He stood aside, and waited for Graydon and the burro to pass him. When man and beast had reached the bottom, he waved his hand in farewell. He slipped back into the forest. Graydon plodded on for perhaps a mile, eastward, as he had been directed. He sank in the underbrush and waited for an hour. Then he turned back, retraced his way, and driving the burro before him reclaimed the ascent. He had but one thought, one desire—to return to Sierra. No matter what the peril—to go back to her. He drew over the edge of the plateau, and stood listening. He heard nothing. He pushed ahead of the burro—walked forward.
Instantly, close above his head, a horn note rang out—menacingly, angrily. There was a whirring of great wings. Instinctively, he threw up his arm. It was the one upon whose wrist he had fastened the bracelet of Sierra. The purple gems flashed in the sun. He heard the horn note sound again, protesting. There was a whistling flurry in the air close beside him, as of some unseen winged creature striving frantically to check its flight.
Something struck the bracelet a glancing blow. Something like a rapier-point thrust through his shoulder just where it joined the base of his neck. He felt the blood gush forth. Something struck his breast. He toppled over the verge of the plateau, and rolled over and over down to the trail.
When he came to his senses, he was lying at the foot of the slope with the burro standing beside him. He must have lain there unconscious for a considerable time, for shoulder and arm were stiff, and the stained ground testified he had lost much blood. There was a gash above his temple where he had struck a stone during his fall.
He got up, groaning. The shoulder wound was in an awkward place for examination, but so far as he could tell, it was a clean puncture. Whatever had made the wound had passed through the muscles of the shoulder and neck. It must have missed the artery by a hair, he thought, painfully dressing the stab.
Whatever had done it? Well, he knew what had wounded him. One of those feathered
serpents he had seen above the abyss of the Face! One of those Messengers, as Suarra had
called them, which had so inexplicably let the four of them pass the frontiers of the Forbidden
Land.
It could have killed him . . . it had meant to kill him . . . what had checked its slaying thrust . . . diverted it? He strove to think . . . God, how his head hurt! What had stopped it. . . . Why, the bracelet, of course . . . the glint of the purple gems.
But that must mean the Messengers would not attack the wearer of the bracelet. That it was a passport to the Forbidden Land. Was that why Sierra had sent it to him? So that he could return? Well, he couldn't determine that now . . . he must heal his wounds first . . . must find help . . . somewhere . . . before he could go back to Sierra . . .
Graydon staggered along the trail, the burro at his heels. It stood patiently that night while he tossed and moaned beside the ashes of a dead fire, and fever crept slowly through every vein. Patiently it followed him the next day as he stumbled along the trail, and fell and rose, and fell and rose, sobbing, gesticulating, laughing, cursing—in the scorching grip of that fever. And patiently it trotted after the Indian hunters who ran across Graydon when death was squatting at his feet, and, who being Aymara and not Quichua, carried him to the isolated little hamlet of Chapin, nearest spot in all that wilderness where there were men of his own color