Page:Amazing Stories Volume 21 Number 06.djvu/100

100 different from anything you can imagine."

"How, different?" Stevens had leaned forward, watching Secumne's old face for every change of expression. It was important that they be not misled by any old dodderer. Their future depended on what they did next. Perhaps on what the old man might tell them depended the continuation or cessation of the daily deaths among their company. Perhaps the whole fate of the Red Legion, of thousands of Indians spread over half the continent—the whole Red Legion—depended on this old man's words. Stevens, too, knew there was a mighty thing to learn about such manifestations. This old one had seen him. That was important.

The old man went on.

"He is different from men, but yet only a man. In some ways he is perhaps much less than a man."

About the old chief some forty intent faces pressed closer, anxious not to miss one quavering word. Truth was in the old man's face, and he knew facts that few other living men knew about the great mystery of life: the Gods that men have worshipped and believed in always.

"Where he is, under earth, you have never seen. It is a world vastly different from our own world of sunshine and natural plant growth. Only many years of experience can give a man understanding of why things are as they are there. So much I will tell you will have to be taken as truth though it may not seem truth.

"Long, long ago—when there were no white men in all the American continent—the red men of the very far past found the ancient caverns of an Elder race. There in the caverns whole tribes lived and died and fought—and learned a magic never known by surface people. The Indian medicine man of those days was one who had gone to those underworld red men and learned magic—and returned to his people to teach. They learned there how to work for the unseen red men—and the remnants of their teachings, surviving in your ignorant modern minds, have brought you to this pass; have somehow brought you to me. I am the last of that kind of medicine man. There are no others that I know of. I am older than you think. For I lived a long time underground. And when I came out I found my friends had aged much more than myself. The custom of those days—of red men underground helping and teaching surface red men—has survived, even though so much time and disaster and miles of rock lie between the brothers. To you Eemeeshee is a god, only a lengendary figure of the dark and ignorant past. If he is in existence, you think he is mysterious, powerful, unknowable; a kind of super ghost."

The old man paused, smiled condescendingly as upon foolish children. His smile was very sweet, he was an old, a good man, it said. One whom time had taught that only goodness and kindness are wisdom. His voice went on, a kind of mildly savage chant in the half-dark.

"But to me, who have seen him, talked to the ancient one, lived with him and served him, he is a timid thing, a misunderstood character, a vast mountain of useless and undying flesh."

The faces of the grim young men who had fled mysterious death that cut them down day by day—drew back at these words, puzzled, disappointed. They knew not what to say. Their breath sounded like a sigh in unison as the tension let up. But old Secumne went on, unnoticing, his eyes musing on things they could not know.

EMEESHEE is timid, as a long-necked clam is timid, as a prairie dog is timid, as a turtle is timid.

"Eemeeshee has a shell. He pokes out his head. If everything is not the way the mind of him would like it, he pulls his head in, and a year goes by before he looks again. The last time—half a century went by, so I have heard. But it was not that long. I am not that old. And I know him. Perhaps he has poked his head out every year.

"Eemeeshe's forefathers have lived in such shells until it is as necessary physically to him as is the actual turtle's shell. Eemeeshee never comes out of his shell. His people have lived in such machines always. Eemeeshee belongs to a very ancient family who have always lived as he is doing. It is his way—and that way is not as we know men's ways. To us, Eemeeshee is not a man. He can not live without his shell, that is a machine."

Lane stirred, rose from his haunches. "That is very strange talk, Secumne. To some, what you say would not make sense. But we know something of what