Huayca, having gone to a small settlement, called the men in council, told them that the white men who had previously gone that way were coming back, disguised as Indians, and thus fired his fuse to ignite Peruvian hatred. He told them that the men had discovered an old burial mound, far in the hills, and had ravaged it, in spite of his protest.
Then, giving them some hints, he slipped away, leaving a fuse of anger steadily hissing toward a powder-keg of rage and racial hatred.
Huayca, feeling quite happy, returned along the pass, over the bridge, up the cliff, along its top, down into the valley spanned by the bridge, and thus again up the stone stairway that Cliff’s party had used the afternoon before: he was back in the narrow outlet by the time that Cliff, consulting his radiumite watch face, decided to call Tom for his shift just after Cliff’s own ended.
It was so still, Cliff thought, that you could almost hear the stars singing as they twinkled with strange brightness in the clear air.
Not a sound reached Cliff’s ears, though. The stars did not sing, nor did anything else make any noise. Nature seemed to be resting in the wee hours before dawn, gathering her strength for a new day.
So Cliff crept as quietly as he could to the hut and shook Tom.
When his chum was thoroughly awake and stood outside the doorway with him, Cliff spoke.
“Don’t shoot if you see a shadow on the ledge,” he said in a whisper. “I am going over to the edge and look around toward the lower pass for a minute before I roll into my blanket.”
“All right,” Tom agreed, and went one way while Cliff went the other.
Tom comfortably disposed just inside the open fissure, saw Cliff standing outlined against a star. The cleft was as still as a tomb. Tom gazed up at the stars, looked along the deep, velvety blackness of the fissure, turned to look again toward Cliff.