"Ugh!" and Billie shivered slightly, and looked at Rhodes, "don't you go digging it!"
His eyes met hers across the table. It was only for an instant, and then Billie got very busy with her coffee which she had forgotten.
"Oh, I'd travel with a mascot to ward off evil," he said. "Would you give me a bead from your string?"
She nodded her head, but did not speak. No one noticed them, for Cap Pike was telling of the old native superstition that the man who first found an ore bed found no good luck for himself, though the next man might make a fortune from it.
"Why," he continued in evidence, "an Indian who finds even a vein of special clay for pottery doesn't blaze a trail to it for anyone else. He uses it if he wants it, because his own special guardian god uncovered it for him, but if it is meant for any other man, that other man's god will lead him to it when the time comes. That is how they reason it out for all the things covered by old Mother Earth. And I reckon the redder the gold the more secret the old _barbaros_ would be about it, for gold is their sun-god medicine, or symbol, or something."
"With white priests scattered through Sonora for two centuries one would suppose those old superstitions would be pretty well eradicated," remarked Singleton.
Doña Luz glanced at him as at a child who must be let have his own ideas so long as they were harmless, but Pike laughed.
"Lord love you, Singleton, nothing eradicates superstition from the Indian mind, or any other mind! All the creeds of the earth are built on it, and a lot of the white ones are still alive and going strong! And as for priests, why man, the Indian priests are bred of those tribes, and were here before the white men came from Spain. It's just about like this: If 'Me und Gott' and the U-boats took a notion to come over and put a ball and chain on all of so-called free America, there might be some pacifist mongrels pretend to like it, and just dote on putting gilt on the chain, and kow-towing to that blood-puddin' gang who are raising hell in Belgium. But would the thoroughbreds like it? Not on your life! Well, don't you forget there were a lot of thoroughbreds in the Indian clans even if some of their slaves did breed mongrels! And don't forget that the ships from overseas are dumping more scrub stock on the eastern shores right now than you'll find in any Indian rancheria either here in Pima or over in Sonora. The American isn't to blame for all the seventeen dozen creeds they bring over,--whether political or religious, and I reckon that's about the way the heads of the red clans feel. They are more polite than we are about it, but don't you think for a moment that the European invasion ever changed religion for the Indian thoroughbred. No sir! He is still close to the earth and the stars, and if he thinks they talk to him--well, they just _talk to him_, and what they tell him isn't for you or me to hear,--or to sit in judgment on either, if it comes to that! We are the outsiders."