Part 6

"Ah, well, Senor," she said with a low laugh; "every queen, I fancy, should have at least one subject. And now--supposing that I am this queen you talk of--what is it you want of me?"

"We always used to be friends, Sajipona. Can we not be friends still?"

"There's another strange question! But--surely you did not come here to ask me that? There is something else, Don Raoul," she added, regarding him intently.

"It is that, first of all. And then--I had it in mind to tell you that my friend is returning to Bogota--David Meudon."

"David Meudon," she repeated, as if pondering the name, looking steadily at Raoul the while.

"But then--what is that to me, Senor?" she asked.

"You remember him?"

"Yes, of course I remember him. He has been away a long time, hasn't he?" Then, after a pause: "Why does he come back?"

"To solve a mystery--so he writes me."

"A mystery?"

"He calls it a mystery," laughed the other. "You see, when we were living here together he disappeared for three months. We thought he had been killed by a dynamite explosion. Surely, you have heard of it, Senorita?"

"Yes--I think everyone has heard of it. And then, at the time, there were rumors. For instance, I heard--I heard who exploded the dynamite."

"Sure enough, there were all kinds of rumors. But, of course, the whole thing was an accident, a horrible accident, that nearly cost David his life. He didn't heed the signal in time--or something went wrong--the signal or the dynamite. Anyway, he wasn't seen or heard of again for three months. We all thought he must have been blown to bits. Then, a curious thing happened. One morning I found him in my house, in a sort of trance."

"Well?"

"When he came out of the trance, he declared he could remember nothing of what he had been through. Those three months were a blank in his memory."

"And then----?"

"He left Bogota, declaring he would never come back. That was just three years ago."

"But----"

"Yes, now he is coming back--with some friends--to solve this mystery, so he says."

"What mystery, Senor?"

"Why," replied Raoul slowly, looking at her intently; "the mystery of those three months when he was supposed to have been in a trance."

"What is a trance, Don Raoul?" asked the girl innocently.

Raoul laughed.

"Ah, that would be hard to explain to a queen of the Indians," he said. "A trance is not exactly a sleep, for a man may talk and travel and do things, just like other men, when he's in a trance. But when he is himself again, he remembers nothing of all that happened when he was in the trance."

"Then you think he was in a trance during those three months when he disappeared from Bogota?"

"Yes."

"And that he has forgotten all that happened to him in that time?"

"Perhaps."

"Could he ever remember?"

"There is only one way in which he could."

"How is that?"

"If he could return to the same scenes and conditions through which he passed during those three months."

"But for that you would have to know, of course, what those scenes and conditions were?"

"Exactly, Senorita."

"Really, it is all very interesting," she said dreamily. "I have heard something like it in fairy tales, I think; but not in real life. And now--why do you tell all this to me, Senor?" she asked, as if struck by a novel idea.

"Ah, Sajipona," he replied with a smile; "I have told you merely in answer to your own questions. You have shown that--for some reason or other--you are interested."

"Interested? Why, of course I am interested--if for no other reason, simply because you are. This David Meudon, you say, left Bogota three years ago? Strange that he should leave so suddenly--and with his work in this country unfinished!"

"I can't tell how much you know of David," he said musingly. "But there is every reason why you, more than anyone else, should be interested in the man who attempts to solve the secret of Guatavita--Sajipona."

There was no mistaking the emphasis placed on the girl's name; nor was there any disguising the effect its peculiar pronunciation had upon her. Sajipona looked at Raoul in alarm, then turned from him in manifest confusion. Presently, she gave a low laugh and her eyes sought his again.

"Ah, you Yankees are strange people," she said. "Some say, you are only money makers. But, it appears, you are more than that; for you listen to foolish legends, like the rest of us--and you believe them."

"Yes, I believe this one, Sajipona."

"Does the man who so strangely lost his memory by your dynamite explosion believe this one?" she asked laughing.

"I don't know. Perhaps he never heard it."

