“Torres has already spotted her,” Francis whispered back. “I caught him winking at her. He doesn’t know the play, nor which way the cat will jump, but he isn’t missing a chance to make friends. We’ll have to keep an eye on him, for he’s a treacherous hound and capable of throwing us over any time if it would serve to save his skin.”
Inside the Long House, seated on rough-plaited mats of grass, they found themselves quickly served with food. Clear drinking water and a thick stew of meat and vegetables were served in generous quantity in queer, unglazed pottery jars. Also, they were given hot cakes of ground Indian corn that were not altogether unlike tortillas.
After the women who served had departed, the little girl, who had led them and commanded them, remained. Torres resumed his overtures, but she, graciously ignoring him, devoted herself to Leoncia who seemed to fascinate her.
“She’s a sort of hostess, I take it,” Francis explained. “You know—like the maids of the village in Samoa, who entertain all travellers and all visitors of no matter how high rank, and who come pretty close to presiding at all functions and ceremonials. They are selected by the high chiefs for their beauty, their virtue, and their intelligence. And this one reminds me very much of them, except that she’s so awfully young.”
Closer she came to Leoncia, and, fascinated though she patently was by the beautiful strange woman, in her bearing of approach there was no hint of servility nor sense of inferiority.
“Tell me,” she said, in the quaint archaic Spanish of the valley, “is that man really Capitan Da Vasco returned from his home in the sun in the sky?”
Torres smirked and bowed, and proclaimed proudly: “I am a Da Vasco.”
“Not _a_ Da Vasco, but Da Vasco himself,” Leoncia coached him in English.
“It’s a good bet—play it!” Francis commanded, likewise in English. “It may pull us all out of a hole. I’m not particularly stuck on that priest, and he seems the high-cockalorum over these Lost Souls.”
“I have at last come back from the sun,” Torres told the little maid, taking his cue.
She favored him with a long and unwavering look, in which they could see her think, and judge, and appraise. Then, with expressionless face, she bowed to him respectfully, and, with scarcely a glance at Francis, turned to Leoncia and favored her with a friendly smile that was an illumination.