Up this we
wormed our way, as flat as snakes, with our noses in the dusty earth. I
was dripping with sweat, and cursing to myself this new madness of
Shalah's. Then I found a cooler air blowing on the top of my prostrate
skull, and I judged that we were approaching the scarp of a ridge.
Shalah's hand held me motionless. He wriggled on a little farther, and
with immense slowness raised his head. His hand now beckoned me
forward, and in a few seconds I was beside him and was lifting my eyes
over the edge of the scarp.
Below us lay a little plain, wedged in between two mountains, and
breaking off on one side into a steep glen. It was just such a shelf as
I had seen in the Carolinas, only a hundred times greater, and it lay
some five hundred feet below us. Every part of the hollow was filled
with men. Thousands there must have been, around their fires and
teepees, and coming or going from the valley. They were silent, like
all savages, but the low hum rose from the place which told of human
life.
I tried to keep my eyes steady, though my heart was beating like a
fanner. The men were of the same light colour and slimness as those I
had seen on the edge of the mist in Clearwater Glen. Indeed, they were
not unlike Shalah, except that he was bigger than the most of them.
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