am and plunged his face into the cool water. The last I
recall previous to dropping off into deep slumber was how large his
shadow loomed, silhouetted in the bright moonshine against a huge black
bowlder directly in my front.

I know not the hour, yet I noted, even in awakening, that the moon had
already passed from out the narrow ribbon of sky above, although still
fringing in silver beauty the sharp summit of the crest, when a quick,
nervous pressure upon my arm awoke me with a start of alarm. Lying at
full length, his head uplifted, was De Noyan.

"Keep still, Benteen," he whispered, his voice vibrant with excitement,
"and look yonder. In the name of all the fiends, what is that?"

CHAPTER XIX

DEMON, OR WHAT?

I have been free from superstitious terror as most men, yet there were
few in those days who did not yield to the sway of the supernatural.
Occasionally, among those of higher education, there may have been
leaders of thought who had shaken off these ghostly chains of the dark
ages, seeking amid the laws of nature a solution for all the seeming
mysteries in human life. Yet it could scarcely be expected a plain
wood-ranger should rise altogether above the popular spell which still
made of the Devil a very potent personality.

Consequently, as my anxious eyes uplifted toward the spot where De
Noyan pointed, it need be no occasion for wonder that my blood turned
to ice in my veins, and I felt convinced I looked upon His Satanic
Majesty. The vast wall of rock, arising a sheer hundred feet directly
opposite to where we lay, appeared densely black now in the shadow, but
as my glance swept higher along its irregularity, the upper edge,
jagged from outcropping stones, stood clearly revealed in the full
silver sheen of the moon, each exposed line, carven as from marble,
standing distinctly forth in delicate tracery against the background of
the night sky.

Appearing to my affrighted eyes the gigantic form of two men strangely
merged into one, there uprose on that summit a figure so odd, weird,
and grimly fantastic, it was small wonder I gazed, never thinking it
could be other than the Evil One. It was unclothed from head to heel,
and, gleaming ghastly white beneath the moonbeams, it brought no Indian
suggestion to mind. High above the head, causing the latter to appear
hideously deformed, arose something the nature of which I could not
rightly judge. It reminded me of a vast mat of hair sticking d