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3S Su
There was an almost sinister quality to his calm, as if he had never actually expected to find the Dutchman, as if he might have had an entirely dif' ferent mission. Adding to Jed's un' easiness, the doctor had seated himself in the rear of the wagon, atop the empty chest, where it Wcis impossible to keep him under observation.
Across the field of dried sunflowers the Jersey wagon jolted on its return trip. Jed squirmed on the driver's seat. He could almost feel the phrc nologist's burning eyes boring into the base of his skull.
"I deeply regret the empty chest," Julius P. Pfrimmer said. "My partner in Saint Louis will be greatly disappointed. I promised him a specimen of the degenerate frontier type. Jed, if you should finish up at the end of a rope, I should like your skull."
Jed attempted to locate the speaker from the corner of his eye, but ap' parently Pfrimmer had shifted his position. Beads of perspiration formed on the youth's sloping brow.
The wagon rattled on. They were approaching the cabin that had once been inhabited by the Indian Sequoyah.
"A vast pity I haven't been able to locate the skull of Sequoyah," Pfrimmer soHloquized. "The skull of a genius and the skull of a degenerate. What a wonderful study in opposites."
Jed checked the mare suddenly and faced about. It wasn't intuition, his nerves just couldn't take any more. Pfrimmer had risen from his seat upon the chest and was creeping forward, a naked hunting knife gripped in his
Februofy, 1949
right hand. As Jed turned he lunged.
There wasn't time for Jed to avoid the blow, but he managed to hunch his left shoulder as Pfrimmer struck, taking the sharp steel in the fleshy part of his arm.
The knife penetrated to the bone, and the shock and pain seemed to release Jed from the hypnotic spell cast upon him by the man's burning, fanatic eyes. He circled the phrenologist's neck with his powerful right arm and bent the man backward relentlessly until there was a snap and the frail body went limp.
He must locate the Reverend Worcester. Jed's slow mind settled on that one important fact. No one else would believe his story. Gradually he made a second decision. He would hide the body until he had had an opportunity to talk with the minister. His eyes rested upon the wooden chest. It was fastened by a padlock hooked through an iron hasp, but Jed located the key in Pfrimmer 's pocket.
Jed placed the limp body in the chest, relocked it, and threw away the key. It was an effort to climb back into the driver's seat because he was losing blood rapidly.
Sometime later Jed reached the fort and drove his Jersey wagon through the gateway in the palisades that was flanked by the rude block houses.
A group of soldiers watched curiously as Jed attempted to dismount from the wagon and fell on his hands and knees in the dust.
"Reverend Worcester," Jed gasped faintly, and then lost consciousness.
When Jed opened his eyes, the hazy