Page:Weird Tales Volume 36 Number 06 (1942-07).djvu/10

He held the bridle of a chunky black stallion colt, not quite full grown.

“I can vouch for the beast,” he greeted Sergeant Jaeger. “It is sad that we watch our animals so much more carefully than our own children.”

“This night I almost failed in my own duty of watching,” replied Jaeger in a tired voice. To me he said, “crawl out of those clothes. Don’t stare. Do as I say.”

By this time there had been so much strangeness and mystery that I did not argue. I shucked my uniform, and the pre-dawn air was cold on my bare skin. The chaplain motioned for me to mount. I did, and he led the colt into the burying ground.

There were wreaths and wrappings of mist. Through them I saw pale, worn-out tombstones. We tramped over them. It wasn’t polite nor decent, but I saw that the chaplain and the sergeant—he came behind, carrying some shovels and a mattock—meant business. I kept my mouth closed. Riding the colt, I was steered across that burying ground, and across again.

In the middle of the second crossing, the colt planted his hoofs and balked.

Jaeger, bringing up the rear, struck with the handle of a shovel. The colt stood firm. The chaplain tugged in front, Jaeger flogged behind. The colt trembled and snorted, but he did not move.

The chaplain pointed. A grave-mound, a little naked wen of dirt among the weeds, showed just in front of the planted hoofs.

“Your book tells the truth,” he said, strangely cheerful. “Here is a tomb he will not cross.”

“Get down, Wickett,” commanded Jaeger. “Dress, and help dig.”

I hurried to the gate, threw on my clothes anyhow, and returned. The chaplain was scraping with a shovel. Jaeger swung a mattock. I grabbed another spade and joined in.

As the first moment of gray dawn was upon us, we struck a coffin lid. Jaeger scraped earth from it. “Get back!” he grunted, and I did so; but not before he heaved up the lid with his mattock.

Inside lay the woman who had come to my cot, in her bridal dress.

“The stake,” said the chaplain, and passed down a sharp stick like a picket-pin. I judged it was of hawthorn, cut from a hedge somewhere. “Strike to the heart,” went on the chaplain, “while I strike at the throat.”

He suited action to word, driving down the blade of his shovel. At the same moment Jaeger made a strong digging thrust with the stick. I heard again the bat-squeaking; and then, was made faint by a horrid stink of rottenness.

Jaeger slammed down the lid—I heard it fall—and scrambled out of the grave. He and the chaplain began tumbling clods into the hole.

Jaeger looked at me over his shoulder, haggard but triumphant.

“I give you back your parole,” he panted. “Jump on that colt and clear out. To the west there’ll be none of our troops. If you ever tell what was done here, nobody will believe you!”

I needed no second permission.

I REMEMBERED that adventure, strangest moment of all my war-boyhood on a late night in the fall of 1876.

The wagon track I walked was frozen to rutted concrete. Wind as cold as fear rustled the tall dead grass and the naked twigs of roadside thickets. A round moon reminded me of a pancake, and I tried not to think of that or anything else to eat. It had been long since I had eaten.

The black beard prophesied me by a long-vanished Yankee captor hung thick on my jowls. I was gaunt, big-boned,