nd in that way did the villages decide to guard the secret of the
High Sun.

"No chance here for whispers of courtiers and king's counselors to get
abroad in the land," decided Don Ruy as they mounted their horses for
the home ride and Yahn lingered to gossip with neighbors. "In the
south the conquerors could fight for gold and win it--but in this land
of silence with whom is one to fight?"

"Need you the gold so much that you must come between these poor
people and their god in the sky?" asked the secretary doubtfully, for
the attitude of the two had been of extreme politeness and not so much
of comradeship since that morning of confession when the lad had owned
himself a deficient page in the bearing of love messages,--"Is the
finding of the gold a matter of life or of death?"

"It pays for most good things," stated Don Ruy. "How know you that I
do not beggar myself on this expedition? And to go back with empty
hands would win little of favor for me from even the well-guarded Dona
of the Mexic tryst."

"You forget, Excellency," said the lad and smiled, "she is called mad
you know--and to a mad maid you might return in a cloak of woven
grasses, or of shredded bark, and lack nothing of welcome."

"Humph! Only to a mad maid dare I return coatless, and find an open
gate? And suppose it be another than the gentle maniac whom I seek?--a
cloak of grasses would be a sorry equipment to cover my failure."

"There is one right good blanket at your disposal," said the lad
looking straight out across the river, yet feeling the color mount to
his hair as Don Ruy regarded him keenly and then clapped him on the
shoulder.

"I'll claim half of the blanket when the day comes!" he declared--"and
in truth I'd not be so sorry to see the maid of your discourse whether
mad or of sanity. That ever restless Cacique who strives to bar us
out, shows me that more than one Indian may have gone mad in the same
struggle. Think you he must know the keepers of the secret of gold?"

"It would not be strange, since he is the head of the magicians and
the worker of spirit things."

"God send that Juan Gonzalvo gets not that idea strongly in his
mind--it would be the cap sheaf to the stack of his grievances."

"And it would be the one to weigh most heavily with his reverence the
padre"--added Chico. "His soul is set on treasure for the Holy
Brotherhood--and to win in secret where Coronado and the church failed
with all the blare of trumpets, m