It was a strange sight to see them in the glare of hundreds of torches split from the resin pine that gave its name to the city, as all night long they moved to and fro in lines, each of them staggering beneath the weight of a basket of earth or a heavy stone, or dug with wooden spades at the hard soil, or laboured at the pulling down of houses.  They never complained, but worked on sullenly and despairingly; no groan or tear broke from them, no, not even from those whose husbands and sons had been hurled that morning from the precipices of the pass.  They knew that resistance would be useless and that their doom was at hand, but no cry arose among them of surrender to the Spaniards.  Those of them who spoke of the matter at all said with Otomie, that it was better to die free than to live as slaves, but the most did not speak; the old and the young, mother, wife, widow, and maid, they laboured in silence and the children laboured at their sides.

Looking at them it came into my mind that these silent patient women were inspired by some common and desperate purpose, that all knew of, but which none of them chose to tell.

‘Will you work so hard for your masters the Teules?’ cried a man in bitter mockery, as a file of them toiled past beneath their loads of stone.

‘Fool!’ answered their leader, a young and lovely lady of rank; ’do the dead labour?’

‘Nay,’ said this ill jester, ’but such as you are too fair for the Teules to kill, and your years of slavery will be many.  Say, how shall you escape them?’

‘Fool!’ answered the lady again, ’does fire die from lack of fuel only, and must every man live till age takes him?  We shall escape them thus,’ and casting down the torch she carried, she trod it into the earth with her sandal, and went on with her load.  Then I was sure that they had some purpose, though I did not guess how desperate it was, and Otomie would tell me nothing of this woman’s secret.

‘Otomie,’ I said to her that night, when we met by chance, ’I have ill news for you.’

‘It must be bad indeed, husband, to be so named in such an hour,’ she answered.

‘De Garcia is among our foes.’

‘I knew it, husband.’

‘How did you know it?’

‘By the hate written in your eyes,’ she answered.

‘It seems that his hour of triumph is at hand,’ I said.

’Nay, beloved, not his but yours.  You shall triumph over de Garcia, but victory will cost you dear.  I know it in my heart; ask me not how or why.  See, the Queen puts on her crown,’ and she pointed to the volcan Xaca, whose snows grew rosy with the dawn, ’and you must go to the gate, for the Spaniards will soon be stirring.’