"It's tonight or never to make a break for it," he decided as he
followed her.
They were passing the block of jasper, the ancient stone of sacrifice.
Zoraida went by first; Kendric was passing when an impulse prompted him
to put out a sudden hand for the keen edged knife of obsidian. He
slipped it into his belt and hid the haft with his coat. If it came to
an ambush, to an attack in the dark, a revolver bullet might fly wild
while the wide sweep of a knife blade would somehow find a sheath in
something more palpable than thin air.
They went on, returning along the way they had come. When the gardens
of the golden Tezcucan were behind them and a door barred Kendric
experienced a sense of relief, even though the tunnels were ahead of
him. He kept close to Zoraida, prepared for any sort of trickery and
with no desire to have her whisk suddenly through a door somewhere and
slam it in his face. His one urgent prayer was for a breath of the
open; just then the consummation of human happiness seemed to him to be
freedom on horseback somewhere out in the mountains with the whole of
the wide starry sky generously roofing the world. He thought of
Betty--and he thought, too, of the six little boys doomed to count
themselves happy back yonder where at most the sun shone down upon them
a few minutes of the day.
Never once did Zoraida turn, not once did she speak as they hastened
on.
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