The Face in the Abyss | Page 5

her arms, held white hands out to him.
"Now," she whispered, "now, by the Wisdom of the Mother, I will save you--if I can."
There was the sound of a horn, far away and high in air it seemed. It was answered by others closer by; mellow, questing notes--with weirdly alien beat in them.
"They come," the girl said. "My followers. Light your fire to-night. Sleep without fear. But do not wander beyond these trees."
"Suarra--"he began.
"Quiet now," she warned. "Quiet--until I am gone."
The mellow horns sounded closer. She sprang from his side and darted away through the trees. From the ridge above the camp he heard her voice raised in one clear shout There was a tumult of the horns about her--elfin and troubling. Then silence.
Graydon stood listening. The sun touched the high snowfields of the majestic peaks toward which he faced, touched them and turned them into robes of molten gold. The amethyst shadows that draped their sides thickened, wavered and marched swiftly forward.
Still he listened, hardly breathing.
Far, far away the horns sounded again; faint echoings of the tumult that had swept about the girl--faint, faint and fairy sweet.
The sun dropped behind the peaks; the edges of their frozen mantels glittered as though sewn with diamonds;
darkened into a fringe of gleaming rubies. The golden fields dulled, grew amber and then blushed forth a glowing rose. They changed to pearl and faded into a ghostly silver, shining like cloud wraiths in the highest heavens. Down upon the algarroba clump the quick Andean dusk fell.
Not till then did Graydon, shivering with sudden, inexplicable dread, realize that beyond the calling horns and the girl's clear shouting he had heard no other sound--no noise either of man or beast, no sweeping through of brush or grass, no fall of running feet,
Nothing but that mellow chorus of the horns.
CHAPTER II.
The Unseen Watchers
STAKRETT HAD DRIFTED out of the paralysis of the blow into a drunken stupor. Graydon dragged him over to the tent, thrust a knapsack under his head, and threw a blanket over him. Then he went out and built up the fire. There was a trampling through the underbrush. Soames and Dancret came up through the trees.
"Find any signs?" he asked.
"Signs? Hell--no!" snarled the New Englander. "Say, Graydon, did you hear somethin' like a lot of horns? Damned queer horns, too. They seemed to be over here."
Graydon nodded, he realized that he must tell these men what had happened so that they could prepare some defense. But how much could he tell?
Tell them of Suarra's beauty, of her golden ornaments and her gem-tipped spears of gold? Tell them what she had said of Atahualpa's treasure?
If he did, there would be no further reasoning with them. They would go berserk with greed. Yet something of it he must tell them if they were to be ready for the attack which he was certain would come with the dawn.
And of the girl they would learn soon enough from Starrett.
He heard an exclamation from Dancret who had passed on into the tent; heard him come out; stood up and faced the wiry little Frenchman.
"What's the matter wit' Starrett, eh?" Dancret snapped. "First I t'ought he's drunk. Then I see he's scratched like wildcat and wit' a lump on his jaw as big as one orange. What you do to Starrett, eh?"
Graydon had made up his mind, and was ready to answer. .
"Dancret," he said, "Soames--we're in a bad box. I came in from hunting less than an hour ago, and found Starrett wrestling with a girl. That's bad medicine down here--the worst, and you two know it. I had to knock Starrett out before I could get the girl away from him. Her people will probably be after us in the morning. There's no use trying to get away. We don't know a thing about this wilderness. Here is as good as any other place to meet them. We'd better spend the night getting it ready so we can put up a good scrap, if we have to."
"A girl, eh?" said Dancret. "What she look like? Where she come from? How she get away?"
Graydon chose the last question to answer.
"I let her go," he said. ^
"You let her go!" snarled Soames. "What the hell did you do that for? Why didn't you tie her up? We could have held her as a hostage, Graydon--had somethin' to do some tradin' with when her damned bunch of Indians came."
"She wasn't an Indian, Soames," said Graydon, then hesitated.
"You mean she was white--Spanish?" broke in Dancret, incredulously.
"No, not Spanish either. She was white. Yes, white as any of us. I don't know what she was."
The pair stared at him, then at each other.
"There's somethin' damned funny about this," growled Soames, at last "But what I want to know is why you let her