In his sick rage he had brooded and walked far. Along the summit of the mesa among the ruins had he walked to the east. The weird dead city of the Ancient Days was made more weird by the strange brooding heat of the dusk. No cool air of the twilight followed the setting sun this night. Sounds carried far. No fires were lit in the camp below––yet movements of the animals told him where the Castilians tethered their wonderful comrades of the trail.
At any other time he would not have walked alone on the heights where mystery touched each broken wall, and wrapped the mesa as in a strange medicine blanket. But in his impotent rage he felt spirit forces of destruction working against him, and the dread of them dulled his senses as to the place where he wandered.
And then his heart jumped with a new fear as the form of a woman arose from a crevice in the stone wall––did the ghost of the ruin wait for him there?
The figure halted uncertainly and then ran toward him with outreaching hand.
It was Yahn Tsyn-deh, and she was half laughing and half sobbing, and the barrier of anger was brushed aside as if it had never been.
“Ka-yemo!––Ka-yemo!” she whispered––“You dare be highest now;––and Tahn-té will be under your feet, Ka-yemo!”
She clasped her arms about him as she stumbled, breathless, at his feet, and his hands clutched her in fierceness.
“Is this a trick?”––he asked. “Have I trapped 259 you with a lover, and you run to me with a new game?”
“Oh––fool, you!” she breathed––“There was but one lover, and he went blind, and walked away from me at a daybreak!”