IN WHICH THE RESULTS OF CHATÉMUC’S ENTHUSIASM ARE SEEN
“Courage, _ma petite_! We’ll find your Chatémuc; then learn the
mysteries of yonder sun-kissed town. That the stubborn captain has
deserted us is hardly strange. Always in fear of de la Salle’s
displeasure, Monsieur de Tonti has grown erratic, unreliable, jealous.
As for the friar, his retreat surprises me. He lacks not courage nor
persistence. He would not leave our brother of the sun without, at the
least, one more attempt to show him the path which leads to Mother
Church.”
Released from the enthusiastic arms of the noblemen who had carried
him in triumph to their king, de Sancerre was now following the royal
litter toward the City of the Sun, walking the well-beaten path with
the mincing step of a courtier whose feet, though swifter than the
winds, pay homage gayly to Grace as a worthier deity than Speed. On
either side of the victorious runner, whose eyes still glowed with
the joy of triumph, walked Noco and Katonah. The latter, downcast and
apprehensive, gazed gloomily toward the city, whose roofs could now
be plainly seen, while she listened apathetically to the Frenchman’s
encouraging words. Changing the tongue he used from French to Spanish,
de Sancerre, turning toward Noco, who looked, in the twilight, like a
hideous heathen idol carved in mahogany, said:
“I trust, señora, that your courageous grandson, my very worthy
opponent, will bear me no ill-will because my slender body was less a
burden than his giant frame.”
Noco, to whom de Sancerre’s overthrow of the erstwhile invincible
Cabanacte had appeared like a miracle wrought by some mysterious
moon-magic, gazed reverentially at the Frenchman with beady, black
eyes, which seemed to be fully half a century younger than the other
features of her wrinkled face. Her countenance was a palimpsest, with
youth staring out from beneath the writings made by time.
“My grandson, Cabanacte, O Son of the Full Moon, will ever do your
bidding with a loyal heart. According to the customs of our land, your
triumph in the race entitles you to service at his hands until his feet
wax swift enough to fly away from yours.”
“Caramba!” exclaimed de Sancerre, whose expletives bore testimony to
the cosmopolitan tendencies of his adventurous career, “your words,
señora, rejoice my heart! I stand in sore need of a servitor to save
me from the nakedness which one more heated foot-race would beget. If
Cabanacte can repair the rents which make my costume such a marvel to
the eye, I’ll free him from his _villein socage_ and make him proud
again.”
Enough of this the old hag understood--enlightened, to a great extent,
by the Frenchman’s eloquent gestures--to emphasize the grin upon her
ugly but intelligent face.
“Cabanacte is a warrior, not a maker of flowing robes!” she exclaimed,
with a raucous chuckle. “But to-night old Noco will repair the holes
in the Son of the Full Moon’s garb. Look at this.” Fumbling at her
waist, she presently held out to de Sancerre’s gaze a needle made of
fish-bone. Lowering her voice, she said: “Coyocop, the spirit of the
sun, has not disdained to let my needle prick her sacred dress. She
weeps, and cares for nothing but to lie upon her couch and whisper
secrets to the mother of the sun. ’Tis sad, but so she must fulfil her
mission to our race. Our nation’s wise men and the priests who tend the
temple-fire had told us she would come. My grandson, Cabanacte, bore
her from the sea.”
De Sancerre listened attentively to the old crone’s words. He recalled
Noco’s assertion that Coyocop had scrawled his inamorata’s name upon
the mulberry bark, though, at the time, he had not grasped the full
significance of her mumbled, mongrel Spanish words, rendered less clear
to him by the use of the meaningless name, Coyocop. But now, as they
hurried on behind the porters who carried the King’s litter, followed
by a hundred chattering noblemen, a veil seemed to be lifted from de
Sancerre’s mind. His heart beat with suffocating rapidity, and his
voice trembled as he looked down at Noco, trying to catch her eyes in
the darkening twilight, and exclaimed:
“’Twas Coyocop who scratched that name upon the bark? But why, good
Doña Noco? Tell me why.”
The old woman glanced over her shoulder, to assure herself that they
could not be overheard. Then she whispered:
“I told her the white-faced children of the moon had come to us upon
the bosom of the flood, according to an ancient prophecy. The temple
priests would strangle me with cords if they should learn how my old
tongue has wagged. They watch me closely, for they worship her. But
once she found a moment, when no priest was near, to scratch the mystic
symbols on the bark. I crept away at night and, lo, your god, the moon,
was guide to my old feet--and, so, I came to you from Coyocop.”
