THE GROVE OF MYSTERY.
Dolores stood still, sweeping the scene of destruction with a gaze of
flinty penetration. The groveling crone at her feet affected her like
something unclean, and she spurned the old woman with her foot, stepping
aside with a gesture of disgust. Then she raised her right hand, and
cried with bitter scorn:
"Come, my brave jackals! Come to the feast prepared for thee." She
lowered her hand and with a contemptuous smile indicated the gruesome
results of the explosion of Milo's awful bomb.
On the edge of the forest the hardier rascals had halted; at her word
they glared loweringly at her and the impassive giant at her back; from
the shadow of the trees yellow and brown and black faces peered in
quivering terror; but none responded to her command to approach her. The
old woman on the ground alone made audible reply, and her slavish
whining enraged Dolores. With a stamp of her sandaled foot she tore from
her waist the gold cord, slipped off the dagger sheath, and fell upon
the wretched old servitor with a shower of blows.
"Silence, old cat!" she cried, and the blows fell heavily. "Up with
thee, and away. Go quickly, and make ready the altar in the Grove of
Mystery. Cease thy bleating, old witch, and summon thy shaky wits
against the ordeal I shall put thee to. Some one among ye stirred up the
rising which resulted as ye now see. That one I shall know before
sundown, and he shall bitterly repent him. Away!"
Dolores was astonished at seeing no sign of Rufe, but outwardly she
showed none of her astonishment. A more vital consideration was present
in the disobedience of the motley crew who as yet made no effort to come
to her call. Drawing herself fully erect when the old woman departed,
she again stretched out her hand and cried:
"Dogs of Satan! I await your homage. Red Jabez lies dead: yet his spirit
lives in me, your queen. By so many breaths that ye flout me, by just so
many torments shall I have ye torn. Come, dogs. Kneel!"
A hoarse murmur went up from the forest edge, and first one by one, then
in knots of half a score each, the negroes and half-breeds slunk into
the open and approached her with eyes full of panic. The whites, not so
susceptible to abstract influence, still hesitated, drawing near to each
other in growling consultation. Dolores gave them no sign, though she
watched them keenly from under her lowered lashes. She gave her
attention to the line of abject creatures who filed slowly past her,
each one stopping to grovel in the dust at her feet and passing on.
These Milo halted near by and herded into a shivering, frightened mob.
And Dolores's cool disregard of the whites had its calculated effect.
One by one they stepped out into the open as had the colored men; the
more timorous, or superstitious, came first, some wearing shamed grins,
others palpably impressed by the example of the others and shuffling on
their way uncomfortably. Last of all came the bolder spirits, and these
wore faces intended to express contempt, or at least sarcastic
indifference; but the faces changed invariably on closer approach to the
queen. Memory proved a stubborn master; in every man's breast
remembrance clamored to them to have a care how they bore themselves
before this beautiful fury they called queen.
Still Yellow Rufe came not.
When all had knelt, and all had been herded by the giant Milo in two
separate parties, the number was tallied, and of the whites, besides
Rufe, seven were missing. One lay inside the passage; of the rest there
were remains lying about the rocky wall to the cavern that might be
three men or six--human discernment could never decide which.
Dolores faced her mongrel subjects again and her dark eyes blazed with
fire, her beautiful face was dark with surging blood, every line of her
lithe figure quivered as she spoke:
"I seek the dog who stirred ye up to mutiny!" she cried. "Yellow Rufe,
if it be he, is not among ye, nor is he one of these carrion scattered
on the ground. If it be some other villain, him I will know before the
sun has stretched my shadow to the cliff. Deliver him up to me, and he
alone shall repay. Disobey, and every biting dog among ye shall swiftly
learn the price of disobedience. I wait."
The sun was fast setting, and already the shadows had grown long. Five
minutes at most would see the shadow of Dolores's head at the base of
the great rock, and the blacks started whimpering with apprehension.
Among the whites a tremendous quiet reigned; but sullen brows here,
snarling teeth there, gave hint of their interest in the sun's progress.
Still no man spoke. Rather they looked at each other questioningly as
the minutes flew, as if the culprit were indeed not among them.
But Dolores was wise beyond her years, wise with a wisdom bred of her
volcanic existence in such a station, and she refused to be hoodwinked
by the apparent absence of the man she sought. Her shadow touched the
rock, and without another second of hesitation she turned toward the
forest fringe, walking with majestic carriage and looking neither to
right nor left. She simply uttered one short sentence: "To the Grove!"
Every man with dark blood in his veins followed her like a sheep, for
terrible things had been witnessed in the Grove of Mysteries: things far
beyond the understanding of such men. The sullen whites hung back
again, for their colder blood was not impregnated with the fears and
superstitions that exerted such tremendous sway over their colored
fellows. Still Dolores gave them never a look; she walked on, and the
forest closed behind her, as if she believed her footsteps followed by
every foot in the unruly crew.
It was Milo who constituted her dependable rearguard. Milo was there,
and Milo would see to it that no skulker declined his queen's command.
There lay the reason why Dolores so placidly turned her back to men
whose dearest ambition would have been realized by the plunge of steel
between her shoulders at that moment. Milo walked around to the rear of
the hesitant mob, and without a word gripped the hindmost in his two
great hands and hurled him bodily over the heads of his mates in the
desired direction.
"Swine!" swore a harelipped Mexican, whipping out his cutlas. "I'll see
your black heart for that!" and furiously made play to avenge insult to
his sorely handled fellow.
The black giant turned as calmly as if his mistress had called him, and
seized the fellow's cutlas hand in one huge fist, crushing bone and
steel into gory pulp without visible effort. His lips never opened, his
tremendous chest was ruffled not one whit; Milo's eyes alone gave
warning of what he might do if occasion arose; and fooled by his obvious
carelessness, the white men closed around him, knives and cutlases
drawn, frantic for his life.
