The End of Maliche
WITH the dawning of another day, our courage returned. And as soon
as it was light enough to see we rose and peered about--still a bit
fearfully--in search of the living nightmare I had shot down. We did
not have far to seek. A few rods from where we stood, a confused, black
mass rested upon the ground, looking so much like the wreck of a
cracked-up airplane that for a moment I felt sure I had inadvertently
brought down an aircraft. But as we cautiously approached it, I saw
it was no machine of fabric and metal, but the body of a gigantic
beast. With amazed eyes, half-incredulously, I stepped nearer and
examined it, while Maliche, all his superstitions aroused, fell
on his knees and bowed his head to the earth. I could not believe
my eyes, could not credit my senses, and yet there was no doubt
about it. The broken motionless thing was a gigantic Pterodactyl!
There were the great bat-like membranous wings now crumpled, torn
and twisted. There was the long skinny neck ending in the immense
scaly head with six-foot, sharp-toothed jaws. There were the huge,
baleful, staring green eyes now glazed in death, and there were the
powerful, long-clawed, alligator-like feet. The thing was a survivor
of long-past ages, a flesh and blood fossil! I had killed a monster
that was supposed to have become extinct hundreds of thousands of
years before! I had brought down a specimen that--had I had the means
of preserving it--would have brought me a fortune, that would have
made me famous. And as I gazed at the gigantic, horrible looking,
but now harmless thing, I bitterly regretted that it must lie there
and rot, that it should provide many a meal for the hungry vultures
already circling overhead, that it would be forever lost to science
and that--if I ever succeeded in reaching civilization--my story would
unquestionably be scoffed at and I would be dubbed a liar. I would
have given much for a camera, even for the possibility of preserving a
portion of the monstrous thing. Even in death it was horrible, uncanny,
fiendish, and with a start I remembered Maliche’s terrified words of
the night----“Izputeque!” and the words of Katchilcan; “and one must
face the demon Ixputeque.” Was this fearsome prehistoric creature the
demon? Was it possible he might have existed, might have haunted this
spot for centuries. Was it possible he had been here when the Book
of Kukulcan was made? Or were there others; had the things survived
here when in all other parts of the world they had become extinct? And
would the “Fiend Neztpehua” eventuate? Would it prove to be some weird,
monstrous, prehistoric leftover?
There was no use in speculating, but with that crumbled Pterodactyl
lying on the ground before me almost anything seemed possible, even
probable. To Maliche, however, the creature was far more than a dead
winged lizard. To him it was the incarnate form of his demon-like god,
Izputeque, and he was muttering prayers and making a blood offering to
it as I turned away.
Our route that day was directly towards the nearer of the two
volcanoes, whose rumblings we could now distinctly hear. By following
the narrow valley between the bare rocky ridges, the way was easy, for
there was no jungle, there were few patches of forest, and it was much
like walking through a huge park. Game, however, was scarce. Indeed,
with the exception of a few small birds, we saw no forms of life, and
I assumed that the great Pterodactyl had practically exterminated the
denizens of the place. But there were plenty of fish and crayfish in
the stream, and we did not worry over our food supply. Before sundown
we had ascended fully one thousand feet and could look back over a vast
extent of country with the glaring red, white and yellow deserts spread
like a map below us. Nothing disturbed our rest that night and, feeling
that the worst part of our journey was over, we resumed our march the
next morning. As we climbed higher, the country became rougher and
wilder; great jagged black crags rose on every side, long débris slopes
of glistening obsidian broke the green hillsides; the stream tumbled in
flashing cascades down outjutting ledges, and ever louder and louder
was the dull, rumbling, growling roar in the bowels of the volcano
under our feet. In the afternoon we met many other signs of volcanic
activity. Springs of hot water bubbled from sulphur and lime-encrusted
pools; sulphurous steam rose from fissures and fumeroles, and in one
spot a group of splendid geysers shot their fountains of boiling water
fifty feet in air. Further upward progress became impossible, and
swinging westward we followed a ridge or plateau that encircled the
mountain like a gigantic terrace. It was odd, I thought, that Maliche
should show no fear of the volcano or of the natural phenomena, but
when I questioned him, he replied that there was a similar smoking
mountain near his home, and that he was familiar with such sights.
