Page:Weird Tales v13n04.djvu/43

Chemeketa Mountain is a wild bit of densely wooded country in the heart of a thinly settled farming district. In the valley at the foot of its eastern slope is a small hamlet of forty or fifty souls which forms the business and social center of the district. The farmers, mostly frugal, hard-working Bohemians, eke out a meager living from the small truck gardens and orchards which constitute their holdings, and help to keep body and soul together by working as day laborers part of the time, while their wives and families labor in the fields. Three days a week the younger children attend the district school, and on Sunday there is church in the village. It is a life of hard work, little pleasure, and back of it all the sinister shadow of Chemeketa Mountain, dark and silent against the setting sun.

There had always been a deal of mystery about the Hermit of Chemeketa Mountain. High up in the forest near the top of the mountain he lived, he and his two dogs. He was a tall, gaunt man, with a ragged, unkempt beard, long, tangled hair, and cold, green-gray eyes that in moments of anger glowered in their deep sockets in a malevolent, unwinking stare. His clothing was filthy and ragged, and was kept in place by bits of string, rusty nails in lieu of buttons, and a frayed rope for a belt.

Where he came from no one knew;