Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 1 (1925-01).djvu/61

you will soon be a leader among them. Strict account is being kept of our flocks now, for does not one-third of all our family stock belong to you? Are you not proud of a wife who brings you so much wealth?"

He smiled at her enthusiasm.

"I do not give a rap about your sheep," he returned, and then, seeing how crestfallen she looked, he added quickly, "I only care about your own bright eyes and your pretty smile. They are worth more to me than many sheep."

She dimpled with pleasure at the compliment, and laid her cheek against his shoulder in a childish caress.

"Ah, yes, I know!" she returned softly. "You are filled with such beautiful thoughts, so loving always, that you do not think often of the other things. And yet I think that it is good for the family that one of us shall be fond of the sheep, and so we shall always have plenty of everything that we need. I know you care only for love, but I shall look after all things for you, for have you not given up everything, friends and home and people, for me?"

He was quick to seize the opening.

"Tell me, Taia," he said, slipping an arm around her and drawing her close, "tell me more about this religion of yours. Why am I not taken to the temple you told me about? Am I not truly one of your people now? I should go where my wife goes, it seems to me."

"Everywhere I go, there shall you go also," she answered gravely. "But I go no more to the temple, since I am your wife. Think not, beloved, that you alone have paid a price for our love. Because of it, I go no more to the holy places of my people."

Martin started.

"But why?" he persisted. "Why should you give up your religion, and remain away from your temple? Why do we not go together? Thus do husbands and wives in my country."

"Thus do we also," she returned proudly, "when husband and wife are Indian. But it is forbidden that any stranger should set foot in our temples. Listen, I will explain once for all, and then we will speak of these things no more. For our law is not of my making, nor even of the Uilca who now leads us, but comes from the past and cannot be changed by the desires of our hearts.

"Once our temples were open to all who came to bow their knees at our altars. All in this land worshiped the sun god, and seeing that there was a certain metal in the earth which shone like the sun itself, my people made many beautiful works of art and our temples were filled with rare and wonderful treasures.

"Then came the white men, and the sight of the golden vessels upon our altars wrought in them a kind of madness, so that they turned and slew all about them and laid waste the land. My people fled to the mountains as the sheep flee before the wolf-pack, knowing not which way to turn.

"Then came one of the wise men of our people and he explained what had happened. Because the white man would not listen to the teaching of the great law, they were stricken with a kind of frenzy at sight of the gold, which is the symbol of the god, and they remained under the curse of that frenzy so long as the gold remained in their sight. So our people hid away the gold in secret places and covered the entrances of the mines from which it was taken, so that the eye of the white man no longer fell upon the thing that made him mad. And sure enough, when the gold was hidden from sight, then peace and quiet came again and all was well. But such is the power of that strange disease over the white race that even now, after all these years, if one of them were to discover the hidden