In the Wrong Paradise, and Other Stories Read online

  III.

  The conclusion of my story shall be very short. What was the connectionbetween Gumbo and the spoils of the Sachem's Mound, and how did thetreasures of the Aztec Temple of the Sun come to be concealed in theburial place of the Red Man? All this Moore explained to me the dayafter we secured the treasures.

  "My father," said Moore, "was, as you know, a great antiquarian, and agreat collector of Mexican and native relics. He had given almost asmuch time as Brasseur de Bourbourg to Mexican hieroglyphics, andnaturally had made nothing out of them. His chief desire was to discoverthe Secret of the Pyramid--not the pyramids of Egypt, as you fancied, butthe Pyramid of the Sun, Tonatiuh, at Teohuacan. To the problem connectedwith this mysterious structure, infinitely older than the empire ofMontezuma, which Cortes destroyed, he fancied he had a clue in thisscroll."

  Moore handed me a prepared sheet of birch bark, like those which the redmen use for their rude picture writings. It was very old, but thepainted characters were still brilliant, and even a tyro could see thatthey were not Indian, but of the ancient Mexican description. In theupper left-hand corner was painted a pyramidal structure, above which thesun beamed. Eight men, over whose heads the moon was drawn, were issuingfrom the pyramid; the two foremost bore in their hands effigies of thesun and moon; each of the others seemed to carry smaller objects with acertain religious awe. Then came a singular chart, which one mightconjecture represented the wanderings of these men, bearing the sacredthings of their gods. In the lowest corner of the scroll they were beingreceived by human beings dressed unlike themselves, with head coveringsof feathers and carrying bows in their hands.

  "This scroll," Moore went on, "my father bought from one of the last ofthe red men who lingered on here, a prey to debt and whisky. My fatheralways associated the drawings with the treasures of Teohuacan, which,according to him, must have been withdrawn from the pyramid, and conveyedsecretly to the north, the direction from which the old Toltec pyramidbuilders originally came. In the north they would find no civilizedpeople like themselves, he said, but only the Indians. Probably,however, the Indians would receive with respect the bearers of mysteriousimages and rites, and my father concluded that the sacred treasures ofthe Sun might still be concealed among some wandering tribe of red men.He had come to this conclusion for some time, when I and my brotherreturned from school, hastily summoned back, to find him extremely ill.He had suffered from a paralytic stroke, and he scarcely recognized us.But we made out, partly from his broken and wandering words, partly fromold Tom (Peter's father, now dead), that my father's illness had followedon a violent fit of passion. He had picked up, it seems, from someIndians a scroll which he considered of the utmost value, and which heplaced in a shelf of the library. Now, old Gumbo was a house-servant atthat time, and, dumb as he was, and stupid as he was, my father hadtreated him with peculiar kindness. Unluckily Gumbo yielded to thefavourite illusion of all servants, white and black, male and female,that anything they find in the library may be used to light a fire with.One chilly day Gumbo lighted the fire with the newly purchased Indianbirch scroll. My father, when he heard of this performance, lost allself-command. In his ordinary temper the most humane of men, he simplyraged at Gumbo. He would teach him, he said, to destroy his papers. Andit appeared, from what we could piece together (for old Tom was veryreticent and my father very incoherent), that he actually branded ortattooed a copy of what Gumbo had burnt on the nigger's body!"

  "But," I interrupted, "your father knew all the scroll had to tell him,else he could not have copied it on Gumbo. So why was he in such arage?"

  "You," said Moore, with some indignation, "are not a collector, and youcan't understand a collector's feelings. My father knew the contents ofthe scroll, but what of that? The scroll was the first edition, the realoriginal, and Gumbo had destroyed it. Job would have lost his temper ifJob had been a collector. Let me go on. My brother and I bothconjectured that the scroll had some connection with the famous riches ofthe Sun and the secret of the Pyramid of Teohuacan. Probably, wethought, it had contained a chart (now transferred to Gumbo's frame) ofthe hiding-place of the treasure. However, in the confusion caused by myfather's illness, death, and burial, Gumbo escaped, and, being anunusually stupid nigger, he escaped due south-west. Here he seems tohave fallen into the hands of some slave-holding Indians, who used himeven worse than any white owners would have done, and left him the merefragment you saw. He filtered back here through the exchange ofcommerce, 'the higgling of the market,' and as soon as I recognized himat the sale I made up my mind to purchase him. So did my brother; but,thanks to Peter and his hornets, I became Gumbo's owner. On examininghim, after he was well washed on the night of the attack, I found thischart, as you may call it, branded on Gumbo's back." Here Moore made arapid tracing on a sheet of paper. "I concluded that the letters S M(introduced by my father, of course, as the Indian scroll must have been'before letters') referred to the Sachem's Mound, which is in my land;that the Sun above referred to the treasures of the Sun, that S C stoodfor the Sachem's Cave, and that the cave led, under the river, within themound. We might have opened the mound by digging on our own land, but itwould have been a long job, and must have attracted curiosity and broughtus into trouble. So, you see, the chart Gumbo destroyed was imprinted bymy father on his black back, and though he _knew_ nothing of the secrethe distinctly _had_ it."

  "Yes," said I, "but why did you ask for a razor when you were left alonewith Gumbo?"

  "Why," said Moore, "I knew Gumbo was marked somewhere and somehow, butthe place and manner I didn't know. And my father might have rememberedthe dodge of Histiaeus in Herodotus: he might have shaved Gumbo's head,tattooed the chart on that, and then allowed the natural covering to hidethe secret 'on the place where the wool ought to grow.'"