Page:Weird Tales Volume 35 Issue 04 (1940-07).djvu/41

let, he approved once again the well-painted old houses and the quaint little stores with canopy-like arcades jutting out over the wooden sidewalk, admired the square-steepled church that dominated all. He estimated that what Pitts called “the Year One” for this community would be well before the middle of the Eighteenth Century.

“There were settlers here before Daniel Boone’s time,” he thought, and inquired for the home of the township clerk. Finding it, he introduced himself.

The clerk was a frail ancient named Simmons, who prided himself on having most of his teeth and needing no spectacles. He was vague about old records, and only when Pursuivant pleaded did he pry into the clutter of files and trunks that jammed a rear room of his house.

“I been the Chrispinville clerk for forty-four years,” he grumbled, "and nobody never asked to see them original papers. Huh, they must be in this here oldest chest.”

The oldest chest was very old indeed, made of unpainted hard wood from which a covering of rawhide was all but rotted away. Mr. Simmons probed and fiddled in the rusty lock with a brass key that might have gone with Noah’s strong box, once or twice calling on heaven to witness his displeasure that the guards did not turn; but then Pursuivant stepped to his side and lifted the lid with a creak of the hinges—the lock had never been fastened. Inside lay papers, yellow and dusty, tied into bundles with antediluvian-looking twine. Simmons examined one handful, then another.

“Yep, these is the old records. Huh, the oldest bunch will be on the bottom, I expect.” He dug down, and brought up a sheaf. “This is what you’ll want. Judge.”

Pursuivant took the papers, unfastened the string, and carefully unfolded them to avoid breaking at the creases. They were covered with writing in rusty ink. At the head of the first was printed in block letters, crude and archaic but forceful:

The ninth year of the region of George II; Pursuivant computed that it would be 1735 when Crispinville was founded as a formal community. The clerk let him carry the documents into the dining-room and spread them on the top of the table.

THE paper on which the records had been written was not of the best, and two centuries had made it brittle and tea-tan; but the first clerk of the township had written fluently and in a good bold hand, with all the underlinings and capitalizations of his age. There was a list of names, with official titles opposite, some half-dozen members of that original council. Then, as the first item of history:

This day we, the Chosen Council of the Town of Crispinville, did pay to certain Indians the Price agreed upon for the Lands whereon our Company will live and plant and reap. ...

The price was itemized, and Pursuivant saw that, as usual in such matters, the Indians had all the worst of it—gaudy cheap cloth, beads, rickety hatchets and knives, one or two muskets and a horn of powder, and certain bottles of raw New England rum. The screed went on, and suddenly Pursuivant was aware that, upon the very threshold of his researches, he had found the origin of the custom he was tracing:

. . . The Indians engaging on their Part to respect our Rights and Boundaries and to keep the Peace, asking only that we observe their Manner of (as our Interpreter putteth) Greeting the Hare; that is, we shall not hunt

Hares nor snare them, but upon meeting