Page:Honore Willsie--Judith of the godless valley.djvu/54

 up a little," said Peter Knight, standing waist-deep in the grave, with John. "Most places I've been, women keep the graves like they would a little garden."

Charleton Falkner, resting on a neighboring head-stone, smiled sardonically. "Lost Chief women have enough to do without dolling up graves."

Cold sweat stood on Doug's forehead. He stared from the gaping grave to the murmuring line of pines that marked the end of the cemetery and the beginning of the Forest Reserve, and shuddered. He had not been sleeping well since the night of the murder. Johnny Brown, small and very thin, with a scraggly iron-gray beard hung with little icicles and his blue eyes watering with the cold, moved away from the headstone against which he had been resting after his turn in the grave.

"That boy," he said, jerking his elbow at Doug, "will be massified for many a year for driving the preacher out of Lost Chief."

"How do you mean—massify!" demanded Doug, gruffly. Johnny might be half-witted, but his remarks were curiously penetrating sometimes.

"I mean massify," grunted Johnny.

Peter Knight heaved a great frosted boulder out to the ground level.

"Charleton," he said slowly, "doesn't the thought of lying in a forgotten grave give you dumb horrors?"

"Sometimes," replied Charleton laconically, as he beat his cold hands together. "But only sometimes."

Douglas strained forward in the intensity of his interest.

Douglas' father straightened his broad shoulders. "If I let myself think about it, I have to go out and get drunk," he muttered.