"Well, it's very interesting, anyway--I mean, about the trance and the dynamite. I want to hear the end of it. You will surely come again, won't you? And tell me when your friend arrives in Bogota," she added, giving him her hand.

"You are ever the queen; you dismiss me from your presence," he complained, taking her hand, nevertheless, and kissing it.

"The streets are safe for you now, Senor," she said.

"Thanks to you, La Reina!"

"Ah, I would do much more for you than that, as you know, Don Raoul!" she exclaimed, an arch smile giving to her beautiful features a rare flash of piquancy. "And now--Adios, Senor!"

"Surely, not 'Adios,' but--until the next time, Sajipona," he replied, as he bowed himself from the sala.

Raoul's belief in the legend involved in Sajipona's name marked a radical change which he had undergone since he arrived in Bogota. To his keen, logical mind the proposal to enlist in a quest for the long lost El Dorado seemed, at first, far too quixotic to be taken seriously. But he humored the idea, originating in David's fondness for studies touching the borderlands of romance, in the hope that he would divert a purely fanciful project into more profitable channels. Later on, however, he was himself caught by the practical possibilities lurking in the old Chibcha legend. Hence, it followed that while David was enjoying the picturesque life of the little mountain capital, Raoul was delving in musty records, running down old traditions, and studying the topography of the Bogota tableland with a degree of patience as to details that the subject had rarely received. For days at a time he burrowed in the crumbling archives of the Museo Nacional, an unpretentious little edifice, not far from the palace of San Carlos, in which were stored, pell-mell, practically every evidence that remained of Colombia's prehistoric civilization. Here, with only the grey, shrivelled mummies of two ancient kings of the Chibchas to watch him, he had reconstructed, as best he could, the past of this vanished race of people, had convinced himself of their wealth, scarcely any of which had fallen into the hands of the Spanish, and had laid his plans for discovering a treasure which had balked every explorer before him.

Combined with these studies in the National Museum and in the vicinity of Lake Guatavita, Raoul had busied himself with the peons of the neighborhood. From these primitive people he learned enough to corroborate the main features in the Chibcha tradition as handed down by Castellanos, Pedro Simon, Piedrahita, and other chroniclers of the Spanish Conquest. In addition, he unearthed the curious legend that the Sacred Lake would never yield up its treasure except to one in whose veins flowed the blood of the Chibcha kings. This bit of prophetic romance had come, it was said, from father to son through the four centuries following the martyrdom of the last of the zipas. He was told, also--and it added to the fantastic character of the prophecy--that a secret, known only to the zipas and their direct descendants, attached to Lake Guatavita, and that by means of this secret the treasure hidden beneath its waters would be discovered.

Raoul at first paid little heed to this part of the legend. It had too strong a flavor of latter-day romance to go for more than a recent addition to the main story of the wealth of the Chibcha kings and their peculiar religious customs. The persistence of the idea, however, the belief in its truth on the part of those repeating it, gradually excited his interest and led him into all kinds of theories as to the existence and recovery of the Guatavita treasure.

That so fanciful a legend could have won even the partial belief of so ingrained a skeptic as Raoul seems at first absurd on the face of it. But most of us can recall instances enough of similar lapses from the hypercritical to the over-superstitious to make this one not altogether incredible. As often happens, also, in such cases--as with those otherwise reasonable persons who believe in fortune-telling, omens, apparitions, etc.,--this bit of superstition, having once lodged itself in Raoul's mind, increased in importance, opening up an absorbing field for his love of psychological novelties, until it finally became a monomania, an obsession, as the scientists call it.

