so pushed on into the menacing night. Till midnight they plodded on
and would not sleep; grimmer and grimmer grew the look of the night,
and the wind more full of meaning, and the mule knew and trembled, and
it seemed that the wind knew, too, as did the instincts of those four
tall men, though they could not reason it out, try how they would.

And though the squaws waited long where the pass winds out of the
mountains, near where the wigwams are upon the plains, the wigwams and
the totems and the fire, and though they watched by day, and for many
nights uttered familiar calls, still did they never see those four
tall men emerge out of the mountains any more, even though they prayed
to their totems upon their painted poles; but the curse in the
mystical writing that they had unknown in their bag worked there on
that lonely pass six leagues from the ruins of Loma, and nobody can
tell us what it was.





The Secret of the Sea

In an ill-lit ancient tavern that I know, are many tales of the sea;
but not without the wine of Gorgondy, that I had of a private bargain
from the gnomes, was the tale laid bare for which I had waited of an
evening for the greater part of a year.

I knew my man and listened to his stories, sitting amid the bluster of
his oaths; I plied him with rum and whiskey and mixed drinks, but
there never came the tale for which I sought, and as a last resort I