José brought in the horses and he and the Captain saddled and packed
them; after which they silently broke camp in the light of the stars and
the waning moon. José took his place at the head of the little
cavalcade, Chiquita following him and the Captain bringing up the rear;
he and Chiquita casting a last look at their first camp as they rode
away.
No one spoke. Save for the measured tread of the horses and noise of the
rushing stream along which the trail led upwards, no sounds disturbed
the silence of the night. Now and then an occasional spark, struck from
the horses' iron-rimmed hoofs, flashed for an instant in the darkness
along the trail.
The Captain's gaze was riveted upon Chiquita's tall, erect figure in
front of him who ever and anon turned in the saddle and smiled, her
beautiful, lustrous eyes flashing like stars in the moon-fire.
Higher and higher they mounted, pausing occasionally to allow the horses
time to draw breath, until they at length drew rein on the summit of the
Sierra Madres. Here a wonderful sight met their eyes, poised as they
were upon the rim of the earth and gazing off into star-strewn space.
Dawn was just breaking, suffusing the long line of the eastern horizon
with a soft, rosy glow which crept swiftly towards them over the
gray-green, purple plains that swept away from the mountains' base like
vast undulating stretches of ocean; the golden shafts of the on-coming
dawn driving the paling stars before them like a shepherd his flocks to
the hills. North and south, as far as the eye could reach, stretched the
broken and many crested length of the great Sierra Madre range; its
sides clothed with dark forests of cedar and pine and chaparral, its
secluded recesses obscured in the gloom; its highest peaks glowing with
golden, pink and violet tints. In the west, surrounded by a host of
golden stars that still glittered in the purple black depths of
vanishing night, the silver moon hung half-way dipped as it slowly sank
behind the towering crest of the Sahuaripa range, an isolated spur of
the Sierra Madres. A vast plain intervened between them and the distant
Sierras at whose foot dwelt the Tewana.
Far below them, from out the shadowy depths on either side of the range,
arose faint sounds of awakening life. The breeze began to sigh among the
tree tops, while high above them they heard the wild scream of eagles
that soared in great circles with widespread pinions in their morning
flight to greet the sun. Great waves of indefinable melody, more subtle
and exquisite than music, swept over them, causing their souls to
quicken and tingle in the freshening dawn as the Day Star rose to hold
again his sway over earth. His mighty splendor and effulgence swept
through and over them, their souls vibrating with renewed life and vigor
as they felt and recognized God's sign and immanence as in the days
when man first walked with Him in the cool of the morning.
They realized that they had entered upon the new life. The promise was
fulfilled--the veil was lifted. The scroll of human destiny seemed to
unroll itself from out the dim traditions of the past, and they beheld
as in a dream the life that was when first the children of men roamed
the earth and established the Kingdom of God which was intended from the
beginning. In the picture of the golden childhood of the race, they
beheld reflected in the new light of the future, the vision of the
emancipated, delivered man, guided by the lessons still to be learned
from the great Book of Nature lying open before him, and the accumulated
wisdom of past ages, handed down to him by his forefathers through
travail and suffering and in legend and song from those ancient days of
suns and nights of stars when the earth and man were young. A freeborn
race of men who are joint tenants of the soil, sharing all things in
common with which their bountiful Mother, the Earth, has provided them.
A race of men, athletic in body as they are able in mind, and spiritual
and courageous, recognizing no laws but those of Nature's or God's.
In silence and with bared heads they gazed upon the grandeur of the
scene that lay spread out before them. It was as though they looked back
upon the old life from another world. It lay so far behind them that it
seemed but a memory; not a vestige of it clung to them, so filled were
they with new hopes and aspirations.
"Behold!" cried José excitedly, pointing toward the west. And looking in
the direction indicated by his outstretched arm, they beheld in the dim
distance numerous columns of smoke rising heavenward in the clear
morning air from the tops of the _mesas_ that dotted the plain.
"'Tis the sign of your coming, Princess!" he continued. "The people have
bowed to the will of the White Cloud--acknowledged the authority of the
White Chief."
Parrakeets began to twitter among the branches of the trees on every
hand during their descent of the western slope. Ravens croaked and
called from the heart of the forest, and the owl flitted by on silent
wing. Black birds with orange heads and throats and splashed with
scarlet on their wings, greeted them at the foot of the mountain among
the reeds which grew along the stream they were following. Deer broke
from the willow copse and bounded away, while grouse rose on whirring
wings from under the horses' hoofs as they emerged upon the plain where
the wild cry of the curlew rang clear and sharp on the morning. They
were free and breathed deep of the spirit of freedom; listened to the
old primeval song of nature's myriad voices; gazed long upon the
pristine loveliness of earth.
