not be good,"--he continued. "It is better that
the boys and the young men see the fate given to a traitor. My
brothers,--is this well?"

"It is well!" said the men, but the voice of the war chief was not
loud, and his hands shook until he clasped them together and held them
steady.

Tahn-te looked around the circle as though undecided, and then rested
on Ka-yemo.

"You speak the words of the Castilian man, and like to speak them," he
said quietly, "so it will be well for you to make the words for this
man who carries to their priest the gift of the sun symbol. Forget no
thought of it--for all the words have meaning."

And this speech to Ka-yemo was in Castilian, and was plainly said, and
Ruy Sandoval knew then why the courtesy of the council had been
extended to him.

And the outcast, holding the nuggets in his trembling outstretched
hand shook so that he could not go alone up the ladder to the world
above.

Ka-yemo, with a still, strange face of fear, put out his hand to help
the outcast, who looked as if Great King Death had called his name.

No more words were spoken, and the men in silence followed after.
They had seen a thing of strong medicine, and the Great Mystery had
sent power quickly. That palsy by which the man had been touched had
come with the swiftness of the wind when it whirls the leaves of the
cottonwood. They all knew that the tongue would be dumb, and the eyes
would be blind in the given time if need be.

And Don Ruy like the others, was touched with awe of the man who had
wrought the thing. As he went up the ladder he looked back at the
Ruler who sat still--gazing into the ashes of the place of sacred
fire.

CHAPTER XIV

THE TRUE VISION

The sentinels on the terrace who watched the night in Povi-whah knew
these were nights when they did not watch alone. The Po-Ahtun-ho
was abroad in the night for prayer, and when they made reports in
the morning, they knew that he had not waited for such reports ere
being wise as to each shining path of a bright spirit sent earthward
by the Great Mystery,--or each shadow passing over the Mother of the
Starry Skirt, or the nearness of the visiting Ancient Star to the
constellations on its trail to the twilight land of many days.

They knew he was watching the world overhead. With the Pin-pe-ye, that
mystic compass of the Milky Way, was he balancing the fate of things
as written in the light of the Sky Mother whose starry skirt was a
garmen