have been hard to have obeyed. But no — she was not a Wolf-woman! What was she? Into my mind came a Uighur word, an ancient word that I had not blown I knew. She was the Salur’da — the Witch-woman. And with it came angry resentment of her summons. Who was she — the Salur’da — to command me! Me, Dwayanu, who in olden time long forgot would have had her whipped with scorpions for such insolence!
I raised myself high above the white water.
“Back to your den, Salur’da!” I shouted. “Does Dwayanu come to your call? When I summon you, then see that you obey!”
She stared at me, stark amazement in her eyes; the strong arm that held the girl relaxed so that the captive almost dropped from the mare’s high pommel. I struck out across the water to the farther shore.
I heard the Witch-woman whistle. The falcon circling round my head screamed, and flew. I heard the white wolves snarling; I heard the thud of the black mare’s hoofs racing over the blue sward. I reached the bank and climbed it. Only then did I turn. Witch-woman, falcon and white wolves — all of them were gone.
Across my wake the emerald-headed, emerald-crested serpents swam and swirled and dived.
The golden pygmies had climbed upon the bank.
Jim asked:
“What did you say to her?”
“The Witch-woman comes to my call — not I to hers,” I answered, and wondered as I did so what it was that compelled the words.
“Still very much — Dwayanu, aren’t you, Leif? What touched the trigger on you this time?”
“I don’t know.” The inexplicable resentment against the woman was still strong, and, because I could not understand it, irritating to a degree. “She ordered me to come back, and a little fire-cracker went off in my brain. Then I— I seemed to know her for what she is, and that her command was rank insolence. I told her so. She was no more surprised by what I said than I am. It was like someone else speaking. It was like —”
I hesitated —“well, it was like when I started that cursed ritual and couldn’t stop.”
He nodded, then began to put on his clothes. I followed suit. They were soaking wet. The pygmies watched us wriggle into them with frank amazement. I noticed that the angry red around the wound on the little man’s breast had paled, and that while the wound itself was raw, it was not deep and had already begun to heal. I looked at my own hand; the red had almost disappeared, and only a slight tenderness betrayed where the nectar had touched it.
When we had laced our boots, the golden pygmies trotted off, away from the river toward a line of cliffs about a mile ahead. The vaporous green light half hid them, as it had wholly hidden our view to the north when we had first looked over the valley. For half the distance the ground was level and covered with the blue flowered grass. Then ferns began, steadily growing higher. We came upon a trail little wider than a deer path which threaded into a greater brake. Into this we turned.
We had eaten nothing since early morning, and I thought regretfully of the pack I had left behind. However, it is my training to eat heartily when I can, and philosophically go without when I must. So I tightened my belt and glanced back at Jim, close upon my heels.
“Hungry?” I asked.
“No. Too busy thinking.”
“Indian — what brought the red-headed beauty back?”
“The wolves. Didn’t you hear them howling after her? They found our track and gave her the signal.”
“I thought so — but it’s incredible! Hell — then she is a Witch-woman.”
“Not because of that. You’re forgetting your Mowgli and the Grey Companions. Wolves aren’t hard to train. But she’s a Witch-woman, nevertheless. Don’t hold back Dwayanu when you deal with her, Leif.”
The little drums again began to beat. At first only a few, then steadily more and more until there were scores of them. This time the cadences were lilting, gay, tapping out a dancing rhythm that lifted all weariness. They did not seem far away. But now the ferns were high over our heads and impenetrable to the sight, and the narrow path wove in and out among them like a meandering stream
The pygmies hastened their pace. Suddenly the trail came out of the ferns, and the pair halted. In front of us the ground sloped sharply upward for three or four hundred feet. The slope, except where the path ran, was covered from bottom to top with a tangle of thick green vines studded along all their lengths with wicked three-inch thorns; a living chaweux-de-frise which no living creature would penetrate. At the end of the path was a squat tower of stone, and from this came the glint of spear-heads.
In the tower a shrill-voiced drum chattered an unmistakable alarm. Instantly the lilting drums were silent. The same shrill chatter was taken up and repeated from point to point, diminishing in the far distance; and now I saw that the slope was like an immense circular fortification, curving far out toward the unbroken palisade of the giant ferns, and retreating at our right toward the sheer wall of black cliff, far away. Everywhere upon it was the thicket of thorn.
The little man twittered to his woman, and walked up the trail toward the tower. He was met by other pygmies streaming out of it. The little woman stayed with us, nodding and smiling and patting our knees reassuringly.
Another drum, or a trio of them, began to beat from the tower. I thought there were three because their burden was on three different notes, soft, caressing, yet far-carrying. They sang a word, a name, those drums, as plainly as though they had lips, the name I had heard in the trilling of the pygmies . . . .
Ev-ah-lee . . . Ev-ah-lee . . . Ev-ah-lee . . . Over and over and over. The drums in the other towers were silent.
The little man beckoned us. We went forward, avoiding with difficulty the thorns. We came to the top of the path beside the small tower. A score of the little men stepped out and barred our way. None was taller than the one I had saved from the white flowers. All had the same golden skin, the same half-animal yellow eyes; like his, their hair was long and silky, floating almost to their tiny feet, They wore twisted loin-cloths of what appeared to be cotton; around their waists were broad girdles of silver, pierced like lace-work in intricate designs. Their spears were wicked weapons for all their apparent frailty, long-handled, hafted in some black wood, and with foot-deep points of red metal, and barbed like a muskalonge hook from tip to base. Swung on their backs were black bows with long arrows barbed in similar manner; and in their metal girdles were slender sickle-shaped knives of the red metal, like scimitars of gnomes.
They stood staring at us, like small children. They made me feel as Gulliver must have felt among the Liliputians. Also, there was that about them which gave me no desire to tempt them to use their weapons. They looked at Jim with curiosity and interest and with no trace of unfriendliness. They looked at me with little faces that grew hard and fierce. Only when their eyes roved to my yellow hair did I see wonder and doubt lighten suspicion — but they never dropped the points of the spears turned toward me.
Ev-ah-lee . . . Ev-ah-lee . . . Ev-ah-lee . . . sang the drums.
There was an answering roll from beyond, and they were silent.
I heard a sweet, low-pitched voice at the other side of the tower trilling the bird-like syllables of the Little People — And then — I saw Evalie.
Have you watched a willow
