Page:Amazing Stories Volume 21 Number 06.djvu/103

Rh been built to keep the water from flowing here. How the rocks that might fall and block it have been cleared away above. Once there were many hands to serve the fathers of Eemeeshee, and Eemeeshee, if he had had the mind to use them. But such as he have little mind to use people."

Old Secumne's voice was filled with a strange weariness, as though the contemplation of the facts about such creatures as the Indian God Eemeeshee was very painful to him.

As the cars trundled into the smooth roadway, picked up speed, Lane asked Secumne:

"How is it that Eemeeshee has survived the death you think has caught up with his like in other places?"

"He is not easy to kill. Too, he is not feared, for he is peculiar, timid. They are used to having such as him about. It is not wise to try to kill such as the old one without necessity. They sometimes know mighty things, which they do not use until someone arouses them from their dreams."

"Finding that the legendary Gods have had a real existence, and that something that was once worshipped as a God still lives on when all belief in such existence has disappeared, is a disappointment. I suppose all Gods everywhere in the centuries past have been just such creatures."

"They have not all been like Eemeeshee, no! But many have. Others, I learned long ago, do not exist, but are imitated by people in the caverns for no reason but custom and mischievousness. But to tell men anything about such subjects I have always found nearly impossible. It is good to find that the Red Legion itself is not a legend, but a reality. It is good to know that the Legion has many members, knows enough to realize that the old tales had a truth about them, a mighty truth."

HE cars wound down and down. Driving was no task, the road was broad, straight and level except for a gradual and hardly noticeable curve, and level as new laid concrete. Here and there slight shifts of the rock strata had raised bumps, sudden steps, where a drop or a raise had taken place, but usually these were easily negotiable as the unevenness had been filled at some time in the past with rubble.

As the way led deeper and deeper into the earth, these shiftings of the rock grew less and less. At last they disappeared altogether.

"How far to the old one?" Stevens leaned toward Secumne, sitting in the back seat with Lane. His dark, aquiline face was intent, curious.

"Couple hours yet. Can't drive fast, can't tell. Maybe rock fall, maybe barricades put up since. Haven't been here for twenty years now."

Lane spoke to Stevens.

"Just what do we expect to get out of him, anyway. Hadn't we better discuss what we are going to say to him, and then let Secumne do the talking? He knows the ancient rigamaroles by which such beings are propitiated. It isn't as if we were going to discuss a point of law with a judge on the bench, you know. We don't really have much idea what we're trying to do."

Stevens looked at Secumne.

"When we get there, you try and arouse some feeling in the old one for the red man and his struggle to remain—to grow great again in his own way. Tell how the white man has displaced us while our guardian, Eemeeshee has dreamed away the life that should have been devoted to preserving the Indian and his way of life, his racial culture and attainments. Tell him that now is his last chance to be what his children have always thought him to be. Try and arouse some spark in his heedless heart. Then, if you see life in his brain and a regard for the red man, tell him we belong to a legion—the last organized red men on the continent. That we will bring members of the legion here to learn from him the way of the Elder Gods. That he must only teach. That if there is fighting to be done, we will do it for him. There is no need for him to disturb his peace or come out of his dreams. After he has taught one of us we will guard him and serve him while we teach the others ourselves. Understand?"

"I catch. I'll tell him what he should have been told a hundred years ago—a hundred and fifty—or what his father should have known three hundred years ago."

The cars were now passing the gray dust shrouded shapes of the wonder work of the Elder race, but old Secumne gave no sign of calling a halt. Steven's eyes darted right and left, watching the dust-covered mystery that was the machinery of a