Part 26 (2/2)

”Aram Harnam!” I yelled out, and let my guitar fall to hang by its string, and I charged up those stairs of stones.

Reed Barnitt was after me as I got to the top.

”It's a put-up show!” I was shouting, and grabbed my hands full of rags. Reed Barnitt clamped onto my arm and flung me down the step-stones so I almost fell flat on the floor. But rags had torn away in my grip, and you could see Aram Harnam's face, all a thicket of hair and beard, with hooked nose and s.h.i.+ning eyes.

”What's up?” hooted out Mr. Eddy.

”Aram Harnam's up!” I yelled to him and the others. ”Sold us that candle-thing, then came here to scare us out!” I pointed. ”And Reed Bamitt's in it with him!”

Reed Barnitt, on the top stone beside Aram Harnam, turned around, his eyes big in his white face. I got my feet under me to charge back up at those two.

But then I stopped, the way you'd think roots had sprung from my toes into the rock. There were three up there, not two.

That third one looked at first glimpse like a big, big man wearing a fur coat; until you saw the fur was on his skin, with warty muscles bunching through. His head was more like a frog's than anything else, wide in the mouth and big in the eye and no nose. He spread his arms and put them quiet-like round the shoulders of Reed Barnitt and Aram Harnam, and took hold with his hands that had both webs and claws.

The two men he touched screamed out like animals in a snap-trap. I sort of reckon they tried to pull free, but those two big s.h.a.ggy arms just hugged them close and hiked them off their feet. And what had come to fetch them, it fetched them away, all in a blink of time, back into that darkness no sensible soul would dare.

That's when we four others up and ran like rabbits, dropping the lantern.

We got back to Mr. Hoje's, and lighted a lamp there, and looked at those two handfuls of metal pieces Clay and Mr. Eddy had grabbed and never turned loose.

”I reckon they're money,” said Mr. Hoje, ”but I never seen the like.”

None of us had. They weren't even round. just limpy-edged and flattened out. You could figure, how they'd been made, a lump of soft gold put between two jaws of a die and stamped out. The smallest was bigger and thicker than a four-bit piece. They had figures, like men with horned heads and snaky tails, and there were what might be letters or numbers, but nothing any of us could name in any language we'd ever heard tell of.

We put all those coins into an old salt-bag, and sat up the rest of the night, not talking much but pure down glad of each other's company. We had breakfast together, cooked by Sarah Ann, who had the good sense not to question. And after that, came up a young man who was sheriff's deputy.

”Gentlemen,” he said to us, ”has ary one of you seen a fellow with a white face and a broad build?”

”What's up with such a one?” asked Mr. Hoje.

”Why, Mr. Hoje,” said the sherffs deputy, ”they want him bad at the state prison. He was a show-fellow, doing play-magic tricks, but he took to swindling folks and got in jail and then got out again, and the law's after him.”

”We've seen such a man,” allowed Mr. Eddy, ”but he's gone from here now,”

When we were left alone again, we told each other we could see how it was. Reed Barnitt did his false magic tricks, like setting the light on the star and making words show on the white paper by heating it.

And he'd planned it with Aram Harnam to furnish us that black candle, to get hold of the property of Mr.

Hoje and Mr. Eddy-scaring them afterward, so bad they'd never dare look again, and forfeit their home places.

Only: Therewas treasure there, the way those two swindlers never guessed. And there was something left to watch and see it wasn't robbed away.

I don't call to mind which of us said that all we could do was take back the gold pieces, because such things could never do anybody good. We went back that noon to Black Pine Hollow, where the sun sure enough didn't s.h.i.+ne. We s.h.i.+vered without ary wind blowing.

Inside the mine-mouth, we picked up the lantern and lighted it. Clay had the nerve to pick up the broken skull Aram Harnam had flung, and we saw why the eyes had shone-pieces of tin in them. We found our spade and hoe. Into the hole we flung the gold pieces, on top of what seemed a heap more lying there.

Then we put back the dirt, tamped it down hard, and we all heaved and sweated till we put the piece of rock in place again.

”There, the Ancients got their treasure back,” said Mr. Hoje, breathing hard.

Then, noise up on those stepstones. I held up the lantern.

Huddled and bent they stood up there, Reed Barnitt and Aram Harnam.

They sort of leaned together, like tired horses in plow harness, not quite touching shoulders. Their hands-Reed Barnitt's white ones, Aram Harnam's s.h.a.ggy ones-hung with the fingers bent and limp.

They looked down at us with tired eyes and mouths drooped open, the way you'd think they had some hope about us, but not much.

”Look,” said Clay, just behind my neck. ”We gave back the gold. They're giving back those two that they dragged away last night.”

But they looked as if they'd been gone more than a night.

The hair on Reed Barnitt's hatless head was as white as his face. And Aram Harnam's beard, and the fur on his hands-black no more, but a dirty, steamy gray. Maybe it had changed from fear, the way folks say can happen. Or maybe there'd been time for it to change, where they were.

”Go fetch them, John,” Mr. Hoje asked me. ”And we'll get a doctor for them when we get them to my house.”

I started up over the stones with the lantern.

Their eyes picked up the lantern light and shone green, like the eyes of dogs. One of them, I don't know which, made a little whimpering cry with no words in it. They ran from me into the dark, and I saw their backs, bent more than I'd thought possible.

I ran up to the top stone, holding out the lantern.

As I watched they sort of fell forward and ran on hands and feet. Like animals. Not quite sure of how to run that way on all fours; but something told me, mighty positive, that they'd learn better as time went by.

I backed down again, without watching any more.

”They won't come out,” I said.

Mr. Hoje spit on the pebbles. ”From what I saw, maybe it's just as well. They can live in there with the Ancients.”

”Live?” repeated Clay. ”The Ancients are dead. Way I figure, what's in there isn't Ancients-just something Ancients left behind. I don't want any part of it.”

From Black Pine Hollow we went to Aram Harnam's empty shanty and there we found the papers he'd tricked Mr. Hoje and Mr. Eddy into signing, and we burned them up. On the way back, the two old men made it up between themselves to spare Clay and Sarah Ann a few acres from both places. As to the cabin, neighbors would be proud to help build it.

”One thing wonders me,” said Clay. ”John, you didn't have any notion night before last of singing about the girl with golden slippers?”

”Not till I struck the strings and piped up,” I told him.

”Then how did Reed Barnitt just happen to take them from under his coat for Sarah Ann?” Clay asked us. ”Stage-show magician or not, how did he just happen to do that?”

None of us could guess.

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