Argosy: The Short Story Magazine — page 126: what you’re looking at

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

“Ss f > : > Ae De, ie’. Le Oe a 126 JOHN WYNDHAM The greathorses clumped steadily on. Presently we came into more Open country; a wind was blowing that we had not noticed among the trees. A sudden gust snatched off the man’s hat, and we stopped for him to retrieve it. As he climbed down, I saw for the first time why he was a dweller in the Fringes. In the top of his head was set a third eye. It was closed. Half an hour later we arrived on the bank of a small river—at least our side was a steep bank; the other was a line of low reddish cliffs. We turned downstream and kept along the bank until we came to a very deviational tree which looked like a huge pear and had all its branches growing in one big tuft at the top. At that point a runnel cut back into the bank, and it was possible for the horses to get down. We forded the river obliquely, making for a gap in the opposite cliffs. It was a narrow passage, only just wide enough in some places to let us through, so that the panniers scraped and bumped on the rocky walls. After a hundred yards or so, it widened out and we began to climb up to normal ground level. Where it finished stood seven or eight men, with bows in their hands. They gaped unbelievingly at the greathorses, and looked half inclined to run. We stopped. ‘** Down you get,” instructed the man in the other pannier. Petra and Rosalind were climbing down, too. The men dropped some of our blankets and bags to us, and then the greathorses moved on. Petra clasped my hand apprehensively, but for the moment the bowmen remained more interested in the horses than in us. There was nothing immediately alarming about the men. One of the hands that held a bow had six fingers, and one man’s head looked like a polished brown egg, without a hair on it, or on his face. Another had grotesquely huge feet and hands, but whatever was wrong with the rest of them was hidden under their rags. Rosalind and I shared a feeling of relief. Petra, also, was encouraged by finding that none of them answered to the descrip- tion of Hairy Jack. Presently, when the horses had disappeared up a path into the forest, their attention returned to us. A couple of them helped to pick up the bundles, and told us to come along. A well-used path led us into the woods for a couple of hundred yards or more, and then gave on to a clearing. "There may have been a natural glade there, but it had been enlarged, and quite recently. Most of it was now covered with huts and tents, with a few men and rather more women moving about among them. We wound our way towards one of the largest tents, a framework of poles supporting what looked like an old rick-cover. Just inside it, sitting on a roughly made stool, was a figure that I recognized with a shock: the same spider-man whom I had seen as a captive at Waknuk seven years before. He lifted his head and glanced at the three of us. Then he studied me more carefully. He nodded, as if satisfied. “‘ Remember. me?” he asked. comiclooks.comn