The Project Gutenberg eBook of Black Canaan, by Robert E. Howard
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Title: Black Canaan
Author: Robert E. Howard
Illustrator: H. S. De Lay
Release Date: July 11, 2023 [eBook #71168]
Language: English
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACK CANAAN ***
Black Canaan
By ROBERT E. HOWARD
_A tale of the Southern swamps, and voodoo
brought from blackest Africa--a spine-freezing,
blood-chilling story of a beautiful
quadroon girl who wielded bitter magic._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Weird Tales June 1936.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
_1. Call From Canaan_
"Trouble on Tularoosa Creek!" A warning to send cold fear along the
spine of any man who was raised in that isolated back-country, called
Canaan, that lies between Tularoosa and Black River--to send him racing
back to that swamp-bordered region, wherever the word might reach him.
It was only a whisper from the withered lips of a shuffling black
crone, who vanished among the throng before I could seize her; but
it was enough. No need to seek confirmation; no need to inquire by
what mysterious, black-folk way the word had come to her. No need to
inquire what obscure forces worked to unseal those wrinkled lips to a
Black River man. It was enough that the warning had been given--and
understood.
Understood? How could any Black River man fail to understand that
warning? It could have but one meaning--old hates seething again in
the jungle-deeps of the swamplands, dark shadows slipping through the
cypress, and massacre stalking out of the black, mysterious village
that broods on the moss-festooned shore of sullen Tularoosa.
Within an hour New Orleans was falling further behind me with every
turn of the churning wheel. To every man born in Canaan, there is
always an invisible tie that draws him back whenever his homeland is
imperiled by the murky shadow that has lurked in its jungled recesses
for more than half a century.
The fastest boats I could get seemed maddeningly slow for that race up
the big river, and up the smaller, more turbulent stream. I was burning
with impatience when I stepped off on the Sharpsville landing, with the
last fifteen miles of my journey yet to make. It was past midnight, but
I hurried to the livery stable where, by tradition half a century old,
there is always a Buckner horse, day or night.
As a sleepy black boy fastened the cinches, I turned to the owner of
the stable, Joe Lafely, yawning and gaping in the light of the lantern
he upheld. "There are rumors of trouble on Tularoosa?"
He paled in the lantern-light.
"I don't know. I've heard talk. But you people in Canaan are a
shut-mouthed clan. No one _outside_ knows what goes on in there----"
The night swallowed his lantern and his stammering voice as I headed
west along the pike.
* * * * *
The moon set red through the black pines. Owls hooted away off in the
woods, and somewhere a hound howled his ancient wistfulness to the
night. In the darkness that foreruns dawn I crossed Nigger Head Creek,
a streak of shining black fringed by walls of solid shadows. My horse's
hoofs splashed through the shallow water and clinked on the wet stones,
startlingly loud in the stillness. Beyond Nigger Head Creek began the
country men called Canaan.
Heading in the same swamp, miles to the north, that gives birth to
Tularoosa, Nigger Head flows due south to join Black River a few miles
west of Sharpsville, while the Tularoosa runs westward to meet the same
river at a higher point. The trend of Black River is from northwest to
southeast; so these three streams form the great irregular triangle
known as Canaan.
In Canaan lived the sons and daughters of the white frontiersmen who
first settled the country, and the sons and daughters of their slaves.
Joe Lafely was right; we were an isolated, shut-mouthed breed,
self-sufficient, jealous of our seclusion and independence.
Beyond Nigger Head the woods thickened, the road narrowed, winding
through unfenced pinelands, broken by live-oaks and cypresses. There
was no sound except the soft clop-clop of hoofs in the thin dust, the
creak of the saddle. Then someone laughed throatily in the shadows.
I drew up and peered into the trees. The moon had set and dawn was not
yet come, but a faint glow quivered among the trees, and by it I made
out a dim figure under the moss-hung branches. My hand instinctively
sought the butt of one of the dueling-pistols I wore, and the action
brought another low, musical laugh, mocking yet seductive. I glimpsed
a brown face, a pair of scintillant eyes, white teeth displayed in an
insolent smile.
