Page:Weird Tales Volume 4 Number 3 (1924-11).djvu/6





HE GOOD ship Tivives had rounded the white beaches and whiter lighthouse of Cape Maisi—had passed the stark wreck of the Norwegian fruiter—"el vapor perdido," so many years a landmark of the easternmost point of Cuba—and had definitely turned her prow westward along the southern coast, scheduled to make Santiago at daybreak en route to Guatemala and Honduras. The last rays of a setting sun illumined the great cliffs back of Ovando and Punta Negra, their black cave-mouths showing in sharp contrast, like the eyeholes of a skull.

Dr. Branson turned to his new friend, Lewis, who lolled in a deck-chair beside him. "I'll bet," he suggested, "the old Indians used to have great times up in those caves before Brother Columbus butted in!"

"Yes," agreed his companion, "the Cronistas tell us that the Taino tribes held some of their most important ceremonies in caves."

The doctor stared.

"What do you know about the Cronistas?" he demanded.

"Oh, my work lies along those lines," laughed the other. "I've had to pore over old Las Casas, Oviedo, and the other early Spanish historians of the New World many a time. I'm on my way now to Guatemala to study some of the ruined cities. Yes, I know many have done this before me, but I can assure you there is still lots to learn. I only wish my wife were along, and she would be, but she can't get away. She likes Aztec work better than Maya, however, and her knowledge in that field is simply uncanny. I can't make out where she got it all; in fact, it was our common interest in such things that brought us together in the first place. There is only one thing on which we do not agree—she has too much respect for the old Aztec priests and conjurors. She insists their powers were real, and that they possessed wonderful drugs unknown to the modern world."

"I read a story not long ago," returned the doctor, "about a white man, an explorer in the highlands of Venezuela, who got a taste of Indian 'medicine' that was a little bit too strong for him. It seems he had fooled around with some decolleté Indian lady back there in the hills until she fell in love with him, and then when he proposed to skip the country, she felt naturally peeved and slipped something into his supper that made his skin turn permanently black, and the story says he's there yet, ashamed to come out. I have had no adventures of my own in this line, but I used to know an old Aztec Indian when we lived in Mexico City, who spun me a lot of curious yarns. He claimed that the old priests of his people had wonderful power—could even change men into women. Do you believe that?" 5