Out of this narrow valley between two ridges, an hour ago choked
with living spruce and cedar, rose up a swirling, terrifying heat.
Down into this pit of death Black Roger stood looking, and David
heard a strange moaning coming in his breath. His great, bare arms
were black and scarred with heat; his hair was burned; his shirt
was torn from his shoulders. When David spoke--and Black Roger
turned at the sound--his eyes glared wildly out of a face that was
like a black mask. And when he saw it was David who had spoken,
his great body seemed to sag, and with an unintelligible cry he
pointed down.
David, staring, saw nothing with his half-blind eyes, but under
his feet he felt a sudden giving way, and the fire-eaten tangle of
earth and roots broke off like a rotten ledge, and with it both he
and Black Roger went crashing into the depths below, smothered in
an avalanche of ash and sizzling earth. At the bottom David lay
for a moment, partly stunned. Then his fingers clutched a bit of
living fire, and with a savage cry he staggered to his feet and
looked to see Black Roger. For a space his eyes were blinded, and
when at last he could see, he made out Black Roger, fifty feet
away, dragging himself on his hands and knees through the
blistering muck of the fire.
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