Las Casas took a last look at the soldiers building their big bonfire. The soldiers running back and forth, breaking apart anything made of wood and throwing it into the bright flames that billowed above them into the sky, looked more like demons than any of the deities depicted in the Mayan books. He turned and moved along the back of the adobe mission buildings, staying in the dark, sheltered places. At the edge of the cleared land, he stepped onto a jungle trail. The foliage grew so thick around the trail that his progress was like moving through a cave. The trail led downward toward the river.

When Las Casas reached the river, he saw that many of the Indians had come out of their huts in the village and that a fire had been lit. They had been aware of the arrival of the strange soldiers and had gathered in the center of their village to discuss what to do. He spoke to them in K’iche’, the language of the Mayans in this district. “It’s me, Brother Bartolomé,” he called out. “Soldiers have come to the mission.”

He saw Kukulcan, who remained seated in the doorway of his hut. He had been an important chieftain in Cobán before he had decided to come to the mission, and now the others all looked to him for leadership. He said, “We saw them. What do they want? Gold? Slaves?”

“They’ve come for books. They don’t understand the books, and someone told them that Mayan books were all about evil and magic. They’ve come to find any books you have and destroy them.”

There were murmurs and expressions of consternation. The news seemed utterly incomprehensible to the crowd, as though someone had come to chop down the trees, drain the rivers, or blot out the sun. This seemed to them an act of pure malice that could not gain the soldiers anything.

“What should we do?” Kukulcan asked. “Fight?”

“All we can do is try to save some of the books. Pick out the most important ones and take them away from here.”

Kukulcan beckoned to his son, Tepeu, a man about thirty years old who had been a respected warrior. They spoke together in quick whispers. Tepeu nodded. Kukulcan said to Las Casas, “There’s no question. It has to be the one I brought to the mission to show you. That one is worth all the others.”

Las Casas turned and moved toward the jungle path. Tepeu was suddenly at his shoulder. “We have to get up the trail before they find it,” Tepeu said. “Try to keep up.” Then he began to run.