"I took some of the gold, but what attracted me--not because it was
pretty, but because I saw in a minute that it was valuable--was a
hideous image about six inches high. I had had an idea all along that
Queza had been lying about the diamonds, but when I saw the image I
knew he'd told the truth. There were about a hundred diamonds on the
image, stuck all around it, the image itself being gold. The diamonds
ran from a carat to seven or eight carats, and there was no question
about them being the real thing. I stuck the thing into a hip pocket,
figuring that with the few other ornaments I had I would have plenty to
carry. Then I went back to where Ezela and Taggart were waiting for me.
"Ezela led us through a long, narrow passage, down some steps to
another passage, and pretty soon we were sneaking along this and I
began to get a whiff of fresh air. In a little while we found
ourselves on a narrow ledge in the canyon, about thirty or forty feet
below the level where the bridge had been, and it was so dark down
there that we couldn't see one another.
"Ezela whispered to us to follow her, and to be careful. We had to be
careful, and after what had happened, crawling along that ledge wasn't
the most cheerful job in the world. It would have been a ticklish
thing to do in the daytime, but at night it was a thousand times worse.
Pages:
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97