Page:Weird Tales Volume 9 Number 1 (1927-01).djvu/13

 "I started up, but I had taken only a half dozen springs or so when Sklokoyum came leaping, plunging into view. I have seen fear, horrible fear, that of cowards and the fear of brave men; but never had I seen anything like that fear which I saw now. And Sklokoyum, whatever his faults, has a skookum tumtum—in other words, is no coward.

"Down he came plunging. There was a glimpse of a blood-covered visage; then he was past. The next instant a shock, a savage oath from White, and he and the Siwash fell in a heap, went over the edge and rolled down the bank and clean to the fire.

"Long and I followed, keeping a sharp lookout behind us, and, indeed, in every direction. But no glimpse was caught of any moving thing, nor did the faintest sound come to us from out that cursed vapor, settling on the trees and dripping, dripping, dripping.

"Sklokoyum's right cheek was slashed as though by some great talon, and he had been terribly bitten in the throat.

"'A little more,' observed Long, 'and it would have been the jugular, and that would have meant klahowya, Sklokoyum.'

"The Indian declared that he had been attacked by a demon, a klale tamahnowis, a winged fiend from the white man's hell itself. What was it like? Sklokoyum could not tell us that. All he knew was that the demon had wings, teeth a foot in length, and that fire shot out of its eyes and smoke belched from its nostrils. And surely it would have killed him (and I have no doubt that it would) if an angel, an angel, from the white man's heaven, had not come and driven it off. What was the angel like? Sklokoyum could not describe her, so wonderful was the vision. And her voice—why, at the very sound of her voice, that horrible tamahnowis flapped its wings and slunk away into the fog and the gloom of the trees.

"Poor Sklokoyum! No wonder he gave us so wild an account of what happened up there! And, said he, to remain here would be certain death. We must go back, start at once. Well, we are still here, and we are not going to turn back at this spot, though I have no doubt that Sklokoyum himself will do so the very first thing in the morning.

"The fog is thinning. Now and again I see a star gleaming down with ghostly fire. We came here seeking a mystery; well, we certainly have found one. I wonder if I can get any sleep tonight. Long is to relieve me at 12 o'clock. For, of course, we can not, after what has happened, leave our camp without a guard. And I wonder if—what, though, is the good of wondering? But what is she, Sklokoyum's angel? And where is she now?"

closed the journal on the forefinger of his right hand and looked at Milton Rhodes.

"Well," said he, "what do you think of that?"

Rhodes did not say what he thought of it. I thought I knew—though I had to acknowledge that I wasn't sure just what I thought of this wild yarn myself.

After a little silence, Milton asked: "Is that all?"

"All? Indeed, no!" returned Scranton.

He opened the book and prepared to read from it again.

"This adventure I have just read to you," he said, looking over the top of the journal at Milton Rhodes, "took place in what is now known as Paradise Park—a Paradise where there is sometimes twenty-five feet of snow in the winter."