Had any member of the tribe watched it, the red dust might have seemed malevolently intelligent. But when the edges of the dust–cloud were no more than twenty yards from Saya's limp body, an opposing breeze sprang up. It was a vagrant, fitful little breeze that halted the red cloud and threw it into some confusion, sending it in a new direction. It passed Saya without hurting her, though one of its misty tendrils reached out as if to snatch at her in slow–motion. But it passed her by.
Saya lay motionless on the ground. Only her breast rose and fell shallowly. A tiny pool of red gathered near her head.
Some thirty feet from where she lay, there were three miniature toadstools in a clump, bases so close together that they seemed but one. From between two of them, however, two tufts of reddish thread appeared. They twinkled back and forth and in and out. As if reassured, two slender antennae followed, then bulging eyes and a small, black body with bright–red scalloped markings upon it.
It was a tiny beetle no more than eight inches long—a sexton or burying–beetle. Drawing near Saya's body it scurried onto her flesh. It went from end to end of her figure in a sort of feverish haste. Then it dived into the ground beneath her shoulder, casting back a little shower of hastily–dug dirt as it disappeared.
Ten minutes later, another small creature appeared, precisely like the first. Upon the heels of the second came a third. Each made the same hasty examination and dived under her unmoving form.
Presently the ground seemed to billow at a spot along Saya's side and then at another. Ten minutes after the arrival of the third beetle, a little rampart had reared itself all about Saya's body, following her outlines precisely. Then her body moved slightly, in little jerks, seeming to settle perhaps half an inch into the ground.
The burying–beetles were of that class of creatures which exploited the bodies of the fallen. Working from below, they excavated the earth. When there was a hollow space below they turned on their backs and thrust up with their legs, jerking at the body until it sank into the space they had made ready. The process would be repeated until at last all their dead treasures had settled down below the level of the surrounding ground. The loosened dirt then fell in at the sides, completing the inhumation. Then, in the underground darkness, it was the custom for the beetles to feast magnificently, gorging themselves upon the food they had hidden from other scavengers—and of course rearing their young also upon its substance.
Ants and flies were rivals of these beetles and not infrequently the sexton–beetles came upon carrion after ants had taken their toll, and when it already swarmed with maggots. But in this case Saya was not dead. The fact that she still lived, though unconscious, was the factor that had given the sexton–beetles this splendid opportunity.
She breathed gently and irregularly, her face drawn with the sorrow of the night before, while the desperately hurrying beetles swarmed about beneath her body, channelling away the soil so she would sink lower and lower into it. She descended slowly, a half–inch by a half–inch. The bright–red tufts of thread appeared again and a beetle made its way to the open air. It moved hastily about, inspecting the progress of the work.
It dived below again. Another inch and, after a long time, another, were excavated.
Matters still progressed when Burl stepped out from a group of overshadowing toadstools and halted. He cast his eyes over the landscape and was struck by its familiarity. He was, in fact, very near the spot he had left the night before in that maniacal ride on the back of a flying beetle. He moved back and forth, trying to account for the feeling of recognition.
He saw the low cliff, then, and moved eagerly toward it, passing within fifty feet of Saya's body, now more than half–buried in the ground. The loose dirt around the outline of her figure was beginning to topple in little rivulets upon her. One of her shoulders was already half–screened from view. Burl passed on, unseeing.
He hurried a little. In a moment he recognized his location exactly. There were the mining–bee burrows. There was a thrown–away lump of edible mushroom, cast aside as the tribesfolk fled.
His feet stirred up a fine dust, and he stopped short. A red puffball had burst here. It fully accounted for the absence of the tribe, and Burl sweated in sudden fear. He thought instantly of Saya. He went carefully to make sure. This was, absolutely, the hiding place of the tribe. There was another mushroom–fragment. There was a spear, thrown down by one of the men in his flight. Red dust had settled upon the spear and the mushroom–fragments.
Burl turned back, hurrying again, but taking care to disturb the dust no more than he could possibly help.
The little excavation into which Saya was sinking inch by inch was not in his path. Her body no longer lay above the ground, but in it. Burl went by, frantic with anxiety about the tribe, but about Saya most of all.
Her body quivered and sank a fraction into the ground. Half a dozen small streams of earth were tumbling upon her. In minutes she would be wholly hidden from view.
Burl went to beat among the mushroom–thickets, in quest of the bodies of his tribesfolk. They could have staggered out of the red dust and collapsed beyond. He would have shouted, but the deep sense of loneliness silenced him. His throat ached with grief. He searched on….
There was a noise. From a huge clump of toadstools—perhaps the very one he had climbed over in the night—there came the sound of crashings and the breaking of the spongy stuff. Twin tapering antennae appeared, and then a monster beetle lurched into the open space, its ghastly mandibles gaping sidewise.
It was all of eight feet long and supported by six crooked, saw–toothed legs. Huge, multiple eyes stared with preoccupation at the world. It advanced deliberately with clankings and clashings as of a hideous machine. Burl fled on the instant, running directly away from it.
A little depression lay in the ground before him. He did not swerve, but made to jump over it. As he leaped he saw the color of bare flesh, Saya, limp and helpless, sinking slowly into the ground with tricklings of dirt falling down to cover her. It seemed to Burl that she quivered a little.
Instantly there was a terrific struggle within Burl. Behind him was the giant meat–eating beetle; beneath him was Saya whom he loved. There was certain death lurching toward him on evilly crooked legs—and the life he had hoped for lay in a shallow pit. Of course he thought Saya dead.
Perhaps it was rage, or despair, or a simple human madness which made him act otherwise than rationally. The things which raise humans above brute creation, however, are only partly reasonable. Most human emotions—especially the creditable ones—cannot be justified by reason, and very few heroic actions are based upon logical thought.
Burl whirled as he landed, his puny spear held ready. In his left hand he held the haunch of a creature much like the one which clanked and rattled toward him. With a yell of insane defiance—completely beyond justification by reason—Burl flung that meat–filled leg at the monster.
It hit. Undoubtedly, it hurt. The beetle seized it ferociously. It crushed it. There was meat in it, sweet and juicy.
The beetle devoured it. It forgot the man standing there, waiting for death. It crunched the leg–joint of a cousin or brother, confusing the blow with the missile that had delivered it. When the tidbit was finished it turned and lumbered off to investigate another mushroom thicket. It seemed to consider then an enemy had been conquered and devoured and that normal life could go on.
Then Burl stopped quickly, and dragged Saya from the grave the sexton–beetles had labored so feverishly to provide for her. Crumbled soil fell from her shoulders, from her face, and from her body. Three little eight–inch beetles with black and red markings scurried for cover in terrified haste. Burl carried Saya to a resting–place of soft mould to mourn over her.