Page:Weird Tales Volume 43 Number 02 (1951-01).djvu/61

 face. "Is nonsense, unsinn. How could it be one of dem? Didn't we bind dem to stay before we left?"

Kate sighed and sank back in her seat. Her brother John, who was sitting beside her (he was only her half-brother, she was wont to say with a touch of defiance), slipped his arm around her waist. "You're tired, Kate," he said. "It ain't them dead ones I'm afraid of. I’m afraid of a posse coming after us."

"Oh, do you think there'll be one?" Kate answered vaguely. Once more her hands were moving on her dress.

"Dead sure. Colonel York suspicioned us about his brother. They traced him as far as our farm."

"He didn’t come back for the seance, though," Kate replied.

"No. But we knew he'd be back later for sure, with more men. Things was getting hot. That’s why we left."

Kate laughed suddenly, a bold, ringing laugh. "Why we left! Didn't we look out the bedroom window that morning and see the ground heaving below in the orchard? Didn't you hear her little voice crying 'Mama! Mama!' the way she did when we burled her? Why we left!"

"I didn't hear or see nothing, Kate. I only said that to ... to agree with you."

Once more Kate laughed. "You didn't hear anything? Why, you turned as white as a sheet!"

"As a ghost," her brother corrected after a moment had passed. "Make it a ghost, while you're doing it."

HEY jounced on. Bender, hunched over the reins, clucked now and then at the team. Once John said out of a long silence, "This here ain’t much of a road, for a fact." Kate looked at him sideways without saying anything.

The sun began to sink. The air, which had been warm with spring earlier in the day, grew colder. A light breeze ruffled the long grass of the prairie. Kate, shivering, let John embrace her without resistance.

Old man Bender turned round to face them. "Hope we find dose houses soon," he said uneasily. "That boy said we'd get to them before night."

Kate raised her head from John's shoulder and looked him full in the eyes. His gaze wavered. He coughed and turned back to the team.

They stopped at last. "Is too dark to drive more," old man Bender said, his voice loud in the sudden silence. "Ve got to sleep here." He looked around the vacant flatness of the prairie, frowning, and then began to unharness the team.

John jumped from the wagon and then turned to help Kate. She was stiff from the long sitting; she almost fell into his arms. Mrs. Bender, meantime, was getting sacks and crocks of provisions out from under the front seat.

"Have an apple, son," she said, holding one out to the young man.

"No. I can't say as I care for the fruit from them trees."

RS. BENDER began to munch the apple herself. Kate had taken advantage of the distraction to withdraw from John’s embrace and wander off. He looked after her, his forehead wrinkled. Then he began to help his mother with the preparations for the evening meal.

Suddenly Kate screamed. It was a high sound, not very loud. John dropped the bread he was holding and ran toward her.

He found her sitting on her heels, her black bombazine skirt drawn tightly around her haunches. She was holding a long thigh bone in one hand.

"It scared me when I first saw it," she said, looking up at him brightly. "The skull, I mean. And look, over there in the grass, there’s another one."

John followed her gesture. He kicked the grass apart. After a short time he found the second skeleton, gleaming whitely even in the dim light. He stooped over, hunting, and came up at last with something in his hand.

"It was an Indian," he announced to Kate. "This here's what killed him. An arrow." He showed it to her.

She seemed to lose interest. "Oh, an Indian. Must of been a long time ago." 