Even now the burden of that chant with the vision of those who sang it sometimes haunts my sleep at night, but I will not write it here.  Let him who reads imagine all that is most cruel in the heart of man, and every terror of the evillest dream, adding to these some horror-ridden tale of murder, ghosts, and inhuman vengeance; then, if he can, let him shape the whole in words and, as in a glass darkly, perchance he may mirror the spirit of that last ancient song of the women of the Otomie, with its sobs, its cries of triumph, and its death wailings.

Ever as they sang, step by step they drew backwards, and with them went the leaders of each company, their eyes fixed upon the statues of their gods.  Now they were but a segment of a circle, for they did not advance towards the temple; backward and outward they went with a slow and solemn tramp.  There was but one line of them now, for those in the second ring filled the gaps in the first as it widened; still they drew on till at length they stood on the sheer edge of the platform.  Then the priests and the women leaders took their place among them and for a moment there was silence, until at a signal one and all they bent them backwards.  Standing thus, their long hair waving on the wind, the light of burning houses flaring upon their breasts and in their maddened eyes, they burst into the cry of: 

‘Save us, Huitzel!  Receive us, lord god, our home!’

Thrice they cried it, each time more shrilly than before, then suddenly they were gone, the women of the Otomie were no more!

With their own self-slaughter they had consummated the last celebration of the rites of sacrifice that ever shall be held in the City of Pines.  The devil gods were dead and their worshippers with them.

A low murmur ran round the lips of the men who watched, then one cried, and his voice rang strangely in the sudden silence:  ’May our wives, the women of the Otomie, rest softly in the Houses of the Sun, for of a surety they teach us how to die.’

‘Ay,’ I answered, ’but not thus.  Let women do self-murder, our foes have swords for the hearts of men.’

I turned to go, and before me stood Otomie.

‘What has befallen?’ she said.  ’Where are my sisters?  Oh! surely I have dreamed an evil dream.  I dreamed that the gods of my forefathers were strong once more, and that once more they drank the blood of men.’

‘Your ill dream has a worse awakening, Otomie,’ I answered.  ’The gods of hell are still strong indeed in this accursed land, and they have taken your sisters into their keeping.’

‘Is it so?’ she said softly, ’yet in my dream it seemed to me that this was their last strength ere they sink into death unending.  Look yonder!’ and she pointed toward the snowy crest of the volcan Xaca.

I looked, but whether I saw the sight of which I am about to tell or whether it was but an imagining born of the horrors of that most hideous night, in truth I cannot say.  At the least I seemed to see this, and afterwards there were some among the Spaniards who swore that they had witnessed it also.