But, he added, he was sure this volcano was the home of terrible gods.
Had we not met the demon-god Izputeque? And at any time others might
appear. But the white man’s magic, the thunder and lightning from his
magic tube, were more powerful than these wicked gods, and he had no
fear. Brave Maliche, he was to learn all too soon how futile was the
white man’s “magic” to which he trusted so implicitly!
We had now circled the first volcano and had reached the pass that led
between the two cones. Here there was a dense forest, the interlaced,
tangled tops of the trees forming a canopy that shut out the light of
the sun, and in the semi-twilight we passed onward between the giant
tree trunks that rose like the fluted columns of some vast cathedral.
* * * * *
SOON after we entered the forest, Maliche shot a small deer, and having
been on slender rations since the previous day, we stopped then and
there, cooked and ate a hearty meal, and prepared to spend the rest of
the afternoon and night there.
Presently Maliche rose, and mumbling that he was going on a hunt to
secure food for the morrow, he vanished among the trees. It was the
last time I ever saw him alive. Perhaps half an hour after he had left
I was startled by a faint, far-away scream, the terrified cry of a
human being, and I leaped to my feet, alert, listening, filled with
fears. Then once again came the scream, suddenly cut short in a faint,
choking groan. Something had happened. Maliche was in trouble! Leaping
forward, dashing between the trees, I sped in the direction of the
sound. Presently, I saw a lighter spot, the trees thinned, and before
me stretched an open space in the forest.
At the sight that met my eyes, the blood seemed to freeze in my veins.
I fairly shook with terror, and a horrified cry rose to my lips.
Squatting in the center of the open space was the most monstrous, the
most horrible, the most repulsive being that ever the eyes of man have
looked upon.
At first sight I had thought the thing a hideous sculptured stone idol.
There, fully thirty feet above the ground, was the great, misshapen,
grotesque head, a head adorned with an upstanding crest of huge spikes,
a head with bestial fiery red eyes, with a gaping cavernous mouth armed
with immense, curved white fangs. There was the great monolithic body
of dull-green, covered with intricate geometric patterns in relief.
There were the crooked short arms with talons in place of fingers, and
there were the columnar bowed legs, all as massive, as hard, as unreal
as any sculptured Mayan god. But the illusion was only momentary.
Behind the terrifying monster extended a gigantic scaly tail, the huge
corpse-white paunch rose and fell as the thing breathed, the scarlet
eyes moved from side to side. The stupendous, indescribably horrible
thing was alive, a creature of flesh and blood! I felt sick, faint,
nauseated as my bewildered brain and horror-filled eyes took in the
scene. In one gigantic front foot, clasped tightly against its chest,
the monster held the body of Maliche!
* * * * *
[Illustration: Squatting in the center of the open space was the most
monstrous, the most horrible, the most repulsive being that ever the
eyes of man had looked upon]
* * * * *
Blood dripped down the livid white belly and crimson foam drooled from
the huge mouth, as the fiendish thing masticated something in its
titanic jaws. The next instant I realized what it was crunching between
its terrible teeth. The mangled decapitated body of the Indian told the
story. It was Maliche’s head!
Madness, Berserk fury took the place of my fear, my horror, my nausea
at the sight. For a moment I was mad, crazed, utterly bereft of reason.
With a hoarse shout, a savage yell, I drew my pistol and fired at the
breast of the cannibalistic demon before me. But I might as well have
fired at a monument of solid rock. The bony scales of the monster’s
body were as impervious to my bullets as plates of steel.
Possibly he did not even feel them. But my shout, the report of my
pistol, distracted his attention from his gruesome, repulsive meal.
Slowly, as if trying to locate the sound, he ceased chewing, turned his
head and peered towards me with one gleaming eye. At that instant I
fired my last shot. I saw the baleful eye vanish in a blurr of red as
my final bullet ploughed its way in, and I gave vent to a wild shout of
triumph.
