CHAPTER II. THE SIGIL ON THE ROCKS
Dawn came. Drake had slept well. But I, who had not his youthfulresiliency, lay for long, awake and uneasy. I had hardly sunk intotroubled slumber before dawn awakened me.
As we breakfasted, I approached directly that matter which my growingliking for him was turning into strong desire.
"Drake," I asked. "Where are you going?"
"With you," he laughed. "I'm foot loose and fancy free. And I think youought to have somebody with you to help watch that cook. He might getaway."
The idea seemed to appall him.
"Fine!" I exclaimed heartily, and thrust out my hand to him. "I'mthinking of striking over the range soon to the Manasarowar Lakes.There's a curious flora I'd like to study."
"Anywhere you say suits me," he answered.
We clasped hands on our partnership and soon we were on our way to thevalley's western gate; our united caravans stringing along behind us.Mile after mile we trudged through the blue poppies, discussing theenigmas of the twilight and of the night.
In the light of day their breath of vague terror was dissipated.There was no place for mystery nor dread under this floor of brilliantsunshine. The smiling sapphire floor rolled ever on before us.
Whispering little playful breezes flew down the slopes to gossip for amoment with the nodding flowers. Flocks of rose finches raced chatteringoverhead to quarrel with the tiny willow warblers, the chi-u-teb-tok,holding fief of the drooping, graceful bowers bending down to the littlelaughing stream that for the past hour had chuckled and gurgled like afriendly water baby beside us.
I had proven, almost to my own satisfaction, that what we had beheldhad been a creation of the extraordinary atmospheric attributes of thesehighlands, an atmosphere so unique as to make almost anything of thekind possible. But Drake was not convinced.
"I know," he said. "Of course I understand all that--superimposed layersof warmer air that might have bent the ray; vortices in the higherlevels that might have produced just that effect of the captured aurora.I admit it's all possible. I'll even admit it's all probable, but damnme, Doc, if I BELIEVE it! I had too clearly the feeling of a CONSCIOUSforce, a something that KNEW exactly what it was doing--and had a REASONfor it."
It was mid-afternoon.
The spell of the valley upon us, we had gone leisurely. The westernmount was close, the mouth of the gorge through which we must pass,now plain before us. It did not seem as though we could reach it beforedusk, and Drake and I were reconciled to spending another night in thepeaceful vale. Plodding along, deep in thought, I was startled by hisexclamation.
He was staring at a point some hundred yards to his right. I followedhis gaze.
The towering cliffs were a scant half mile away. At some distant timethere had been an enormous fall of rock. This, disintegrating, hadformed a gently-curving breast which sloped down to merge with thevalley's floor. Willow and witch alder, stunted birch and poplarhad found roothold, clothed it, until only their crowding outposts,thrusting forward in a wavering semicircle, held back seemingly by theblue hordes, showed where it melted into the meadows.
In the center of this breast, beginning half way up its slopes andstretching down into the flowered fields was a colossal imprint.
Gray and brown, it stood out against the green and blue of slope andlevel; a rectangle all of thirty feet wide, two hundred long, theheel faintly curved and from its hither end, like claws, four slendertriangles radiating from it like twenty-four points of a ten-rayed star.
Irresistibly was it like a footprint--but what thing was there whosetread could leave such a print as this?
I ran up the slope--Drake already well in advance. I paused at thebase of the triangles where, were this thing indeed a footprint, thespreading claws sprang from the flat of it.
The track was fresh. At its upper edges were clipped bushes and splittrees, the white wood of the latter showing where they had been slicedas though by the stroke of a scimitar.
I stepped out upon the mark. It was as level as though planed; bent downand stared in utter disbelief of what my own eyes beheld. For stoneand earth had been crushed, compressed, into a smooth, microscopicallygrained, adamantine complex, and in this matrix poppies still bearingtraces of their coloring were imbedded like fossils. A cyclone can anddoes grip straws and thrust them unbroken through an inch board--butwhat force was there which could take the delicate petals of a flowerand set them like inlay within the surface of a stone?
Into my mind came recollection of the wailings, the crashings in thenight, of the weird glow that had flashed about us when the mist aroseto hide the chained aurora.
"It was what we heard," I said. "The sounds--it was then that this wasmade."
"The foot of Shin-je!" Chiu-Ming's voice was tremulous. "The lord ofHell has trodden here!"
I translated for Drake's benefit.
"Has the lord of Hell but one foot?" asked Dick, politely.
"He bestrides the mountains," said Chiu-Ming. "On the far side is hisother footprint. Shin-je it was who strode the mountains and set herehis foot."
Again I interpreted.
Drake cast a calculating glance up to the cliff top.
"Two thousand feet, about," he mused. "Well, if Shin-je is built in ourproportions that makes it about right. The length of this thing wouldgive him just about a two thousand foot leg. Yes--he could just aboutstraddle that hill."
"You're surely not serious?" I asked in consternation.
"What the hell!" he exclaimed, "am I crazy? This is no foot mark. Howcould it be? Look at the mathematical nicety with which these edges arestamped out--as though by a die--
"That's what it reminds me of--a die. It's as if some impossible powerhad been used to press it down. Like--like a giant seal of metal in amountain's hand. A sigil--a seal--"
"But why?" I asked. "What could be the purpose--"
"Better ask where the devil such a force could be gotten together andhow it came here," he said. "Look--except for this one place there isn'ta mark anywhere. All the bushes and the trees, all the poppies and thegrass are just as they ought to be.
"How did whoever or whatever it was that made this, get here andget away without leaving any trace but this? Damned if I don't thinkChiu-Ming's explanation puts less strain upon the credulity than any Icould offer."
I peered about. It was so. Except for the mark, there was no slightestsign of the unusual, the abnormal.
But the mark was enough!
"I'm for pushing up a notch or two and getting into the gorge beforedark," he was voicing my own thought. "I'm willing to face anythinghuman--but I'm not keen to be pressed into a rock like a flower in amaiden's book of poems." Just at twilight we drew out of the valley intothe pass. We traveled a full mile along it before darkness forced us tomake camp. The gorge was narrow. The far walls but a hundred feet away;but we had no quarrel with them for their neighborliness, no! Theirsolidity, their immutability, breathed confidence back into us.
And after we had found a deep niche capable of holding the entirecaravan we filed within, ponies and all, I for one perfectly willingthus to spend the night, let the air at dawn be what it would. We dinedwithin on bread and tea, and then, tired to the bone, sought each hisplace upon the rocky floor. I slept well, waking only once or twiceby Chiu-Ming's groanings; his dreams evidently were none of thepleasantest. If there was an aurora I neither knew nor cared. My slumberwas dreamless.