"Who the devil are you?" I demanded.
"Why do you ride so late, Kirby Buckner?" Taunting laughter bubbled in
the voice. The accent was foreign and unfamiliar; a faintly negroid
twang was there, but it was rich and sensuous as the rounded body of
its owner. In the lustrous pile of dusky hair a great white blossom
glimmered palely in the darkness.
"What are you doing here?" I demanded. "You're a long way from any
darky cabin. And you're a stranger to me."
"I came to Canaan since you went away," she answered. "My cabin is on
the Tularoosa. But now I've lost my way. And my poor brother has hurt
his leg and cannot walk."
"Where is your brother?" I asked, uneasily. Her perfect English was
disquieting to me, accustomed as I was to the dialect of the black-folk.
"Back in the woods, there--far back!" She indicated the black depths
with a swaying motion of her supple body rather than a gesture of her
hand, smiling audaciously as she did so.
I knew there was no injured brother, and she knew I knew it, and
laughed at me. But a strange turmoil of conflicting emotions stirred
in me. I had never before paid any attention to a black or brown
woman. But this quadroon girl was different from any I had ever seen.
Her features were regular as a white woman's, and her speech was not
that of a common wench. Yet she was barbaric, in the open lure of her
smile, in the gleam of her eyes, in the shameless posturing of her
voluptuous body. Every gesture, every motion she made set her apart
from the ordinary run of women; her beauty was untamed and lawless,
meant to madden rather than to soothe, to make a man blind and dizzy,
to rouse in him all the unreined passions that are his heritage from
his ape ancestors.
I hardly remember dismounting and tying my horse. My blood pounded
suffocatingly through the veins in my temples as I scowled down at her,
suspicious yet fascinated.
"How do you know my name? Who _are_ you?"
With a provocative laugh, she seized my hand and drew me deeper into
the shadows. Fascinated by the lights gleaming in her dark eyes, I was
hardly aware of her action.
"Who does not know Kirby Buckner?" she laughed. "All the people of
Canaan speak of you, white or black. Come! My poor brother longs to
look upon you!" And she laughed with malicious triumph.
It was this brazen effrontery that brought me to my senses. Its cynical
mockery broke the almost hypnotic spell in which I had fallen.
I stopped short, throwing her hand aside, snarling: "What devil's game
are you up to, wench?"
Instantly the smiling siren was changed to a blood-mad jungle cat. Her
eyes flamed murderously, her red lips writhed in a snarl as she leaped
back, crying out shrilly. A rush of bare feet answered her call. The
first faint light of dawn struck through the branches, revealing my
assailants, three gaunt black giants. I saw the gleaming whites of
their eyes, their bare glistening teeth, the sheen of naked steel in
their hands.
My first bullet crashed through the head of the tallest man, knocking
him dead in full stride. My second pistol snapped--the cap had somehow
slipped from the nipple. I dashed it into a black face, and as the
man fell, half stunned, I whipped out my bowie knife and closed with
the other. I parried his stab and my counter-stroke ripped across his
belly-muscles. He screamed like a swamp-panther and made a wild grab
for my knife wrist, but I struck him in the mouth with my clenched left
fist, and felt his lips split and his teeth crumble under the impact
as he reeled backward, his knife waving wildly. Before he could regain
his balance I was after him, thrusting, and got home under his ribs. He
groaned and slipped to the ground in a puddle of his own blood.
I wheeled about, looking for the other. He was just rising, blood
streaming down his face and neck. As I started for him he sounded a
panicky yell and plunged into the underbrush. The crashing of his blind
flight came back to me, muffled with distance. The girl was gone.