For an instant I thought my lucky shot had killed the monster. His head
sagged, his front foot relaxed, the torn and bleeding body of Maliche
dropped unheeded to the ground, and the gigantic creature swayed
unsteadily.
But the next second I realized my mistake. I realized that my bullet
had only momentarily stunned and confused the terrible beast. With a
hoarse bellow he dropped to all fours, swung his head quickly to right
and left and then, evidently locating me, he leaped with a prodigious
bound directly at me. But I had already turned to run. I heard the
colossal thing crash against a tree, I heard him panting, bellowing
with pain and baffled rage; but I did not turn, did not glance back.
Realizing even in my mad terror and my extremity that such an enormous
beast would find it difficult to make speed among the trees, I dodged
between the trunks, plunging deeper and deeper into the forest, paying
no heed to direction.
In my rear I could still hear the monster in pursuit, crashing,
hurtling into the trees, roaring hoarsely, shaking the very ground
with his thundering tons of infuriated flesh. He was like a whole herd
of elephants charging through the forest. Small trees went down like
straws before his onrush, and only the fact that he was half-blinded
and unable to see me as long as I kept to the right, and was therefore
obliged to keep his head turned to avoid blundering into trees, saved
me from Maliche’s fate.
Even as it was, I barely held my own, barely kept my scant two hundred
feet in advance of my terrible pursuer. And each minute, each second I
was growing weaker, becoming more and more spent. My breath wheezed in
my throat, my lungs seemed bursting, a mist swam before my eyes. Soon
I knew I must slow down, must stop. At any moment my heavy feet might
trip upon a root and the next instant the terrible man-eating beast
would be upon me.
Then, as I felt I must give up, as I had made up my mind to slip
another cartridge into my pistol, and end my life rather than be torn
to pieces, the forest came to an end and, unable to check my headway, I
slipped, plunged head-first and rolled, head-over-heels down a sharp,
bare slope. Dazed, frightened, my eyes blinded with dust, my mouth and
nostrils filled with choking powder, dimly aware of blistering, burning
heat, I brought up with a jarring, sickening thud against a mass of
rock.
Bruised, shaken, sputtering, I spat the sand from my mouth, wiped the
dust from my eyes and glanced about. Up from where I lay upon a ledge
of rock surrounded by coarse grass and stunted trees, stretched a long
steep slope of glaring white sand. Here and there slender columns of
steam rose from it. Dull yellow patches of sulphur dotted its surface,
and an uneven, irregular furrow marked the course of my fall. At the
summit of the slope rose the forest trees and, issuing from them, was
the gigantic monster still in pursuit.
But I could not move, could not make an effort to escape. I was utterly
done, utterly exhausted. I felt for my pistol, but the holster was
empty. In a moment more the colossal beast would come sliding, bounding
upon me.
* * * * *
FASCINATED, I stared at him. One glance he gave about, and then, with
a bound, he was on the slope. My heart seemed to stop beating, numbing
terror paralyzed me. But I need not have feared. Little did I know the
character of that declivity of white, innocent-appearing sand. Instead
of racing down the slope, the monster sank into it as though it had
been liquid. He thrashed, struggled, bellowed, lashed with his enormous
tail, but all in vain. Every movement buried him deeper and deeper.
The soft, fine, almost impalpable dust could not support his weight.
It gave way beneath him, closed in clouds above him. It was like a
quicksand, and presently only the tip of his upflung tail and the
thrashing, gnashing jaws were visible.
And then an amazing phenomenon occurred. Up from the spot where he was
vanishing, a great column of steam shot fifty feet in air, hissing,
roaring. The next instant it subsided, and only the smooth unbroken
slope remained.
