"Did he drop it?" I whispered fiercely to Tawannears. "Did you see the priest drop it?"
"Yes, brother," he answered coolly, "but who could swear he was responsible?"
"And you stayed quiet!" I marveled. "How could you know the snake would not strike?"
"It was nothing," he returned. "That snake never strikes unless it thinks you are frightened of it. The man bungled. He should have dropped it on Tawannears. Then it would have struck instinctively. But Hawenneyu did not will it so. Tawannears' medicine is too strong for the snake-priest, Kokyan."
CHAPTER XVIII
TAWANNEARS' SEARCH IS ENDED
The last of the snake priests disappeared through the temple entrance, and old Angwusi left her stool and advanced in front of Massi's image, prostrated her bulky figure with much difficulty and then made invocation to the sun, riding high toward mid-afternoon. Her words had the form of a prayer, but at intervals responses were intoned by the masked clan dancers behind her, and at the end all the people shouted an answer, turning their faces up to the sky.
She returned to her seat amidst a rapt silence that was broken only when Wiki made a signal with his "paho," or prayer-stick, a painted and befeathered baton, which was the symbol of his office. As he raised it the drums in the temple rumbled again, and the masked dancers began to sing, swaying their bodies to the haunting rhythm of the music. After each stanza Wiki would chant an invocation of his own, prostrating himself on the sand before Massi. And this song terminated, as had Angwusi's prayer, in a chorus of all the people, the thudding of the drums running in and out of the roar of voices that echoed against the overhanging cliff.
The singing died away. Silence once more. Wiki, standing now beside the image of the Ruler of the Dead, lifted his paho in a second gesture of command. Tap-tap-tap! very slow, went the drums. The masked clan dancers sorted themselves into two files facing inward on either side of the temple doorway. The people around us, whose interest in the ceremonies had been perfunctory since the snake dance, bunched forward in attitudes of pleasurable expectancy. A murmur of voices bandied back and forth the one word—"Kachina!"
I saw the muscles twisting on Tawannears' jaw. His face, that was usually so masklike, was openly expressive. But a look of puzzled inquiry in his eyes changed to bewilderment, when, instead of the Sacred Dancer, appeared the snake priests, marshaled by Kokyan and staggering under the weight of a hurdle upon which reposed a mighty pumpkin. It was twice as thick as Peter in girth and half as tall from the litter of stalks and vine-leaves upon which it was set.