d fallen and though the mist was low. The
four tall men leaped up at once from their knees and would have left
the gods upon the pass but that they feared some hunter of their tribe
might one day find them and say of Laughing Face, "He fled and left
behind his golden gods," and sell the gold and come with his wealth to
the wigwams and be greater than Laughing Face and his three men. And
then they would have cast the gods away, down the abyss, with their
eyes and their emerald tongues, but they knew that enough already they
had wronged Loma's gods, and feared that vengeance enough was waiting
them on the hills. So they packed them back in the bag on the
frightened mule, the bag that held the curse they knew nothing of, and
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
went to the Huthneth Mountains and bargained there all night with the
chiefs of the gnomes.

When I came to the ancient tavern and entered the low-roofed room,
bringing the hoard of the gnomes in a bottle of hammered iron, my man
had not yet arrived. The sailors laughed at my old iron bottle, but I
sat down and waited; had I