“Here, boy! Pitch in now, and dig out under that bank!” as he pointed out a part of the bluff at the very edge of the gully. And Nick—strong, and young, and keen as himself to know how much of the “greasy” stream was dammed up behind the bluffs that the pick could disclose, swung it with strong strokes that ate into the clay in a way that did Landis good to see.
He had been working but a short time when the pick point caught into something other than lumps of clay; caught at it—clawed at it—and then dragged out (one—two—half a dozen) bones stripped of all flesh.
Nick stopped.
“What are you stopping for?” Landis asked sharply. “Go on! It’s only some horse or a cow that’s died here.” But already he himself had seen the thigh bone of a human being. Nick hesitated; still staring at what lay there.
“Damn you, go on! What’s the matter with you?”
The steady strokes recommenced. Little by little there was uncovered and dragged out the skeleton of someone Who Once Was. Nick looked sullen and strange, but he did not falter. He worked steadily on until they lay—an indistinguishable heap—beside the narrow gully. Landis said nothing, and the pick strokes ate farther and farther into the bank.
Suddenly there was a terrible sound—half a shriek and half a gurgle that died away in the throat—which startled them; and swinging around, Landis saw an old Indian tottering along the narrow ledge that bordered the river there. He was stumbling and blindly staggering toward them, waving his arms above his head as he came. A bareheaded, vilely dirty and ragged old man—how old no one might be able to say. As his bleared eyes found the skeleton heap, he shrieked forth in the Indian tongue something (though Landis knew no word of what he might say) that sent a chill over him of prescient knowledge of what was to come. He turned his back on the old man, and addressed himself to Nick.
“What does he say?”
The younger Paiute looked old and gray with a horror that Landis refused to translate.
“My father——”