The Seven Serpents Trilogy by Scott O’Dell Read Free Book Online

the cacique. Certain that there was gold somewhere on the island, he went among the natives, asking questions, threatening them if they dared to lie.
    He learned nothing at first, though most of the In dians wore gold necklaces and ear plugs. But on the day the pearling stopped and one of the cacique’s sons came aboard the
Santa Margarita
to receive the tribe’s share of the harvest, Guzmán confronted him below deck. What took place between them there in the dark hold no one knew, except that a scream was heard and shortly afterward the cacique’s son came on deck, one of his hands cut and bloodied.
    The next morning Guzmán disappeared up the stream that flowed into the lagoon. He came back that night with the news that he had discovered a gold pebble lying in a pool half a league up the stream.
    Guzmán had worked in a quicksilver mine in Spain and had made, so Captain Roa said, a fortune in gold near Hispaniola, a fortune soon lost at tarok. Being ex perienced in mining, he knew that the gold pebbles came from nearby, since they were rough edged and not smooth, which they would have been had they traveled any distance.
    With two soldiers he set out to find the source of the gold shaped like pebbles. After two days of searching along the banks, he discovered a vein of pure metal, nearly the width of a hand, that ran back from the stream for more than thirty paces and at last lost itself in a rocky hill.
    Guzmán reported the discovery to Don Luis, who spoke to Ayo and asked his permission to mine it. The cacique stood for a while, looking down at his toes and thinking. Then he said he wanted something in return. It happened at this moment that Bravo, the black stal lion, who was tethered nearby, gave forth a powerful neigh.
    The cacique looked up. “The horse,” he said to Esteban, “the big horse I want for the gold.”
    Don Luis said to Esteban, “Tell the chieftain that the big horse he cannot have, since it was a birthday gift from my grandfather, who is now dead. Blessed be his sainted memory. But the chieftain can have any one of the other fine horses he wishes. And a saddle with silver on it.”
    â€œBesides the horse and the silver seat,” the cacique said, “I wish one half of the gold.”
    â€œOne half,” Don Luis agreed.
    The suddenness with which he agreed and the tone of his voice made me think he had no intention of giving the cacique so much as one
onza
of the gold.
    â€œWho digs the gold?” the cacique asked.
    Don Luis said, “You have many men who are young and strong and have little to do. They dig. Señor Guzmán here will tell them how to dig and where. He has had much experience with digging.”
    A gray gelding that had not survived the voyage well was given over to the cacique, and a saddle trimmed with silver, and a halter hung with hawk’s bells.
    Our horses had been a wild curiosity from the very beginning. At first the Indians stood off and looked at them from a distance, from behind a tree if one was handy. Gradually, a step at a time over days, they approached the horses and at last began to feed them. So the gift of the gelding was a big event, which they celebrated with drums and songs.
    Guzmán got together a band of a dozen Indians that same afternoon and went upstream to start work on the gold reef. They carried iron mattocks, long-handled tools, each with a blade set at right angles to the shaft, and a keg of gunpowder.
    They mined the vein of pure gold and blasted the rock that lay around it. This ore they carried in baskets down to the lagoon, where they piled it up, awaiting the completion of a rock crusher, a two-stone
arrastre.
By evening of the second day, when a mound of ore rose shoulder-high, Don Luis called all the workers together and gave them glass trinkets. He was greatly excited by the gold. The harvest of pearls was valuable, but the shining metal embedded in the yellow rock that lay piled