be such that their only
safety would lie in flight. To the law they were already fugitives and
consequently to be suspected of anything from petty larceny to
murder.

To have forced himself to the safe with all the pain which walking
caused him, the wounded man must have been impelled by some strong and
unusual motive. It couldn't be that he had suspected Wilson and Jo of
theft, because, in the first place, he must have seen at a glance that
the safe was undisturbed; and in the second, that they had not taken
advantage of their opportunity for flight. It must have been something
in connection with this odd-looking image, then, at which he had been
so eager to look. Wilson returned to the next room. He picked the idol
from the floor. As he did so the head snapped back into place. He
brought it out into the firelight.

It looked like one of a hundred pictures he had seen of just such
curiosities--like the junk which clutters the windows of curio
dealers. The figure sat cross-legged with its heavy hands folded in
its lap. The face was flat and coarse, the lips thick, the nose squat
and ugly. Its carved headdress was of an Aztec pattern