"The Toltecs on the other side were watching, and they saw the priest
go. Until now they hadn't shot at us, probably afraid of hitting the
girl, but when they saw her push the priest over the edge of the canyon
they saw that her sympathies were with us, and they let drive at us
with their arrows. We were all slightly wounded--not enough to
mention--and we got back into the cave where their arrows couldn't
reach us. Three or four times the Toltecs tried to swing the bridge
back into position, but they couldn't make it because there was no one
on our side to help them, and Taggart and me made things mighty
unpleasant for them with our sixes. They finally went away and held a
council of war, which seemed to leave them undecided. They evidently
hadn't figured on the girl turning traitor. If she hadn't they'd have
got me and Taggart in short order.
"We'd got where the treasure was, all right, but it was a mighty bad
outlook for us. We were kind of anxious about the bridge, being afraid
the Toltecs would get it back into place; but the girl, who called
herself Ezela, showed us that getting the bridge back wasn't possible
without help from our side. She said that the priest she'd dumped down
into the canyon was the only one with the tribe at the time; the others
had gone to a distant village. She said, too, that there was a secret
passage from the cave; she'd discovered it, and no one but her and the
priests knew anything about it, but that the Toltecs would send runners
for the priests and we'd have to get out before they came, or they'd
lay for us at the outlet.
"Well, we hustled. We felt bad about Nebraska and Taylor, and were
determined not to leave without some of the treasure, and after Ezela
showed us where it was I kept her busy talking while Taggart got about
as much as he could carry. Ezela offered no objections; on the other
hand, when Taggart came back she told me to get some of the treasure
too. Taggart hadn't taken enough to miss; there were millions of
dollars' worth of gold and diamonds in the room, where they'd raised a
kind of an altar, and I had my choice.
"I took some of the gold, but what attracted me--not because it was
pretty, but because I saw in a minute that it was valuable--was a
hideous image about six inches high. I had had an idea all along that
Queza had been lying about the diamonds, but when I saw the image I
knew he'd told the truth. There were about a hundred diamonds on the
image, stuck all around it, the image itself being gold. The diamonds
ran from a carat to seven or eight carats, and there was no question
about them being the real thing. I stuck the thing into a hip pocket,
figuring that with the few other ornaments I had I would have plenty to
carry. Then I went back to where Ezela and Taggart were waiting for me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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