Page:Weird Tales Volume 2 Number 2 (1923-09).djvu/43

42 amount of bad luck. Sometimes a job does go like that—all sorts of petty interruptions; unexplainable, too.

They began to get onto Courtney's nerves early in the game.

"That's always the way with a rush order," he growled. "The more hurry, the less speed. I wish we hadn't overlooked that rigging equipment. I can't work but five of the steam shovels now, and we need all seven of 'em, to get through."

"Well, do the best you can," advised Weatherford patiently. "It does seem as if we're having a little more than our share of bother, though."

"Bother!" barked Courtney. "Well, I should say we are! The dump train went off the track three times yesterday—only three times, you understand? And two grade teams went over the einbankment—two, in one afternoon! Can you beat it? The men aren't working very good either, somehow."

"Oh, that's all imagination," said Weatherford expansively.

"No, it isn't imagination," Courtney declared. "I don't know what it is, but somehow we're not getting results as we should—not like we usually do. I can't tell what the trouble is, though," he repeated, puckering his brows.

"Well, it's all in the day's work," said Weatherford philosophically. "We'll get through somehow, I guess; just keep on plugging."

"And, say!" Courtney turned on his heel as he started to leave. "This survey we're following calls for a ten-foot cut right through that damned Indian graveyard, over at Number Two Hill!"

"Well," said Weatherford, gazing at him impersonally from across a stack of figures upon the desk. "Run it through, then!"

"But it's a graveyard!" protested Courtney. "An Indian"

"Well, they're all dead, aren't they?" inquired Weatherford, a barely perceptible twitching at the corners of his mouth.

"Yes, I know! But we're having enough trouble already, without stirring up the dead," said Courtney, with an embarrassed little laugh.

"When did you ever become so superstitious as all that?" inquired Weatherford, dryly.

"I'm not superstitious!" Courtney defended indignantly. "But—Well—the men don't—"

"If the survey calls for a cut through a graveyard," said Weatherford, measuring his words to give them greater weight, "then we go through a graveyard! We didn't make the survey; we're simply up here to follow out instructions. And we're building a railroad." Weatherford returned diligently to his figures "There's gotta be graveyards, somewhere," he added, half apologetically, dropping into the vernacular, "and there's also gotta be railroads."

Throughout the aforesaid mysterious mishaps—call them such, although they did seem to be running oddly toward the specific, as if some method, or general plan, were in operation back of them—Charley Eaglefeather displayed no emotion of any sort. You cannot get emotion out of an Indian, under ordinary circumstances. Not that it is not there—you simply can't get it out. You may look him in the face persistently for a hundred years, and yet not read his thoughts. He has them, all right; yet, such as they are, and whatever they are, they remain as safe in his charge as the secrets of the Pyramids.

Eaglefeather's work consisted in leveling the grade behind the construction crew—telling them when to break off, and when to go on.

This work he did efficiently, and without comment. He never had been much of a talker, even in his most loquacious moments, and he did not talk now. The incidents that first day at the Indian village had not since been mentioned by him, nor the tribe itself, nor his ancestors, nor the things we were doing to the family graveyard. He simply continued stoically about his task, looking at you—when he did look at you—with that poker-face gaze of his, which reminded you of a stone image, except that it was much hotter.

By the end of the fourth week of our sojourn at the foot of Deadman's Hill, the situation had gotten so badly on the nerves of the temperamental Courtney, that he took the matter up again with Weatherford.

"We've just got to do something about it," he said puckering his brows, as he always did under perplexities. "At least a hundred picks and shovels have disappeared from these diggings since we started work, forty or fifty within the past twenty-four hours."

"You hadn't told me that," breathed Weatherford.

"Well, I didn't hardly miss 'em at first—not until that big bunch went, yesterday. You know, I think it's the Indians that are doing it."

"Why; did you find some live ones when you went through their graveyard?" Weatherford smiled.

"No, but we found plenty of beads, arrowheads, and tomahawks, and a couple of tons of perfectly white bones." Courtney shivered. "There are some live ones around, though, for all that," he added. "What I'd like to know—" He turned to gaze suddenly, wide-eyed, at Weatherford, as he spoke—"What I'd like to know is, who opened those flood gates into Number Two Cut, last night!"

"Why, were they opened?" Weatherford straightened up suddenly, interested.

"Yes, they were opened—opened up wide. Three feet of water standing in the cut, this morning; had to drain it out before we could go ahead. And those gates didn't open themselves, either," Courtney added significantly.

"There may be some Bolsheviks among the crew," suggested Weatherford.

"No, I don't think so," Courtney's attitude was positive. "The crew's all right. So that isn't it. The fact remains, however, that we left the dump-train standing on the siding when we closed down last night, and this morning it was in the ditch; been run down and shunted off at the switch—lying on its side."

"Might have broken loose," suggested Weatherford thoughtfully.

"Sure, it might!" barked Courtney. "Those gates might have opened themselves, too;—but they didn't. I tell you there's something going on around here—something that's getting clear past us, without us seeing it!"

Courtney's voice held a tragic note; clearly he was both baffled and worried.

"I don't think it's the Indians, though," said Weatherford.

"Well, who is it, then?" Courtney demanded, helplessly. "Somebody's doing it; it's just got to be Indians, of some sort."

"I'm sure I don't know who it is," said Weatherford, with a worried stare. "Yet it's a situation that'll have to be looked into."

ow it is a fact that we had seen no Indians since the first day of our arrival. We had observed, it is true, their horses—they had a large number of horses, two or three hundred, I should think—grazing, always at a great distance out over Wild Rose Prairie.

Also, we had noticed occasional plumes of smoke rising against the blue sky from remote campfires, and heard, sometimes, faint though garish Indian sounds—the weird chant of the harvest dance, the monotonous beating of tom-toms.

Yet these sights and sounds were always distant—far away, as if they were but memories. In truth, they had from the first seemed more like memories than realities—memories of a once vast and