Benicia’s features had never relaxed their cold intentness during the preparations. There was even, to Grant’s troubled scrutiny, some element of the barbaric there. A look like that on the stone visage of an Aztec goddess, implacable, without mortal instincts. She took her stand by the kettle and spoke rapidly to the Papagoes, pointing to the knife, then lifting her finger to mark the place of the sun in the white sky.
Abruptly she finished, stooped and touched one finger to the bottom of the kettle. It came away blackened by soot. Then she turned to Grant. “It is the test of God,” she said in a dulled voice. “My people have used it in times past when they were perplexed as I am. All here including you, Señor Hickman, and you, Señor Bagley, will endure this test even as I just have done. Put your fingers to the kettle and show them to all, blackened. God will speak through the mouth of the imprisoned cock when the guilty man touches the iron.”
Grant gave the girl a steady look, then without a word he stepped to the blackened dome, swept the fingers of his right hand across it and held them aloft. Benicia was looking away when Grant stepped back beside her; he saw a convulsive movement of her throat—no other sign. Then big Bim dared the oracle with an easy grace. A shuddering intake of breath from the Indians as each man underwent trial.
Quelele now gave an order which brought all the men of the village and great-house into line of which he was the head. Even the musicians were replaced by squaws who did not permit the drubbing and squeaking to diminish. The faces of all wore the set look of hypnosis—eyes white and staring, muscles twittering in cheeks, tongues licking out over dried lips.
Thrut-t-t-t-t! An extra flourish of the rasping sticks and a thunder of the water drums as Quelele started the line forward toward the kettle. The big Indian moved with a mincing sidewise step reminiscent of some deer-dance of his people at the festival of sahuaro. His arms were held rigidly crooked at elbows and fingers splayed. The great moon face was contorted into a lolling mask. He sweat with fear.
Twice the lightning-like bobbing out and back of the imprisoned cock’s head as Quelele approached. “Ai-ie!” a squaw screamed in a frenzy.
The leader touched the kettle, held up his blackened finger for those in line behind him to see, then broke from line and stood at a little distance from Benicia and the two white men.
Second in line was the ancient with the yucca rattles on his legs. Coming to the kettle, he stood rigid, tilted his old eyes to the blinding sun. A shiver ran down his body which caused every dry pod of his anklets to emit a whisper. He whirled once, dipped and swept a finger through the soot. “Njo oovik (Bird speaking),” he cried, and there was foam on his lips.
But the bird did not speak, and the line came slowly on. The spell of the weird had Grant bound. The rational in him tried to prompt that all this was but a shrewd application of the new psychological method of crime detection as utilized by primitive peoples before ever the science of the mind was thought of; but his imagination strained to hear the crowing of the cock when the finger of guilt was laid upon the iron shell. Mutter of the drums, shuffle of dancing feet, guttural calls and imprecations: these things had swept away all prim gauds and dressings of a mind counting itself superior and he was swept back to kinship with the wild, its children. Again the desert moved to bring him under its subjection.
“Lookit that fellah!” It was Bim who gripped Grant’s arm and pointed to the advancing line. One of the younger bucks had dodged out of his place and fallen back three numbers.