Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 189, No. 4 — page 105: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE SUN TEST. | the council were standing, three on each side of the stone slab with the chief at its foot. At the head stood Za in full regalia of jewels and huitzin. Her complexion seemed more brilliant than he-had ever seen it before, and on a second look he discovered that her cheeks and lips had been painted with vermilion. The tips of her fingers also, and her toes were similarly rouged. It added a fiery note of ornate splendor to the scene in which she was the most brilliant figure. The guards had Black Pete by the side of the stone slab. From the opposite side facile hands swiftly spread on top of the stone, layer after layer of dried twigs, brit- tle as punk. On top of these transversely were laid a dozen dried tree branches. Over them were then sprinkled handful after handful of dried grass until a couch was formed with its top just above a man’s waist. The chief nodded and four of the guards seized Black Pete, one at each limb, and lifted him on to this couch where he lay sprawling and struggling on his back while they lashed him down securely, leaving nothing free but his head. Tench was now horribly fascinated. The meaning of the wooden couch on top of the stone slab with its sinister dried grass dawned on him. Was it a pyre? Was he about to witness the burning of a human being? He was afflicted with a sick dread of what appeared to be about to happen, and he be- gan to cast around in his mind for some way to prevent it, but the event rolled on so swiftly that he was spellbound, and it was practically over before he realized how it happened, or even fully that it was going to happen. He saw the chief sprinkle from a gourd at his waist some grains of what looked like powder, along the edge of the stone slab. He saw another place at the head of the slab a piece of rock. Then he saw Za take from her breast the largest of the jewels, detach it from its leather holdings and place it on top of the small rock. | She then raised her hands upward and looked full-eyed into the sun, while she ut- tered a prayer, which he could only hear O15 indistinctly, so fearful was he of what was to come, and so wild was his desire to dis- cover some way to prevent it. It was now high noon, the sun was at his zenith, directly overhead, and in the full force of late June. Its rays were vertical and all powerful. Tench sat as if stunned and in what seemed to him a mere second of time al- though perhaps minutes elapsed, he saw a thin wisp of smoke come from beneath the small rock which held the polished jewel. A moment later a tiny flame spread to the dried grass. The day was dead and still. The grass was like tinder. It crackled into flame almost instantly. The flame spread to the dried branches, and in a moment the pyre was alight and blazing. The whole tribe looked on silent, awed, but devouring the spectacle with religious, savage glee. They were suffering vicariously with the already burning flesh of the white criminal, and this suffering was part of their sincere devotion to their god. Cries of terrible anguish rent the air from the doomed desperado. He writhed and struggled, but he was bound securely, and as the flames began to scorch his body, his screams could have been heard perhaps miles away. Tench could not distinguish half that he said, but out of it one phrase pierced his numb consciousness. ‘‘ Kid, save me!” wailed Black Pete. ‘‘ The Injun beasts is roastin’ me to hell!” Tench could endure no more. This plea was enough. Not only was it from a human being in extreme pain, but it came from an- other white man. However degraded and defiled, however unworthy and remiss, Pete was still human, and still white. Tench forgot the precariousness of his own situa- tion, forgot everything except the poignant appeal of that piercing cry. ‘Coming, Pete!” he cried, and precip- itating himself down the sides of the stadi- um, pushing his way through the aston- ished Mayans until his foot was on the sec- ond of the three steps leading to the pyre. He felt the heat of the flames as the guards seized him. “Quick, kid, or I’m done for,” roared the sizzling Pete. Tench could not see the vic- Gomichooks (E@)