Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 5 (1925-11).djvu/71

poor and that there was gold aplenty in Hurt's cabin. The ax and the murder and DuPerret's wagon tracks—it would look mighty funny.

A smile crept through Slater's countenance but died again before it reached his eyes.

"Sure thing, DuPerret; you can have my ax, as soon as I tie up this box. By George, there's no string in the house. I strung it all up on a nail out in the stable. Take the lamp out there and get me a couple of pieces for this box. I'll put the ax in your wagon while you're gone."

DuPerret took the oil lamp from its bracket and went to the stable for a length of string.

Slater made sure DuPerret was far enough toward the stable not to catch sight of the smear on the ax blade when he should run out with it to the wagon and put it under the seat. In the darkness Slater ran to Hurt's door. As he opened it he looked instantly toward the bunk where he had left the murdered man bleeding.

Settler Hurt's body was gone from the bunk!

In the full glare of the moon, now that the paper shade had been torn away from the window, Slater saw a pool of black glistening matter stain the bunk boards at about the spot where the man's head had been severed with the ax. But the bunk was unoccupied!

Slater backed through the door, away from Hurt's room. As he reached the center of the messroom, Hurt's voice came deeply with a grave tremor from the shadowy doorway of the sleeping chamber.

"Milton Slater!"

DuPerret, returning now from the stable, the chimney lamp flickering in the wind, called to Slater as he neared the door of the cabin.

"There ain't no string out there, Slater."

"Milton Slater!" Settler Hurt's deep-toned voice boomed again in the darkness.

DuPerret came in and put the lamp on the table. He saw Slater in the middle of the room, pale and trembling.

Then DuPerret looked toward the doorway from which Settler Hurt had just called. In that oblong of darkness, the light from the smoking lamp-chimney dimly lighting the gruesome thing, stood a headless body.

It dangled heavily and awkwardly, as if weary from being propped up on its limp rubbery legs. The top of the neck, a raw stump butting up from the bloody-shirted shoulders, was a horrible mass. A gigantic mushroom it seemed, with the pasty coagulation of its life blood swollen and fringed about the headless stump.

Just beyond the doorway the awful thing swayed unsteadily, and then from its invisible throat came Settler Hurt's stentorian voice.

"Milton Slater. I have returned from the dead. I have come back from hell, from my bunk where you slew me. I have risen to accuse you of murder."

DuPerret saw Slater fall to his knees, saw his face turn stony and his body shiver with a terror that transformed the brawny prospector to an abject shriveling coward.

"Milton Slater."

Hurt's words came as from the pit of a grave.

"I come to throw the proof of your crime at your feet, here in the presence of one who will see that you are punished. Milton Slater, stand up!"

Slater was groveling now, clutching at the floor as one saving himself from drowning.

"Milton Slater," the headless body shouted, "stand up! This is your hour of judgment."

Terrorized, DuPerret beheld Slater. Slowly the man raised himself from the floor but shut his eyes, put his