Beyond the sunset

by Arthur D. Howden Smith

We moved softly out the door, and she guided us along the wall of the temple's upper story. Here was black night, unmitigated, for the overhang of the cliff shut out even the star-shine. We had passed two other doorways, as I could tell by feeling with my hands, the uproar in the plaza becoming deafening in the meantime when there was a patter of feet and torches blazed across the terrace. Men streamed by us, indistinct running figures, and we flattened against the wall, trusting to the shifting shadows to conceal us; but a group of a dozen or more with torches made the night brilliant as day.

A yell announced our discovery. There was a rush that we stemmed with ready steel, and Kachina cried:

"Run! Do not stay to fight!"

We won a brief respite by our efforts; and she dived into a nearby doorway, and we found ourselves tumbling down a steep stair that twisted on itself and debouched into a vast chamber which we recognized as the temple. Already men were pouring in from the plaza, Kokyan at their head, a torch waving in one hand, a knife in the other. And behind us the restricted stair echoed the shouts of our immediate pursuers.

Kachina ignored Kokyan, and guided us past the tank before the empty altar of Massi, in which writhed the reptile guardians of the shrine; but Kokyan sped around the other, and shorter, side of the temple. The foam was dripping from his jaws; his eyeballs were staring from their sockets. And as he saw Kachina turn toward a doorway that showed dimly behind the altar he shrieked with fury and hurled his torch at her. It would have struck her had not Tawannears reached out and caught it as expertly as he was used to catching the tomahawks thrown at him in practice by his warriors.

An instant Tawannears held the flaming club of resinous pine-wood. Then he sounded the war-whoop of the Iroquois that is dreaded by white man and red from the Great Lakes to the Ohio, and sprang forward to meet the Priest of Yoki. They came together beside the tank of snakes, but Tawannears refused to close, backing away in such fashion that the priest was poised on the very verge of the tank, from which arose an evil tumult of hissing as the snakes responded to the confusion above them.

Pursuit and flight were stayed for the instant by the spectacle of this struggle. Moreover, Peter and I guarded the space betwixt the opposite side of the tank and the temple wall, and no man, not even the snake priests themselves, cared to try to leap that gap. Kachina, smiling unconcernedly, her feather raiment rising and falling steadily with her even breathing, stood, with hands on her hips, in the doorway behind the tank, watching the contest of the two men for her. If she had any feeling of concern she covered it effectually.

Kokyan howled a curse at the Seneca. Tawannears replied with a smile as unconcerned as the girl's and the priest stabbed at him desperately, with all the strength of his body behind the blow. Never moving his feet, Tawannears swayed his shoulders to avoid the knife, and struck sideways with the torch he held in his left hand. It smote the priest on the thigh as he was off-balance, and Kokyan tottered and fell—into the squirming midst of the tank of snakes. Tawannears, without a word, tossed the torch after him, and a bedlam of angry hisses responded. Looking over my shoulder, I shuddered at what I saw.

The Priest of Yoki was submerged beneath a tempest of coiling monsters tortured by the flames of the torch and excited by the unusual light and noise. I had a vision of triangular heads that darted back and forth, of fangs that dribbled venom, of slimy, twisting lengths that coiled and uncoiled and coiled again—and under them all a shape that quivered and jerked and called feebly and was still.

I turned and ran, Peter at my heels. The Dutchman's flat, impassive face was a study in horror. Myself, I experienced a nausea that left me weak as I staggered behind Tawannears into the doorway before which ordinarily stood the idol of Massi. Kachina's figure flitted ahead of us, unseen, but notified to our senses by the echo of her feet and low-voiced directions as we came to turns or steps up and down in the course of the passage. And close after us sounded the hue and cry of the pursuit, a confused clamoring of people driven mad with hate.