THE WEB OF DESTINY
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."