Page:Amazing Stories Volume 21 Number 06.djvu/94

94 As Johnny plodded off into the dimly-lit boring his hand slid into his loin cloth, fumbled for an instant with a folded bit of paper. His brothers on the surface must know of what had come to pass. Of the fate that had overtaken the ancient, secret and aloof strength of the Red Men of under-earth. The Red Legion had been their favorite project for the future. They must be told; those red brothers on the surface. They must be warned of what had happened down here.

Two miles from the "Express Office" Johnny looked about carefully. Then he reached with his mind's awareness for the ionizing of any watchray upon him. At last, convinced he was unobserved, he slipped the little paper out of his loin cloth and slid it into a tiny unmarked crevice in the ancient hardened rock of the wall. Silently, unthinkingly, his mind a careful blank, Johnny Ahahne plodded on his long carry into the dark.

He did not love the white European ray people. This Da Sylva woman who had taken over the Elder caverns under Butte, Montana, was a cruel creature, and her gang was worse, when possible. When the short, bloody, decisive battle was over, there was left alive but a few hundred of the red warriors. For them was designated the labor, the dirty jobs no one else wanted, and the working of the ancient mines. Johnny, as so many of his ancestors in the past, cursed his heathen curses on all white men and moved on into the ever-dark.

But the little paper did not remain in the unnoticeable slot in the hardened rock of the ancient cavern wall. An hour later another bearer paused, reached with his mind to sense the ionizing of the watch rays, looked at the age-old dust to watch the furry bristling that tattled on the electric flows of a watch ray. The bristling dust died into quiescence, it was but the wind of his slight movement. He reached into the slot, took the paper. Many days he had looked into the secret place, found nothing. Today there was a message. He knew it was for the red brothers on the surface—those who knew.

By such stages the paper finally reached the surface. In the overalls of a red-skinned cowhand the paper traveled toward Butte.

N Butte, Lane's partner, Jack Stevens, parked his Buick coupe near the long-limbed animal from the Ranch of the Elder Twin. Stevens stood by his car absently filling his pipe, his tall, spare, wide shouldered figure well dressed in dark gray, well-pressed worsted. His aquiline, high cheek-boned face was expressionless. Only the glitter of his heavy-lidded black eyes betrayed his intent awareness. Only the Indians who belonged to the Red Legion knew that the Ranch of the Elder Twin was built over an ancient Entrance to the Elder World; a world that only the Indians of this part of the west knew existed. Only a few of the Indians knew that the Elder Twin was a living God who inhabited the deeper caverns of the Elder World. Only a very few of them fully realized the tremendous nature of the secret covered by that low-built ranch house.

Stevens stood still a long time, eyeing that rangy bay horse from the ranch. Johnny Ahahne's voice had told him in the night there would be a message—written—that he could depend on; that would be no fake by some imp of the dark.

The cowhand came out of the store, swung into the saddle, moved down the wide street. Stevens bent, picked up the paper. The Red Legion had contacted the unseen.

HORTLY Stevens entered the office that bore his and Lane's names on the window.

Lane looked up at his partner, but did not move from his slumped, discouraged position at the big desk. Stevens tossed the still-folded paper in front of Lane. Lane's dark eyes quickened. He picked up the paper, unfolded it jerkily. On it was a series of pictographs, readable only to a few Indians; or to a student who knew the lesser languages of the Indians. They are few.

As Lane pored over the message, two men came into the office. They were cowhands of Indian blood from another ranch near Butte, the Barred Y. Lane passed the message to one of these men, sat watching his face as he deciphered the near-forgotten symbols. One by one more and more men filed into the office. Lane knew by the man's face that he was not wrong, that the message meant exactly what he had read it to mean. There was no mistake. The Red Legion was doomed if it stayed here.

The Brotherhood of the Unseen had