Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 3 (1925-03).djvu/102



N SANTO DOMINGO any native will tell you, at great length, tales of the glories of dead and gone Dominican heroes. They will tell you of the bloody sack of Puerto Plato; of how a defeated general fled to Porto Rico without telling his army in the north that his cause had been lost, leaving them to fight on with the loss of a thousand souls when there was really no need of fighting; of how another general captured Macoris without firing a shot, of how, compelling his fighters to strip to their naked hides, he caused each man to be smeared with oil and armed with two machetes. They went into Macoris after nightfall, slipping through the streets like ghosts. Encountering another person in the pitch darkness, the fighter knew at once whether that person were friend or foe—if he felt a body greasy like unto his own, he moved on with a grunt of recognition, but if he encountered the feel of cloth his machete struck swiftly, viciously, and in silence, except for the crunch of bones.

All these stories, and many others, will the natives tell you; but if you ask them how the Desert of the Dead acquired its name they will cross themselves hurriedly and flee from you as if from a living plague. The more ignorant ones will make signs behind your back and scratch crosses in the dusty prints where your feet have trodden. You have asked a question that no one will answer, for the subject is taboo.

But, from a few words I had heard here and there among the better educated Dominicans, I pieced together a tale of how the place had come to be so named—a tale of a struggle in which brother met brother, father met son, paternal uncles crossed machetes with fuzzy-chinned nephews, and of how all met their deaths together in a baptism of fire.

Desert of the Dead lies in the very heart of the Cordillera Central. It is a great hollow bowl, cliff-bordered, far back in the mountains westward from Basimo. This much I know, and the scraps of stories which I had heard had filled me with curiosity that would not be gainsaid. I resolved to visit this desert of grisly name. I sought far and wide for guides to lead the way. None could be found with the courage to accompany me.

So I took passage on a guagua which plied between Santo Domingo