Observe the irony. We had made headway against Kokyan's enmity by virtue of the very talent he arrogated to himself. Hence the frowns he bent on us as he danced from the temple, leading his snake priests, every man a center of twisting coils of slimy reptiles.
This was the opening phase of the ceremonies. Wiki and Angwusi sat in front of the temple entrance upon solid blocks of wood, behind them leering the horrid features of Massi, carried forward from his darksome shrine into the glare of daylight for this occasion. Kachina had not yet appeared, but grouped in a semicircle in back of idol, priest and priestess were the masked dancers of the different clans, arrayed in the semblance of bird, beast, reptile, vegetable or insect.
Overhead towered the bulging brow of the cliff. Across the housetops reared the distant wall of the valley, crowned by the slim smokes of the Awataba, those persistent savages who belied their inconsequential natures by the fixity of the purpose with which they hemmed us in. And all around the plaza, and on the nearby house-roofs, too, were crowded the village people, the men in their white kilts—the red border being reserved for the highest members of the priesthood and the Wise Men of the Council; the women in plain white robes that folded over the right shoulder and slid under the left breast, curving graciously to the figure and banded tight around the waist.
Drums thudded inside the temple to herald the approach of Kokyan and his loathsome attendants. They pranced slowly into the light, snakes twining about their middles, their arms and their necks, forked tongues darting and hissing—and never a man bitten!
The snake priests sounded a low chant, as they advanced with a jerking, undulating step, apparently designed to reproduce the traveling motion of a snake. Whining in a minor key, the chant progressed in volume, the rumble of the unseen drums rising in tune with it.
Bound the open space danced the ugly procession, the people instinctively drawing back as the snake-ridden men came near. Kokyan, the scowl of a fiend on his face, passed us and went on. The whole line passed, and I breathed freely again, for I did not like those scores of unrestrained reptiles, any one of which in threshing free of its bearer might carry death into the throng.
The drums thudded louder and louder as the priests circled the plaza the second time; and the snakes were more excited than ever by the noise, the unaccustomed sunlight and the white-garbed rows of onlookers. They writhed up above the heads of the priests, struck at each other and hissed into the empty air. 'Twas a nightmare spectacle—such a picture as the Italian Dante dreamed of the torments of Hell. But again Kokyan passed, and again I felt the breath whistle from my lungs. Then it came—what I had been expecting!
The drumming became hurried, confused, and the priests jostled together, as if surprised. There was a plop! on the sandy ground, and a rattlesnake as long as Peter contorted into its fighting coils within arm's-reach of Tawannears. But the Seneca remained perfectly quiet, not moving a muscle of face or body. A gasp went up from the people around us. Women cried out, and children whimpered. Wiki rose from his stool with a single curt order, and one of the priests stepped out of the line and retrieved the snake, calming it by a stroking motion down its belly as he grasped it just under the venomous head.
It all happened so quickly that few saw the incident, but Peter's big hand gripped my arm until I thought he would tear it off.
"If he mofed he was deadt!" he gasped in my ear. "Ja, if he mofed, Tawannears was deadt!"