It is not, it discovers, the thrilling spectacle its puffball fancy painted.
No puffball is poisonous, so far as is known, but if the inside has turned yellowish at all it is apt to be quite bitter.
It had sprung suddenly from behind a great puffball as the two men froze in horror.
In a moment they had emerged from the tangle of fungus growths to stand upon the banks of a wide river--the same river whose gleam Burl had seen the day before, from the farther side of the red puffball plain.
Atop the low cliff a red puffball glistened in the morning light.
Then the mountains drew back and the tribe was in a valley where, look as they might, there was no single tawny-red puffball from whose spreading range the tribesmen were refugees.
In the light of dawn the deadly red haze was forming once more over the puffball plain.
Almost as if at a signal a red puffball burst among the fanlike growths.
After the puffball has matured, the contents change into a brown, dustlike mass, and the top falls off; and it is then inedible.
All varieties of puffball with a pure white interior are harmless, if eaten before becoming crumbly and powdery.
There was a burst of blinding flame, and then thepuffball had vanished, and the too-curious warrior remained only a heap of charred and blackened bones.
They all saw it--a white puffball of smoke that tumbled over the tower-rim and came drifting and rolling down the slope toward them.
And because he had lied in saying the puffball was white clay, therefore he and his people should never again be able to speak, and they should always hide their heads for shame.
So he took the puffball back and showed it to the young man.
The puffball very quickly increased in size and weight so that it was all the turtle could bear.
The young man then placed the puffball upon the turtle's back.
Then the puffball became as light as a feather and turned black.
Still the puffball continued to grow until the turtle's body was pressed flat by it, and his breath was pressed out of his body and he lay as if he were dead.
