Page 221
By Jack Joseph Smith
The Rolls Royce was parked in the bush at the
brink of one of the long rounded Topanga ranges.
The vast Pacific Ocean spread out this day under
a clean sky and untinted wavelengths from the sun.
Prankster noticed a large ranch house at a dis-
tance of about two hundred yards due South, and he
wondered if this might be their destination. But
the man who had been silently driving indicated a
direction leading down a ravine. The shotgun man
seemed to know where he was was going also, and
Prankster and Davenport followed the two men down
a thin path. Red, purple, yellow were the barries
up wild, and the wind was swift and cool at the
place of their decention just after the crest. At
the top of crevice the wind had switched a good
portion of its strength down, as they walked to-
ward a medow way below, where the outline of some sort of build-
ings could be seen, And as they wound further
down through what was becomming more the shape and
spread of a canyon, this wind funneled out and did
push forcefully at their backs until Prankster felt
a sensation to the possibility of being shoved under,
and at the same time knew it odd to feel heat real-
ized in his bones and rising to his temples. It had
occurred to Prankster to ask the two men about making
a check of the road that had led them there; before: