He swallowed and tried to keep his heart from going down too far. “It’s got to be somewhere along there,” he murmured. “We came out through there. We both remember that. That was no dream.”
But what was? And what wasn’t?
He tried to take bearings as best he could. “We went off the trail to the left,” he said, speaking aloud to convince himself as well as her. “That means we’ve got the trail to our right, unless we recrossed it since in the dark without knowing it. So if we work our way back toward the right, we should come upon the tomb entrance eventually.” He looked at her questioningly. “We’ll take the chance, Chris, shall we? I don’t want to fool you; it’s just a chance. But I’m afraid if we go off to our left, we’re liable to work our way blindly entirely around the inside of the valley without ever getting out again.”
“Let’s take the chance, Larry,” she said feebly.
They retraced their way a little, first of all, to take themselves back a little deeper into the jungle cover, so that they wouldn’t be so exposed to view. Then they skirted the jungle just short of the point at which it lost full density. Not that there was a hard-and-fast, razor-clean line where jungle ended and barren foothills began; sometimes the growth sent out tongues, crept fairly high up the inclined mountainside. At other times, by reverse process, there were arid strips where the jungle wall receded far back to the other side of them.
Tiredness had no meaning to them any longer, or hunger, or anything else. If they were going to succumb to fatigue, they would have succumbed long ago, when it was still new and sharp. Now it was old and dull, so old they scarcely took account of it any more. Just a glassiness of the eye, a stricture of the stomach cords.
There was a fairly prominent outthrust shoulder of mountain they had to round, they found as they progressed. On the other side of this the succeeding line of mountains fell back considerably; there was a recession, more evident at first by a change of tint than anything else. The coloring beyond was more transparent, less opaque. Then as they drew nearer they saw the variation was one of proximity and not shading.
Then as some certain, invisible line of longitude on the slopes beyond worked itself clear to their advancing gaze, their hands flew toward one another and clenched tightly. They saw it. It was there. The flanking projection had covered it from them until now. There was no mistaking it. They saw the artificial man-made flatness of the grooved stones framing it, leaning slightly back in conformity with the tilt of the native rock wall. A slot, a window in the mountain. It looked awfully small, it looked awfully high up. But it was there. Every detail stood out distinct in the crystal-clear air.
They’d come out of the jungle a good half day’s journey off their course. But they’d corrected it now. They were back again on course. They could see where they were going now. And they were still up on their own feet, they were still untaken, that was the main thing.
Slowly it inched abreast of them, until at last the trail itself, leading down from it, came into view. Up there it was just a rut, a fold, tucked into the mountain skin. But it could be seen, there was a lividness to it that revealed it against the topsoil pelt, as when a fine wire is drawn too tightly over something and leaves a shiny trace behind.
He stopped at last and dropped down with her behind a little hummock that looked out through spindly tree trunks. “We’ll stay down below here, under cover, until we’re ready,” he puffed. “We’re as close as we can get now without overreaching it and going too far to the other side.” And this was their final rest before the final break, the dash that would carry them up, and in, and through.
The place he’d chosen gave good cover. Yet they could command the tomb entrance. And the downward trail from it had swung very close athwart their way now, entered the jungle almost directly ahead of where they lay. They were as close to it as he intended to risk going.
They lay there like two wilted, discarded tendrils, her head resting in the notch just above his hip. The safest thing of all to do, he knew, would be to wait until nightfall. But the law of diminishing returns was already in full swing against them. He didn’t think their strength would hold that long.
She fell asleep, and this time he let her, wanted her to. His own eyes closed for the first time since the second night before, and it was as though there were mucilage on the lids. No sooner had they touched than they adhered. Not all the will power at his command could have pried them apart again.
It seemed they’d only been like that a moment, when she was already shaking him awake. She was frightened, cautioning him even as she did so. “Larry, don’t move. Look. Look up there.”
Three warriors were standing by the tomb entrance. Then suddenly four. Then five. Every moment there was another one. They were coming out, one by one. A party that must have entered it in search of them was now reappearing, frustrated.
He could feel her heart pounding wildly against him. She had pressed herself close. “Can they see us from there?”
They were obviously scanning the jungle rim from their lofty perch; he could tell by the way their buckshot-sized heads moved in deadly, slow-sweeping unison.
“I don’t think so.”
“But we can see them. I can even see the sun flash from their knives.”
“They have nothing but bare rocks for a background, they stand out against them. We have leaves and tree shadows and all sorts of other screens to deflect the aim of the eye. But lie still whatever you do, don’t stir.”
They started down the trail single file, the first of them already well on toward the bottom before the last had finished emerging from the tomb orifice. He counted ten of them. The warriors made a slow zigzag coming down, lengthily spaced, and at every moment danger increased, for as they descended they were being brought continuously nearer to their hiding place.
The warriors grew larger, too; from puppet size they swelled to man size, as each one passed close to them and went on to be engulfed in the static green tidal wave that was the jungle, poised but never shattering into spray high over all their heads. Brief patches of coppery skin would reappear, as if it were indeed green water they were being submerged by, and then they would be gone for good.
The last trembling leaf stilled, the last shuddering reed quieted, the downgrade trail coursed empty. Nothing but time still stirred. They were gone as though they had never been. But what reckless impunity to count on that!
Finally he gave her, indirectly, the signal that the moment had come. “Can you get all the way up there to it, do you think?”
She nodded bravely. “I can try. I’m ready.”
“Once we start we’ll have to go fast. We’ll be in the open from here on up, no more jungle skulking. And some of them may have stayed behind, for all we know.”
He stood up slowly, with an uneasy naked, defenseless feeling. “Stay down a minute longer.”
She crouched submissive at his feet, flattening her hair back with both hands to get it out of her way.
Finally he nodded. She stood up beside him.
“Are you all right, Chris?”
“I’m all right, Larry.”
“Say a prayer before we go.”
“Out loud?”
“I don’t care. I guess so.”
She tilted her face a little, lidded her eyes for a moment. “Take us through. Somebody,” she said fervently. “Oh, Somebody, whoever you are, be on our side for just this one time.”
He stiffened his arm around her. “Take my hand,” he said curtly. “Here we go.”
They broke jungle at a tired sort of trot, which was the best they could muster. Again the process of exposure wasn’t immediate; the jungle slowly thinned, opened out about them. Still at some indeterminate point, the area of their bodies that could be seen from a distance was greater than the area that could not, and from then on danger had set in full force.