_2. The Stranger on Tularoosa_
The curious glow that had first showed me the quadroon girl had
vanished. In my confusion I had forgotten it. But I did not waste
time on vain conjecture as to its source, as I groped my way back to
the road. Mystery had come to the pinelands and a ghostly light that
hovered among the trees was only part of it.
My horse snorted and pulled against his tether, frightened by the smell
of blood that hung in the heavy damp air. Hoofs clattered down the
road, forms bulked in the growing light. Voices challenged.
"Who's that? Step out and name yourself, before we shoot!"
"Hold on, Esau!" I called. "It's me--Kirby Buckner!"
"Kirby Buckner, by thunder!" ejaculated Esau McBride, lowering his
pistol. The tall rangy forms of the other riders loomed behind him.
"We heard a shot," said McBride. "We was ridin' patrol on the roads
around Grimesville like we've been ridin' every night for a week
now--ever since they killed Ridge Jackson."
"Who killed Ridge Jackson?"
"The swamp-niggers. That's all we know. Ridge come out of the woods
early one mornin' and knocked at Cap'n Sorley's door. Cap'n says he was
the color of ashes. He hollered for the Cap'n for God's sake to let him
in, he had somethin' awful to tell him. Well, the Cap'n started down to
open the door, but before he'd got down the stairs he heard an awful
row among the dogs outside, and a man screamed he reckoned was Ridge.
And when he got to the door, there wasn't nothin' but a dead dog layin'
in the yard with his head knocked in, and the others all goin' crazy.
They found Ridge later, out in the pines a few hundred yards from the
house. From the way the ground and the bushes was tore up, he'd been
dragged that far by four or five men. Maybe they got tired of haulin'
him along. Anyway, they beat his head into a pulp and left him layin'
there."
"I'll be damned!" I muttered. "Well, there's a couple of niggers lying
back there in the brush. I want to see if you know them. I don't."
* * * * *
A moment later we were standing in the tiny glade, now white in the
growing dawn. A black shape sprawled on the matted pine needles, his
head in a pool of blood and brains. There were wide smears of blood on
the ground and bushes on the other side of the little clearing, but
the wounded black was gone.
McBride turned the carcass with his foot.
"One of them niggers that came in with Saul Stark," he muttered.
"Who the devil's that?" I demanded.
"Strange nigger that moved in since you went down the river last time.
Come from South Carolina, he says. Lives in that old cabin in the
Neck--you know, the shack where Colonel Reynolds' niggers used to live."
"Suppose you ride on to Grimesville with me, Esau," I said, "and tell
me about this business as we ride. The rest of you might scout around
and see if you can find a wounded nigger in the brush."
They agreed without question; the Buckners have always been tacitly
considered leaders in Canaan, and it came natural for me to offer
suggestions. Nobody gives _orders_ to white men in Canaan.
"I reckoned you'd be showin' up soon," opined McBride, as we rode
along the whitening road. "You usually manage to keep up with what's
happenin' in Canaan."
"What _is_ happening?" I inquired. "I don't know anything. An old
black woman dropped me the word in New Orleans that there was trouble.
Naturally I came home as fast as I could. Three strange niggers waylaid
me----" I was curiously disinclined to mention the woman. "And now you
tell me somebody killed Ridge Jackson. What's it all about?"
"The swamp-niggers killed Ridge to shut his mouth," announced McBride.
"That's the only way to figure it. They must have been close behind
him when he knocked on Cap'n Sorley's door. Ridge worked for Cap'n
Sorley most of his life; he thought a lot of the old man. Some kind of
deviltry's bein' brewed up in the swamps, and Ridge wanted to warn the
Cap'n. That's the way I figure it."
"Warn him about what?"
"We don't know," confessed McBride. "That's why we're all on edge. It
must be an uprisin'."
That word was enough to strike chill fear into the heart of any
Canaan-dweller. The blacks had risen in 1845, and the red terror of
that revolt was not forgotten, nor the three lesser rebellions before
it, when the slaves rose and spread fire and slaughter from Tularoosa
to the shores of Black River. The fear of a black uprising lurked for
ever in the depths of that forgotten back-country; the very children
absorbed it in their cradles.
