"I understand." Suarra's eyes and face were calm. "You need fear nothing from us."
"We don't," said Soames. "But you have much to fear―from us." Another moment he regarded her, menacingly; then shoved his pistol back into his holster.
"You go first," he ordered. "Your man behind you. And then him—" he pointed to Graydon. "We three march in the rear—death–weapons ready."
In that order they passed through the giant algarrobas, and out into the oddly park–like spaces beyond.
Chapter IV
The Thing That Fled
THEY HAD TRAVELED over the savanna for perhaps an hour when Suarra turned to the left, entering the forest that covered the flanks of a great mountain. The trees closed, on them. Graydon could see no trail, yet she went on without pause. Another hour went by and the way began to climb, the shade to deepen. Deeper it became and deeper, until the girl was but a flitting shadow.
Once or twice Graydon had glanced at the three men behind him. The darkness was making them more and more uneasy. They walked close together, eyes and ears strained to catch the first faint stirrings of ambush. And now, as the green gloom grew denser still, Soames ordered him to join Dancret and Starrett. He hesitated, read murder in the New Englander's eyes, realized the futility of resistance and dropped back. Soames pressed forward until he was close behind the cowled figure. Dancret drew Graydon between himself and Starrett, grinning.
"Soames has changed his plan," he whispered. "If there is trouble, he shoot the old devil—quick. He keep the girl to make trade wit' her people. He keep you to make trade wit' the girl. How you like—eh?"
Graydon did not answer. When the Frenchman had pressed close to him, he had felt an automatic in his side pocket. If an attack did come, he could leap upon Dancret, snatch the pistol and gain for himself a fighting chance. He would shoot Soames down as remorselessly as he knew Soames would shoot him.
Darker grew the woods until the figures in front were only a moving blur. Then the gloom began to lighten. They had been passing through some ravine, some gorge whose unseen walls had been pressing in upon them, and had now begun to retreat.
A few minutes longer, and ahead of them loomed a prodigious doorway, a cleft whose sides reached up for thousands of feet. Beyond was a flood of sunshine. Suarra stopped at the rocky threshold with a gesture of warning, peered through, and beckoned them on.
Blinking, Graydon walked through the portal. He looked out over a grass–covered plain strewn with huge, isolated rocks rising from the green like menhirs of the Druids. There were no trees. The plain was dish–shaped; an enormous oval as symmetrical as though it had been molded by the thumb of some Cyclopean potter. Straight across it, three miles or more away, the forests began again. They clothed the base of another gigantic mountain whose walls arose, perpendicularly, a mile at least in the air. The smooth scarps described an arc of a tremendous circle—round as Fujiyama's sacred cone, but many times its girth.
They were on a wide ledge that bordered this vast bowl This shelf was a full hundred feet higher than the bottom of the valley whose side sloped up to it like the side of a saucer. And, again carrying out that suggestion of a huge dish, the ledge jutted out like a rim. Graydon guessed that there was a concavity under his feet, and that if one should fall over the side it would be well–nigh impossible to climb back because of the overhang. The surface was about twelve feet wide, and more like a road carefully leveled by human hands than work of nature. On one side was the curving bowl of the valley with its weird monoliths and the circular scarp of the mysterious mountain; on the other the wooded cliffs, unscalable.
They set forth along the rim–like way. Noon came, and in another ravine that opened upon the strange road they had snatched from saddle bags a hasty lunch. They did not waste time in unpacking the burros. There was a little brook singing in the pass, and from it they refilled their canteens, then watered the animals. This time Suarra did not join them.
By mid–afternoon they were nearing the northern end of the bowl. All through the day the circular mountain across the plain had unrolled its vast arc of cliff. A wind had arisen, sweeping from the distant forest and bending the tall heads of the grass far below them.
Suddenly, deep within the wind, Graydon heard a faint, far–off clamor, a shrill hissing, as of some on–rushing army of serpents. The girl halted, face turned toward the sound. It came again—and louder. Her face whitened, but when she spoke her voice was steady.
"There is danger," she said. "Deadly danger for you. It may pass and— it may not. Until we know what to expect you must hide. Take your animals and tether them in the underbrush there—" she pointed to the mountainside which here was broken enough for cover—"the four of you take trees and hide behind them. Tie the mouths of your animals so that they can make no noise."
"So!" snarled Soames. "So here's the trap, is it! All right, sister, you know what I told you. We'll go into the trees, but—you go with us where we can keep our hands on you."
"I will go with you," she answered, gravely.
Soames glared at her, then turned abruptly.
"Danc'," he ordered, "Starrett—get the burros in. And Graydon—you'll stay with the burros and see they make no noise. We'll be right close—with the guns. And we'll have the girl—don't forget that."
Again the hissing shrilled down the wind.
"Be quick," the girl commanded.
When the trees and underbrush had closed in upon them it flashed on Graydon, crouching behind the burros, that he had not seen the cloaked famulus of Suarra join the retreat and seek the shelter of the woods. He parted the bushes, and peered cautiously through them. There was no one upon the path.
A sudden gust of wind tore at the trees. It brought with it a burst of the hissing, closer and more strident, and in it an undertone that thrilled him with unfamiliar terror.
A thing of vivid scarlet streaked out from the trees which here were not more than a half a mile away. It scuttled over the plain until it reached the base of one of the monoliths. It swarmed up its side to the top. There it paused, apparently scanning the forest from which it had come. He caught the impression of some immense insect, but touched with a monstrous, an incredible suggestion of humanness.
The scarlet thing slipped down the monolith, and raced through the grasses toward him. Out of the forest burst what at first glance he took for a pack of huge hunting dogs—then realized that whatever they might be, dogs they certainly were not. They came forward leaping like kangaroos, and as they leaped they glittered green and blue in the sunlight, as though armored in mail of emeralds and sapphires. Nor did ever dogs give tongue as they did. From them came the hellish hissing.
The scarlet thing darted to right, to left, frantically; then crouched at the base of another monolith, motionless.
From the trees emerged another monstrous shape. Like the questing creatures, it glittered—but as though its body were cased in polished jet. Its bulk was that of a giant draft–horse. Its neck was long and reptilian. At the base of its neck, astride it, was a man.
Graydon cautiously raised his field glasses and focused them on the pack. Directly in his line of vision was one of the creatures which had come to gaze. It stood rigid, its side toward him, pointing like a hunting dog.
It was a dinosaur!
Dwarfed to the size of a Great Dane, still there was no mistaking it. He could see its blunt and spade–shaped tail which with its powerful, pillar–like hind legs made a tripod upon which it squatted. Its body was nearly erect. Its short forelegs were muscled as powerfully as its others. It held these forelegs half curved at its breast, as though ready to clutch. They ended in four long talons, chisel shaped. One of which thrust outward like a huge thumb.