CHAPTER VII

To himself Kirby chuckled. Such real entreaty filled the Duca's voice

that there seemed no danger of further treachery from him at the

moment.

With a grin, Kirby took Naida's hand and led her down the steps,

unbolting each bronze gate but the last.

"What do you want?" he asked in a cool voice a moment later, when he

stopped on the final step and faced the Duca from behind the protection

of the final gate.

Clearly the parley was going to be a blunt one.

"I want you to leave our world," the Duca rumbled promptly.

He was drawn up in a posture intended to display dignity. But his left

cheek, where Kirby had hammered him, was pulpy and discolored, and

somehow he seemed to Kirby more than ever merely human.

"Under what conditions am I to leave?"

"If you will vacate my tower at once," the Duca said with a flush of

eagerness which he could not conceal, "I will permit Naida and one of my

caciques to escort you back to the Valley of the Geyser. I will also

give you directions by which you may travel in safety from there to the

outer world."

Kirby, wanting more details, made himself seem thoughtful.

"And what will happen to me, and to the girls, if I decline?"

Encouraged, the Duca made an impressive gesture.

"You will be left in the tower to die of starvation. Mine is not a

complicated offer. It should require no complicated decision. What is

your answer?"

Kirby dropped his carefully assumed mask of thought.

"My answer is this," he lashed out. "I will not leave! The tower is

ours, and we will hold it until you have accepted Naida's peace terms on

your priestly oath!"

"But if you stay in the tower you will starve!" thundered the Duca.

"No, we won't starve! We won't starve because we eat the food of

Ducas!"

* * * * *

In silence, Kirby took from his pocket a strip of the sacred Peyote and

bit off one end of it. Suddenly the hush in the amphitheatre became

complete. As he watched Kirby chewing, the Duca gasped and choked.

"Moreover," Kirby announced with slow emphasis, "I have taken possession

of the weapons which you took from men of the upper world, and which

have already sent men of your race to their death. I have no wish to

kill either you or your caciques, but if you do not presently discuss

peace with me, you will certainly find yourself embroiled in a struggle

more bitter than the mild one of this morning."

With that said, he swung on his heel, and taking Naida's hand again,

started with her up the steps.

"I have nothing more to say," he called over his shoulder to a Duca

whose white haired majesty had been stripped from him.

"We're getting on," he whispered to Naida a moment later. "The best

thing for us is just to sit still now, and wait."

With the questions he wanted to ask Naida about her world becoming

insistent, he found himself, as a matter of fact, glad for the prospect

of further respite. As both of them rejoined the girls in the Duca's

prayer chamber, the first thing he did was to take from his tunic the

cylinder of gold which he had found in the canyon.

"What is this, Naida?" he asked, hoping to start talk that would make

all of them forget the Duca and politics, and at the same time help him

to learn much that he wished to know.

But a queer thing happened. Naida's reaction to the carven gold was as

unexpected as it was marked.

"_Oh!_" she cried in a voice which suddenly trembled with surprise, with

blank dismay. Somehow, the cylinder of gold brought to her face things

which not even the Serpent's head of the diamond had evoked.

* * * * *

The prospect of a long session of talk began to fade out in Kirby's

mind.

"But Naida, whatever is there about this fragment of gold to startle you

as it does?"

By this time all of the thirty-odd other girls had come flocking about

them, and all were staring at the cylinder as fascinatedly as Naida.

"Do you see what he has there?" Naida finally asked, ignoring Kirby in

her continued excitement.

"Do we _see_?" answered the girl she had addressed. "Naida, surely it is

the carving which was lost!"

Naida was quivering with feeling now.

"Do you realize what it means to our cause that it should have been

returned to us in this way?"

The girl to whom she had spoken, and the others, simply looked at her,

but in one face after another presently dawned awe and joy.

Kirby stood still, puzzled and interested, until at last Naida was

recovered enough to speak to him.

"Where did you get this thing which you call 'a fragment of gold'?" she

asked in a hushed voice.

"I found it," Kirby answered, "lying beside the skeleton of an

upper-world man, while I was ascending the canyon which brought me to

the Valley of the Geyser."

"And you do not know what the cylinder is? But no, of course you could

not."

"_What_ is it, Naida?"