And as I glanced about at my surroundings, my heart still pounding, I
realized what had happened, what manner of place I had so fortunately
fallen into. I was in an ancient crater; the slope down which I had
slid was merely a pile of fine volcanic ash covering the boiling,
steaming, heated mass below, a mere crust over an inferno. Somewhere
within the depths, the carcass of the dinosaur--for such I knew the
monster must have been--was being boiled to shreds. My own weight had
not been sufficient to break through the surface in my swift descent;
I had moved too rapidly to be badly burned by the scalding steam and
hot ashes, but the monster’s weight had spelled his doom. But Maliche
was dead. I was alone. “My God!” I exclaimed, as a sudden realization
came to me. I was in the “realm of hot ashes” of the prophecy. Was the
monstrous dinosaur I had seen destroyed, the “fiend Neztpehua”?
I was convinced it was so, positive that the dinosaur had been
there since the days of Kukulcan. And a strange elation, a sudden
unaccountable joy thrilled me. Everything had come out precisely as
it had been foretold. I had met every peril, every danger of which
Katchilcan had warned me. So far, I had come unharmed through all. My
way had been “made easy.” Was there some unknown, some supernatural
power watching over me? Was there some magic in the Book of Kukulcan?
I tried to reason, tried to convince myself it was all nonsense, all
superstition, all the state of my nerves, of my overtaxed muscles and
brain. But I could not shake off the belief, could not argue mentally
against obvious facts. So fully had the idea possessed me, that I felt
absolutely convinced that I would yet come to the Cave of the Bats, to
the Bridge of Life and would enter the hidden city of Mictolan.
But first, I must get out of the crater. As I have said, the spot where
I had been arrested in my involuntary decent of the ash slope was rocky
and was surrounded with coarse grass and a few gnarled and stunted
trees. This was not surprising, for in many other active craters,
especially in the West Indies--I had seen the same forms of vegetation
growing in the sand and sulphur-impregnated deposits surrounded with
steam and boiling water. As I rose and pressed through the thin
growth--taking great care not to step into a pool of boiling water, I
gave a cry of delight. Lying among the bits of rock was my revolver.
Refilling its empty chambers and replacing it in the holster, I passed
through the scrub, and reaching the farther side carefully surveyed the
crater, searching for a passage out. I was at the bottom of an immense
crater--I remember that at the time it reminded me of the titanic pit
of a gigantic ant-lion, and I thanked Heaven there had been no such
voracious creature lurking in the bottom to gobble me up as I came
tumbling into its waiting jaws. On one side was the slope down which
I had fallen and which had swallowed up the dinosaur. On two other
sides there were perpendicular rocky walls seamed with golden-yellow
sulphur veins, but on the fourth side the crater wall was broken down
and filled with loose masses of stone between which grew red-flowered
weeds, climbing cacti and coarse, brake-like ferns. It was the only
passable exit, and crawling carefully over the loose and treacherous
rocks, I surmounted the barrier and to my delight found that the
brushy mountain side stretched unbroken to a wooded valley far below.
As I moved easily down the hillside, many thoughts and conjectures
filled my mind. Would I be able to sustain life without Maliche’s aid?
Would I--even if I reached the hidden city--ever be able to return
to civilization? Of what use would it have been to have journeyed so
far, to have undergone so much, to have found the city, if I spent
the rest of my days here? And in that case, of what value would be my
precious codex? I laughed grimly to myself as I mentally reviewed the
strange events that had followed in such an unbroken chain since my
visit to the little junk shop in far-off Vigo. From the moment I had
seen the faded, ancient document, my entire course of life, yes, even
my mental processes, had been altered. I had been bewitched, obsessed
with the thing. Why hadn’t I been content to dispose of it for what it
would bring--a far greater sum than I had ever before possessed at one
time--instead of traveling here, there and everywhere, trying to find
someone to interpret it?
And why, even at the eleventh hour, hadn’t I been satisfied with old
Katchilcan’s information and interpretation, without plunging into this
wilderness on my wild-goose chase for the mythical city of Mictolan?
Why? I could find no answer save that it was fate, destiny, that I had
come honestly into possession of the Book of Kukulcan and had therefore
to bring the long-awaited token to the Mayas in the hidden city. But in
that case, why had not some other done so long before? Surely others
must have owned the codex honestly. The old shopkeeper in Vigo, for
instance. I laughed heartily as I tried to picture paunchy old Don
Miguel Salceda on this journey--crossing the deserts, crawling through
the snake-infested tunnel, rolling down the ash-covered crater’s slope,
running away from a charging dinosaur.