All that day and the three following, the columns of smoke continued to
rise heavenward as they pursued their journey. At night, pillars of fire
took the place of the smoke, and all the while, save for an occasional
glimpse in the distance of a solitary horseman who faded specterlike
from view on their approach, they saw not a soul.
The Spirit of the Great Mystery brooded over the land, and they rode as
in a dream. The fragrant cedar and piñon-scented smoke mingled with the
soft, thin haze of the Indian summer which veiled the land in its golden
glow of mystery; the sacred incense, the Red men say, of the gods,
burned on their altars in ancient days; a sign to the people to gather
each year on the hilltops and _mesas_, and in the forests and plains
during the moon of falling leaves, and celebrate in prayer and sacred
dance and song, the advent of the gods.
The wind was hushed and all things seemed to sleep and dream, and they
seemed to draw nearer to the heart of things. The great change that had
come into their lives was, after all, no more wonderful than the changes
which they saw had taken place in nature about them. A luxuriant growth
of tropical vegetation, succeeded by vast forests of conifers, a remnant
of which still survived upon the mountains, once flourished in the
semi-desert through which they traveled. An occasional broken,
half-buried pillar, or the remains of a crumbling wall that had
witnessed the passing of the ages and listened to the tales borne on the
winds, marked the existence of vanished civilizations of which men
to-day know naught. All things appeared to change and fade, nothing
seemed permanent, not even the ideal; the morrow was but a forgetting.
Beneath them they felt the Earth, ponderous and weighty and crushing in
its immensity to the imagination, and whose existence seemed of little
moment in comparison to the countless worlds that filled the universe
about them. Yet, insignificant though it appeared, was it not a link in
the great universal scheme of matter, and did it not stand in the same
relation to the universe as their individual lives to the human race?
Like two stars their souls had rushed together from the uttermost
confines of space. She had been led into his world, and he compelled to
retrace his steps to almost primitive conditions in order that they
might find one another and together take up the thread of their common
destiny. Clearly, they were children of destiny upon whose brows God had
set His seal. They realized that the path which lay before them was not
one entirely strewn with flowers. That between the chosen ones, life
meant something more than the love of a man for a woman, or a woman's
for a man. That they still stood with their feet in the flame; that
earth's cup of joy for them must still remain one of bitter-sweet; that
they must go on to the end in order that men might see and hear; that
the new order of things must spring from them.
Gay was the Princess. She laughed and talked and related incidents of
her life and her people; the silvery tinkle of the bells on her spurs,
accompanying every movement of her horse, chimed sweetly with her mood.
In the raven folds of her blue-black hair, she wore again the red
berries as on the day when first he beheld her. She seemed a part of
that tawny landscape, splashed with great patches of crimson and gold
and gray and purple--the spirit and incarnation of the Indian summer.
As he gazed upon her and listened to her words, the wild refrain of
those familiar lines recurred to him:
"I will wed some savage woman; she shall rear my dusky race:
Iron-jointed, supple-sinewed, they shall dive and they shall run,
Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun,
Whistle back the parrot's call,--leap the rainbows of the brooks,--"
The woman of the ages had come back again. Lilith and Eve and Isis and
Venus, the foam-kissed, and Erda, the dreaming one. The vision of the
ancient world rose before him; virgin forests and plains and mighty
rivers and mountains; the ancient temples of the Nile and the Ganges,
Hellas' fanes and Druidic monoliths and sacred groves, and voices of
strange peoples mingled with the soft notes of reed and lute.
Within the unending circle of life and death, of love and hatred, of joy
and sorrow and remorse which mark the rise and passing of the
civilizations, he beheld the sacred ash and pine, and starry lotus
afloat upon the face of moonlit waters in which were mirrored the palm
and papyrus and acanthus, and stood face to face with the serpent and
wolf, the winged horse and sphinx, and the dragon and the griffin when
their secret origins and significance were known unto men. The sounds of
harps and cymbals and lyres and timbrels blended with those of
conch-shells and antelope horns. Sighs and laughter and curses and
weeping mingled with the wild strains of Homeric song and mystic rites
of Chaldea and Babylon, and the sacred chant of Isis. The Voodoo danced
to the rattle of shells and antelope hoofs before the shrines of
Ethiopia's dark woman, crowned with the sickle moon, and vast multitudes
knelt and lay prostrate before the car of Juggernaut and the passing
image of Pracriti of Asia, the many-breasted, the Goddess of Abundance.
Sun and Fire worshipers tore the hearts and scalps from living victims
and held them aloft to the rising sun, and men and wild beasts fought in
arenas amid the acclamations of the people.
