“Oho!” said Coth, “so it is as I thought, and nobody guarantees the affair but you! Well, now, upon my word, do you take us for buzzards or for scavengers, that we should in any way be bothering about what emanates from you! By what oath can garbage swear, that anybody should heed it!”
The great corpse stirred restively under the midget’s piping taunts. But the voice of Tal-Cavêpan said only, “I swear by the oath of the Star Warriors, even by the Word of the Tzitzi-Mimé.”
“Ah, ah!” said Coth. “Put me down, dear little wife!” Then Coth, the very tiny pink mannikin, strutted toward the evil-smelling black corpse, and brown Utsumé followed fondly after him. Coth posed in a majestic attitude, resting one elbow upon his wife’s instep, and twirling at his mustachios. Coth said:
“You have sworn to these things, Yaotl, by that unbreakable oath of yours which first started all this trouble. Very well! I am co-emperor of Tollan. I am as much emperor as Vemac is: and it is I who will draw you to the burning you have richly earned; and it is I whom your oath will prevent from ever returning into this infernal Porutsa, where such uncalled-for liberties are taken with a person’s size, and the people are very much too fond of dancing.”
“But,” said the corpse, “I meant the other emperor!”
Coth answered: “Bosh! Nobody cares what you meant, it matters only what you have sworn.”
“But,” said the corpse, “but, you pernicious pink shrimp—!”
Coth replied, “I do not deny that you spoke lightly: even so, you did swear it, by an unbreakable oath; and the affair is concluded.”
Coth caught at the parti-colored ropes with tiny fingers. But as he tugged, Coth began to grow. The harder he pulled, the greater became his stature, in order that the honor of the Capricious Lord might stay undisgraced, and Yaotl not be evicted from Porutsa by a midget. And now the corpse moved. Now the Taoltecs saw hauling doggedly at those black and red ropes a full-grown if somewhat short-legged champion, with a remarkably large and glistening pink head: before him went a little yellow whirlwind, and behind him dragged a dreadful black corruption. Thus Coth passed through the east gate of their city.
“The will of the gods be done!” said Vemac,—“especially when it is in every way a very good riddance.” Nobody dissented with his pious utterance. “Let the city gates be closed!” said Vemac then. “Put new bolts on them, lest that son-in-law of mine be coming back to us against the will of the gods. And you, my dear Utsumé, since you alone are losing anything, howsoever happily, by this business, you shall have another husband, of less desultory dimensions, and, in fact, you may have as many husbands as you like, my darling, to raise up an heir for us in Porutsa and an emperor to come after me and rule over all Tollan.”