"What makes you think it might be an uprising?" I asked.
"The niggers have all quit the fields, for one thing. They've all got
business in Goshen. I ain't seen a nigger nigh Grimesville for a week.
_The town-niggers have pulled out._"
In Canaan we still draw a distinction born in antebellum days.
"Town-niggers" are descendants of the house-servants of the old days,
and most of them live in or near Grimesville. There are not many,
compared to the mass of "swamp-niggers" who dwell on tiny farms along
the creeks and the edge of the swamps, or in the black village of
Goshen, on the Tularoosa. They are descendants of the field-hands of
other days, and, untouched by the mellow civilization which refined
the natures of the house-servants, they remain as primitive as their
African ancestors.
"Where have the town-niggers gone?" I asked.
"Nobody knows. They lit out a week ago. Probably hidin' down on Black
River. If we win, they'll come back. If we don't, they'll take refuge
in Sharpsville."
I found his matter-of-factness a bit ghastly, as if the actuality of
the uprising were an assured fact.
"Well, what have you done?" I demanded.
"Ain't much we could do," he confessed. "The niggers ain't made no open
move, outside of killin' Ridge Jackson; and we couldn't prove who done
that, or why they done it.
"They ain't done nothin' but clear out. But that's mighty suspicious.
We can't keep from thinkin' Saul Stark's behind it."
"Who is this fellow?" I asked.
"I told you all I know, already. He got permission to settle in that
old deserted cabin on the Neck; a great big black devil that talks
better English than I like to hear a nigger talk. But he was respectful
enough. He had three or four big South Carolina bucks with him, and a
brown wench which we don't know whether she's his daughter, sister,
wife or what. He ain't been in to Grimesville but that one time, and a
few weeks after he came to Canaan, the niggers begun actin' curious.
Some of the boys wanted to ride over to Goshen and have a showdown, but
that's takin' a desperate chance."
I knew he was thinking of a ghastly tale told us by our grandfathers
of how a punitive expedition from Grimesville was once ambushed
and butchered among the dense thickets that masked Goshen, then a
rendezvous for runaway slaves, while another red-handed band devastated
Grimesville, left defenseless by that reckless invasion.
"Might take all the men to get Saul Stark," said McBride. "And we don't
dare leave the town unprotected. But we'll soon have to--hello, what's
this?"
* * * * *
We had emerged from the trees and were just entering the village of
Grimesville, the community center of the white population of Canaan. It
was not pretentious. Log cabins, neat and white-washed, were plentiful
enough. Small cottages clustered about big, old-fashioned houses which
sheltered the rude aristocracy of that backwoods democracy. All the
"planter" families lived "in town". "The country" was occupied by their
tenants, and by the small independent farmers, white and black.
A small log cabin stood near the point where the road wound out of the
deep forest. Voices emanated from it, in accents of menace, and a tall
lanky figure, rifle in hand, stood at the door.
"Howdy, Esau!" this man hailed us. "By golly, if it ain't Kirby
Buckner! Glad to see you, Kirby."
"What's up, Dick?" asked McBride.
"Got a nigger in the shack, tryin' to make him talk. Bill Reynolds seen
him sneakin' past the edge of town about daylight, and nabbed him."
"Who is it?" I asked.
"Tope Sorley. John Willoughby's gone after a blacksnake."
With a smothered oath I swung off my horse and strode in, followed
by McBride. Half a dozen men in boots and gun-belts clustered about
a pathetic figure cowering on an old broken bunk. Tope Sorley (his
forebears had adopted the name of the family that owned them, in slave
days) was a pitiable sight just then. His skin was ashy, his teeth
chattered spasmodically, and his eyes seemed to be trying to roll back
into his head.