* * * * *

Naida glanced at her friends, then laid her hand on Kirby's.

"Next to the great diamond, it is the most cherished possession of our

race. In some respects it is even more holy than the Serpent's head. The

cylinder happens to be the first work in gold which was ever produced by

our people. It was made when the race was new. It was because our first

wise men had found they could create things of beauty like this

cylinder, that they decided to attempt the creation of the Serpent's

head, which is supposed to have brought all of our blessings upon us."

Kirby thought he was beginning to understand the excitement which his

introduction of the cylinder had created. He also thought he could see

what Naida had meant by implying that the cylinder could be made to aid

their cause.

"Tell me," he asked in a mood approaching reverence, "how the cylinder

came to be lying beside a dead man's bones."

"It was stolen," Naida answered in the breathless silence which the

others were keeping. "When I was very young, an upper-world man found

his way here, and the Duca captured and meant to sacrifice him. But

while they were leading him to the temple where such special ceremonies

are held--the building stands on another plateau, beyond this--the man

broke away. Some of the priests in the procession were carrying the

cylinder, for it was an occasion of great importance. The prisoner

knocked them down, got the cylinder away from them, and finally escaped

by the same route over which you came."

"And he escaped," said Kirby wonderingly, "only to be killed by a

rattlesnake before he ever reached the civilized world. But do you mean

that you never knew your sacred cylinder was so close to you all these

years?"

Naida shook her head.

"We never got to the canyon of which you speak, for a special reason

which I shall explain some day. And besides that, I think the Duca was

afraid of this man who fought so bravely. So he counted the cylinder as

lost. And that is one of the reasons why he killed the men with the

rifles, who appeared in the Valley a few years later."

* * * * *

Kirby looked at her thoughtfully. The mood for discussing all the

wonders of this lower world, which had made him bring out the cylinder

originally, had quite vanished.

"I suppose," he said, "that anyone who was responsible for the return of

the cylinder to its rightful owners, would be held in some respect?"

Naida nodded vigorously, while little lightnings of excitement flickered

in her eyes.

"He might be held in more than respect."

"What, then, do you suggest that we do next?"

Again the small lightnings darted, and Naida reached for the cylinder.

"Do you mind if I take it for a moment?"

"Of course not."

Promptly then she faced around.

"Wait here, everyone," she ordered.

And with that she waved the cylinder in a flashing little arc before

their eyes, and darted to the door.

It was all so unexpected that she was gone before Kirby could speak.

Slowly, with all of the suddenly gay company of girls following after

him, he went to the doorway, and stood on the steps leading to the

amphitheatre.

* * * * *

A minute passed. He heard voices downstairs. He heard Naida's voice

ringing clearly, though he could not distinguish her words. He heard a

great cry from a score of male throats. More minutes passed. Words that

were low and tense poured out in a rumbling volume. Above the rumble,

Naida's voice presently sounded again, clear and sweet, but incisive.

Then, when no more than five or six minutes had gone, Kirby heard the

clang of the bronze gate at the foot of the steps, heard light, swift

footsteps ascending.

"Naida!" he called softly.

She flashed upward toward him around the last curve in the stairway.

Straight to his outstretched arms she went.

"It is done! It is done!" she whispered.

"Tell us!" cried first one girl and then others.

Naida drew away from Kirby at last.

"I told the Duca," she said to all of them, "that our leader would keep

the cylinder for a period of time equal to one upper-world year. If the

Duca grants all the terms of peace which we will ask of him, and if he

accepts the upper-world man as our temporal ruler, and all goes well for

a year, then we will consider replacing the cylinder where it belongs."

"And what," Kirby asked exultantly, "does the Duca say?"

Suddenly, without warning, Naida dropped before him on one knee, and

from that position gazed up at him laughing.

"He says he will make you our King, to govern all temporal affairs

within our realm! He is waiting for you to come and hold a conclave

now."

"_What?_"

Still kneeling half in fun, half in sincere reverence, Naida held out

the precious, potent cylinder of gold.

"Guard it carefully!" she exclaimed. "So long as you keep it away from

the Duca, making him hope to win it back, he will consent to almost

anything. Yes, he is waiting with the caciques in the amphitheatre now;

waiting to draw up terms of peace."