Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 3 (1925-03).djvu/105

104 shouted to one another, and their voices were shrill with fear. The encampment below was in an uproar. There was a great explosion and half the wall fell into the passageway!

"Fight, you soldiers without shame," cried the general, "for there is no retreat!"

As he danced up and down upon the rock I knew that I gazed upon the figure of a man beside himself, a man who had gone crazy with the lust to kill.

a red glare lighted the scene. Some frenzied fool had fired the woods inside the amphitheater! Great columns of flame leapt up above the crests of the cliffs. The fire spread with the speed of the wind. No one seemed to notice the danger at first, for the two opposing forces were at handgrips below me, fighting with tooth and nail, with rifles and machetes, to the very death. Shrieks of the dying smote my ears, hoarse shouts of men filled with the lust for blood. The tide of battle surged in my direction. I saw the top of one man's head leap into the air as a 50-70 bullet made a direct hit. I saw another man get hit in the leg, and the shot fractured the bone until it protruded through his ragged trousers. Yet he hopped on his right leg, with the broken one swinging grotesquely and getting in his way, straight toward the man who had shot him. He came to close quarters and decapitated his enemy with one stroke of his machete. The falling man's rifle discharged as he fell and I saw the killer double up with a bullet in his stomach. He rolled over on his back, and the head of the man he had killed rolled up against that of the killer, both faces in plain view of where I sat. I gasped in horror. These two were brothers! The family likeness was unmistakable!

For fifteen minutes the battle eddied and swirled at my feet. The general who had planned the bloody coup danced up and down in frenzy on the rock beside me. He even jumped upon me and all I felt was a cool breeze against my cheek! The fire grew by leaps and bounds. Then the blood-hungry fighters saw and knew their danger.

"Fuego! Fuego!" came the cries from all sides.

The opposing forces forgot their enmity in the common danger. As one man they looked toward the passageway and saw that it was hopeless. The walls were practically out of the question, even had there been time. Friend and enemy huddled together, a blood-stained group in the center of the Desert of the Dead.

The fire was upon them.

Four men leapt to their feet and hurried away toward the western wall. I watched them begin the ascent. Watched breathlessly as four ragged figures fought their way upward. Three of them gained the summit and fled into the mountains, crazed with pain and terror, beating the fire from their garments as they ran—straight into the west, where there was no hope of rescue at all. They had only prolonged their doom. The flames caught the fourth man halfway up the cliff. A hungry tongue of fire seized his garments and enveloped him. He shrieked in terrible agony. His feet lost their footing, but his hands clung with the strength of despair. He died there, with his last shrieks ringing in my ears long after they had ceased. The human torch grew dim at last and died out. But the fingers still clung, holding that charred thing suspended against the face of the cliff.

Up to my nostrils came the odor of burning flesh—smarting, stinging, horrible. Shrieks, moans, prayers.

"Ai Dios mio! Padre de nosotros! Imagen de los Santos! Virgen de Altagracia!"