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It was the priest Guarin, priest and physician, for they are the same here. Palm against earth, I half rose. He nodded, made a sign to rise wholly and come. I did so. I stood and saw under the moon no waking face nor upspringing form. I stepped across an Indian, another, a third. Then was clear space, the wood, Guarin.
They were gone, and we knew not where, Quisquaya being a huge country, and the paths yet hidden from us or of doubtful treading. But the heaped mountains rose before us, and Juan Lepe at least could feel assured that they were gone there. They vanished and for long we heard nothing of them, not of Guacanagari, nor of Guarin who had saved Juan Lepe, not of Catalina, nor any.
Juan Lepe and Guarin went on down through wood to a narrow silver beach, out upon which had cast itself an Indian village. Guacanagari was not here. He waited within his house for the Admiral. But his brother, and others of Guarico, saw me and there rose a clamor and excitement that for the moment took them from the ships.
Now I knew, because Guarin had told me so, that that wound was healed. It had given trouble the Caribs poisoned their darts but now it was well. But they are simpler minded than we, this folk, and I read Guacanagari that he must impress the returning gods with his fidelity. He had proved it, and while Juan Lepe was by he did not need this mummery, but he had thought that he might need.
The Admiral put forth a lean, knotted, powerful hand and laid it on the brown, slim, untoiled hand. "I wish peace," he said. "My brother Bartholomew and I will do what we can do to gain it. Good peace, true peace!" Without the room, I asked the cacique about Guarin. He was gone, he said, to the mountains. He would not stay with Guacanagari, and he would not go to Caonabo or Gwarionex.
When he went down there had been an exclamation from those Indians nearest us. "Aiya!" It was their word for rotten, no good, spoiled, disappointing, crippled or diseased, for a misformed child or an old man or woman arrived at helplessness. Such, I had learned from Guarin, they almost invariably killed. It was why, from the first, we hardly saw dwarfed or humped or crippled among them.
But the Great Spirit could not be hurt and had no wish to hurt any one else, whether zemes or men. To live with the Great Spirit, that was really the Heron wish, though the little herons could not always see it. This butio Guarin his name was a young man with eyes that could burn and voice that fell naturally into a chant. He took me into the forest with him to look for a very rare tree.
Halfway to level land he met Guarin coming up; the two met beneath a tree huge and spreading, curtained with a vine, starred with flowers. "He has come!" cried the Indian. "They have come!" In his voice was marveling, awe, perturbation. The sun in the sky shone, and in the bay hung that wonder of return, the many ships for the Nina.
But I saw three Indians from outside his country curse him in the name of all the other tribes, with a kind of magical ceremony. Is he right, or is he wrong, Juan Lepe? Or is he neither the one nor the other, but Something moves him from above?" "Have you never seen again the butio, Guarin?" "No."
He would live with and teach the Guaricos, becoming butio he and Guarin butios together. I pondered it. If the Admiral came not again it was the one thing to do. I remember the very odor and exquisite touch of the morning. Guarin was away. I had to myself cave and ledge and little waterfall and great trees that now I was telling one from another.
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