Last of the Incas: A Romance of the Pampas

The priests laid the unhappy wretch in the trough of the altar. He was a colonist made prisoner at the taking of Población del Sur; indeed the pulquero in whose shop the gauchos were accustomed to drink their chicha.

In the meanwhile Nocobotha trembled as if smitten with ague. He had a buzzing in his ears; his temples beat violently, and his eyes were suffused with blood. He supported himself on one of the arms of his chair.

"What is the matter?" Doña Concha asked him.

"I do not know," he answered; "the heat, the excitement, perhaps – I am stifling; I hope it will be nothing."

The unfortunate pulquero had been stripped of all his clothes, with the exception of his trousers, and he uttered heart-rending cries. The matchi approached him, brandishing his knife.

"Oh, it is frightful!" Doña Concha exclaimed, burying her face in her hands.

"Silence!" Nocobotha murmured; "It must be."

The matchi, insensible to the yells of the victim, selected the spot where he was to strike, looked at the day star with an inspired air, raised his knife, and laid open the pulquero's chest. Then, while the victim writhed in agony, and the priests collected the blood which poured in a stream, the matchi plucked out his heart, and held it up to the sun, like the host in Catholic churches.

At this moment all the Ulmens mounted the scaffold, and seating Nocobotha on the throne, raised him on their shoulders, shouting enthusiastically —

"Long live the new Emperor! Long live the Son of the Sun!"

The priests sprinkled the crowd with the blood of the victim, and the Indians filled the air with deafening shouts.

At length Nocobotha exclaimed, "I have restored the Empire of the Incas, and freed my race!"

"Not yet!" Doña Concha said to him, triumphantly. "Look!"

The gauchos, who had hitherto been impassive spectators of the ceremony, suddenly dashed at a gallop upon the defenceless Indians, while through all the streets poured Argentine troops, who had arrived from Buenos Aires, and all the windows were lined with white men, who fired at the mob. In the centre of the square could be recognized Don Sylvio d'Arenal, Blas Salazar Pedrito and his two brothers, who pitilessly massacred the Indians with shouts of "Exterminate the Pagans!"

"Oh!" Nocobotha exclaimed, brandishing his totem with a trembling hand, "What treachery!" He tried to fly to the help of his people, but he tottered and fell on his knees; his eyes were covered by an ensanguined mist; a devouring fire burnt his entrails. "What is the matter?" he asked himself in despair.

"You are dying, Don Torribio," Doña Concha whispered in his ear, as she seized his arm forcibly.

"Woman, you lie," he said, striving to rise. "I will help my brothers."

"Your brothers are being slaughtered; did you not mean to kill my father, my affianced husband, and myself? Die, villain! Die by a woman's hand! I love Don Sylvio – do you hear me? – And I am avenged."

"Woe, woe!" Nocobotha shrieked, dragging himself on his knees to the edge of the platform, "I am the murderer of a people I wished to save."

The Indians fell like ripe corn before the sickle of the reapers. It was no longer a combat, but a butchery. Several chiefs flying before Pedrito the capataz and Don Sylvio rushed to the platform as a last refuge.

"Oh!" Nocobotha howled, as he took a tiger bound and seized Don Sylvio by the throat, "I too will revenge myself."

There was a moment of terrible anxiety.

"No," the chief added, letting loose his enemy and falling back; "it would be cowardly, for this man has done me no injury."

Doña Concha, on hearing these words, could not restrain tears of admiration, tardy tears; tears of repentance, or of love, perhaps!

Pedrito fired his rifle into the chest of the chief, who was lying stretched out at his feet. At the same instant Pincheira fell, his head cleft asunder by Don Sylvio. Don Valentine struck by a straggling bullet, sank into his disconsolate daughter's arms.

"My God," Nocobotha murmured, "you will judge me!" He locked up to heaven, moved his lips again as if in prayer, and suddenly his countenance became radiant; he fell back and expired.

"Perhaps this man's cause was just," Doña Concha said, overwhelmed with remorse.

It is not the first time that a woman has, through the decree of Heaven, arrested a conqueror.

THE END