The rocky slope, broken into little falls of cliff, had ended abruptly. There was an open space, timbered only by a few water-loving trees, the red willow and alder, and tall grass. Sheldon yanked off pack and pack saddle, tethered his horse, and went to drink.
The beauty of the brook—it was scarcely more here near the source—with the moonlight upon it, impressed him, tired as he was. There was a sandy bed, gravel strewn, unusual here, where the thing to be expected was the water-worn rocks. The current ran placidly, widening out to a willow-fringed pool. The grass stood six inches tall everywhere, straight, untrampled.
Sheldon threw himself down to drink. What he had thought the dead white limb of a tree, lying close to the water’s edge, was a bone. He found another. Then the skull, half buried in mud and grass. It was the skeleton of a man. The second in one day’s travel! And, though Sheldon looked that night and again the next morning, there was nothing to hint at the cause of this man’s death. Nor was there a gun, an ax, a pocket knife or watch or strip of boot leather—nothing but the bones which the seasons had whitened, here and there discolored by the soil into which they had sunk.
When a man is as hungry and tired as Sheldon was that night, he does not squander time in fruitless fancies. He made a rude meal swiftly, rolled into his blankets, and went to sleep. But he had muttered as he rolled over to keep the moonlight out of his eyes:
“We’re not going back yet, Buck, old horse. If other men got this far, we can go a little farther.”
And, though he was too tired to lie awake and think, he could not shut out of his dreams the fancies bred of the two discoveries. The stories which men told of the Sasnokee-keewan, the superstition-twisted tales of the Indians, came and went through his brain, distorted into a hundred guises. This was No-Luck Land—the land into which few men came; the land from which those few did not return. What got them? What killed them?
Out of a vision of some great, hideous, ghoulish being which robbed the dead, even to stripping the bodies of their clothing, Sheldon woke with a start. The moon shone full in his eyes. Something had wakened him. He heard it moving there, softly. He sat up, grasping his rifle. It was very still again suddenly. He could not locate the sound. Maybe it had been Buck, browsing. No; Buck was tethered beyond the alders, out of sight. No sound came from there; the horse no doubt was dozing.
He even got up, vaguely uneasy. He had awakened with the decidedly uncomfortable feeling that something was above him, staring down into his face. That, on top of the sort of dream which had been with him all night, bred in him a stubborn curiosity to know what the something was.
He went quietly and cautiously back and forth; to where Buck stood, hidden beyond the trees, dozing, as he had anticipated, across the brook. He lifted his shoulders distastefully as he stepped by the little pile of bones.
There was nothing. It might have been a cat, even a night bird breaking a twig in the nearest pine. Sheldon went back to his bed. But he was wide awake now. He lighted his pipe and for an hour sat up, smoking, his blanket about his shoulders.