Beyond the sunset

by Arthur D. Howden Smith

Inside we were in total darkness, and I experienced a chilling fear of treachery. But the worst that happened to us was to crack heads and shins on unseen stairs, angles and doorposts as we were drawn through a dingy warren of passages. Wiki guided me, and strangers conducted Tawannears and Peter. Kachina must have skipped ahead of us, for she was the first person we identified when we stepped suddenly out of a gloomy vestibule into the bright, sun-smitten plaza or central space of the village.

This space was sufficiently large to accommodate all the population of the village, which must have numbered upwards of fifteen hundred souls. It was surrounded by the communal houses, in which these people lived, houses which made the Long Houses of the Iroquois appear as primitive as the skin teepees of the Dakota. They rose high above us, each story receding the depth of a room from the area of the one below it, so as to provide a succession of unroofed porches or verandas. These roof-tops were crowded with people, and several hundred men lounged in the central plaza.

Directly opposite us and situated in a notch or recess in the cliff-side was a building of somewhat different proportions. It had the same peculiar recession of the upper stories, but instead of having four floors it had only three, the first story being twice as high as in the adjoining houses. There was a great doorway midway of its windowless facade, with monstrous stone figures, creatures with the bodies of men and the heads of fabulous beasts, entwined with snakes, on either side.

In front of this doorway stood three people, of whom Kachina was the least remarkable. The one in the middle of the group was a very fat old woman, gray-haired, with dull, snaky eyes. She was dressed like Kachina in a white robe, bordered with crude red, and she held herself with a certain conscious dignity that was imposing, whatever you might think about her character and personal cleanliness.

On her left was the voluble young man, who had evinced so strongly his disapproval of us after the fight; and not content with his kilt of serpent's-skins he now had a rattlesnake coiled around his neck, its head poised next his left ear. He took a step forward as we appeared in the plaza, and began declaiming in a harsh voice, the snake at his ear hissing an accompaniment. Occasionally he would suspend his oration, and pretend to stop and listen to what the snake was telling him. The people heard him with awe; but I thought I surprised a look of mild cynicism upon Wiki's face. As for Kachina, she made no attempt to conceal her feelings.

After the voluble young man and the snake had talked until you could have heard the rustling of a grass-blade she interrupted them as ruthlessly as she had me. And she was not content with merely saying what she thought. She danced it, too. That is literally what I mean. She would say something, lift her eyes skyward, raise her arms in a beseeching gesture, and then dance a slow, stately measure, or perhaps a swift, heady one. Betwixt dances she was making demands of something inside the temple or arguing with the fat old woman or with Wiki.

When she ceased the voluble young man tried to continue his oration, but Wiki stepped to the front and cut him off. Then there was a four-sided debate, in which the fat old woman joined, and presently, she raised her arms in a gesture of invocation, blinked her eyes shut, waited—whilst everyone, including ourselves, became tense—and ejaculated a single sentence. After which she reopened her eyes, and waddled into the dark recesses of the temple, attended by the young man, no longer voluble, but very sullen, and hauling the snake from its embrace.

Wiki expressed no sentiment in his face or actions, but Kachina showed delight as plainly as she had disapprobation of the young man's suggestions, and she danced away by herself in the direction of a narrow door in one corner of the temple-block.

Wiki crooked his finger.

"Come," he said, and led us through another door to a stair which fetched us to the terrace on the roof of the fore part of the temple proper. We crossed this roof, eyed suspiciously by several men who wore the serpent's-skin kilt, to a doorway opening into a room probably twelve feet square. It had no windows, and its walls and floor were bare of furnishings.