  “Four days more and you will see your father,” Bill told Cliff. “He is much better. I saw him today.” “If only I could slip away and see him, just for a minute.” Cliff spoke wistfully. Bill shook his head. “I am afraid they would suspect something,” he said. “It was easy for me to see him, as I told you before; I pretended to know that there was a great, pale scholar from beyond the mountains whose knowledge I wanted to compare with mine. The chief priest often talked with your pa and he was glad to take me; and now I can go alone. You are supposed to be spending all your time pleading with the Sun-god to save their corn. I’m afraid to have you caught going through the tunnels.” Quichaka was a city modeled very closely along the pattern of the ancient capital, Cuzco. As in that old place, so in Quichaka, the grounds beneath the temples were honeycombed with secret passages, tunnels that led to underground chambers. In the fifteenth century Topa Inca Yapanqui had extended the borders of the flourishing empire of the Incas to the Maule River and his son had later subdued Quito and made it a part of his possessions; then the Spaniards had come into the country. Observing that these invaders had confiscated treasure, one of the many sons of the reigning Inca of the period had gathered much treasure and many of his nobles and their subjects and had found a way to the hidden valley where they had built up Quichaka during long years of labor until it almost duplicated the ancient glories of Cuzco, their former home. “They don’t keep Cliff’s father in a dungeon, do they?” Tom asked Bill. Mr. Whitley was away, alone, in the foothills, searching for certain minerals. Bill shook his head in reply to Tom. “Not a dungeon,” he explained. “They have some cells down under the ground but he is in a sort of chamber, a good, big room.” “Why isn’t he allowed to be in a house?” Nicky demanded. “Huamachaco, the high priest, is to blame for that,” Bill said. “Cliff’s pa heard in some way that there was a secret pass or some way to get out of the valley and he tried to find it; they caught him and brought him back and then he tamed the eaglet and when they discovered that it was missing and found some torn scraps of paper which he had tried to destroy after he had spoiled the letter he had started on them, Huamachaco, who isn’t any man’s dummy, decided to have the white man watched.” It was because the chief priest was so clever that Bill feared to take the least chance of upsetting their plans. Challcuchima, who had become very much attached to Cliff and to his chums, in a respectful awed way, came to visit them while they discussed their plans. “Holy Chasca,” he said to Cliff in quichua dialect at which Cliff was only fairly proficient, covering up his deficiency by saying very little. “As successor to the Inca rule I have been shown the mysteries of the secret ways beneath the city. Among our hidden treasure is a statue which is like you and yet not like you. My father, the Inca, has permitted me to show it to you that you may say if it is truly your image and if it should be set in the Temple of the Stars.” Cliff consulted Bill with his eyes and Bill, with a very tiny wink and nod, bade him go. The chums, not invited, looked downcast as Cliff walked across the gardens of gold and silver with his young guide; but Bill soothed them by telling them what he had seen underground. Cliff was to see far more than was permitted to the eyes of his supposed scholarly servant. Taking him to the Inca, who greeted him with a mixed respect and good feeling, Challcuchima led Cliff through a tapestried and hidden opening in the private rooms of the palace; then they went down many steps; Cliff had brought a flashlight, an implement which caused Challcuchima much awe and wonder when he was allowed to operate it. Mostly, they used torches as they traversed long passages, twisted around sharp bends, slipped through cross-cuts. Finally the two came to a huge chamber cut out of the rock. Servants, carrying torches, held their lights high and Cliff had to suppress his tendency to gasp. He had never seen a sight to compare with that which met his eyes. “This is the room beneath the Temple of the Sun,” Challcuchima informed him, “this is sacred ground.” He and Cliff removed their sandals for everyone of the few permitted access to the Temple or its underground counterpart, went unshod. Wide and long was the chamber. The light, flaring and flickering as the torches leaped up and burned down, was filled with gold and silver objects. There were utensils of every sort, from plates, cups and rude pots, to wonderful statues and urns and placques of precious metal. It was a very treasure-house. Challcuchima led Cliff, his eyes dazed by the glories of the objects which he dared only to examine briefly in passing, to a statue depicting a youth cast and moulded in purest gold, a lithe, poised figure of a young man in the action of running, poised on the toes of one foot, the other leg thrust out and lifted as though it had just taken a step. “It is like to you and yet not like,” said Challcuchima. Cliff thought quickly. It could not be a trap, this effort to discover whether or not he knew the figure. Or could it. And why a trap at all? Was anyone suspicious of his pose and of the part he played? If he said it was Chasca and the Incas knew differently, he mused, he would disclose his ignorance: if he denied that it was the image of Venus as they imaged the god of that star, what might they answer? He was spared the need for an answer. Huamachaco, the high priest, coming down the passage with a torch, said something in quite an excited manner. Challcuchima grasped Cliff’s arm. “There is something new—come,” he urged, “this can wait!” Cliff hurried after the servants with their torches and his royal young guide turned swiftly into a passage they had not used, which brought them out into one of the small houses just beyond the Sun temple, a dwelling of one of the priests. There was a crowd assembled near the Temple of the Stars and Cliff saw at once that Bill, Nicky and Tom were on the way to join the gathering crowd. With Challcuchima and Huamachaco he went quickly toward them. “What goes on?” he asked. Huamachaco did not answer. He was rather stout and the climb had taxed his wind. Cliff met his comrades at the edge of the group: some fell back respectfully to give passage to the young Inca-to-be and to Chasca and the high priest. They pressed to the point of interest. A native, much more stocky than the others they had seen, and of a far deeper reddish complexion, seemed to be a captive; but so rapid was the exchange of conversation, so sharp the questions which Huamachaco asked and so hasty the replies that Cliff and his fellows were completely at sea. Finally the crowd grew so thick that, at the high priest’s order soldiers formed a quick wedge and began to disperse them. The stranger stared fixedly for a while at the group facing him, while he replied to Huamachaco’s sharp demands with fluent quichua dialect. The priest seemed puzzled. Finally he made a sign to Challcuchima who turned and hurried toward his father’s palace. Huamachaco, taking the stranger by the arm, with the soldiers closing in behind them, apologized to Chasca for leaving so abruptly, and Huamachaco led the stranger away toward another building. “He claims that he has an important word for Manco Huayna, who was, he says, the fellow who went out into the mountains to find out about the eaglet,” Bill explained as they returned soberly to their own place. “Do you know who I think he is?” “The Spaniard,” said Nicky promptly, “Did you see his shifty eyes?” “Did he recognize us?” Tom asked, “I know he stared.” “I think he suspected,” Bill answered. “What word do you think he has? About us?” Tom mused. “I hope not,” said Bill, dubiously. “He’s after gold, of course. I don’t know how far that fellow would go in an effort to get it.” And not even Chasca could tell him. |
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