The next I was at her side.

‘What passes here?’ I asked sternly.

Otomie looked on me with a cold wonder, and empty eyes as though she did not know me.

‘Go back, white man,’ she answered; ’it is not lawful for strangers to mingle in our rites.’

I stood bewildered, not knowing what to do, while the flame burned and the chant went up before the effigy of Huitzel, of the demon Huitzel awakened after many years of sleep.

Again and yet again the solemn chant arose, Otomie beating time with her little rod of ebony, and again and yet again the cry of triumph rose to the silent stars.

Now I awoke from my dream, for as an evil dream it seemed to me, and drawing my sword I rushed towards the priest at the altar to cut him down.  But though the men stood still the women were too quick for me.  Before I could lift the sword, before I could even speak a word, they had sprung upon me like the jaguars of their own forests, and like jaguars they hissed and growled into my ear: 

‘Get you gone, Teule,’ they said, ’lest we stretch you on the stone with your brethren.’  And still hissing they pushed me thence.

I drew back and thought for a while in the shadow of the temple.  My eye fell upon the long line of victims awaiting their turn of sacrifice.  There were thirty and one of them still alive, and of these five were Spaniards.  I noted that the Spaniards were chained the last of all the line.  It seemed that the murderers would keep them till the end of the feast, indeed I discovered that they were to be offered up at the rising of the sun.  How could I save them, I wondered.  My power was gone.  The women could not be moved from their work of vengeance; they were mad with their sufferings.  As well might a man try to snatch her prey from a puma robbed of her whelps, as to turn them from their purpose.  With the men it was otherwise, however.  Some of them mingled in the orgie indeed, but more stood aloof watching with a fearful joy the spectacle in which they did not share.  Near me was a man, a noble of the Otomie, of something more than my own age.  He had always been my friend, and after me he commanded the warriors of the tribe.  I went to him and said, ’Friend, for the sake of the honour of your people, help me to end this.’

‘I cannot, Teule,’ he answered, ’and beware how you meddle in the play, for none will stand by you.  Now the women have power, and you see they use it.  They are about to die, but before they die they will do as their fathers did, for their strait is sore, and though they have been put aside, the old customs are not forgotten.’

‘At the least can we not save these Teules?’ I answered.

’Why should you wish to save the Teules?  Will they save us some few days hence, when we are in their power?’

‘Perhaps not,’ I said, ’but if we must die, let us die clean from this shame.’

‘What then do you wish me to do, Teule?’