"Here's Kirby!" ejaculated one of the men as I pushed my way through
the group. "I'll bet he'll make this coon talk!"
"Here comes John with the blacksnake!" shouted someone, and a tremor
ran through Tope Sorley's shivering body.
I pushed aside the butt of the ugly whip thrust eagerly into my hand.
"Tope," I said, "you've worked one of my father's farms for years. Has
any Buckner ever treated you any way but square?"
"Nossuh," came faintly.
"Then what are you afraid of? Why don't you speak up? Something's going
on in the swamps. _You_ know, and I want you to tell us--why the town
niggers have all run away, why Ridge Jackson was killed, why the swamp
niggers are acting so mysteriously."
"And what kind of devilment that cussed Saul Stark's cookin' up over on
Tularoosa!" shouted one of the men.
Tope seemed to shrink into himself at the mention of Stark.
"I don't dast," he shuddered. "He'd put me in de swamp!"
"Who?" I demanded. "Stark? Is Stark a conjer man?"
Tope sank his head in his hands and did not answer. I laid my hand on
his shoulder.
"Tope," I said, "you know if you'll talk, we'll protect you. If you
don't talk, I don't think Stark can treat you much rougher than these
men are likely to. Now spill it--what's it all about?"
He lifted desperate eyes.
"You-all got to lemme stay here," he shuddered. "And guard me, and
gimme money to git away on when de trouble's over."
"We'll do all that," I agreed instantly. "You can stay right here in
this cabin, until you're ready to leave for New Orleans or wherever you
want to go."
He capitulated, collapsed, and words tumbled from his livid lips.
"Saul Stark's a conjer man. He come here because it's way off in
back-country. He aim to kill all de white folks in Canaan----"
A growl rose from the group, such a growl as rises unbidden from the
throat of the wolf-pack that scents peril.
"He aim to make hisself king of Canaan. He sent me to spy dis mornin'
to see if Mistah Kirby got through. He sent men to waylay him on de
road, cause he knowed Mistah Kirby was comin' back to Canaan. Niggers
makin' voodoo on Tularoosa, for weeks now. Ridge Jackson was goin' to
tell Cap'n Sorley; so Stark's niggers foller him and kill him. That
make Stark mad. He ain't want to _kill_ Ridge; he want to put him in de
swamp with Tunk Bixby and de others."
"What are you talking about?" I demanded.
Far out in the woods rose a strange, shrill cry, like the cry of a
bird. But no such bird ever called before in Canaan. Tope cried out as
if in answer, and shriveled into himself. He sank down on the bunk in a
veritable palsy of fear.
"That was a signal!" I snapped. "Some of you go out there."
Half a dozen men hastened to follow my suggestion, and I returned to
the task of making Tope renew his revelations. It was useless. Some
hideous fear had sealed his lips. He lay shuddering like a stricken
animal, and did not even seem to hear our questions. No one suggested
the use of the blacksnake. Anyone could see the negro was paralyzed
with terror.
* * * * *
Presently the searchers returned, empty-handed. They had seen no one,
and the thick carpet of pine needles showed no foot-prints. The men
looked at me expectantly. As Colonel Buckner's son, leadership was
expected of me.
"What about it, Kirby?" asked McBride. "Breckinridge and the others
have just rode in. They couldn't find that nigger you cut up."
"There was another nigger I hit with a pistol," I said. "Maybe he came
back and helped him." Still I could not bring myself to mention the
brown girl. "Leave Tope alone. Maybe he'll get over his scare after a
while. Better keep a guard in the cabin all the time. The swamp niggers
may try to get him as they got Ridge Jackson. Better scour the roads
around the town, Esau; there may be some of them hiding in the woods."
"I will. I reckon you'll want to be gettin' up to the house, now, and
seein' your folks."
"Yes. And I want to swap these toys for a couple of .44s. Then I'm
going to ride out and tell the country people to come into Grimesville.
If it's to be an uprising, we don't know when it will commence."