These ancient zipas, he argued, were the chieftains of a superior race of people. In the annual tribute from the royal treasury to the national god, who was supposed to live at the bottom of Lake Guatavita, they catered to the credulity of their subjects while, in reality, laughing in their sleeves at them, so to speak, all the time. Men of their intelligence were not apt literally to throw away wealth they had themselves amassed, and which they must consider as belonging to them and to their descendants. But as they--apparently--did throw it away, it was more than likely that they used some kind of hocus-pocus, known only to themselves, by means of which the God Chibchacum--in whose existence they did not believe--was cheated of his annual tribute. How they practiced this deception they must surely have told their children. The coming of the Spaniards, however, and the overthrow of the ancient dynasty, had made of the whole affair a greater secret than ever. It would be handed down from one generation to another so long as there were descendants of the zipas; but these survivors of the royal line would find it increasingly difficult, owing to the presence of the Spaniards, to take the steps needed to recover their ancestral treasure.

There was some plausibility in Raoul's reasoning, enough, perhaps, to excite the romancer's interest, but scarcely that of the practical man of affairs to whom are broached the details of a mining venture. Conviction grew, however, with Raoul, whose investigations were confined thenceforward less to the archæological aspects of the problem and more to the task of discovering the whereabouts of the living descendants of the zipas.

These speculations and the singular inquiry into which they had drawn his companion excited only a mild interest in David. The latter, strangely enough, enchanted with the picturesque novelty of the cloud-city in which he found himself, felt less of the antiquarian's zeal than when Bogota was a remote geographical possibility. Perhaps it was the stimulus of mountain air, a bracing climate, that got him out of his habitual bookishness. Here, at any rate, there was neither the warmth nor the color of the tropics to entice him to the indolent dreaming that one of his temperament might easily yield to in the lowlands of Colombia. The peculiar lustre of the grey-green Bogota tableland, the cool crystalline atmosphere, invited him to continual physical exercise. For days at a time he went on long horseback rides. Then, tiring of this, and feeling something of the restraint experienced by the stranger who exerts himself abnormally in the rarefied air of the higher Andes, he fell into the easy habits of the pleasure-loving Bogotano. Muffled warmly in a ruana, he strolled comfortably about the streets of the city, amused by the chaffering of peons in the market place, enchanted by the quaint and varied architecture of the houses and public buildings, the grotesque paintings and bas-reliefs in the churches; or else he would sit by the hour in the open window of some cafe on the Cathedral Esplanade, watching the gay throng of idlers and politicians for whom this is a favorite rendezvous. The dust and cobwebs of the Museo did not attract this former dabbler in antiquities, who abandoned himself eagerly to the fleeting impressions gathered from an altogether pleasing environment. And Raoul, naturally secretive, gave him the vaguest outline only of the course and the result of his studies.

The discovery that made the deepest impression on Raoul took place under circumstances which intensified his superstitious feeling in regard to everything connected with the buried treasure. He was on one of numerous trips to Lake Guatavita. Riding alone, he reached the gloomy body of water toward nightfall. Tethering his horse near the trail at the edge of the plain over which he had ridden, he approached the lake on foot, his mind penetrated by the absolute silence of the place. He had come for no specific purpose except to examine further the old Spanish cutting that gashes the great hill which originally rose, a solid wall of rock, above the unknown depths of the waters. Through this narrow cleft, on the instant that it was completed three centuries ago, a mighty torrent had hurled itself into the valley beyond. As this torrent subsided and the lake shrank to its present compass, a wide margin of precipitous shore was left bare to the scrutiny of treasure seekers. Even after the lapse of centuries this portion of the lake's basin still shows the ravages wrought by the Spaniards. It remains a gaunt, jagged surface of rock and flinty gravel, unclothed by tree or shrub--an ancient sanctuary whose violation defies the repairs of time.

Raoul smiled contemptuously at these evidences of the rude labors of the early Spaniards. With modern science to back him he would not attack the problem in this way. He would pierce this ancient secret to its heart by subtlety, not brute force. For the hundredth time he went over the system of lines and levels by which he and David planned to tunnel their way to the coveted prize, indicating to himself the various points from which they proposed to start their work, and noting and comparing the obstacles they would encounter by each route.

