Argosy, September 1955 — page 55: what you’re looking at

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

SUMMER IN SALANDAR 53 his head up with a sharp breath of pain. Above him the sky swung and quivered. A speck that might have been dust or a buzzard or just the shadow of something fell swiftly from it and cut across his sweat-locked eyes. She saw his pain and said, “ I'll get Manuel. I'll get you back.” “Oh God, no! I can make it.” “Tl get Manuel. It’s better.” He tried to watch her figure going down the path. He tried to call out to her to come back. ‘Then he was alone and it was no use. He was a darkening, dribbling figure, undramatic and strengthless, slipping down from the rock. The worst of it, some long time later, was the sight of Manuel, coming to take him away. The correct, oiled, subservient figure. The slight bow. The glance at the foot, the shoe that was black with blood. ‘The cool eyes, the mouth that was so well-shaped, so poised, that it might have ejected at any moment that madden- ing whistle. ‘‘ I told you so.” It was morning, about ten o’clock, when Manuel carried him out to the waiting mules. The crushed arch of his foot might have been made of cactus thorns, each thorn a nerve beating nakedly up and down to the thump of blood. His head, like the foot, seemed to have swollen and he felt the great thudding pulse of it rocking outwards, rolling and striking the sides of the valley. *“1’m going to tie you onto the mule, sir. Just to be safe. In case you feel dizzy.”’ ** Absolutely all right,’’ he said. “‘ Where’s Miss Vane? ” “* She’s just getting her things. She’s going to ride with you.”’ ** She’s got to catch the Alacantra. What about the car? ”’ “I’m going on to telephone for it, sir. Then Ill send the hammock back from the top of the road.”’ “Hammock? For heaven’s sake, what hammock? ” ‘““ You’ll be better in the hammock, sir.”’ He found himself shaking and swaying with sickness, impotent behind the fluttering ears of the mule, the entire valley projected before him in those strong high blue lines that were pulsations rather than shadow. ‘** Much better if you let Miss Vane push on. I can manage.”’ Presently he was aware of a slow transition of scene: rock and pine looming up, starry walls of cactus leaf dripping past, bright green under springs, sunlight firing pine-needles to masses of glass-paper, ashy blue under a sickening sky. Heat lay on the back of his neck, in spite of the towel Manuel had put there, like a burning stone. He wondered why there had been no attempt to escape the heat by starting earlier. Then he remembered not being able to sleep. Great rocks in the valley grating against each other. A far continuous thunder, a power- house noise, from across the plateau. Water, a stream somewhere, drowning him, dragging him under. He remembered falling down. He had walked out to the verandah, seeing Miss Vane there, in an comiclbooks.conn