Page:The Mastering of Mexico.djvu/300

262 the town was one among many and the land about it produced plenty of maize, and we had allies, the Tlaxcalans, to guard the frontier, we founded a town at Tepeaca and set up a regular government. We scoured the neighboring territory, and at one town where fifteen Spaniards had been killed, we turned many into slaves. We cast an iron to brand those we took for slaves, and its mark was the letter G, which means guerra, war. Within forty days we had all the towns punished and thoroughly at peace.

The successor of Montezuma, he who had driven us out of Mexico, about this time died of smallpox. Another now came to the headship, a near relative of Montezuma, about twenty-five years old, for an Indian very well-bred and more inclined to white than to the copper-brown of his race. The new monarch was valiant, moreover, and soon made himself so feared among his people that, in his presence, they trembled. His wife, one of Montezuma's daughters, passed for a beauty among her country-women.

When this new ruler learned that we had defeated the Mexicans at Tepeaca, and that the people of the town had given their fealty to our king, he feared that we would overrun his other provinces and reduce them to our service, and he therefore sent messengers to every town with commands that they be