e for your
god--also many of your own people are killed in such god wars--your
tribes of different names call these wars 'holy'. Our people do not
think like that. Even the wild tribes hold the Great Mystery sacred in
their hearts. They will fight for hunting ground, or to steal women or
corn--but to fight about the gods would bring evil magic on the
land--the old men could not be taught that it is a good thing! Also
your Holy Office has the torch, and the rack, and the long death of
torture for the man who cannot believe. The priests of your jealous
god do that work, and their magic is strong over men. You talk against
our altars, but on our altars there is not torture,--there is one
quick pain--and the door of the Twilight Land is open and the spirit
is loose! This world where we live is a very ancient world, but it is
not yet finished. All the old men can tell you that. It may be in the
unborn days that earth creatures may see the world when it
finished,--and when the gods come back, and speak in the sunlight to
men. In that time the sacrifice may be a different sacrifice. But in
this time we follow the ancient way for the gods have not shown us a
different way."

"You have studied much in books--you have learned much from men," said
Don Ruy--"You could change the minds of these people in this matter."

Tahn-te looked kindly on him, but shook his head.

"Not in the ages of ten men can you change the mind of the men you
called Indian," he said, "in my one life I could not make them see
this as you see it--yet am I called strong among them. Also I could
not tell them that the way of the white priest when he breaks the
bones in torture until the breath goes, is a better way than to take
the heart quickly for the god! That would be a lie if I said it, and
true magic does not come to the man who knows that he is himself a
teller of lies!"

The men of the council went their separate ways to sleep in the kivas,
well content that the angry god was to be appeased at the rising of
the sun,--and Don Ruy rolled himself in his blanket and lay near the
door where Ysobel and her husband lived apart from the camp, with only
the secretary inside their walls. But Don Ruy slept little--and cursed
the heathenish logic of Tahn-te, and wished him to the devil.

And stealthily as a serpent in the grasses,--or a panther in the
hills, Tahn-te sped from the council of sacrifice, to the hills where
he knew a girl had waited long for his