Would the Red Ponchos follow? No, they did not move. She was watching them now, with her whole soul. They were still there, motionless, ready to spring to her rescue when the hall was empty, ready to carry her to the horses that must be waiting. The Dead One at all events could do nothing to prevent it.
There were only twenty Indians left in the hall now... only five... four... three.... They turned slowly at the doorway to look at her again... She sat motionless, rigid.... She must not move unless the Dead One moved.... Only the four Red Ponchos remained....
She half screamed.... They also had risen, pacing slowly toward the doors.
It could not be! They could not be deserting her! But they were going away like the others, without looking in her direction. No, she must not scream... she must wait patiently... wait for a sign. Still walking slowly, three of them had gone to the three doors, but the fourth, Dick, turned suddenly, his finger on his lips.
Forgetting Huascar’s words, Maria-Teresa half rose in her seat. There was a revolver in Dick’s fist now, and her father had vanished through one of the doors, looking to make sure that the courtyard was deserted. Then his voice gave the signal:--“Recuerda!” (Remember!) Dick dashed up the porphyry steps, Don Christobal following, while the two others remained at the doors.
Dick stretched out his hands to take little Christobal, and Maria-Teresa had risen, when a terrible whistling sound filled the hall, and the two prisoners, shrieking, were hurled back into the seat by the monstrous folds of a huge serpent which seemed to spring into life about them, binding them down to the throne of Death. The serpent of the House of the Serpent had come to claim his prey.
Raising his revolver, Dick thundered at the hideous head towering above them, whistling with wide-open jaws, and tore at the coils which imprisoned his fiancée. His hands fell, not on living flesh, but on hard, cold metal; copper rings which ground one against the other, overlapped, and drew tighter. It was in vain that he and Don Christobal tore at them with furious hands.
“Look out! They are coming!” shouted Natividad from the doorway, and the hall was invaded by Indians, while the Serpent shrieked stridently, and a thousand rattles seemed to sound the alarm. The Marquis still tore at the coils that were choking his children, but Dick, hesitating a moment, dashed down the stairs. In a twinkling, the hall was full of Indians, priests, caciques, mammaconas, scores of Quichua soldiers from the train of Oviedo Runtu, who alone remained invisible.