there was no twilight in homolobi. buried beneath the jutting overhang of the western cliff, the village was plunged in darkness the moment the sun had sunk behind it. one minute i looked through the narrow doorway of our room and saw the gaunt figure of the serpent priest, our sentinel, limned against the gray house-walls across the temple plaza. then the enveloping gloom had swallowed him. only upon the distant eastern cliffs of the valley a few crimson beams clashed harshly upon the painted rock strata, flickered courageously—and vanished, too.
but immediately other lights flared up. the plaza, whence rose—had risen this hour—a continuous hum and buzz of comment, of a sudden glared with torches. more torches shone on the opposite house-roofs, and from the unseen depths of the valley at the foot of the breast blossomed a great flower of light that grew and grew, accompanied by a muted roar of savage voices, dissonant, unrestrained.
the voices of homolobi were stilled—as though wild had suppressed all with one wave of his feathered paho. the village became wrapped in the silence of death. and now our ears could hear distinctly that gritting insanity of frenzied noise, rising and falling with the leaping of the flames that streaked hundreds of feet into the air to illumine the darkness beyond the village walls. they were faint, far away, but the savage insistency of their chorus was unescapable, even when the hum of the village began knew.
"the awataba," i muttered, more to myself than to the others.
"ja," assented corlaer. "der bowmen are madt. dey go crazy, eh?"
tawannears said nothing. he had not spoken in the hour which had elapsed since the serpent priests had driven us from the plaza. until the light failed i had been able to see him sitting motionless, with his back to the wall, his eyes staring into vacancy. now, i suppose, he occupied the same position. at any rate, i could not see him.
"if we had but a pound of powder and ball between us," i groaned.
"what use?" replied corlaer. "if you kill all der people in homolobi we hafe still der awataba."
"no use," i admitted. "yet i like not the thought of dying in a trap."
"we will not be deadt alone," the dutchman grunted. "ha!"
his exclamation was caused by the soft tread of a foot in the doorway. i jumped to one side, drawing the knife and tomahawk from my belt.
"into the open!" i whispered.
but kachina's voice answered me, the sibilant spanish just loud enough to reach my ear.
"quiet! 'tis i."
i extended my arm and clutched her feather garment.
"alone?" i whispered.
"yes. let me in. i— where is tawannears?"
the seneca's voice came from the darkness at my elbow.
"tawannears is here, gahano."
the throb of gladness in it sent my heart leaping into my throat. there were tears in my eyes.
she understood him.
"tell him," she ordered me, with a tinkle of musical laughter, "my name is kachina."
"she is gahano to me," was tawannears' answer.
i felt her press by me, and a moment later her voice reached me again, strangely muffled.
"what i am called matters little," she said. "i think wiki lies when he says i came from massi. i seem to remember a time many years ago when i often saw people who were white like you. but that does not matter. tawannears is a man! and i am tired of priests and their ways. ay, a man who would travel as far as tawannears for a woman is a man!"
"we shall all of us go soon upon a longer journey," i returned significantly. "and you, too, if you stay here."
"yes," she agreed, her voice still muffled.
i thrust out my hand and found her body in tawannears' arms.
"what!" i gasped in astonishment.
tawannears laughed softly—and at that note, contented, caressing, peter, also, indulged in a peal of low laughter.
"dot's funny," he squeaked. "we come all dis way, andt tawannears gets her, andt we die quick."
"what did the fat one say?" inquired kachina, wrenching herself from the seneca's embrace.
i told her.
"yes," she said a second time. "death is coming. that is why i am here. the awataba told the council they must have you to sacrifice. they said they dreamed that your lives would appease their gods, but i think that ant kokyan planted the idea in their heads. i would have said so, but wiki would not let me, and so i ran away."
"what will the council do?" i asked helplessly.
the hum of the village and the blurred voices of the bowmen at the foot of the breast rasped through the night.
"they will give you up. kokyan said there should be no argument. it was sufficient sign of your harmfulness that the awataba were so emboldened. and when wiki argued against it, the bowmen said they would lay waste the valley, even though they all perished for it. then angwusi joined with kokyan, and i spoke as i said."
"hark!" said peter.
from the plaza came a bellow of voices.
"the council is ended," exclaimed kachina. "they are coming."
"a few of them will die," i answered grimly. "you had best go."
"old fool!" she retorted contemptuously. "you have no wits. they will block up the doorway, and break in upon you from above. you have no chance here."
"then we will go out into the open."
