It said it was — or had been — Capt. Lawton, but it was definitely younger by as much as forty years than the old man who had climbed the mound. Its hair was jet black, and its face — now distorted with nameless fright — free from wrinkles. But it did remind Grandma Compton most uncannily of the captain as he had looked back in ‘89. Its feet were cut off neatly at the ankles, and the stumps were smoothly healed to an extent almost incredible if the being really were the man who had walked upright a week before. It babbled of incomprehensible things, and kept repeating the name “George Lawton, George E. Lawton” as if trying to reassure itself of its own identity. The things it babbled of, Grandma Compton thought, were curiously like the hallucinations of poor young Heaton in ‘91; though there were minor differences. “The blue light! — the blue light! . . .” muttered the object, “always down there, before there were any living things — older than the dinosaurs — always the same, only weaker — never death — brooding and brooding and brooding — the same people, half-man and half-gas — the dead that walk and work — oh, those beasts, those half-human unicorns — houses and cities of gold — old, old, old, older than time — came down from the stars — Great Tulu — Azathoth — Nyarlathotep — waiting, waiting. . . .” The object died before dawn.
Of course there was an investigation, and the Indians at the reservation were grilled unmercifully. But they knew nothing, and had nothing to say. At least, none of them had anything to say except old Grey Eagle, a Wichita chieftain whose more than a century of age put him above common fears. He alone deigned to grunt some advice.
“You let um ‘lone, white man. No good — those people. All under here, all under there, them old ones. Yig, big father of snakes, he there. Yig is Yig. Tiráwa, big father of men, he there. Tiráwa is Tiráwa. No die. No get old. Just same like air. Just live and wait. One time they come out here, live and fight. Build um dirt tepee. Bring up gold — they got plenty. Go off and make new lodges. Me them. You them. Then big waters come. All change. Nobody come out, let nobody in. Get in, no get out. You let um ‘lone, you have no bad medicine. Red man know, he no get catch. White man meddle, he no come back. Keep ‘way little hills. No good. Grey Eagle say this.”
If Joe Norton and Rance Wheelock had taken the old chief’s advice, they would probably be here today; but they didn’t. They were great readers and materialists, and feared nothing in heaven or earth; and they thought that some Indian fiends had a secret headquarters inside the mound. They had been to the mound before, and now they went again to avenge old Capt. Lawton — boasting that they’d do it if they had to tear the mound down altogether. Clyde Compton watched them with a pair of prism binoculars and saw them round the base of the sinister hill. Evidently they meant to survey their territory very gradually and minutely. Minutes passed, and they did not reappear. Nor were they ever seen again.
Once more the mound was a thing of panic fright, and only the excitement of the Great War served to restore it to the farther background of Binger folklore. It was unvisited from 1916 to 1919, and would have remained so but for the daredeviltry of some of the youths back from service in France. From 1919 to 1920, however, there was a veritable epidemic of mound-visiting among the prematurely hardened young veterans — an epidemic that waxed as one youth after another returned unhurt and contemptuous. By 1920 — so short is human memory — the mound was almost a joke; and the tame story of the murdered squaw began to displace darker whispers on everybody’s tongues. Then two reckless young brothers — the especially unimaginative and hard-boiled Clay boys — decided to go and dig up the buried squaw and the gold for which the old Indian had murdered her.
They went out on a September afternoon — about the time the Indian tom-toms begin their incessant annual beating over the flat, red-dusty plains. Nobody watched them, and their parents did not become worried at their non-return for several hours. Then came an alarm and a searching-party, and another resignation to the mystery of silence and doubt.
But one of them came back after all. It was Ed, the elder, and his straw-coloured hair and beard had turned an albino white for two inches from the roots. On his forehead was a queer scar like a branded hieroglyph. Three months after he and his brother Walker had vanished he skulked into his house at night, wearing nothing but a queerly patterned blanket which he thrust into the fire as soon as he had got into a suit of his own clothes. He told his parents that he and Walker had been captured by some strange Indians — not Wichitas or Caddos — and held prisoners somewhere toward the west. Walker had died under torture, but he himself had managed to escape at a high cost. The experience had been particularly terrible, and he could not talk about it just then. He must rest — and anyway, it would do no good to give an alarm and try to find and punish the Indians. They were not of a sort that could be caught or punished, and it was especially important for the good of Binger — for the good of the world — that they be not pursued into their secret lair. As a matter of fact, they were not altogether what one could call real Indians — he would explain about that later. Meanwhile he must rest. Better not to rouse the village with the news of his return — he would go upstairs and sleep. Before he climbed the rickety flight to his room he took a pad and pencil from the living-room table, and an automatic pistol from his father’s desk drawer.