Page:Weird Tales Volume 2 Number 2 (1923-09).djvu/47

46 over back of the cook-house. Its voice stirred the S. P. & S. construction camp to an activity far beyond its normal, filling the night with the thumping of many hoofs, the sound of hurrying feet, and the loudly issued call of orders.

My badly-shaken nerves denied me sleep. So I walked about the construction camp—in and out among the improvised buildings, up and down along the different spur tracks, back and forth across the open intervals—finally, after the lapse of an hour or so, through a tiny universe which slept again, though more or less fitfully.

The wind raged on, rising ever in intensity. Yet the night was not wholly opaque. Across the intervals the camp buildings peered like gray ghosts out of the darkness. Through the pale saffron glow I could see the dim outline of Deadman's Hill looming like a shadow across the northern sky. Overhead the clouds, snow white or inky-black, with pink and silver edges, fled on and on across the face of a porcelain moon.

The night seemed filled with an extra dread, the air surcharged with currents of electricity. The thing—whatever it might turn out to be—was not yet at an end. Of this I felt quite sure. Perhaps it was only beginning—who could say? The slumbering camp slept on; only the night-watchmen were about, moving like wraiths along their various beats. And I, whose nerves denied me sleep, kept additional watch and ward, listening, waiting intensely, senses keyed to the breaking point, against that thing which should—at least which might—next transpire.

HEY appeared to be coming from the north—riding with the wind and the night, as it were, down across Wild Rose Prairie.

I could hear the vague though well-defined rumble of significant sound, rising and receding, and rising again, like the roaring of a storm on a distant mountain side. No physical thing made itself manifest, as yet—no object was visible to the human eyes; yet I keenly felt the approach of this nameless menace.

Filled with a sudden wish to rise above my environment, and so attain a point of greater safety, I climbed upon the lumber heap in front of the company office, and there stood, buffeted by the high wind, peering northward, wide-eyed, into the night.

The sounds had grown louder, now, increased to a rattling roll—the steady, persistent roll of hundreds of horses' hoofs, hard-driven, beating upon the grass-grown surface of Wild Rose Prairie.

They were bearing down upon us—coming in the direction of the construetion camp. Presently a dim outline became visible, more like the moving shadow of a cloud, spread thin and stringlike across the flat surface of prairie, vague yet forever moving, working up and down, traveling continually toward us through the saffron night, like the wind passing over a field of wheat.

The sleeping construction camp heard the increasing urge of sound, and stirred again into life. Lights winked on suddenly in the cook-house and the sleeping quarters; door slammed, voices called shrilly across the darkness. The S. P. & S. had arisen once more to action. Beyond all other sounds I could hear the squealing of the frightened horses in the company corrals, the scamper of feet, the sharp thud of hoofs against the sides of the enclosure; and, rising thinly out of the aggregate rush of noise, the voice of Weatherford at the telephone in the little office back of me, calling persistently for Fort Hardie, and the cavalry.

A hand grasped me tensely by the sleeve, and I turned. It was Courtney; he had climbed upon the lumber heap beside me; he stood now, white-faced and trembling at my elbow.

"A stampede!" he whispered. "They have sprung a stampede—turned their range horses loose upon us!"

But it was not a stampede. For those horses—deployed, as they were, in a thin skirmish line of cavalry across Wild Rose Prairie, running low and with muzzles tense and outstretched—they had riders! Riders, in blankets, paint and war bonnets, who sat their steeds erect and full of dignity. They were led by a figure on a milk-white horse with a silver mane and tail.

Thus they came on swiftly toward us. Yet they gave forth no sound—made no undue motion; they simply drove straight ahead, silently, inexorably, like spectres riding down the night.

"See how still they are!" gasped Courtney suddenly, clutching me by the arm. "As if they were dumb!—not able to make a noise of any sort!"

I shook his hand free from my sleeve.

"Why shouldn't they be still?" I hissed back at him foolishly. "There's nothing to make a noise about."

"Shadows of the dead past!" I heard Courtney breathe with a half sob, his voice trailing off into a whisper.

Up along the S. P. & S. right of way they came, through Cut Number Two, over the half-finished grades, across the desecrated burying grounds, with an endless roaring of hoofs, like the rush of a rising gale. The night wind rattled the dry quills of their war bonnets, streamed through their black, disheveled hair, whipping their blankets out straight like streamers behind them, as they came along. Yet they gave forth no human sign nor sound: they simply rode circumspectly on through the night.

"God! They can't move!" Courtney gasped. "See, they can't move—they can't turn their heads!"

The frenzy of this half-demented man seemed to unseat my reason, obsess my mind, so that I heard what he heard, saw only what he saw. Thus I beheld this strange aggregation of shapes, fossilized in this their supernatural calm, come swiftly on, as if pulled by unseen hands across the darkness. Their chins were up, their shoulders held erect; each right arm, reaching high and defiant, clutched aloft a bow and a sheaf of arrows. Yet no emotion stirred the muscles of their bodies, no feature changed upon those paint-smeared faces. They simply sat like images of bronze, their eyes, wide and unblinking, gazed fixedly ahead, as if frozen in their sockets.

"Blind!" Courtney whispered, half hysterically. "Totally blind! Oh, pitiful, pitiful!"

Thus for a brief instant they flashed across our view. In that instant the earth spun dizzily around, losing all form and focus. For they rode—or seemed to ride—straight through the construction train, asleep upon the siding; through the seven steam shovels; through the cook-house, and the hundred tents of the sleeping quarters; through the little office itself, where Weatherford still sat calling frantically for the cavalry—through, and on—and left things standing as before!

The S. P. & S. construction camp joined in the brief commotion, with a slamming and banging of doors, the call of frantic voices from out the sleeping quarters. Yet these, with the steady beating of hoofs, were the only sounds.

Our own horses, catching the swift contagion, screaming and kicking, leaped against the corral gates and, riding them down, flowed out upon the prairie to join the wild night orgy.

So they passed, thundering away southward down the Clearwater Basin. The noise diminished, grew less and less, coming vaguely and yet more vaguely across the growing distance, sank finally to a low grumble on the night wind, and so disappeared. Once more the S. P. & S. construction camp lay wrapped in its garment of silence and repose.

Presently, out of this silence, there arose the wailing note of a lone coyote,