for all practical purposes we were prisoners during the weeks we spent in homolobi, but i cannot say that we were fettered or chained. the whole village, with its rabbit-warrens of passages, its ponderous masses of masonry, its soaring walls and towers, its rare rock-gardens—odd patches of dirt in angles of the cliffs around the breast—its plazas and hidden reservoirs, we were free to roam in.
escorted by kachina, we even ventured into the dim recesses of the temple and stared at the wooden image of massi, a sinister object of partly human aspect presiding over a stone tank crammed with writhing rattlesnakes, which, our guide assured us, had not had their fangs drawn. yet she and all the evil priests of this forbidding place handled the reptiles without fear, and so far as we could see were never bitten. explain it how you will.
'twas after this visit that a knife fell from the air at tawannears' feet, missing the opening betwixt collar-bone and shoulder-blade by inches. if it dropped by accident none came to reclaim it, nor did we have sight of its owner; and we had no choice but to suppose it had been aimed at the seneca's life. but we deemed it best to hold our tongues concerning the incident—with all save kachina; she had become our staunch friend and ally, more through a whimsical interest in new faces—and especially tawannears—as i believe, than for aught else, unless it was the opportunity to plague kokyan and annoy wiki the grave. later—but i gallop in advance of my story.
kachina approved our silence.
"'twas that ant kokyan, beyond a doubt," she glowered. "he shall suffer for it! i will dance his heart out of him, and laugh at his misery. but it will serve no purpose to denounce him. he would laugh at you, and turn people against you, saying you had come amongst us only to create discord. and that would be bad because it has not rained since you came, and already people are saying that you have brought us good luck and a fair harvest. but you must be careful how you walk—and keep out of dark passages."
at her suggestion we took to walking daily on the floor of the valley where no knives could fall upon us—although once, as tawannears came through a copse by the river to where she was explaining to us their irrigation system, an arrow thrummed into a tree-trunk beside him. he looked unsuccessfully for the hidden archer, then ran on and joined us; and after that we avoided copses and groves, as well as dark corners and places commanded by overhanging walls. but i think the best reason why tawannears was not assassinated was that she stuck so close to him.
"what chance has a warrior when he has a priest for enemy?" she said, laughing. "'tis well he has me to care for him. do kokyan and his tools think i would let them slay tawannears before i have learned this fine, booming speech of his?"
no hindrance was placed in the way of our excursions, but there were always men close by and—when we were in the open—a few of the priests in serpent's-skin kilts lurked within eye-shot. moreover, the smokes of the awataba now encircled the valley. north, south, east and west they rose languorously in the windless air, for the days were still, equably warm, without great heat and wondrously dry.
twice i asked wiki, mainly to see what he would say, if we might leave the valley. each time he smiled cryptically, raised his arm and swept the compass of the cliffs.
"if you go, you go to death," he said the first time.
and a week later:
"shall we send you to your deaths, englishman? that would not be kind."
"but i think sometimes we linger here only to await death," i countered.
his face was solemn, but his green eyes mocked me.
"can you see the future?" he asked.
"no, i am no miracle-worker."
"then how can you know what massi has in store for you?"
"why do the naked bowmen lurk here so long?" i demanded, changing the subject.
his brow wrinkled in what might have been perplexity.
"who can say?" he answered, with a shrug. "they are children. perhaps they have killed enough meat to feed them a while."
at times he would be more communicative, and we discussed the beliefs of his people and their social and religious organization. they were in many ways the most civilized indians i have seen, and they seemed all the more so, meeting them, as we did, after prolonged contact with the depraved tribes we had encountered west of the sky mountains and along the coast of the western ocean.
perhaps because of the inaccessible character of their situation, they were essentially unwarlike, wrapped up in the pursuit of agriculture and the raising of turkeys. certain of these birds they bred especially for the sacred flock attending on the shrine of massi for the purpose of supplying feathers, with which women wove remarkably beautiful screens and robes. their crops were as good as those obtained by european husbandmen, and much better than those ordinarily reaped by our own farmers in america, notwithstanding that their only tools for cultivation were pointed sticks and the most primitive kinds of rakes and hoes.
wiki said, in one of his conversational moods, that their traditions taught them that long ago this barren land of rocks was much richer than it now was, and at that distant time their people were very numerous in this locality. but in the course of ages the climate changed, and with it the nature of the country. the rivers dried up; the deposits of soil were blown away; vegetation died; the sun's heat became so fierce as to wither growing things, except in a few favored spots.
about the same time there was a succession of eruptions of hordes of savages from the north, low-browed, ferocious people, akin, perhaps to the awataba—and on the same count to the people of homolobi themselves. these were the shunwi, or "flesh creatures," as they called themselves—who overran many villages, driven mad by starvation probably and aided by an enormous numerical superiority. and the populations of other villages, disheartened by these experiences, moved away into the south, where conditions were more favorable, and gradually lost touch with those who had remained in the home-land of the race.
