ence, until at a signal one and all they bent them
backwards. Standing thus, their long hair waving on the wind, the light
of burning houses flaring upon their breasts and in their maddened eyes,
they burst into the cry of:

'SAVE US, HUITZEL! RECEIVE US, LORD GOD, OUR HOME!'

Thrice they cried it, each time more shrilly than before, then suddenly
they were GONE, the women of the Otomie were no more!

With their own self-slaughter they had consummated the last celebration
of the rites of sacrifice that ever shall be held in the City of Pines.
The devil gods were dead and their worshippers with them.

A low murmur ran round the lips of the men who watched, then one cried,
and his voice rang strangely in the sudden silence: 'May our wives,
the women of the Otomie, rest softly in the Houses of the Sun, for of a
surety they teach us how to die.'

'Ay,' I answered, 'but not thus. Let women do self-murder, our foes have
swords for the hearts of men.'

I turned to go, and before me stood Otomie.

'What has befallen?' she said. 'Where are my sisters? Oh! surely I have
dreamed an evil dream. I dreamed that the gods of my forefathers were
strong once more, and that once more they drank the blood of men.'

'Your ill dream has a worse awakening, Otomie,' I answered. 'The gods of
hell are still strong indeed in this accursed land, and they have taken
your sisters into their keeping.'

'Is it so?' she said softly, 'yet in my dream it seemed to me that this
was their last strength ere they sink into death unending. Look yonder!'
and she pointed toward the snowy crest of the volcan Xaca.

I looked, but whether I saw the sight of which I am about to tell or
whether it was but an imagining born of the horrors of that most hideous
night, in truth I cannot say. At the least I seemed to see this, and
afterwards there were some among the Spaniards who swore that they had
witnessed it also.

On Xaca's lofty summit, now as always stood a pillar of fiery smoke, and
while I gazed, to my vision the smoke and the fire separated themselves.
Out of the fire was fashioned a cross of flame, that shone like
lightning and stretched for many a rod across the heavens, its base
resting on the mountain top. At its foot rolled the clouds of smoke, and
now these too took forms vast and terrifying, such forms indeed as
those that sat in stone within the temple behind me, but magnified a
hundredfold.

'See,' said Otomie again, 'the cross of your