"no, you shall come with me. i know a way. it is dangerous in daylight, and perhaps we shall all perish; but if we gain the cliff-top we can hold our own. come! i will lead tawannears, and do you others follow him."
we moved softly out the door, and she guided us along the wall of the temple's upper story. here was black night, unmitigated, for the overhang of the cliff shut out even the star-shine. we had passed two other doorways, as i could tell by feeling with my hands, the uproar in the plaza becoming deafening in the meantime when there was a patter of feet and torches blazed across the terrace. men streamed by us, indistinct running figures, and we flattened against the wall, trusting to the shifting shadows to conceal us; but a group of a dozen or more with torches made the night brilliant as day.
a yell announced our discovery. there was a rush that we stemmed with ready steel, and kachina cried:
"run! do not stay to fight!"
we won a brief respite by our efforts; and she dived into a nearby doorway, and we found ourselves tumbling down a steep stair that twisted on itself and debouched into a vast chamber which we recognized as the temple. already men were pouring in from the plaza, kokyan at their head, a torch waving in one hand, a knife in the other. and behind us the restricted stair echoed the shouts of our immediate pursuers.
kachina ignored kokyan, and guided us past the tank before the empty altar of massi, in which writhed the reptile guardians of the shrine; but kokyan sped around the other, and shorter, side of the temple. the foam was dripping from his jaws; his eyeballs were staring from their sockets. and as he saw kachina turn toward a doorway that showed dimly behind the altar he shrieked with fury and hurled his torch at her. it would have struck her had not tawannears reached out and caught it as expertly as he was used to catching the tomahawks thrown at him in practice by his warriors.
an instant tawannears held the flaming club of resinous pine-wood. then he sounded the war-whoop of the iroquois that is dreaded by white man and red from the great lakes to the ohio, and sprang forward to meet the priest of yoki. they came together beside the tank of snakes, but tawannears refused to close, backing away in such fashion that the priest was poised on the very verge of the tank, from which arose an evil tumult of hissing as the snakes responded to the confusion above them.
pursuit and flight were stayed for the instant by the spectacle of this struggle. moreover, peter and i guarded the space betwixt the opposite side of the tank and the temple wall, and no man, not even the snake priests themselves, cared to try to leap that gap. kachina, smiling unconcernedly, her feather raiment rising and falling steadily with her even breathing, stood, with hands on her hips, in the doorway behind the tank, watching the contest of the two men for her. if she had any feeling of concern she covered it effectually.
kokyan howled a curse at the seneca. tawannears replied with a smile as unconcerned as the girl's and the priest stabbed at him desperately, with all the strength of his body behind the blow. never moving his feet, tawannears swayed his shoulders to avoid the knife, and struck sideways with the torch he held in his left hand. it smote the priest on the thigh as he was off-balance, and kokyan tottered and fell—into the squirming midst of the tank of snakes. tawannears, without a word, tossed the torch after him, and a bedlam of angry hisses responded. looking over my shoulder, i shuddered at what i saw.
the priest of yoki was submerged beneath a tempest of coiling monsters tortured by the flames of the torch and excited by the unusual light and noise. i had a vision of triangular heads that darted back and forth, of fangs that dribbled venom, of slimy, twisting lengths that coiled and uncoiled and coiled again—and under them all a shape that quivered and jerked and called feebly and was still.
i turned and ran, peter at my heels. the dutchman's flat, impassive face was a study in horror. myself, i experienced a nausea that left me weak as i staggered behind tawannears into the doorway before which ordinarily stood the idol of massi. kachina's figure flitted ahead of us, unseen, but notified to our senses by the echo of her feet and low-voiced directions as we came to turns or steps up and down in the course of the passage. and close after us sounded the hue and cry of the pursuit, a confused clamoring of people driven mad with hate.
indeed, 'twas the stimulus of their hatred flogged me back to self-control. at a corner in the passage, with a glimmer of light beyond advertising its emergence upon some opening, i gripped peter and bade him stop.
"we must fight them back," i panted. "they do not expect—we shall gain time."
he crouched next me, our bodies blocking the way, and the leaders of the pursuers, rounding the turn at a run, crashed full upon our knives. we flung the two corpses into the mob that pelted after them, slashing and hacking with knives and hatchets in the half-light of the torches, until we had reared a barricade that gave us an opportunity to resume our flight with a trifling lead—for men hesitated to cross the battered heap we had left behind us. yet we were no more than a dozen paces in the lead when we broke from the passage into a courtyard deep in the cleft of the cliff. in front and overhead towered the peculiar bulging rock formation which protected homolobi from assault from above. the cliff-top mushroomed out so that it overhung the breast, and leaning against its base was a double ladder from which kachina and tawannears waved us on.
i could not see what use it was to climb to some rock-lodge where we would be picked off in daylight by archers on the temple roof, but there was no time for argument with that yelping horde on our track. peter and i raced across the court, and rattled up the hidebound rungs as fast as we could go. there were men on the lower rungs already when we stepped upon a narrow shelf where the girl and tawannears awaited us.
"come," she said nervously in spanish, and plucked the seneca by the hand.
"waidt," shrilled peter solemnly, and he seized the ladder-ends in his huge paws, swayed them tentatively and gave a shove.
the ladder teetered erect on end, poised as if to drop back against the cliff—and went over backward, spilling its load of priests to an accompaniment of fearful screams.
"now we got a better chance, eh?" commented the dutchman.
kachina chuckled with amusement. she had adopted our side unreservedly. the death of these people who had lately almost worshiped her distressed her no more than the slaying of the awataba in the pass.
"that was a good blow for the fat one," she remarked. "they will set up the ladder again, but we shall have more time, and that means everything."