And the dinosaur! Were there other, perhaps even more terrible
prehistoric creatures in this land? I had had proof that pterodactyls
and dinosaurs still survived there. Was it not possible there were
others of their kinds, or even more ferocious living fossils? A
Triceratops would be a most unpleasant “demon” to meet, an Iguanodon
might be even worse. It behooved me to go carefully, to watch my step,
to pass my nights where I would be safe from attack. And, thinking
of passing the night, reminded me that the sun had set behind the
peak, and that darkness was near at hand. To find a place in which to
sleep would be simple--the rocks on either side of the valley were
full of fissures and caves, but I was hungry and thirsty, and I could
see no prospect of either water or food. Below me, to the right, the
vegetation seemed greener, fresher. Possibly water was there and,
meanwhile keeping a sharp watch for any possible game or even some
edible berries or fruits, I hurried in the direction I had picked out.
As I had hoped, a tiny stream trickled from among the rocks. A recess
in a ledge formed a secure resting place, but I went supperless to bed
and hunger prevented me from sleeping much that night.
* * * * *
THE next morning, however, I was in better luck. I came unexpectedly
upon a raccoon and secured him with my pistol and, a little later, I
found a huge land tortoise. I dined well, and feeling much better,
swung on down the valley. To my delight I now found I had passed
beyond the volcanoes, and somehow I had a feeling that I was nearing
the end of my journey. I had been puzzled many times at not having
found any traces of the country ever having been inhabited. There had
been no signs of Indians, no ruins, no monuments, not even inscribed
rocks since we had passed that great statue of Chac-Mool in the pool
of the crocodiles. If in the long ago the Mayas had passed this way,
surely, I thought, they would have left some traces. Hardly had the
thought crossed my mind when, rising above the trees ahead, I saw the
remains of stone buildings. The ruins were in bad shape, the walls
had fallen apart, but they were unquestionably ancient Mayan. But
there was one thing about them that puzzled me. In several places were
sculptured figures and symbols unlike anything I had ever seen, and in
one doorway was a true arch. The Mayas, I knew, had never--as far as
known--discovered the arch. They joined their walls either by “stepping
in” the stones until they met, or they connected them by means of
wooden beams or lintels of stone. But here was an arch, without a
keystone to be sure, formed of stones cemented together, and that still
remained, though the walls about it had crumbled and fallen. I had made
an epochal discovery--though it was of little value to me or to the
scientific world, but it whetted my desire to find the hidden city. If
the ruins I was examining were the remains of the work of the people
of Mictolan--as I felt sure they were--then those people had developed
beyond the other Mayas and, in the many centuries that had passed
since they had been separated from the rest of their race, they might
have reached most astounding heights and have made most remarkable
discoveries.
A little later, I came upon something that puzzled and interested me
even more than the ruins with the arch. Hidden in the brush was an
immense stone monument lying half buried in the earth. One portion of
its upper surface was elaborately carved with beautiful bas-reliefs,
but the lower portion was unmarked, and the plain surface graded
evenly into the carved surface. There was every graduation from the
deeply-cut sculptures to shallow carvings, from these to mere outlines,
and from these to the smooth stone. And there were no signs of tool
marks upon it, nothing to show that the design was being chiseled
away. Eagerly I examined the other visible surfaces. They were exactly
the same. It was precisely as if the immense stone column had been
steel and had been dipped into some acid that had deeply etched the
submerged portion, leaving the rest untouched. Of course I knew that
nothing of the sort actually had occurred. I merely thought of it as
an appropriate simile, but the mystery of how the Mayas accomplished
their wonderful sculptures had always fascinated me, and I had never
before seen, or even heard of, a column that was partly carved like
this one. However, it proved the Mayas had been here, and from time to
time, during several hours thereafter, I came upon other remains of the
ancient race. At any time now, I thought, I might come within sight of
Mictolan. Little did I dream what lay ahead of me.