Thus occupied, Raoul slowly circled the lake, following the precarious path that still remained along the edge of the old high-water mark--the path upon which had marched the gaily vestured Chibcha devotees in the pomp of their semi-annual festival, when the dancing waves radiating from the heavily laden rafts of the Gilded Man and his court, washed over their sandalled feet, and all was sunshine and joyous laughter, glitter of gold and emerald offerings ready poised to be hurled, with shouts of triumph, to the insatiable God in his crystalline caverns below.

Scenes from the old legend flashed across the prosaic details of Raoul's mining schemes, as he stood in the shadow of the majestic hill that lifted its huge shoulders behind him. Not a ripple scarred the surface of the sombre waters. The ancient God, it would seem, waiting in vain the tribute that once was his, had grown angry and made of his Sacred Lake a shrunken circle of dark and sinister meaning.

Into its silent depths, fascinated by the desolation surrounding him, Raoul gazed intently. He would revive the old ceremony. He would bring an offering to this hidden God--an offering bearing a menace, a demand for the treasure that he felt already in his grasp. He seized a stone from the many that were strewn at his feet. It was smooth, worn by the streams through which it had chafed its way hither; he paused as he weighed it thoughtfully in his outstretched hand. Then he threw it high in air, over the center of the pool. The sound of the falling missile plunging through the waters echoed sullenly along the towering walls of granite. The weird effect delighted him, and again and again he cast stones into the water, dislodging some of the more unwieldy rocks from their resting-places and watching them bound and ricochet, with a thunderous noise, down the precipice after the others.

In the midst of this fantastic play he was arrested by the cry of a human voice. High, clear and sibilant it came; a word of command, as it seemed, out of the empty space above:

"Silence!"

He thought it might be the rustle of the wind that had just sprung up and was stirring the gnarled branches of the trees fringing the brow of the hill upon whose precipitous slope he was standing. Carefully he scanned the rocky pinnacles rising on either side of him. If it was not the wind, the invisible being whose voice he had heard might be hidden in one of the many clefts that furrowed the face of the hill behind him.

Again he heard the command. Silvery, unmistakably human; the peremptory voice came from some one near at hand, a few hundred yards, it might be, from where he stood:

"Silence!"

The tall, slim figure of a woman, clad in flowing white robe, with dazzling arm stretched downward, flashed in sharp outline against the dark hillside. She stood just above him, on a projecting shelf of rock. Her eyes, calm and stern, were not turned toward Raoul, but fixed intently on the lake, as if beholding--or expecting to behold--something there that was hidden from all others.

Involuntarily Raoul bent his head to this singular apparition, scarcely knowing whether it was a creature of his imagination, conjured out of the strange fancies awakened by the lonely scene, or a real woman, statuesque, beautiful.

Why was she here? Whence had she come? How address her? Vague questions crowded upon him, giving place finally to the conviction that he was an intruder and had unwittingly offended one whose rights here were supreme. And then he yielded to a feeling of shame at being caught in senseless boy's play.

"Pardon, Senorita," he murmured lamely.

"Ah," she sighed, a trace of irony in her voice; "it is I, a stranger here, who must ask pardon for daring to interrupt you."

"Again--pardon," he said, moved by the seriousness, the bitterness in her tone. "Surely, you are not a stranger to Guatavita, to Bogota?" he added, not concealing his astonishment.

"My home is far from here," she said simply. "Four days ago I left it for the first time to go to Bogota."

"And you visit the Sacred Lake on your way to the city!"

"My fathers sacrificed here," she said proudly. "I am an Indian, the daughter of those who once poured their treasure into the lake which you have defiled with stones."

"Sajipona!" called a harsh guttural voice from the trail that followed the cutting made by the Spaniards in the mountain's side.

"Si, padre mio," she answered, slowly descending to the path upon which Raoul was standing.

