"Then he redeemed himself by falling in love with his wife. In time he found out where the gem pockets were situated. But when Selden came to him to see if he'd stumbled on to the secret, he put him off and said, 'Not yet.' "From the date of the Fiesta de Santa Maria de Refugio until the night of the Mona Fiesta he remained undecided what to do. Somehow or other, he told me, though he had been a highwayman and was then protected from the flimsy law of that day only by his Indian brothers, he could not bring himself to break faith with them. "Then came the night of the first Mona Fiesta since he became Watchman of the Dead; and that night temporarily decided him. "When he squatted in the circle about the fire and saw the rapt, tear-stained, brown faces of these people who had placed absolute faith in him, he fell under the spell of their simplicity, and swore that so long as he lived he would not betray their trust. "And he lived up to it, with his partner, Adam Selden importuning him daily to get the stones and skip the country. And finally to be rid of Selden and the double game he was obliged to play, Peter Drew left with his wife one night and did not return for fifteen years. "And since then there has been no Watchman of the Dead until the night you defeated the evil spirits in the fire dance. "Out in the world of white men Peter Drew settled down to ranching. His Indian wife had died two years after he left this country. With her gone, and the new order of things all about him, he began to wonder if he had not been a fool. "Up here in the lonesome hills was wealth untold, so far as he knew, and he renounced it for an ideal. To secure those gems he had only to show ingratitude to the Showut Poche-dakas, had only to break faith with a handful of ignorant, simple-minded Indians. What did they and their ridiculous beliefs amount to in this great scheme of life as he now saw it? Each day men on every hand were breaking faith to become wealthy, were trampling traditions and ideals underfoot to gain their golden ends. Business was business--money was money! Had he not been a fool? Was he not still a fool--to renounce a fortune that was his for the taking? "He called himself an ignorant man. He told himself--and truly, too--that countless men whom he knew, who had read a thousand books to one merely opened by him--men of education, men of affairs--would laugh at him, and themselves would have wrested the treasure from its hiding place without a qualm of conscience. Civilization was stalking on in its unconquerable march. Should a handful of uncouth Indians, a superstitious, dwindling tribe of near-savages, be permitted to handicap his part in this triumphal march? No--never!