"how?" i questioned, as i strove to discern a way of escape from the scanty foothold of the rock-ledge.
"i will show you," she answered. "this is a secret path of the priests. wiki used it when he went into the desert to commune with massi. but it is very dangerous, and you who are not accustomed to climbing the rocks will have to go slowly. that is why i say the fat one did well to overthrow the ladder. before they dare to set it up again we shall be able to climb beyond their reach."
she took tawannears by the hand. he led me, and peter brought up the rear, and we edged cautiously along the shelf, blessed by our blindness in that we could not see how perilously near eternity we walked. some twenty feet from where the ladder had rested the ledge terminated in a series of foot- and hand-holds ascending a slope, and these we climbed by touch. in that pitch darkness 'twas impossible for one to see the others ahead of him. but we hurried, for behind us we heard the ladder creaking back into place.
the third stage of the path was another ledge, which carried us into a remarkable crevice in the face of the cliff, a kind of natural chimney, evidently a fault in the rock structure caused by some bygone disturbance of the earth's surface. in the crevice it was darker than it had been outside, if that was possible; but the footing was more secure, and we were spurred on by the sounds of our pursuers, better accustomed to such work than we and consequently making twice as rapid progress.
the path was made easier by occasional foot-rests chopped by the priests and by ladder-rungs braced in holes. it trended at first directly into the heart of the cliff, then turned at right angles and ascended diagonally, following a layer of soft rock which i could readily identify with my hands. in two places it was so steep as to demand progress by means of straddling. atop of the first of these funnels it widened to become a chamber littered with rock fragments, and a beam of moonlight filtered into the somber place revealed a jagged crack along the side toward the valley.
peter, following me up the second funnel, muttered he could see one of the priests climbing the slant of the path to its beginning, and in my energy to make way for him i deluged him with pebbles and fine gravel. this upper end of the crevice was very brittle, perhaps because it had been long baked in the heat of the sun, and we slipped and slid continually, losing a foot for every yard we scaled. but at last kachina achieved the top, and helped tawannears up, and betwixt them, they hauled up peter and me.
to our surprise, we discovered ourselves to be on the summit of the cliff. homolobi, of course, was hidden beneath the protuberance of rock that ran eastward many feet from where we stood. beyond it, though, we could see the full sweep of the valley, dotted with the fires of the awataba, the silver glitter of the moonlight on the river and the opposite wall of cliffs. the night was very bright and clear, the sky gemmed with a myriad stars, the moon shining full between draperies of purple velvet.
"what now!" i asked.
kachina shook her head.
"we must keep back the priests from following us," she said. "if we left the path they would soon be close to us again."
"and if we wait," i returned, "they will send back messengers to guide the awataba here by some other trail. perhaps they have already done so."
"true," she agreed coolly. "well, so far i have planned for you. it is time you took thought to save yourselves."
i translated this to the others, and peter strode instantly to an enormous boulder, lying on its side in a bed of shale.
"we put a cork in der bottle," he announced.
he leaned his shoulder against the boulder, heaved and it rolled over toward the head of the funnel. another heave and another, and it rested on the funnel's lip. peter shoved it with his right arm, there was a shower of gravel, a startled yelp from the bowels of the rocks, and he turned to us, with a broad grin.
"ja, dot's a goodt——"
i thought the end of the world had come. deep underneath there was a heavy jar, then a sullen, sky-piercing roar that resounded and reëchoed, pounding our ears, dazing our senses, louder, ever louder, swelling and bursting into prodigious thunder-peals. a dense cloud of dust rose like a curtain around us. the rock on which we stood jumped as though it had been struck with the hammer of a god. the roar slid off into a declining repetition of earth-shocks. the dust settled slowly. and we looked from a sheer precipice at our feet upon what had been homolobi.
peter's boulder, bounding down the funnel in the cliff, must have encountered a fault in the rock, possibly the jagged crack i had noted above the first funnel, and with the momentum it had gathered and its accompanying wave of small stones and gravel, had started forces which had torn from the face of the cliff the overhanging projection which had shielded homolobi from attack for centuries. this mass, in falling, had planed off the top of the breast, and was now a sloping hill of rock fragments which stretched far into the valley.
under it lay the people and the houses of homolobi, their storehouses and choicest gardens and most of the awataba, who had gathered close to the foot of the breast to await the issue of their demands. it was the most utter, tragic ruin i have ever seen. the dust clouds seethed above the wreckage like the smoke of successful fires, but no fires could have been so successful. there were not left even ruins or ashes. homolobi was abolished. it was gone without a trace to show where it had been.
kachina cast herself at tawannears' feet.
"how mighty are your gods!" she moaned. "i am yours. save me from them."
tawannears lifted her in his arms.
"gahano need have no fear," he said proudly. "tawannears' medicine is strong. all who oppose him shall perish. but gahano is safe. surely, hawenneyu has us in his keeping that he should visit such destruction upon our enemies! he will send the honochenokeh to guard us. tharon the sky-holder will let the clouds fall upon those who stand in our way. gaoh will blow the winds against them. tawannears' orenda will triumph over all!"