He beheld the milk-white bullocks of the Druid, garlanded with flowers,
heading the procession that entered the dark groves in search of the
sacred mistletoe-bearing oak; the processions of Pan and Odin, and Siva
and Vishnu and Baal, and Venus and Bacchus. Nymphs and fauns and dryads
and hamadryads called from the depths of the forest, and youths and
maidens and shepherds with vine-wreathed brows danced in the sunlit
glades and on the hills where the white flocks roamed, to the plaintive
notes of the mystic pipes of Pan. He beheld the flaunting banners and
flashing steel of victorious hosts and heard the wild, weird chants of
wandering, barbaric hordes that conquered and destroyed. The flash and
roar of artillery of recent times but intensified the gloom that brooded
over the world. The struggle was unending. Men still remained the
victims and slaves of passion and desire. Their sighs and curses and
groans and cries of hatred and despair increased with the years; the
smoke of their torment blackened the face of the sun.
The waves of human harmony and discord swept over him like the sounds of
mighty rushing winds and waters, and he beheld the race to-day, as in
the past, in the plains and on the high tops, prostrate and erect with
hands outstretched toward the heavens, crying for release. And yet
through it and beneath it and above it all, he heard a ringing note of
triumph that swelled onward and upward until the vision shone clear, and
the true import of their lives stood revealed. They had overcome the
world; broken the fiery chains of desire.
The heavens of the old world rolled together like a scroll, and the sun
and the moon and the stars and the earth fell into the burning sea of
man's worldliness, but out of the chaos that followed, the earth emerged
once more, green and beautiful, and grain waved upon its face, and the
voice of the Angel rang clear, crying aloud and mightily:
"Babylon the Great is fallen, is fallen! Babylon, the woman mounted upon
the scarlet beast and arrayed in purple and scarlet color and decked
with gold and precious stones and pearls, and having a golden cup in her
hand full of abominations.... Babylon upon whose forehead is written,
'Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of
the Earth.' Babylon drunk with wine and the blood of those who stood for
the truth. Babylon, of whose wine and delights all men have drunk and
with whom all the nations of the Earth have committed fornication.
Babylon whose sins have reached unto heaven; who hath glorified herself
and lived deliciously and who said in her heart: 'I sit a queen, and am
no widow, and shall know no sorrow; my joy shall continue forever!'
"Her plagues shall come in one day, death and mourning and famine, and
she shall be utterly burned with fire. And the kings and the rulers of
earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the mighty men, and the
chief Captains, and the bondsmen, and the free-men who have lived
deliciously with her and who bear the mark of the beast in their hands
and upon their foreheads shall bewail her and lament for her, crying:
"'Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city!'
"And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no
man buyeth their merchandise any more: The merchandise of gold and
silver and precious stones, and of pearls and fine linen, and purple,
and silk and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of
ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass and
iron and marble. And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and
frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts,
and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men....
"The fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, and all
things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee, and thou
shalt find them no more at all. The merchants of these things which were
made rich by her shall stand afar off ... weeping and wailing and
saying: 'Alas, alas that great city, that was clothed in fine linen and
purple and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stones and
pearls....' And every ship master and all the company in ships, and
sailors, and as many as trade by sea ... shall cry when they see the
smoke of her burning, saying: 'What city is like unto this great city?'
And they shall cast dust on their heads, and weeping and wailing, cry:
'Alas, alas that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships
in the sea by reason of her costliness!'
"Babylon, Babylon, thine idols and graven images of gods shall be cast
down and shattered utterly and forever! The voice of harpers, and
musicians, and of pipers, and trumpeters shall be heard no more at all
in thee; and no craftsman of whatsoever craft he be shall be found any
more in thee; and the sound of a millstone shall be heard no more at all
in thee; and the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee;
and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more
at all in thee; for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for
by thy sorceries were all nations of the earth deceived!"
Babylon, Babylon, thou fair city, thou proud world, thou wonderful
emanation of men's minds, thou fair wanton, thou beauteous licentious
harlot of gold and gems, and white linen, and silks, and of henna, and
myrrh, and frankincense, and sweet-smelling herbs, no more shall thy
sons and daughters rejoice in thee and worship thee! Thy grass shall be
withered and thy fig trees shall cast their figs, and thy gold and
silver, and thy diamonds, and rubies, and sapphires, and turquoise, and
emeralds, and opals, and pearls, and topaz, shall lie scattered and in
heaps for him to take who wisheth them, but none shall desire them.
No more shall thy daughters sit in the shadow of thy vines where nesteth
the dove, and glorify thee in idle jest and laughter and song, and
longingly wait for the coming of the night, for they shall be bereft of
their silks, and their girdles, and anklets, and bracelets of gold and
jewels. Thy songs and pæans of triumph and victory shall cease with the
tainted stream of thy desires, and the walls of thy temples shall
crumble to dust. Thy stars shall pale, and the sun and the moon shall
illumine thee no longer, for the day approacheth when thy blandishments
shall fail to allure.
Babylon, Babylon, thou proud city, thou who sitteth upon many waters,
thou whose sway encompasseth the earth, how hast thou fallen!