That Noco had told him all she had to tell, the Frenchman did not for
a moment doubt. But, even then, she had thrown little light upon the
mystery which confronted him. A mondain to his finger-tips, at heart
a sceptic, de Sancerre fostered no belief in miracles. Surrounded,
as he had been all the days of his life, by men and women steeped
in superstition, his spirit had revolted at the impostures which
had served to blind mankind through centuries of human history. Had
de Sancerre been wrought of the stuff of which his age was made, he
would have reached the conclusion at once that here in the wilderness
the avenging spirit of the Spaniard whom he had slain in France was
haunting him at night to play him tricks to drive him straight to
madness. ’Twould be so easy to account thus for what his reason could
not now explain. But de Sancerre was a man who, intellectually, had
pressed on in advance of his times. By policy a conformist to the
exterior demands of his avowed religion, he had long lost his faith in
the active interference in earthly affairs of saints and devils. How
the name of Julia de Aquilar had found its way to a piece of vagrom
bark in a wilderness, thousands of miles across the sea from the land
of her nativity, he could not explain, nor could he harbor, for an
instant, the wild idea that Coyocop and his inamorata would prove
to be identical. In spite of the malicious horns of his dilemma,
nevertheless, he eliminated from his thoughts the possibility that he
had become the plaything of supernatural agencies. But who was Coyocop?
He must look upon her face without delay.
“Señora, listen!” exclaimed de Sancerre, seizing Noco by the arm. “I
must see the spirit of the sun to-night! From the mountains of the
moon, where reigns our god in silvery state, I bear a message to the
goddess Coyocop. _Peste_, Doña Noco! Have you gone to sleep?” He shook
her gently, striving hard to find her eyes.
“It cannot be,” muttered the old crone, trembling under his grasp as if
the night wind chilled her time-worn frame--“it cannot be. ’Twould mean
your life--and mine.”
“Hold, señora! Remember Cabanacte--and pin your faith to me! No matter
what the odds may be, the brother of the moonbeams always wins! Bear
that in mind, good Noco, or the future may grow black for thee. Be
faithful to my fortunes--and I’ll make your grandson noble once again.”
How deep an impression his words had made upon the beldame, de Sancerre
could not tell, for at that moment there arose behind him a weird
chant, sung by a hundred tuneful voices, rising and falling upon the
evening air with thrilling effect. Suddenly beyond them from the very
heart of the City of the Sun arose a mightier chorus than the King’s
suite could beget, and the night grew vibrant with a wild, menacing
song which chilled de Sancerre’s heart and caused Katonah to press
close to his side, in vain striving for the comfort she could not find.
Presently the litter of the King, passing between two outlying houses,
turned into a broad avenue which led directly to the great square of
the city, at one side of which stood the temple of the sun. The moon
had not yet arisen, and what was twilight in the open had turned to
night within the confines of the town. De Sancerre, who was a close
observer, both by temperament and by habit, strove in vain to obtain a
satisfactory view of the dwelling-houses between which the royal litter
passed. But when the King and his followers had reached the outskirts
of the great square, the Frenchman forgot at once his curiosity as a
traveller; forgot, even for a moment, the problem to solve which he
had dared to enter this pagan city, in defiance of all discipline and
in direct disobedience to La Salle’s lieutenant. The scene which broke
upon his staring eyes stilled, for an instant, the beating of his
heart, which seemed to bound into his throat to choke him.
The square between the King’s litter and the entrance to the temple
was thronged with men and women, in front of whom stood long lines of
stalwart warriors, the flower of the army which had recently astonished
the eyes of the wanderers from over-sea. Waving lights and shadows, the
quarrelsome offspring of flaring torches, changed constantly the grim
details of the scene, as if the night wind strove to hide the horrors
of a dancing, evil dream.
Directly in front of the main entrance to the temple of the
sun-worshippers stood a post to which Chatémuc had been tied by cords.
On either side of him white-robed priests, wielding long wooden rods,
the ends of which had been turned to red coals in the sacred fire,
prodded his hissing flesh, while they sang a chant of devilish triumph,
in which the populace, enraged at the sacrilege attempted by the
Mohican, joined at intervals.
Facing the dying martyr, who gazed down at him with proud stoicism,
knelt the gray-frocked Franciscan, Zenobe Membré, holding toward
the victim of excessive zeal the crude crucifix, for love of which
Chatémuc, the Mohican, was now freeing his soul from torment.
“Nom de Dieu!” cried de Sancerre, placing his hand upon his rapier,
“this savage sport must end!” In another instant the reckless
Frenchman, carving his way to death, would have challenged an army,
single-handed, had not Katonah, reeling from the horror of her
brother’s death, fallen senseless into his reluctant arms.