The other photograph was taken in the woods someplace. Neil didn’t recognize the scenery at all. A group of Indians were standing by a fallen tree, squinting at the camera as if they mistrusted it. Among them was the same medicine man, in a woolen robe this time, but wearing the same necklaces and beads.

“All right,” said Neil, “it’s two pictures of the same Indian. What’s that supposed to prove?”

“Look at the dates on the back,” suggested Billy Ritchie.

Neil turned the photographs over. One, the street scene in Calistoga, was marked 8/1/15. The woodland scene was marked August 5th, 1915.

“I don’t get it,” persisted Neil. “These were taken three days apart. What’s so strange about that?”

Billy Ritchie cackled. “What’s so strange about it is that the picture in the woods was taken by a photographer called Lewis Clifton, of Massachusetts, up by the Wampanoag settlement on the Miskatonic River in New England. These photographs were taken three days apart, sure. But they were also taken three thousand miles apart.”

“That’s impossible,” said Neil. “In 1915, it would have taken almost a week to get from New England to the Napa Valley.”

“That’s right,” nodded Billy Ritchie. “And yet both of these photographs are authenticated, and their dates are plumb correct.”

Neil peered closer at the calm, amused face of the Wampanaug medicine man. Even though the pictures were almost seventy years old, they had a curious freshness about them, as if they had been taken only a few weeks ago. He said, “That’s strange, that’s really strange.”

“Not strange at all when you know who that is,” said Billy Ritchie. “That’s the best-known of all the Indian men, the most powerful Indian sorcerer who ever lived. That’s Misquamacus.”

“Misquamacus?”

“That was what they called him, among a whole lot of other names. But the reason I spent some time finding those photographs is because of what that trapper told me, up in the Modoc Forest. He said that when the day of the dark stars came around, this man Misquamacus would be the fellow to bring all the twenty-two wonder-workers together. This man Misquamacus, he said, was obsessed with taking his revenge on the white folks, and that his whole aim in life was to see white people die in the cruelest way possible.”

Billy Ritchie began to stroke his cat again. “I’d say that the crudest way possible would be to call down Nashuna and Pa-la-kai and Ossadagowah, and let them loose. Now, that would be cruel.”

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