projections from that cement, and when I came up to the wall and examined them I found that they were human skulls!
The gruesome find rather staggered me. They were real skulls, set in the cement wall so as to project three or four inches, and they were in good condition. I am not superstitious, and I had no objections to this scheme of decoration on personal grounds; but it struck me that Balliol had carried his search for novelty just a bit too far.
“It’s only a step from beaux arts to bizarre,” I reflected, “and my friend Balliol seems to have taken the step. Where did he get ’em I wonder? Two—four—six—an even half dozen! Wonder if he put any more inside? I didn’t notice them—”
I hastened inside the house, my thoughts on the big hearth and chimney of cobbles; but I confess that to my relief I found it was quite lacking in further remains. All the skulls were outside.
With that, I paid little more attention to the matter, practically dismissing it from my mind—and for excellent reasons. I passed out on the veranda, meaning to go around to the car at the side of the house, and get my provisions; but at the first step I came to a dead halt, with a cold chill at my throat.
Upon the cement floor of the veranda were wet tracks; they began at the door and ended abruptly in the middle of the floor.
Yet the veranda was empty.
Those were not the tracks of a man. Something in their very appearance sent queer horror rippling through me, sent my gaze quickly over my shoulder at the empty house.
I had been gone not twenty minutes; these tracks were still wet, and whatever had made them must have come from the lake while I was down there.
Undeniably shaken by the mystery of it, I rushed back through the house to the back door. Absolutely nothing was in sight; I ran around the house, past the car, and saw nothing.
At the edge of the bluff I could see the shoreline below—and it was deserted.
I came back to the veranda and stared again at those tracks, now fast drying. They frightened me; there was something about them vaguely unnatural! And never in my life had I seen anything like them. Of course, I had opened the wide veranda window, and a bird might have walked in, then flown out and away—
But, a bird of this size? A bird from the lake? There was no other water, except in the well behind the house, from which the house itself was supplied by an electric motor.
And were those the tracks of any bird alive? I doubted it. The size was immense; the shape was that of a small central foot, with four immense toes—and beyond these the marks of long claws, unless I were mistaken!
What was the thing—monster or hallucination? I tried to argue that I was self-deceived, and I failed miserably. There were the wet prints on the cement before my eyes, slowly drying away! They could not have been made more than a few moments before I returned from the boathouse.
I felt suddenly prickly cold and very uncomfortable, and turned into the house. To go ahead with luncheon was, for the moment, impossible. I went into the living room, and, as I passed one of the two pianos, I suddenly descried a book lying open upon it.
I paused to glance at the book; to my astonishment I saw upon the printed page a cut of the exact print which I had seen on the veranda. Beneath the illustration was the legend:
Fossil imprint of Pterodactyl,
Marsh Collection, Yale College.
The realization smote me like a blow, as I leaned over the book and read. Balliol had left the book open here, of course! Balliol had seen the same prints—or had he seen the thing itself? Had he seen the living actual pterodactyl, the creature that had become extinct when the world began, the flying dragon of myth and legend? He had seen the tracks, at any rate, just as I had seen them.
This proved that I was under no delusion about those prints. But—was the thing credible? It was not. The bowl of this lake was an ancient volcano, the whole valley was of volcanic creation; mineral springs abounded; a few miles distant were quicksilver mines; the water in my own well was mineralized. Now, I had read stories about prehistoric monsters coming back to the world via extinct volcanoes and bottomless lakes, and so forth—stories, that is, which were purely fiction. Had such a thing really come about here in Lake County, California, upon my own ranch?
“Not by a damn sight!” I exclaimed, throwing the book across the room. “Balliol was frightfully nervous; I’m not. He may have been frightened out of here by his imagination—but I’m going to be shown!”
Then and there I dismissed the unnatural fears which had shaken me. If the creature existed, I would shoot it; if the whole affair were one of those queer mental quirks which come to all men, if the prints were caused by some natural agency not at the moment obvious to my deduction, well and good.
I went around to the car and hauled in my provisions. The electricity was on in the house, and I got the electric range working and managed to make myself a fairly decent meal. At times I found myself desirous of casting quick glances over my shoulder, at windows or doors, but I repressed it firmly. I was not going to get into Balliol’s condition if I could help it.
Lunch over, I dragged a rocker to the veranda and enjoyed a smoke, with the beauties of the lake outspread before me. By reason of a deep indendation of the lakeshore, the bluff on which my house was built faced almost due east; opposite me, across the bight, I saw the roofs of a farmhouse, doubtless my nearest neighbor in that direction.
It occurred to me that if I wanted to talk business, the noon hour would be an excellent time to do it.
So I went down to the boathouse again, opened up the water doors, and filled the boat’s tank with gas. She was in good shape, and almost with the first turn of the wheel the spark caught. A moment later I was chugging out into the lake, feeling intensely pleased with myself, and I headed directly down to my neighbor’s dock among the tules or reeds.
The neighbor himself I found sitting on his front porch. He was a brawny, bearded man of stolidly slow speech, Henry Dawson by name. I introduced myself as the new owner of Balliol’s ranch, and was in turn introduced to Mrs. Dawson and two strapping Dawson boys. They all eyed me with frank curiosity.
I lost no time in setting forth my business. Dawson, like all farmers, was content to let me talk as long as I would. When I cautiously broached the subject of renting my land, however, he nodded his head in slow assent.
“Ought to rent,” he stated, as though he thought just the opposite. “Maybe. Don’t know as folks would want the house, though.”
“I want that myself,” I said. “What I want to rent is the fruit land. Could you handle it?”
At this direct assault, he hemmed and hawed. He was a very decent chap, however, and when I make it clear that I was not after extortionate rentals he came around quickly. I could see the house had killed the place, for some reason.
“Just what’s the matter with that house?” I demanded, while he was making up his mind about rental. “Is it those skulls in the front wall?”
“Blamed if I know,” he rejoined slowly. “Reckon it’s that, much as anything. Gives folks a creepy feelin’.”
“Why didn’t Balliol get along there?”
He gave me a slow stare. “Get along?
