Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 189, No. 4 — page 97: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE SUN TEST. Was it the inherited wildness that had descended to him through his unknown predatory sire? CHAPTER XIII. TREACHERY. ENCH McTIER was a Mayan, but in name only. He looked upon the tribe as the oysters of the human race. By denying themselves all the ideas and desires which rendered life attractive to the average American, they had been able to ex- ist for centuries without any change. From an ethnic point of view, they were doubtless degenerates; the law of life is that if you do not advance, you must go backward. They had not advanced. They had tried to stand still. Therefore, despite themselves, despite most unexampled heroisms of self control, and of a timid denial of many human in- stincts, they had gone backward, slowly, in- evitably. Intellectually and sociologically, they were living in the very dawn of the race’s activity. Now that he had regained his health and his freedom, Tench felt that there was nothing to hold him among them, existing on pounded maize, sunning himself month in and month out, in the manner of a lizard. Nothing, that is, but Za—Za, with her yellow hair, and youthful bloom, and her persistent idolatry of the sun, ignorant, su- perstitious, but lovely and fascinating. He had committed himself to breaking down the barriers that separated them. But for a few days after he had been ac- ‘cepted as a priest of Za, and when he felt that the roads up over the mesa were open to him to go when and where he chose, mem- ories of other days began to crowd upon him, and a longing to again show himself in his old haunts, well and strong, became im- perative. Why should he linger with these exotic degenerates and trifle longer with their ab- surd outworn beliefs? Why should he not take the trail at once that led to the north, and push on over the mesa and through the desert until he came again to the haunts of men like himself? | 567 This impulse was not as robust as he imagined, however. He began to recall tales he had heard of white men highly cul- tured, even like himself, being lost in the wilds of Africa with primitive folk no more developed than were men in the dawn of history, or in the depths of Asia, or beyend the Arctic Circle with Eskimos, who were content to live their lives under these con- ditions so far removed from modern ken. Was there an intense primitive urge in the heart of man luring him ever back- ward along the trail? Was it like some over- powering drug that lulled the senses to sleep? Irom day to day he debated thus with himself, part of the time resolving to run away from the Mayans and return to civi- lization but all the time held to them by the thrall of the tropics, the lure of the primi- tive, and a longing again to see Za, a longing that grew upon him like a subtle fever. He would wake at night suddenly with an overwhelming consciousness that she was beside him and that her tiny palm lay softly in his, only to find he was alone, and to be seized with a baffling longing to talk to her again. He dared not confide in Xlaco, He dared make no move toward Za’s pueblo which would indicate to the Mayans how unlike theirs was his love for her. One day Xlaco said to him: “ To-morrow, we go to the mine.” “What mine?” asked Tench, “The mine of the Sun’s windows. Once each year for one day, all men of the tribe work the mine.” Tench touched the yellow jewel which hung in the leather guard about his neck. “You intend to get more like this?” he asked. ce Aye,” early.” The Mayans started the next morning before dawn, just as they had started on the day of the races, took a direction along the base of the cliff. At their head marched Za, robed in the huitzin. Following her came the seven mem-< bers of the council, the oldest men of the tribe. — ‘Then came the Priests of Za including said Xlaco. ‘‘ We must be ready This time, however, they comic 200KS com