the coming of the spaniards sealed the doom of all of them. to wiki, who evidently had visited the spanish colonies, possibly had indulged in the occasional indian plots to regain independence and restore the dominance of the red race under a new montezuma, the tragedy of his people was very apparent. he had seen village after village on the outskirts of the rock desert conquered and christianized. his life was dedicated to an effort to protect homolobi from the universal fate. this was the reason for his equivocal reception of our party. it was the reason, too, i suspect, for his uncertain attitude toward us after he had saved our lives. he was not sure how best to make use of us, whether it would more aptly serve his purpose to let us go or to sacrifice us to the superstitious wrath and priestly politics of kokyan's faction.
the hub of the situation, indeed, was the factional politics that rent the village. as kachina had told us, the priestly organization was likewise the political superstructure of the social life of the community. the council of wise men was really a council of the priests, with a handful of others selected by and under the control of the priests. they not only regulated the religious life of the village, but exerted a general supervision over its agricultural and industrial undertakings, adjusted inter-family or clan disputes, made and administered laws, interpreted traditions, and in event of war furnished the military leadership that was required.
the one-sided intellectuality which resulted was probably the cause of the decline of the race. this was the judgment of tawannears, who was best qualified to estimate their tribal characteristics, combining in his mind, as he did, the training and outlook of red man and white. he took a keen interest in the problem, despite his absorption in his own tangled thoughts and his strange infatuation with kachina, which was to lead to the crisis of our affairs. and it was largely through him and the attraction which he possessed for the girl, with all her weird power and influence, that we were enabled to gain a really intimate view of the drama which was centering around our three alien lives.
briefly, it was the old, old story of all communities. wiki represented the wisdom of age. fifteen years before, i gathered, he had acquired preponderating power when he went out into the desert, as he said, "to fast and ask a message forecasting the future," and returned with the woman-child who grew to be kachina, and who, he told the village, had been sent to him by massi to serve the temple and dance in honor of the ruler of the dead. his own shrewd intellect combined with the latin grace of the girl and her original personality had strengthened his position so that he ruled practically supreme, being able to ignore, if he chose, the rival authority of old angwusi, who represented the women in the hierarchy.
it was, by the way, typical of the social organization of homolobi that the women had important representation in the priesthood. the women were in all ways equal to the men. they held their share of property, and they had the right to be consulted on all matters of public import. they upheld and maintained the sanctity of monogamous marriage. they had the right to secure punishment for any man who neglected, abused or maltreated his wife. and while they were barred from the service of chua and from membership in the priestly clan or participation in the religious dances, they had in angwusi a representative who ranked next to the chief priest in authority, who might, in some cases, compel even his acquiescence on questions of policy.
angwusi was as clever as a priestess-stateswoman as wiki, but she lacked his breadth and experience. she had been instrumental in building up the prestige of kokyan, the young priest of yoki and suitor for kachina's hand; but as soon as he was strong enough to make himself felt in opposition to the chief priest, she had hastened to redress the balance, hoping, in the conflicting ambitions of the two men, to find the means for gaining her own ends, whatever they were.
but the situation was complicated again by the interposition of kachina. she had not, until recently, been regarded as more than an assistant and subordinate of wiki. kokyan's courtship and rivalry of the chief priest and the politics precipitated by his rise, however, had lifted her to an importance equal with that enjoyed by the other three; and she was not slow to take advantage of it. how loyal she was to wiki, of course, i cannot say; but from my knowledge of her afterward i should say that she would have stood by him, after securing such concessions as she wanted for herself, had it not been for the arrival of tawannears.
love and hate, the lure of beauty, hunger for power, these were the factors here as elsewhere. suppose we had gone north, instead of south, to pass the salt lake, suppose we had not ventured into these mountains! what would have happened then to the fortunes of wiki, of kachina, of kokyan and angwusi and the people of homolobi—ay, and of tawannears, peter and myself. fifteen hundred lives would have ended differently—i say nothing of the awataba, who perished for causes beyond their comprehension.
so slender is the thread of destiny which weaves our lives!
but my speculation, after all, is purposeless. we were fated to do what we did. it was written in the book that we should go to homolobi, just as it was written that tawannears' fantastic search should be carried to its logical conclusion. how else can you explain the instant attraction he had for the girl, the light that shone in his eyes when he first fronted her threatening arrow, the very ease with which they two brushed aside from their path the needs and wants and desires and wishes of fifteen hundred others? it was written that it should be so. why, even peter's giant strength had its rôle to play in this, as in other acts, of the drama we lived. and i—am i not the narrator?
