ney of your words, and we who urged caution, or even an alliance with
the white men, the children of god, were overruled. You went hence,
and twenty thousand men, the flower of our people, followed you to
Tenoctitlan. Where are they now? I will tell you. Some two hundred of
them have crept back home, the rest fly to and fro through the air in
the gizzards of the zaphilotes, or crouch on the earth in the bellies
of jackals. Death has them all, and you led them to their deaths. Is it
then much that we should seek the lives of you two in payment for those
of twenty thousand of our sons, our husbands, and our fathers? But we do
not even ask this. Here beside me stand ambassadors from Malinche, the
captain of the Teules, who reached our city but an hour ago. This is the
demand that they bring from Malinche, and in his own words:

'"Deliver back to me Otomie, the daughter of Montezuma, and the renegade
her paramour, who is known as Teule, and who has fled from the justice
due to his crimes, and it shall be well with you, people of the Otomie.
Hide them or refuse to deliver them, and the fate of the City of Pines
shall be as the fate of Tenoctitlan, queen of the valley. Choose then
between my love and my wrath, people of the Otomie. If you obey, the
past shall be forgiven and my yoke will be light upon you; if you
refuse, your city shall be stamped flat and your very name wiped out of
the records of the world."

'Say, messengers of Malinche, are not these the words of Malinche?'

'They are his very words, Maxtla,' said the spokesman of the embassy.

Now again there was a tumult among the people, and voices cried, 'Give
them up, give them to Malinche as a peace offering.' Otomie stood
forward to speak and it died away, for all desired to hear her words.
Then she spoke:

'It seems, people of the Otomie, that I am on my trial before my own
vassals, and my husband with me. Well, I will plead our cause as well as
a woman may, and having the power, you shall judge between us and Maxtla
and his allies, Malinche and the Tlascalans. What is our offence? It is
that we came hither by the command of Cuitlahua to seek your aid in his
war with the Teules. What did I tell you then? I told you that if the
people of Anahuac would not stand together against the white men, they
must be broken one by one like the sticks of an unbound faggot, and cast
into the flames. Did I speak lies? Nay, I spoke truth, for through
the treason of her tribes,