He smashed open the suitcase. Within it he found wads of crumpled newspapers, and among the newspapers seven stones. At first he thought they were nothing but stones. Gradually he realized that they were carven images of some sort. Except for these, there was nothing in the suitcase. There was nothing to denote its ownership—not a mark, not a line, not a card nor a word.
Thady Shea set out the seven stone gods on the ground, and regarded them. The more he looked at them, the more he saw in them. Each one was somewhat different in shape, but all were of a size. They were smooth and rounded, as if from much handling, or as if worn sleek by many centuries. They were crude, uncouth little figures, those gods; they were fashioned rudely in the semblance of man, with every angle and sharp line worn down, obliterated, rounded.
“They look as if some kid had been making mud dolls, and the mud had hardened,” observed Shea in some wonder. The description was accurate and perfect.
Thady Shea knew nothing about Indians or their gods. He had not the slightest idea what these things really were; but he was a member of The Profession, an actor of the old school. All his life he had been surrounded by the superstitions of the old school. As everyone knows, there are no stronger, firmer, and more absolute superstitions than those of The Profession.
As Thady Shea gazed upon those seven stone gods which sat in the dust and grinned stonily back at him, various things suggested themselves to his fertile brain. Seven of them—and seven was beyond question a lucky number! Then, fate had undoubtedly placed them in his hand and had removed any clew to their former owners. Luck had come to him, and if he threw the luck away because of a little bother involved in carrying it—well, that would be an ill thing to do!
Out of his subconscious self evolved a curious idea, a remembrance. What did these things represent? He dimly remembered something about the seven heavenly virtues and the seven deadly sins. The vague thought stirred him. These images were ugly enough to represent the seven sins—or the seven virtues. He must keep them at all costs; in the manner of their coming was something fated, something that appealed to all the latent superstition within him. He dared not refuse these talismen!
So he replaced them in the suitcase and took up his road anew.
It was a rough road that called to him. It was a long and lonely road, a road that took him out of human ken and into the heart of the high hills.
He swung along at a good four-mile clip, his long legs fast covering the ground. He had never before this day been actually among the mountains, and he liked their friendly, forested faces. The rough trail denoted very little usage, yet this absence of all humanity did not oppress Thady Shea. He felt gloriously independent, free!
About noon he was following Beaver Creek through a rough and rugged cañon. Here he lunched, with a silver-black pool of water foaming and bubbling fifty feet below him; a pool that foamed green and silver with sunlight and bubbled with black shadows. Over on the opposite wall of the cañon was a broken line of masonry, half hiding a niche in the rock where once had lived and died the cliff dwellers. It was a spot to remember. It was a place that stirred the deep things in a man’s soul, that caused him to think upon the mysteries, the flashing glimpses of occult things. About that place there lingered a sense of the futility of man, a sense of the gorgeously foaming and bubbling eternity of the Creator. Thady Shea was glad that he had seen that place.