“No doubt of it,” I sneered.
“The days went by,” he continued, ignoring my sneer, “and more and more that thing outside kept getting on my nerves. The sun went south, and from one day to another I never saw it. The never-ending night was bad enough, but when you add the northern lights and the howling of the wolves you’ve got a condition that breaks a man if he’s not careful. Furthermore, there was that ugly-looking devil outside to think about.
“I was thinking about that thing constantly, and got so I couldn’t sleep. If I shut my eyes I’d see it, anyhow, and if I went to sleep I’d have a nightmare over it. Now and then I’d go out and stand there in the starlight or the aurora looking at it. It fascinated me, yet the sight of the thing gave me the creeps. Finally I began taking a club or my rifle along when I went to look at it; got afraid the thing would come alive and try to murder me with that knife.
“And that’s the way of things for maybe three months and more. My thoughts all the time on that thing outside.
“Well, that couldn’t go on, you know. One morning I woke up with the worst headache a man ever had. I thought my head would split wide open. My blood was like molten iron flowing through my veins. I knew what it was. _Fever._ I had thought and worried about that thing outside until it got me, and I was in for a brain-storm. I was as weak as a cat, but managed to build up a good fire and pack my bunk with all the blankets and furs I had and crawl in. I only hoped I wouldn’t freeze to death when the fire went out.
“I no sooner got all set in the bunk than things let go; I went completely off. I can’t say positively what happened for a few days after that. Seems like I remember, though, periods when I was semi-rational. I think once I got up to put more wood on the fire. Another time I saw that thing standing in the doorway grinning at me like the devil it was. I shot at it with my rifle and later found a bullet in the door. My shooting couldn’t have been a delusion, at any rate. But the door was still fastened against the wolves and there were no tracks in the snow outside.”
Bonner paused to light his pipe, and then went on:
“I don’t know exactly how long I was out of my head. I’d wound my watch before I crawled into the bunk the first time, and I half remember I wound it again when I got up to put wood on the fire, and it was pretty well run down. It goes forty hours without winding, yet when my head cleared it had stopped. I must have been off my nut about four days.
“Well, you can lay your bottom dollar I’d had enough of prehistoric men hanging around the shack by that time. Let the scientists be damned; I was determined to get rid of that thing the quickest way possible. The quickest way, I thought, would be to get the corpse warm so it would decompose rapidly, then I’d put it outside where the wolves and ravens would pick the bones clean. The scientists would have to be satisfied with the skeleton.
“So I made a big fire in the fireplace and got the shack good and hot, then went out and brought in the corpse. I got sick at the stomach on that job, but that was the only way. I didn’t have the heart to leave the thing outside and build a fire over it out there. I try to respect the dead, even if the corpse is that of a man who had been dead several thousand years and looked more like an animal than a human being.
“I laid the thing on the floor before the fireplace, then sat down on the bunk to wait. I watched it pretty close, because, being dead so long, I thought when it got warm and started to decompose it would go like butter; I didn’t want the shack to be all smelled up with the stink of it. Probably half an hour went by, then all of a sudden _I saw the thing quiver--_”
“Your brain-storm returning,” I interposed.
“Wait,” said Bonner sharply. “It quivered; not much, but enough to notice. That sort of got me, then I reasoned that anything thawing out like that would naturally quiver a little. Maybe another fifteen or twenty minutes passed, then one of the legs moved. Jerked, sort of. It startled me. Remember, there I was down there in those hills alone with that thing. I was pretty susceptible to weird influences, understand. Anyhow, the leg moved, and--”
“It sat up and asked for a drink of water.” I could not help putting in. Bonner continued, paying no attention to my sarcasm. He seemed to be talking aloud to himself:
“I watched it like a hawk for some time after that, then as I didn’t see it move any more I stepped outside to get some more wood for the fire and to pull a few good breaths of cold air into my lungs. That shack was like the inside of an oven.
