death! Is that the way you greet your friends?"

Jake waved the statuette in a circular motion, then crossed the circle
twice with the waving gold. He stood there, his crossed eyes darting
here and there along the line of force, and after a long minute, after a
time that seemed filled with a distant chuckling, like thunder too far
off to be heard clearly--the lift and fall of the dust on the baffled
wind stopped, the strict line of the wind's stoppage began to disappear,
the line of demarcation was gone!

Jake reached out an arm, feeling cautiously for the invisible wall, and
after a minute, his face lightened from its habitual gloom, he stepped
across the line, and did not stagger and fall as had the horse. The wall
was gone! Jake turned, said calmly:

"Come on, our friends have decided to let us in."

My mind in a whirl at the unexpected display of knowledge beyond me, of
forces beyond the power of any rifle bullet to overcome, of strange
hidden things here--I stepped across the line, keeping close to the
tracks left by Jake's big feet. Polter and Noldi followed and the horses
plodded after. We trudged on, but not the same. We were afraid, and we
were conscious of a vast ignorance, of a fear that we did not belong
here, that the only wise thing for us to do was to turn back and give up
this Jake Barto and his cross eyes and his mumbo jumbo statue to his own
doom.

At least that's the way I felt, but something stronger than curiosity
drew me on. I wanted to know why I was so drawn when reason kept
demanding I give up this quest. I wanted to know why a golden statue
pointed always to one point on the horizon, and why that wall of force
had obeyed Jake's injunction to go away. Or was I unable to think,
really? Was I shocked out of my ability to reason and act on my reason's
dictates?

Ahead, as the trail dipped low, a vast panorama of valley and hill and
hollow, of eerie rocky spires, lay outspread. Here and there were
cultivated fields, and figures at work on the fields. In the distance
shone a stream. It flowed meandering into a wide lake. There were two
villages, not clear in the haze. At the distant lake, some kind of
larger structure lifted tall towers, shining with prismatic glitter, a
city of strange appearance.

We had crossed a barrier, and we had entered a land of the living--but
it was unclear before us. The drifting mountain mists, the sun-glitter
and the haze of noon kept the scene from striking thr