In the gathering darkness Raoul saw, just emerging from the cleft in the rocks, the huge figure of a man, dressed, as all travelers are in the mountains, in wide sombrero, capacious ruana, great hair-covered leggings reaching to the waist, his spurred heels clattering on the stones as he walked towards them. Two mules followed closely, the bridle of the foremost held in his hand; behind these came a burro, loaded with mountainous baggage which swayed from side to side as the patient little animal picked his way along the treacherous path.

"Good evening, senor," said the man suavely, as if Raoul were some old acquaintance whom he expected to meet. "It grows dark quickly. Moreover, it is far to the city and the beasts are tired. We stop for the night at La Granja. And you, Senor?"

"My horse is fresh, I will ride to Bogota."

"A stranger?" queried the man.

"An American."

"Ah!" Then, as if to atone for his surprise: "Bueno, in Bogota my house is yours."

Only the sure-footed mules of the Andes could have threaded this handsbreadth of a path in safety, and only a horsewoman of the lithe grace and dexterity of this daughter of the mountains could have swung herself with such slight assistance into the high, clumsy saddle as did this girl addressed as Sajipona.

"Watch your burro, Senor," warned Raoul, viewing with some anxiety that much encumbered animal wavering disconsolately on the brink of the precipice. "He will slip into the lake."

"Eh, Senor!" grunted the man, vaulting heavily to the back of his mule, at the same time spurring and then checking him with the reins. "He knows his business, the canaille! Besides," he added, chuckling to himself, "we carry no treasure for Guatavita. Since the days of Sajipa, men pay no tribute here--they look for it instead."

"That is true," murmured Raoul. Then, addressing the departing travelers: "May you have a pleasant ride, Senorita! And you, Senor; I may see you in Bogota?"

"In the Calle de Las Flores, Senor," called the other briskly. "Ask for Rafael Segurra; always--remember!--at your service."

Sajipa--Sajipona! The two names persisted in Raoul's thoughts as he rode home that evening. Over and over again he passed in review the details of his strange encounter with this mysterious girl who, in spite of the exquisite fairness of her complexion, called herself an Indian and claimed these old worshipers of the Lake God for her ancestors. Who was she? Could it be that his search for the descendant of that almost mythical line of monarchs had been so unexpectedly, completely rewarded? He could hardly wait for the morning to make the inquiries that he planned.

"Ah, yes," he was assured; "this Rafael Segurra is quite a man in his way--a 'politico,' strong with the government. He lives far from here--on a hacienda--no one knows where. And his daughter--he brings her to Bogota? That is strange! The beautiful Sajipona! Who knows if she really is Don Rafael's daughter! There is a mystery, a tradition about her. Yes, some say that she has in her veins the blood of that poor old zipa that the Spaniards roasted alive because he wouldn't tell where he had hidden his treasure. Still, how can that be if Don Rafael is her father? Ah, no one can be sure, Senor--their home is so far away. But--she is very beautiful. And there are many, many lovers--so they say."

The information, picked up from various sources, strengthened Raoul's first impression, and from that time, he became a constant visitor in the little house on the Calle de Las Flores.

VIII

A RIVER INTERLUDE

On the deck of the wheezy, palpitating river steamer, "Barcelona," toiling slowly up the turbid waters of the Magdalena, sat the usual throng of passengers who are compelled to sacrifice two weeks of their lives every time they travel from the seacoast to Colombia's mountain capital. Fortunate such travelers count themselves if their lumbering, flat-bottomed craft, its huge stern wheel lifted high above the down-rushing eddies and whirlpools, escapes the treacherous mudbanks which form and dissolve in this ever-shifting, shallow current, and which not infrequently elude the vigilance of the navigator.

On this particular voyage, however, it is pleasant to record that the "Barcelona," in spite of various temptations to the contrary, had behaved in a most decorous manner, diplomatically avoiding the aforesaid mudbanks, submerged treetrunks and the like and giving promise of an early arrival at her destination in the Upper Magdalena.