Argosy, September 1955 — page 53: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

SUMMER IN SALANDAR ! 51 ; at the foot of a pine no taller thana man. His left foot was jammed | by rock. His fall had ended in a kind of football tackle, not badly aimed at the feet, the roots of the pine. He struggled to free his - foot, and the tree-roots, under his weight, cracked under the rock ~~ and began to come out like slow-drawn teeth in gristly pain. cS He thought he was laughing. Then he knew that he was really 7 sucking air, enormous gasps of it, gorging on it, fighting for it in pure fright with his terrified mouth and tongue. The last of the tree-roots were sucked out and the tree fell over, letting him down. His foot too was free. He laughed and shouted something. He did not know what it was but the very feeling of coherent air across his tongue gave him enormous hope. He felt suddenly as calm and poised as the buzzard above the valley. He climbed slowly up on his hands and knees, aware of a slight drag in his left leg. It was not important, he thought, and when he reached the path, he sat down with his back against rock and kept saying, “‘ I’m all right. I’m perfectly all right. I’m abso- lutely and perfectly all right.” “Oh, my God, I’m sick,” she said. ‘“‘ Oh, I’m so sick.” “ Tll hold you. Lie against the rock,” he said. ‘¢ But he found that he could not hold her. He lay against the ia rock too, trembling all over. The valley swam below him. Whole waves of dust-bright haze washed over him, drowning him in sweat, leaving him cold. ‘“‘ I knew I was gone,” he said. “ I know what the end is like now.” ‘“* Let’s go down,” she said. , His eyes were shut. His sweating face seemed to be fixed against ‘3 a cool bone of projecting rock. Y The rock moved and touched him. He discovered then that it was her own face, terribly and dryly cool. His sweat was drying too and he shuddered. ‘Then he felt the sun burning his eyeballs through lids that were like dry thin tissue and he knew that if he did not get up and walk at once he would slide in weakness, like a dislodged stone, off the edge of the gorge. They were far down on the path, at the place where they had lunched, before she said, ‘“‘ I never liked heights. I could never bear them. I hate that awful vertigo.”’ He was glad to see that Manuel had taken him at his word and had started back. He was glad too that the path was at last doubly wide, so that the two of them could walk together. The idea that something was very wrong with his left foot came to him slowly. The drag of it was heavy and finally the drag of | it woke into pain. . He found himself at last sitting on the path, staring into a shoe | half full of blood. : ““It was all my fault,’ she said. ‘‘ I wanted to go up there.”’ | J »”» He poured blood onto the dust of the path and struggled to put on his wet, blackening shoe. Somehow he could not get it back. Nothing of the kind, he thought. He felt tired and sick. Staring at the bloodstained shoe, he remembered clearly how she had not comiclbooks.conn