Tales of Wonder

  The Loot of Loma

  Coming back laden with the loot of Loma, the four tall men lookedearnestly to the right; to the left they durst not, for the precipicethere that had been with them so long went sickly down on to a bank ofclouds, and how much further below that only their fears could say.

  Loma lay smoking, a city of ruin, behind them, all its defenders dead;there was no one left to pursue them, and yet their Indian instinctstold them that all was scarcely well. They had gone three days alongthat narrow ledge: mountain quite smooth, incredible, above them, andprecipice as smooth and as far below. It was chilly there in themountains; at night a stream or a wind in the gloom of the chasm belowthem went like a whisper; the stillness of all things else began towear the nerve--an enemy's howl would have braced them; they began towish their perilous path were wider, they began to wish that they hadnot sacked Loma.

  Had that path been any wider the sacking of Loma must indeed have beenharder for them, for the citizens must have fortified the city butthat the awful narrowness of that ten-league pass of the hills hadmade their crag-surrounded city secure. And at last an Indian hadsaid, "Come, let us sack it." Grimly they laughed in the wigwams. Onlythe eagles, they said, had ever seen it, its hoard of emeralds and itsgolden gods; and one had said he would reach it, and they answered,"Only the eagles."

  It was Laughing Face who said it, and who gathered thirty braves andled them into Loma with their tomahawks and their bows; there wereonly four left now, but they had the loot of Loma on a mule. They hadfour golden gods, a hundred emeralds, fifty-two rubies, a large silvergong, two sticks of malachite with amethyst handles for holdingincense at religious feasts, four beakers one foot high, each carvedfrom a rose-quartz crystal; a little coffer carved out of twodiamonds, and (had they but known it) the written curse of a priest.It was written on parchment in an unknown tongue, and had been slippedin with the loot by a dying hand.

  From either end of that narrow, terrible ledge the third night wasclosing in; it was dropping down on them from the heights of themountain and slipping up to them out of the abyss, the third nightsince Loma blazed and they had left it. Three more days of trampingshould bring them in triumph home, and yet their instincts said thatall was scarcely well. We who sit at home and draw the blinds and shutthe shutters as soon as night appears, who gather round the fire whenthe wind is wild, who pray at regular seasons and in familiar shrines,know little of the demoniac look of night when it is filled withcurses of false, infuriated gods. Such a night was this. Though in theheights the fleecy clouds were idle, yet the wind was stirringmournfully in the abyss and moaning as it stirred, unhappily at firstand full of sorrow; but as day turned away from that awful path a verydefinite menace entered its voice which fast grew louder and louder,and night came on with a long howl. Shadows repeatedly passed over thestars, and then a mist fell swiftly, as though there were somethingsuddenly to be done and utterly to be hidden, as in very truth therewas.

  And in the chill of that mist the four tall men prayed to theirtotems, the whimsical wooden figures that stood so far away, watchingthe pleasant wigwams; the firelight even now would be dancing overtheir faces, while there would come to their ears delectable tales ofwar. They halted upon the pass and prayed, and waited for any sign.For a man's totem may be in the likeness perhaps of an otter, and aman may pray, and if his totem be placable and watching over his man anoise may be heard at once like the noise that the otter makes, thoughit be but a stone that falls on another stone; and the noise is asign. The four men's totems that stood so far away were in thelikeness of the coney, the bear, the heron, and the lizard. Theywaited, and no sign came. With all the noises of the wind in theabyss, no noise was like the thump that the coney makes, nor thebear's growl, nor the heron's screech, nor the rustle of the lizard inthe reeds.

  It seemed that the wind was saying something over and over again, andthat that thing was evil. They prayed again to their totems, and nosign came. And then they knew that there was some power that nightthat was prevailing against the pleasant carvings on painted poles ofwood with the firelight on their faces so far away. Now it was clearthat the wind was saying something, some very, very dreadful thing ina tongue that they did not know. They listened, but they could nottell what it said. Nobody could have said from seeing their faces howmuch the four tall men desired the wigwams again, desired thecamp-fire and the tales of war and the benignant totems that listenedand smiled in the dusk: nobody could have seen how well they knew thatthis was no common night or wholesome mist.

  When at last no answer came nor any sign from their totems, theypulled out of the bag those golden gods that Loma gave not up exceptin flames and when all her men were dead. They had large ruby eyes andemerald tongues. They set them down upon that mountain pass, thecross-legged idols with their emerald tongues; and having placedbetween them a few decent yards, as it seemed meet there should bebetween gods and men, they bowed them down and prayed in theirdesperate straits in that dank, ominous night to the gods they hadwronged, for it seemed that there was a vengeance upon the hills andthat they would scarce escape, as the wind knew well. And the godslaughed, all four, and wagged their emerald tongues; the Indians sawthem, though the night had fallen and though the mist was low. Thefour tall men leaped up at once from their knees and would have leftthe gods upon the pass but that they feared some hunter of their tribemight one day find them and say of Laughing Face, "He fled and leftbehind his golden gods," and sell the gold and come with his wealth tothe wigwams and be greater than Laughing Face and his three men. Andthen they would have cast the gods away, down the abyss, with theireyes and their emerald tongues, but they knew that enough already theyhad wronged Loma's gods, and feared that vengeance enough was waitingthem on the hills. So they packed them back in the bag on thefrightened mule, the bag that held the curse they knew nothing of, andso pushed on into the menacing night. Till midnight they plodded onand would not sleep; grimmer and grimmer grew the look of the night,and the wind more full of meaning, and the mule knew and trembled, andit seemed that the wind knew, too, as did the instincts of those fourtall men, though they could not reason it out, try how they would.

  And though the squaws waited long where the pass winds out of themountains, near where the wigwams are upon the plains, the wigwams andthe totems and the fire, and though they watched by day, and for manynights uttered familiar calls, still did they never see those fourtall men emerge out of the mountains any more, even though they prayedto their totems upon their painted poles; but the curse in themystical writing that they had unknown in their bag worked there onthat lonely pass six leagues from the ruins of Loma, and nobody cantell us what it was.