It had come about that Noco as interpreter—the connecting link between the spirit of the sun and the chief priest of the temple—had found herself in a position of great influence. The old hag, a compound of superstition, spitefulness, and saturnine humor done up in a crumpled brown package, had derived malicious satisfaction from playing Coheyogo’s game with a skill and an audacity which had saved her from the many perils which had menaced her in the pursuit of this eccentric pastime.
Coheyogo would visit Coyocop with Noco and lay before the sun-spirit some problem dealing with the attitude of the temple toward a question at that moment interesting the sun-worshippers. The quick-witted and fearless interpreter would answer the chief priest with advice originating in her own fertile brain, and, in this way, would protect Coyocop from cares of state, while she made a willing tool of Coheyogo and satisfied her own love of mischief. Within well-defined limitations, old Noco, at the moment of which we write, held under her control more actual power than either the Great Sun or the chief priest. As the tongue of Coyocop, the court of last resort in a priest-ridden state, the old crone, with little fear of detection, could put into the mouth of the sun-spirit whatever words she chose. Fortunately for Coyocop and the sun-worshippers, the aged linguist was, at heart, progressive rather than reactionary. She had cherished for years a detestation for the bloody sacrifices of the temple, which heterodoxy, had Coheyogo suspected it, would have long ago brought her life to a sudden end. As it was, the old interpreter had made use of Coyocop to mitigate, as far as possible, the horrors which a cruel cult, administered by heartless priests, had inflicted upon a brave, kindly, but too plastic race.
It was now a full hour past high noon, and Coheyogo stood, surrounded by the temple priests, confronting Cabanacte by the sacred fire. The interior of the sun-temple was not less repulsive to an unbiased eye than the skull-crowned palisades outside. Divided into two rooms of unequal size, the interior of the blood-stained fane served the double purpose of a gigantic oven to keep the veins of the living at fever-heat and of a tomb in which the bones of the noble dead might crumble into dust. In the larger of the two rooms, in which the chief priest was now holding a council of the elders, stood an altar seven feet long by two in width and rising to a height of four feet above the floor. Upon this altar rested a long, hand-painted basket in which reposed the remains of the reigning Great Sun’s immediate predecessor.
The heat of the room was intense, for no windows broke the monotony of the temple’s walls; mud-baked partitions, nine inches in thickness. Rows of plaited mats covered the arched ceiling of the interior. At the end of the room furthest from the sacred fire, folding doors, closed at this moment, opened into the private apartments of the chief priest. Running from these doors, along both sides of the smoke-blackened hall, wooden shelves supported the grewsome relics of horrid ceremonials. Long lines of baskets, daubed with red and yellow paint, contained the revered dust of Great Suns gone into the land of spirits accompanied by the loyal souls of their strangled wives and retainers. Scattered between these tawdry urns, the shelves bore crudely-wrought clay figures of men, women, serpents, owls, and eagles; and here and there an offering of fruit, meat, or fish stood ready to satisfy the craving of any uneasy ghost coming back dissatisfied with the cuisine of the spirit-world.
Grouped around the sacred fire, in which logs of oak and walnut preserved a flame which the sun-god had vouchsafed to man in a remote day of grace, the temple priests, whose dark faces bore evidence of their internal agitation, stood listening and watching as Cabanacte and Coheyogo faced each other at this crisis and discussed, in subdued tones, a question of immediate significance. As the chosen discoverer of Coyocop, the instrument employed by the great spirit for the fulfilment of an ancient prophecy, Cabanacte occupied an influential position in the eyes of the temple brotherhood. The inspiration from on high, which had turned the giant’s feet toward a haunted shingle upon which the spirit of the sun lay asleep, might at any moment stir his tongue with words of divine origin. Since the night upon which Cabanacte had brought Coyocop to the City of the Sun, he had always been listened to with rapt attention by the jealous guardians of the sacred fire.
“He threatens me, you say?” muttered Coheyogo angrily, gazing up at Cabanacte with flashing eyes. “And you have told the people that the Great Sun dies because I do not worship this white-faced conjurer who says the moon is his? Beware, oh Cabanacte, what you do! I’ll dare the magic of his silver wand and prove to him the sun-god is omnipotent.”
Drawing himself up to his full height, until he towered a full half-foot above the stately sun-priest, Cabanacte exclaimed, in a low, insistent voice:
“Have you forgotten Coyocop? Did she not last night—old Noco tells the tale—command you to do honor to this white face from the moon? ’Tis you, Coheyogo, who should now take heed. ’Tis not moon-magic which you would defy. ’Tis Coyocop herself, the spirit of the sun, our god.”
The chief priest remained silent for a time, gazing thoughtfully at the sacred fire, which seemed to roar and flash and snap and dance before his restless black eyes as if it threatened him with tortures for harboring a sacrilegious thought. Had not the spirit of the sun itself, through Coyocop’s inspired tongue, commanded him to treat the nation’s white-faced guest with all respect? The great power which Coheyogo had wielded for a year seemed to be slipping from his grasp. Its foundation-stone had been the word of Coyocop. Should he not heed her late behest he’d pull the very underpinning from beneath his tower of strength. Furthermore, the Great Sun, an easy-going monarch, subservient to the chief priest’s stronger will, lay at death’s door. His successor to the throne, his sister’s son, Manatte, was a headstrong, stubborn youth, upon whom the influence of Coheyogo was but slight. Should the chief priest lose at one stroke the countenance of Coyocop and the good-will of the Great Sun, the supremacy of the temple would be destroyed upon the instant, and Coheyogo would find himself hurled from a pinnacle of power to a grovelling attitude among a people chafing under the cruel tyranny of a bloodthirsty priesthood. Turning fretfully from the threatening blaze to glance up again at the steady eyes of Cabanacte, the chief priest said:
“The words of Coyocop come straight from God.” Facing then the expectant priests, he cried sternly: “Go forth, my brothers, and bid the people to disperse at once. Tell them to go to their homes and offer prayers that the Great Sun may be spared to us. Then come to me here, for I have other work for you to do.”