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 go—whatever the hell she was?”
“Because I thought we’d have a better chance if I did than if I didn’t.” Graydon’s own wrath was rising. “I tell you that we’re up against something none of us knows anything about. And we’ve got just one chance of getting out of the mess. If I’d kept her here, we wouldn’t have even that chance.”
Dancret stooped, and picked up something from the ground, something that gleamed yellow in the firelight.
“Somet’ing funny is right, Soames,” he said. “Look at this!”
He handed the gleaming object over. It was a golden bracelet, and as Soames turned it over in his hand there was the green glitter of emeralds. It had been torn from Suarra’s arm, undoubtedly, in her struggle with Starrett.
“What that girl give you to let her go, Graydon, eh?” Dancret spat. “What she tell you, eh?”
Soames’s hand dropped to his automatic.
“She gave me nothing. I took nothing,” answered Graydon.
“I t’ink you damned liar,” said Dancret, viciously. “We get Starrett awake,” he turned to Soames. “We get him awake quick. I t’ink he tell us more about this, oui. A girl who wears stuff like this—and he lets her go! Lets her go when he knows there must be more where this come from—eh, Soames! Damned funny is right, eh? Come now, we see what Starrett tell us.”
Graydon watched them go into the tent. Soon Soames came out, went to a spring that bubbled up from among the trees; returned, with water.
Well, let them waken Starrett; let him tell them whatever he would. They would not kill him that night, of that he was sure. They believed that he knew too much. And in the morning—
What was hidden in the morning for them all?
That even now they were prisoners, Graydon was sure. Suarra’s warning not to leave the camp had been explicit. Since that tumult of the elfin horns, her swift vanishing and the silence that had followed, he no longer doubted that they had strayed, as she had said, within the grasp of some power as formidable as it was mysterious.
The silence? Suddenly it came to him that the night had become strangely still. There was no sound either of insect or bird, nor any stirring of the familiar after-twilight life of the wilderness.
The camp was besieged by silence!
He walked away through the algarrobas. There was a scant score of the trees. They stood like a little leafy island peak within the brush-covered savanna. They were great trees, every one of them, and set with a curious regularity; as though they had not sprung up by chance; as though indeed they had been carefully planted.
Graydon reached the last of them, rested a hand against a bole that was like myriads of tiny grubs turned to soft brown wood. He peered out. The slope that lay before him was flooded with moonlight; the yellow blooms of the chilca shrubs that pressed to the very feet of the trees shone wanly in the silver flood. The faintly aromatic fragrance of the quenuar stole around him. Movement or sign of life there was none.
And yet—
The spaces seemed filled with watchers. He felt their gaze upon him. He knew that some hidden host girdled the camp. He scanned every bush and shadow—and saw nothing. The certainty of a hidden, unseen multitude persisted. A wave of nervous irritation passed through him. He would force them, whatever they were, to show themselves.
He stepped out boldly into the full moonlight.
On the instant the silence intensified. It seemed to draw taut, to lift itself up whole octaves of stillnesses. It became alert, expectant—as though poised to spring upon him should he take one step further.
A coldness wrapped him, and he shuddered. He drew swiftly back to the shadow of the trees; stood there, his heart beating furiously. The silence lost its poignancy, drooped back upon its haunches—watchful.
What had frightened him? What was there in that tightening of the stillness that had touched him with the finger of nightmare terror? He groped back, foot by foot, afraid to turn his face from the silence. Behind him the fire flared. His fear dropped from him.
His reaction from his panic was a heady recklessness. He threw a log upon the fire and laughed as the sparks shot up among the leaves. Soames, coming out of the tent for more water, stopped as he heard that laughter and scowled at him malevolently.
“Laugh,” he said. “Laugh while you can. Maybe you’ll laugh on the other side of your mouth when we get Starrett up and he tells us what he knows.”
“That was a sound sleep I gave him, anyway,” jeered Graydon.
“There are sounder sleeps. Don’t forget it,” Dancret’s voice, cold and menacing came from the tent.
Graydon turned his back to the tent, and deliberately faced that silence from which he had just fled. He seated himself, and after awhile he dozed.
He awakened with a jump. Halfway between him and the tent Starrett was charging on him like a madman, bellowing.
Graydon leaped to his feet, but before he could defend himself the giant was upon him. The next moment he was down, overborne by sheer weight. The big adventurer crunched a knee into his arm and gripped his throat.
“Let her go, did you!” he roared. “Knocked me out and then let her go! Here’s where you go, too, damn you!”
Graydon tried to break the grip on his throat. His lungs labored; there was a deafening roaring in his ears, and flecks of crimson began to dance across his vision. Starrett was strangling him. Through fast dimming sight he saw two black shadows leap through the firelight and clutch the strangling hands.
The fingers relaxed. Graydon staggered up. A dozen paces away stood Starrett. Dancret, arms around his knees, was hanging to him like a little terrier. Beside him was Soames, the barrel of his automatic pressed against his stomach.
“Why don’t you let me kill him!” raved Starrett. “Didn’t I tell you the girl had enough green ice on her to set us up the rest of our lives? There’s more where it came from! And he let her go! Let her go, the—”
Again his curses flowed.
“Now look here, Starrett,” Soames’s voice was deliberate. “You be quiet, or I’ll do for you. We ain’t goin’ to let this thing get by us, me and Dancret. We ain’t goin’ to let this double-crossin’ louse do us, and we ain’t goin’ to let you spill the beans by killin’ him. We’ve struck somethin’ big. All right, we’re goin’ to cash in on it. We’re goin’ to sit down peaceable, and Mister Graydon is goin’ to tell us what happened after he put you out, what dicker he made with the girl and all of that. If he won’t do it peaceable, then Mister Graydon is goin’ to have things done to him that’ll make him give up. That’s all. Danc’, let go his legs. Starrett, if you kick up any more trouble until I give the word I’m goin’ to shoot you. From now on I boss this crowd—me and Danc. You get me, Starrett?”
Graydon, head once more clear, slid a cautious hand down toward the pistol holster.
