Bringing up their pieces of ordnance, the Spaniards set them within little more than an hundred paces of the gates, and began to batter us with iron shot at their leisure, for our spears and arrows could scarcely harm them at such a distance.
Still we were not idle, for seeing that the wooden gates must soon be down, we demolished houses on either side of them and filled up the roadway with stones and rubbish.
At the rear of the heap thus formed I caused a great trench to be dug, which could not be passed by horsemen and ordnance till it was filled in again.
All along the main street leading to the great square of the teocalli I threw up other barricades, protected in the front and rear by dykes cut through the roadway, and in case the Spaniards should try to turn our flank and force a passage through the narrow and tortuous lanes to the right and left, I also barricaded the four entrances to the great square or market place.
Till nightfall the Spaniards bombarded the shattered remains of the gates and the earthworks behind them, doing no great damage beyond the killing of about a score of people by cannon shot and arquebuss balls.
But they attempted no assault that day.
At length the darkness fell and their fire ceased, but not so our labours.
Most of the men must guard the gates and the weak spots in the walls, and therefore the building of the barricades was left chiefly to the women, working under my command and that of my captains.
Otomie herself took a share in the toil, an example that was followed by every lady and indeed by every woman in the city, and there were many of them, for the women outnumbered the men among the Otomie, and moreover not a few of them had been made widows on that same day.
It was a strange sight to see them in the glare of hundreds of torches split from the resin pine that gave its name to the city, as all night long they moved to and fro in lines, each of them staggering beneath the weight of a basket of earth or a heavy stone, or dug with wooden spades at the hard soil, or laboured at the pulling down of houses.
They never complained, but worked on sullenly and despairingly; no groan or tear broke from them, no, not even from those whose husbands and sons had been hurled that morning from the precipices of the pass.
They knew that resistance would be useless and that their doom was at hand, but no cry arose among them of surrender to the Spaniards.
Those of them who spoke of the matter at all said with Otomie, that it was better to die free than to live as slaves, but the most did not speak; the old and the young, mother, wife, widow, and maid, they laboured in silence and the children laboured at their sides.
Looking at them it came into my mind that these silent patient women were inspired by some common and desperate purpose, that all knew of, but which none of them chose to tell.
‘Will you work so hard for your masters the Teules?’ cried a man in bitter mockery, as a file of them toiled past beneath their loads of stone.
‘Fool!’ answered their leader, a young and lovely lady of rank; ‘do the dead labour?’
‘Nay,’ said this ill jester, ‘but such as you are too fair for the Teules to kill, and your years of slavery will be many.
Say, how shall you escape them?’
‘Fool!’ answered the lady again, ‘does fire die from lack of fuel only, and must every man live till age takes him?
We shall escape them thus,’ and casting down the torch she carried, she trod it into the earth with her sandal, and went on with her load.
Then I was sure that they had some purpose, though I did not guess how desperate it was, and Otomie would tell me nothing of this woman’s secret.
‘Otomie,’ I said to her that night, when we met by chance,
‘I have ill news for you.’
‘It must be bad indeed, husband, to be so named in such an hour,’ she answered.
‘De Garcia is among our foes.’
‘I knew it, husband.’
‘How did you know it?’
‘By the hate written in your eyes,’ she answered.
‘It seems that his hour of triumph is at hand,’ I said.
‘Nay, beloved, not HIS but YOURS.
You shall triumph over de Garcia, but victory will cost you dear.
I know it in my heart; ask me not how or why.
See, the Queen puts on her crown,’ and she pointed to the volcan Xaca, whose snows grew rosy with the dawn, ‘and you must go to the gate, for the Spaniards will soon be stirring.’
As Otomie spoke I heard a trumpet blare without the walls. Hurrying to the gates by the first light of day, I could see that the Spaniards were mustering their forces for attack.
They did not come at once, however, but delayed till the sun was well up.
Then they began to pour a furious fire upon our defences, that reduced the shattered beams of the gates to powder, and even shook down the crest of the earthwork beyond them.
Suddenly the firing ceased and again a trumpet called.
Now they charged us in column, a thousand or more Tlascalans leading the van, followed by the Spanish force.
In two minutes I, who awaited them beyond it together with some three hundred warriors of the Otomie, saw their heads appear over the crest of the earthwork, and the fight began.
Thrice we drove them back with our spears and arrows, but at the fourth charge the wave of men swept over our defence, and poured into the dry ditch beyond.
Now we were forced to fly to the next earthwork, for we could not hope to fight so many in the open street, whither, so soon as a passage had been made for their horse and ordnance, the enemy followed us.
Here the fight was renewed, and this barricade being very strong, we held it for hard upon two hours with much loss to ourselves and to the Spanish force.
Again we retreated and again we were assailed, and so the struggle went on throughout the live-long day.
Every hour our numbers grew fewer and our arms fainter, but still we fought on desperately.
At the two last barricades, hundreds of the women of the Otomie fought by the sides of their husbands and their brothers.
The last earthwork was captured by the Spaniards just as the sun sank, and under the shadow of approaching darkness those of us that remained alive fled to the refuge which we had prepared upon the teocalli, nor was there any further fighting during that night.
CHAPTER XXXV
THE LAST SACRIFICE OF THE WOMEN OF THE OTOMIE
Here in the courtyard of the teocalli, by the light of burning houses, for as they advanced the Spaniards fired the town, we mustered our array to find that there were left to us in all some four hundred fighting men, together with a crowd of nearly two thousand women and many children.
Now although this teocalli was not quite so lofty as that of the great temple of Mexico, its sides were steeper and everywhere faced with dressed stone, and the open space upon its summit was almost as great, measuring indeed more than a hundred paces every way.