oss the trail and along the near-bare rocks stirred
and lifted and fell fitfully, as if the air was barred passage by some
invisible wall, and there were the skeletons of birds that had flung
themselves against the invisible wall and died, falling there. There was
the skeleton of a goat half across the trail; and at one side, what had
once been a man! All these dead--and the bones could be seen here and
there along the far line of the dust--had gone so far and no farther.
Polter had stopped fearfully ten feet from the clearly marked line--and
I for one had no desire to add my skeleton to the others.

For a few minutes none of us had anything to say, then reason reasserted
itself, and I pressed past Polter, knowing that the thing was an
illusion born of coincidence and wind currents. Some baffling current of
wind around the mountain formed here a wall of air cleavage, and the
skeletons were merely coincidence. I pushed up to the strange line of
lifting and falling dust, a little roll showing the magic of invisible
force, and pressed on, as if to cross.

Behind me a cry gave me pause. I turned, looking for that cry's source,
for it seemed to me the cry was the girl I had rescued from Barto. That
saved me, for the little horse behind me pressed on across the strange
line--and faltered, gave a horse-scream of terror, fell dead before me.

We stopped, terror of the unknown in our breasts, wondering--afraid to
put the wonder into words. We did not look at each other or discuss the
thing, we just accepted it, and stared dumbly at it like animals. I
tossed a rock across the body of the now quite motionless pack animal,
the rock reached the wall beneath which my animal lay dead--slowed,
curved sharply to the ground, did not roll, but lay as if imprisoned in
invisible jelly!

There was a wall of invisible and deadly force there, and there was no
known explanation for it!

I growled at Barto, all the suspicion and distrust that had been
building up in me toward him in my voice.

"What does your golden girl tell you now, Jake?"

Jake surprised me. He walked ahead toward that frightening manifestation
of the unknown, holding the little statuette before him like a sword,
his ugly face rapt in some listening beyond me. As the little statue
crossed the line, he sang out:

"Listen, Goddess of the Golden forces, listen and heed! We come from
afar to pay our worship, to give to you our devotion, and we are met
with this wall of