“When I went in again I saw that the damned thing _had turned over on its back_.
“Turned over on its back, I say. And there was a change in the eyes, too; they had a half-awake sort of look in them; a more _alive_ look, understand. And breathing! Yes, sir, _breathing_! Why the thing didn’t see me when I came in and shut the door I don’t know, but apparently it didn’t. And, believe me or not, the hand that had held the knife was open and the knife was lying on the floor apart from the body.
“Crazy? I tell you _no_! I was as sane as I am now. I tell you I saw these things with my own two eyes; saw them just as plain as I see you now. I see you don’t believe me, MacNeal. Oh, well, I don’t blame you; I hardly believe it myself sometimes.”
He uttered a little laugh.
“But there it was, just as I’m telling you. And I was that gone when I saw that the thing had turned over on its back that I dropped the wood I had in my arm. The crash of it on the floor brought the thing to its feet on the jump. You needn’t look at me like that; I tell you it did. I take my oath it did! There it was, crouched like a panther ready for the spring, the eyes of it flashing like fire, its lips pulled back tight across the gums and the yellow fangs showing. Can you see that? No, you can’t.”
Bonner made an expressive gesture with one hand.
“Remarkable, but the thing hadn’t seen me yet. It was looking at the fire; it was half turned toward me so I could see that. Suddenly it screamed in an outlandish gibberish and leaped to the fireplace and tried to gather in an armful of flames. I take it the thing had never seen fire before; didn’t know what it was; probably imagined it some kind of wild animal. Naturally the only thing it got out of that play was burned arms and hands, and the long hair sizzled and curled. It leaped back with a snarl, spitting that funny gibberish. Talk, I guess it was; it came from way down in the belly and sounded like pigs grunting.
“I tell you, MacNeal, I was fair dazed. But I had the sense left to try to help myself. My rifle was leaning against the bunk and I made a quick dive for it. Then, apparently, the thing saw me for the first time. The way it glared at me with those glittering eyes was a caution. I didn’t stop to argue; I snatched up the rifle, cocked it and made a snap shot. The bullet caught the thing in the left breast and the blood gushed. Of course you don’t believe it. But blood, I tell you, gushed from the breast of a thing that had been frozen in a glacier for thousands of years!
“Well, here it came like a cyclone. I didn’t have time to shoot again. Smell? That thing smelled like carrion; almost strangled me. Maybe you know how the cage of a wild animal stinks if it ain’t cleaned out for a week or two. This thing smelled like that, only worse. I can smell it yet. Lord!”
Bonner wrinkled his nose and shivered.
“But there we were at grips, the thing making those belly noises and smelling like a thousand garbage piles. It had the strength of ten men; I sensed that. It jerked the rifle from me and bent the barrel of it double with a twist of the wrists. The barrel of a thirty-eight caliber Winchester rifle--bent it as easy as you or I would bend a piece of copper wire.
“Then we were at it, fighting like a couple of wild cats all over the shack. I’m no slouch of a man myself, MacNeal, when it comes to a rough-and-tumble; but that thing handled me like a baby. I could see my finish. We threshed about the floor, me fighting like a devil, it fighting like forty devils. We kicked into the fire and out again and scattered live coals all over the place, and the shack took fire.
“I was just about gone when my hand accidentally fell on the handle of the knife the thing had dropped on the floor. I hung on to it and poked away at that thing for all I was worth, driving the blade clean up to the hilt with every punch.”
“That knife?” I broke in.
“This knife,” answered Bonner. “There’s the dried blood on it yet. But I think it was really the bullet that did the work. It must have cut an artery. Anyhow, the blood kept gushing out of the thing’s breast; it got on my hands and made ’em slippery. I knew the thing couldn’t pour out blood like that and keep going; that’s what put the heart in me to keep on fighting. And, as I say, I think it was the bullet that did the work in the long run. A lucky shot, otherwise I wouldn’t be here now.