The Face in the Abyss | Page 2

and irritable. Soames seemed to have come to the conclusion that Starrett, Graydon and Dancret had combined against him; that they had either deliberately missed the trail or had erased the signs. Only when the pair of them joined Starrett and drank with him the Quicha brew with which they had laden one of the burros did the three relax. At such times Graydon had the uneasy feeling that all were holding the failure against him, and that his life might be hanging on a thin thread.
The day that Graydon's great adventure really began, he was on his way back to the camp. He had been hunting since morning. Dancret and Soames had gone off together on another desperate search for the missing marks.
Cut off in mid-flight, the girl's cry came to him as the answer to all his apprehensions; materialization of the menace toward which his vague fears had been groping since he had left Starrett alone at the camp, hours ago. He had sensed some culminating misfortune close--and here it was! He broke into a run, stumbling up the slope to the group of gray-green algarrobas, where the tent was pitched.
He crashed through the thick undergrowth to the clearing.
Why didn't the girl cry out again, he wondered. A chuckle reached him, thick, satyr-toned.
Half crouching, Starrett was holding the girl bow fashion over one knee. A thick arm was clenched about her neck, the fingers clutching her mouth brutally, silencing her; his right hand fettered her wrists; her knees were caught in the vise of his bent right leg.
Graydon caught him by the hair, and locked his arm under his chin. He drew his head sharply back.
"Drop her!" he ordered.
Half paralyzed, Starrett relaxed--he writhed, then twisted to his feet.
"What the hell are you butting in for?"
His hand struck down toward his pistol. Graydon's fist caught him on the point of the jaw. The half-drawn gun slipped to the ground and Starrett toppled over.
The girl leaped up, and away.
Graydon did not look after her. She had gone, no doubt, to bring down upon them her people, some tribe of the fierce Aymara whom even the Incas of old had never quite conquered. And who would avenge her in ways that Graydon did not like to visualize.
He bent over Starrett. Between the blow and the drink he would probably be out for some time. Graydon picked up the pistol. He wished that Dancret and Soames would get back soon to camp. The three of them could put up a good fight at any rate... might even have a chance to escape... but they would have to get back quickly... the girl would soon return with her avengers... was probably at that moment telling them of her wrongs. He turned--
She stood there, looking at him.
Drinking in her loveliness, Graydon forgot the man at his feet--forgot all else.
Her skin was palest ivory. It gleamed through the rents of the soft amber fabric, like thickest silk, which swathed her. Her eyes were oval, a little tilted, Egyptian in the wide midnight of her pupils. Her nose was small and straight; her brows level and black, almost meeting. Her hair was cloudy, jet, misty and shadowed. A narrow fillet of gold bound her low broad forehead. In it was entwined a sable and silver feather of the caraquenque--that bird whose plumage in lost centuries was sacred to the princesses of the Incas alone.
Above her elbows were golden bracelets, reaching almost to the slender shoulders. Her little high-arched feet were shod with high buskins of deerskin. She was lithe and slender as the Willow Maid who waits on Kwannon when she passes through the World of Trees pouring into them new fire of green life.
She was no Indian... nor daughter of ancient Incas ... nor was she Spanish... she was of no race that he knew. There were bruises on her cheeks--the marks of Star rett's fingers. Her long, slim hands touched them. She spoke--in the Aymara tongue.
"Is he dead?"
"No," Graydon answered.
In the depths of her eyes a small, hot flame flared; he could have sworn it was of gladness.
"That is well! I would not have him die--" her voice became meditative--"at least--not this way."
Starrett groaned. The girl again touched the bruises on her cheek.
"He is very strong," she murmured.
Graydon thought there was admiration in her whisper; wondered whether all her beauty was, after all, only a mask for primitive woman worshiping brute strength. "Who are you?" he asked.
She looked at him for a long, long moment.
"I am--Suarra," she answered, at last.
"But where do you come from? What are you?" he asked again. She did not choose to answer these questions.
"Is he your enemy?"
"No," he said. "We travel together."
"Then why--" she pointed again to the outstretched figure--"why did you do this to him? Why did you