so i say there was no accident in what transpired. accident must have slain us heedlessly a score of times before destiny was ready for us to work the deeds it had prepared for us.
if wiki, priest of massi, from whatever abode he occupies, looks over my shoulder as i write i know that he will smile assent. there are some forces beyond human control. we were caught fast in the grip of such a force when the people of homolobi gathered before the kiva of massi for the pre-harvest festival at the end of that moon in which we had come into their valley—i cannot make the date more specific, for we had lost all track of time in more than two years of wandering.
it was a clear, cloudless day, still not too hot, with almost no breeze stirring, exactly like all the other days since our arrival; and i remember the people squatting around the open space in front of the temple made room for us readily in the front row, some of them actually smiling, so popular had we become on account of the good weather we had brought the village.
weather was everything to these people. in fear of a failed harvest they always kept a year's store of dried crops ahead; but there had been times when the crops had failed two years running, and they regulated their whole lives to the one end of securing enough food. religion, with them, was weather. hence the popularity of kokyan, priest of yoki, who had twice secured them abundant early summer rain. hence, too,—and most paradoxically—our own popularity, because we had staved off the unseasonably heavy storms which sometimes destroyed or diminished a good planting.
observe the irony. we had made headway against kokyan's enmity by virtue of the very talent he arrogated to himself. hence the frowns he bent on us as he danced from the temple, leading his snake priests, every man a center of twisting coils of slimy reptiles.
this was the opening phase of the ceremonies. wiki and angwusi sat in front of the temple entrance upon solid blocks of wood, behind them leering the horrid features of massi, carried forward from his darksome shrine into the glare of daylight for this occasion. kachina had not yet appeared, but grouped in a semicircle in back of idol, priest and priestess were the masked dancers of the different clans, arrayed in the semblance of bird, beast, reptile, vegetable or insect.
overhead towered the bulging brow of the cliff. across the housetops reared the distant wall of the valley, crowned by the slim smokes of the awataba, those persistent savages who belied their inconsequential natures by the fixity of the purpose with which they hemmed us in. and all around the plaza, and on the nearby house-roofs, too, were crowded the village people, the men in their white kilts—the red border being reserved for the highest members of the priesthood and the wise men of the council; the women in plain white robes that folded over the right shoulder and slid under the left breast, curving graciously to the figure and banded tight around the waist.
drums thudded inside the temple to herald the approach of kokyan and his loathsome attendants. they pranced slowly into the light, snakes twining about their middles, their arms and their necks, forked tongues darting and hissing—and never a man bitten!
the snake priests sounded a low chant, as they advanced with a jerking, undulating step, apparently designed to reproduce the traveling motion of a snake. whining in a minor key, the chant progressed in volume, the rumble of the unseen drums rising in tune with it.
bound the open space danced the ugly procession, the people instinctively drawing back as the snake-ridden men came near. kokyan, the scowl of a fiend on his face, passed us and went on. the whole line passed, and i breathed freely again, for i did not like those scores of unrestrained reptiles, any one of which in threshing free of its bearer might carry death into the throng.
the drums thudded louder and louder as the priests circled the plaza the second time; and the snakes were more excited than ever by the noise, the unaccustomed sunlight and the white-garbed rows of onlookers. they writhed up above the heads of the priests, struck at each other and hissed into the empty air. 'twas a nightmare spectacle—such a picture as the italian dante dreamed of the torments of hell. but again kokyan passed, and again i felt the breath whistle from my lungs. then it came—what i had been expecting!
the drumming became hurried, confused, and the priests jostled together, as if surprised. there was a plop! on the sandy ground, and a rattlesnake as long as peter contorted into its fighting coils within arm's-reach of tawannears. but the seneca remained perfectly quiet, not moving a muscle of face or body. a gasp went up from the people around us. women cried out, and children whimpered. wiki rose from his stool with a single curt order, and one of the priests stepped out of the line and retrieved the snake, calming it by a stroking motion down its belly as he grasped it just under the venomous head.
it all happened so quickly that few saw the incident, but peter's big hand gripped my arm until i thought he would tear it off.
"if he mofed he was deadt!" he gasped in my ear. "ja, if he mofed, tawannears was deadt!"
"did he drop it?" i whispered fiercely to tawannears. "did you see the priest drop it?"
"yes, brother," he answered coolly, "but who could swear he was responsible?"
"and you stayed quiet!" i marveled. "how could you know the snake would not strike?"
"it was nothing," he returned. "that snake never strikes unless it thinks you are frightened of it. the man bungled. he should have dropped it on tawannears. then it would have struck instinctively. but hawenneyu did not will it so. tawannears' medicine is too strong for the snake-priest, kokyan."