They should have known better. Their lessons had been many and vivid;
but not a man of them all was of the caliber to learn from a slave. Milo
kept hold of his man's hand, and at the scrape of steel leaving
scabbard, he brought up his free hand and grasped the fellow's left
wrist. Then, springing aside with the resistless impulse of a charging
buffalo, he gained a clear space, and began to swing his victim by the
wrists.
One complete circle was made with the human club, then a catlike ruffian
watched his chance and darted in with murderous knife at Milo's breast
while the dreadful club was at his back. Cool as a mountain spring, the
giant immediately let go his man, letting him fly far behind him like a
stone from a catapult. In a twinkling of an eye, the great hands that
released the one captive closed afresh on the new assailant in front,
and now the giant gave no further grace. His fingers tightened on the
man's throat and the desperate face went black. Then, keeping the fellow
ever before him, he suddenly flung him into the air by the waist,
shifting holds with tigerish swiftness, and caught him by the ankles as
he came down. He whirled the unfortunate wretch once, and three men went
down under the terrible blow; the rest scattered with furious howls,
bespattered with the blood of their comrade; but one more sight of the
unruffled giant cowed them; none attempted further knife or sword-play.
Then Milo smiled scornfully, and uttered: "Go!" and they went to the
forest like jackals before the lion. The giant saw them on their way,
and tossing his fearful weapon over the cliff, strode after them, an
awful embodiment of relentless, all but limitless strength.
The forest lay hushed and dim beyond the fringe; whispering leaves and
crackling twigs sounded sharp as a shower of stones in the stillness.
Great trees reared their majestic heads to mingle their foliage and shut
out the light; every creeping, flying, walking creature seemed awed into
a vague murmuring that was deeper than silence. The Grove of Mysteries
was a semicircular space of cool, mossy sward, bowered in great trees
and tangled vine screens; its background was the bare rock of the
cliffside itself--actually, though unknown to the rabble, the outer
rocky wall of the great chamber--and against this stood the altar.
The old woman had made use of her skinny limbs to good effect, impelled
by a fear that had become terror. The altar was resplendent in silk and
velvet, fashioned for an altar very different from this; but in place of
the vessels usually associated with so sacred a piece of furniture, the
Altar of the Grove was embellished with a mosaic of skulls and bones
surrounding a complete skeleton which held its head in one grisly hand.
In the hollow eye-sockets glowed a weird fire that darted forth at
irregular intervals like glances of demoniacal hate; at the altar foot a
great censer erupted a dense cloud of pungent smoke that rendered the
altar and those about it still more vague and ghostly. And the glade was
full of cowering, slavering blacks and half-breeds, whose superstitious
terrors reached high tide with each succeeding swirl of smoke or
outflash of eye-socket fires.
Dolores went directly to the old woman, who stood in cringing
subservience with a plain white garment in her hands. This she placed on
the girl's shoulders, fastening it at the bosom with a small skull of
jade stone whose grinning teeth were pearls, and whose eye-sockets were
empty with an awful blackness. The gold circlet was discarded, and in
its place Dolores placed on her head a turban formed from a stuffed
coiled snake, whose neck and head darted hither and thither on cunning
springs with her every motion and gesture.
To this awesome place came the herd that Milo drove before him; and not
a man among the hardened crew was hardy enough to carry his bravado into
the Grove. Blacks and whites alike, no matter what their inmost thoughts
might be, yielded to the spell of the place the moment their feet trod
the sward and the congregation settled into the places allotted to them.
Dolores glided out in front of the altar, and eyes glittered, dusky
throats went constricted and dry with terror when she stirred up the
brazier and was hidden for a moment in the rising volume of blue smoke
in which flashes of devilish light played incessantly. Milo stepped up
behind and above the altar, and as the smoke reeked about him vanished
seemingly into the face of the cliff. There, in an unsuspected outlet to
the great chamber, was the key to much of the magic with which Dolores
kept her turbulent crew on the borderline of fear. She flashed a glance
holding much of anxiety after her giant servitor, and busied herself
about the altar to gain time.
She had received from his hands as he stepped up the effigy of a man in
black wax, and now she advanced with hand upraised for silence. It was
unnecessary: the silence of the dead prevailed in the Grove. With the
image held aloft Dolores was a magnet that drew all eyes inevitably. Six
inches tall, the image was a cleverly modeled composite of every type in
the motley band; and every man realized this. Placing the effigy on the
altar, Dolores seized from the brazier a glowing coal with her bare
hands and placed it behind the figure. Then she flung both hands high
and her vibrant voice pealed through the Grove.
"Regard all men the voice of the gods! By this sacred fire shall this
image be melted; and when it is gone, out of its many likenesses shall
remain the shape of him who stirred ye to mutiny against me. That shape
I shall show ye by the power of my will. Lest ye disbelieve that I have
this power, behold! Look for proof in the smoke behind me!"
As she spoke she stirred the incense to a dense cloud of smoke, and her
blazing eyes, turned from her people, peered through the reek for a
reassuring sign from the rock, for what she now demanded of Milo called
for superhuman swiftness and surety. As the seconds sped, she kept the
smoke swirling thickly, and her voice rang out in a weird incantation
that kept the spectators trembling with the growing suspense.
Then a triumphant note entered her speech; the smoke rose thicker for an
instant, then dissolved; and as it vanished, high on the rocky cliff,
framed, as it seemed, in the solid rock itself, stood the grim, cold
figure of the dead Red Jabez.
In this, her grave extremity, Milo the strong, Milo the slave, more than
all, Milo the faithful, had not failed her.