Otomie herself took a share in the toil, an
example that was followed by every lady and indeed by every woman in
the city, and there were many of them, for the women outnumbered the men
among the Otomie, and moreover not a few of them had been made widows on
that same day.
It was a strange sight to see them in the glare of hundreds of torches
split from the resin pine that gave its name to the city, as all night
long they moved to and fro in lines, each of them staggering beneath the
weight of a basket of earth or a heavy stone, or dug with wooden spades
at the hard soil, or laboured at the pulling down of houses. They never
complained, but worked on sullenly and despairingly; no groan or tear
broke from them, no, not even from those whose husbands and sons had
been hurled that morning from the precipices of the pass. They knew that
resistance would be useless and that their doom was at hand, but no cry
arose among them of surrender to the Spaniards. Those of them who spoke
of the matter at all said with Otomie, that it was better to die free
than to live as slaves, but the most did not speak; the old and the
young, mother, wife, widow, and maid, they laboured in silence and the
children laboured at their sides.
Looking at them it came into my mind that these silent patient women
were inspired by some common and desperate purpose, that all knew of,
but which none of them chose to tell.
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