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Page 54
"High Jack's ethnology gets the upper hand of his rum for a minute,
and he investigates the inscription.
"'Hunky,' says he, 'this is a statue of Tlotopaxl, one of the most
powerful gods of the ancient Aztecs.'
"'Glad to know him,' says I, 'but in his present condition he reminds
me of the joke Shakespeare got off on Julius Caesar. We might say
about your friend:
"'Imperious what's-his-name, dead and tunied to stone--
No use to write or call him on the 'phone.'
"'Hunky,' says High Jack Snakefeeder, looking at me funny, 'do you
believe in reincarnation?'
"'It sounds to me,' says I, 'like either a clean-up of the slaughter-
houses or a new kind of Boston pink. I don't know.'
"'I believe,' says he, 'that I am the reincarnation of Tlotopaxl. My
researches have convinced me that the Cherokees, of all the North
American tribes, can boast of the straightest descent from the proud
Aztec race. That,' says he, 'was a favorite theory of mine and
Florence Blue Feather's. And she--what' if she--!'
"High Jack grabs my arm and walls his eyes at me. Just then he looked
more like his eminent co-Indian murderer, Crazy Horse.
"'Well,' says I, 'what if she, what if she, what if she? You're
drunk,' says I. 'Impersonating idols and believing in--what was it ?-
-recarnalization? Let's have a drink,' says I. 'It's as spooky here
as a Brooklyn artificial-limb factory at midnight with the gas turned
down.'
"Just then I heard somebody coming, and I dragged High Jack into the
bedless bedchamber. There was peep-holes bored through the wall, so
we could see the whole front part of the temple.
Major Bing told me afterward that the ancient priests in charge used
to rubber through them at the congregation.
"In a few minutes an old Indian woman came in with a' big oval earthen
dish full of grub. She set it on a square block of stone in front of
the graven image, and laid down and walloped her face on the floor a
few times, and then took a walk for herself.
"High Jack and me was hungry, so we came out and looked it over.
There was goat steaks and fried rice-cakes, and plantains and cassava,
and broiled land-crabs and mangoes--nothing like what you get at
Chubb's.
"We ate hearty--and had another round of rum.
"'It must be old Tecumseh's--or whatever you call him--birthday,' says
I. 'Or do they feed him every day? I thought gods only drank vanilla
on Mount Catawampus.'
"Then some more native parties in short kimonos that showed their
aboriginees punctured the near-horizon, and me and High had to skip
back into Father Axletree's private boudoir. They came by ones, twos,
and threes, and left all sorts of offerings--there was enough grub for
Bingham's nine gods of war, with plenty left over for the Peace
Conference at The Hague. They brought jars of honey, and bunches of
bananas, and bottles of wine, and stacks of tortillas, and beautiful
shawls worth one hundred dollars apiece that the Indian women weave of
a kind of vegetable fibre like silk. All of 'em got down and wriggled
on the floor in front of that hard-finish god, and then sneaked off
through the woods again.
"'I wonder who gets this rake-off?' remarks High Jack.
"'Oh,' says I, 'there's priests or deputy idols or a committee of
disarrangements somewhere in the woods on the job. Wherever you find
a god you'll find somebody waiting to take charge of the burnt
offerings.'
"And then we took another swig of rum and walked out to the parlor
front door to cool off, for it was as hot inside as a summer camp on
the Palisades.
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