Page:Amazing Stories Volume 21 Number 06.djvu/99

Rh have been carefully taught that "voices are insanity"; never to believe such silly tales. And that is hard to understand when one has been raised to respect and fear the ancient underworld.) The women and children were not admitted to the council.

Yuka had once been quite a large mining camp. Then it had been called Crockett, after the famous Indian fighter. After its brief hey-day it had been a ghost town for a long time. Now it was "Yuka," a new name for its score of falling down frame shacks.

Secumne had taken the biggest shack. It had once been a bar-room. Now it was hung with Indian blankets, an open fire burned, weapons hung on the walls and the pelts of game. Secumne sat on a chair draped with a sheep pelt across the back.

A dozen leading men of the tribe squatted behind Secumne. Old wrinkled ones, younger eagle-eyed sturdy ones. Stevens and Lane squatted directly in front of the old chief. Behind, filling the shack, squatted or stood the twenty-five young men who survived.

Stevens smoked the long pipe, passed it to Lane. When the pipe had finally returned to Secumne, he took it in one thin hand, puffed it contentedly. There was plenty of time. Lane handed Secumne the little paper on which John Ahahne had scribbled the pictograph message. The old man looked at it briefly, frowned, nodded, returned it. To make sure Secumne understood, Lane interpreted the message at length. "The message is what started us away from Butte. Chance has brought us to you. Can you help us; tell us of your knowledge of the secret. What we must know to find a place that is safe for us? Your trail signs told us you would aid men of the Red Legion."

The old man looked very stupid. He looked at them a long time. Finally the wrinkled, toothless old mouth began to talk.

"What you should know takes much telling. Not many you could find would have any information for your company. The Gods have brought you to me." The old man spoke good English. He must have been in an Indian school, long ago when young.

The company of men from Butte waited. To an outsider they looked like deeply tanned white men, in white men's clothes. But inside those clothes and that lean, rangy flesh, inside those tall silent young Americans burned the ancient fire that made the red man the feared warrior that he was. On those faces that savage courage and hardihood of the Indian sat, at home. They waited. The old one would take his time. The voice finally went on.

"You have prayed to Eemeeshee, the Breath-Master. He has answered you. I know that is true, for you have told me, and I can see you are not all liars. It has not happened for many years that Eemeeshee talked with his children. It seems that the ancient one has awakened, then. So I have much to tell you. If it had not been that you told me of your invocation to Eemeeshee—I would have little to say to you. But that is good, that Eemeeshee still answers his chosen. Now I must tell you what Eemeeshee is, and you must listen and understand me and believe. Even these who have known me many years, my own people, many of them would not believe what I am going to say. But if you wish to save yourselves from the fate that has dogged you here, you must believe me."

The old man stopped, looked at them, sounding them for unbelief, for scorn of his words. Finding only an attention and respect in their faces, he went on.

"You see, Eemeeshee is a man. He is many hundred years old. His father was still older when he died. I have been to Eemeeshee's lodge, deep under earth. I have seen him."

OU have seen our ancient God?" Lane rose to his feet, excitement not letting him sit still.

"He exists in truth? Then all our fathers' teachings are not lies, as the white men tell us?"

"The white men are overwise sometimes. They 'know everything' because some teacher who 'knows everything' told them so, because they read a book that told them what was true and what was false. They believe they know many things they do not know. The white men are sometimes very foolish in their wisdom. Eemeeshee is not what they think. But he is not what the Red Man thinks, either. He is not a spirit! He is very