The Face in the Abyss. A. Merritt

no calls on Graydon at the time. It was true that he could well afford the cost. At the worst there would be adventure and some pleasant excitement. He met Dancre and Soames, the first a cynical, but amusing little bunch of wires and nerves, the second a lanky, saturnine, hard bitten Yankee. They had gone down by rail to Cerro de Pasco for their outfit, that being the town of any size closest to where, according to the map, their trail into the wilderness began. A week later, with eight burros and six arrieros or packmen, they were well within the welter of peaks through which the old map indicated their road lay.

      They found the signs cut in the rocks exactly as the parchment had promised. Gay, spirits high with anticipation, three of them at least spending in advance their share of the treasure, they followed the symbols. Steadily they were led into the uncharted wilderness.

      At last the arrieros began to murmur. They were approaching, they said, a region that was accursed, the Cordillera de Carabaya, where demons dwelt and only fierce Aymaras, their servants, lived. Promises of more money, threats, pleadings, took them along a little farther.

      Then one morning the four awoke to find the arrieros gone—and with them half the burros and a portion of their supplies.

      They pressed on. Then suddenly, the signs had failed them. Either they had lost the trail, or there were no more carven symbols and the parchment which had led them truthfully so far had lied at the last. Or was it possible that the signs had been obliterated—cut away?

      The country into which they had penetrated was a strangely deserted one. They saw no sign of Indians—had seen none indeed since when, more than a week before, they had stopped at a Quicha village and Sterrett had got mad drunk on that fiery spirit the Quichas distill. Food, too, was curiously hard to find, there were few animals and fewer birds.

      But worst of all was the change that had come over his companions. As high as they had been lifted by their certainty of success, just so deep were they now cast into despair. The wilderness, the loneliness of it, their disappointment, had brought out the real man that lies hidden beneath the veneer we all of us carry. Sterrett kept himself at a steady level of drunkenness, alternately quarrelsome and noisy or sunk in a sullen mood of brooding, brutal rage. Dancre had become silent and irritable. Soames seemed to have reached the conclusion that Graydon, Sterrett and the Frenchman had combined against him; that they had either deliberately missed the trail or had erased the signs. Only when the two of them joined Sterrett and drank with him the Quicha hell-brew did either of them relax. At such times Graydon had the uneasy feeling that they were holding the failure against him and that his life might be hanging on a thin thread.

      On the day that his adventure really began—that strange adventure to which all that had passed before had been prelude—Graydon was coming back to the camp. He had been hunting since morning. Dancre and Soames had gone off together on another desperate search for the missing symbols that would lead them to the treasure trail again.

      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 ever since he had left Sterrett alone at the camp hours ago. He had sensed some culminating misfortune close—and here it was! He knew it; how, he did not stop himself to ask; he was sure. He broke into a run, stumbling up the slope to the group of gray green algarroba trees where the tent was pitched.

      What had the drunken fool done? Graydon had warned them all that their situation was perilous; that if Indians came they must try to make friends with them—that they must be superlatively careful in their treatment of any Indian women.

      He reached the algarrobas; crashed through the light undergrowth to the little clearing. Why didn’t the girl cry out again, he wondered. There was a sickness at his heart. A low chuckle reached him, thick, satyr toned. Then Sterrett’s voice, cruel, mocking!

      “No more fight in you, eh? Well, which’ll it be, pretty lady—the way to the gold or you? And by Heaven—I guess it’ll be you—first!”

      For an instant Graydon paused. He saw that Sterrett, half crouching, was holding the girl bow fashion over one knee. A thick arm was clinched about her neck, the fingers clutching her mouth brutally, silencing her; his right hand fettered her slender wrists; her knees were caught in the vise of his bent right leg.

      She was helpless, but as Graydon sprang forward he caught a flash of wide black eyes, wrath filled and defiant, staring fearlessly into those leering so close.

      He caught Sterrett by the hair, locked an arm under his chin, drawing his head sharply back.

      “Drop her!” he ordered. “Drop her—quick!”

      Sterrett hurled himself to his feet, dropping the girl as he rose.

      “What the hell are you butting in for?” he snarled. His hand struck down toward his pistol. But even while the fingers were tightening around the butt, Graydon’s fist shot out and caught him on the point of the hairy jaw. The clutching fingers loosened, the half drawn pistol slipped to the ground, the great body quivered and toppled over. Long before it fell the girl had 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 those fierce Aymaras that 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 down over Sterrett. His heart was beating; feebly it was true—but beating. The reek of drink was sickening. Graydon’s hand touched the fallen pistol. He picked it up and looked speculatively at the fallen man’s rifle. Sterrett, between the blow and the drink, would probably be out of the running for hours. He wished that Dancre 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 for escape. So ran his thoughts. But Dancre and Soames would have to return quickly. The girl would soon be there—with the avengers; no doubt at this very moment she was telling them of her wrongs. He turned—

      She stood there; looking at him!

      And drinking in her loveliness, Graydon forgot the man at his feet; forgot all, and was content to let his soul sit undisturbed within his eyes and take its delight to her.

      Her skin was palest ivory. It gleamed translucent through the rents of the soft amber fabric like the thickest silk that swathed her. Her eyes were deep velvety pools, oval, a little tilted; Egyptian in the wide midnight of their irises. But the features were classic, cameo; the nose small and straight, the brows level and black, alomst meeting above it! And her hair was cloudy jet, misty and shadowed, and a narrow fillet of gold bound the broad, low forehead. In it like a diamond were entwined the sable and silver feathers of the caraquenque, that bird whose plumage in lost centuries was sacred to the princesses of the Incas alone. Above her dimpled elbows golden bracelets twined, reaching to the slender shoulders. The little, high arched feet were shod with high buskins of deerskin.

      She was light and slender as the Willow Maid who waits on Kwannon when she passes into the World of Trees to pour into them new fire of green life—and like the Willow Maid green fire of tree and jungle and flame of woman gleamed within her.

      Nothing so exquisite, so beautiful had ever Graydon beheld. Here was no Aymara, no daughter of any tribe of the Cordilleras, no descendant of Incas. Nor was she Spanish. There were bruises on her cheeks—the marks of Sterrett’s cruel fingers. Her long, slim hands touched them. The red lips opened. She spoke—in the Aymara tongue.

      “Is he dead?” she asked—her voice was low, a faint chime as of little bells ringing through it.

      “No,” Graydon answered.

      In the depths of the midnight eyes a small hot flame flared; he could have sworn it was of gladness; it vanished as swiftly as it had come.

      “That is well,” she said. “I would not have him die—” the voice become meditative—“so!”

      “Who are you?” Graydon asked wonderingly. She looked at him for a long moment, enigmatically.

      “Call me—Suarra,” she answered at last.