"You're not goin' alone!" protested McBride.
"I'll be all right," I answered impatiently. "All this may not amount
to anything, but it's best to be on the safe side. That's why I'm going
after the country folks. No, I don't want anybody to go with me. Just
in case the niggers do get crazy enough to attack the town, you'll
need every man you've got. But if I can get hold of some of the swamp
niggers and talk to them, I don't think there'll be any attack."
"You won't get a glimpse of them," McBride predicted.
_3. Shadows Over Canaan_
It was not yet noon when I rode out of the village westward along
the old road. Thick woods swallowed me quickly. Dense walls of pines
marched with me on either hand, giving way occasionally to fields
enclosed with straggling rail fences, with the log cabins of the
tenants or owners close by, with the usual litters of tow-headed
children and lank hound dogs.
Some of the cabins were empty. The occupants, if white, had already
gone into Grimesville; if black they had gone into the swamps, or
fled to the hidden refuge of the town-niggers, according to their
affiliations. In any event, the vacancy of their hovels was sinister in
its suggestion.
A tense silence brooded over the pinelands, broken only by the
occasional wailing call of a plowman. My progress was not swift, for
from time to time I turned off the main road to give warning to some
lonely cabin huddled on the bank of one of the many thicket-fringed
creeks. Most of these farms were south of the road; the white
settlements did not extend far to the north; for in that direction lay
Tularoosa Creek with its jungle-grown marshes that stretched inlets
southward like groping fingers.
The actual warning was brief; there was no need to argue or explain.
I called from the saddle: "Get into town; trouble's brewing on
Tularoosa." Faces paled, and people dropped whatever they were
doing: the men to grab guns and jerk mules from the plow to hitch
to the wagons, the women to bundle necessary belongings together
and shrill the children in from their play. As I rode I heard the
cow-horns blowing up and down the creeks, summoning men from distant
fields--blowing as they had not blown for a generation, a warning and a
defiance which I knew carried to such ears as might be listening in the
edges of the swamplands. The country emptied itself behind me, flowing
in thin but steady streams toward Grimesville.
The sun was swinging low among the topmost branches of the pines when I
reached the Richardson cabin, the westernmost "white" cabin in Canaan.
Beyond it lay the Neck, the angle formed by the junction of Tularoosa
with Black River, a jungle-like expanse occupied only by scattered
negro huts.
Mrs. Richardson called to me anxiously from the cabin stoop.
"Well, Mr. Kirby, I'm glad to see you back in Canaan! We been hearin'
the horns all evenin', Mr. Kirby. What's it mean? It--it ain't----"
"You and Joe better get the children and light out for Grimesville," I
answered. "Nothing's happened yet, and may not, but it's best to be on
the safe side. All the people are going."
"We'll go right now!" she gasped, paling, as she snatched off her
apron. "Lord, Mr. Kirby, you reckon they'll cut us off before we can
git to town?"
I shook my head. "They'll strike at night, if at all. We're just
playing safe. Probably nothing will come of it."
"I bet you're wrong there," she predicted, scurrying about in desperate
activity. "I been hearin' a drum beatin' off toward Saul Stark's cabin,
off and on, for a week now. They beat drums back in the Big Uprisin'.
My pappy's told me about it many's the time. The nigger skinned his
brother alive. The horns was blowin' all up and down the creeks, and
the drums was beatin' louder'n the horns could blow. You'll be ridin'
back with us, won't you, Mr. Kirby?"
"No; I'm going to scout down along the trail a piece."
"Don't go too far. You're liable to run into old Saul Stark and his
devils. Lord! _Where_ is that man? Joe! _Joe!_"
As I rode down the trail her shrill voice followed me, thin-edged with
fear.
* * * * *
Beyond the Richardson farm pines gave way to live-oaks. The underbrush
grew ranker. A scent of rotting vegetation impregnated the fitful
breeze. Occasionally I sighted a nigger hut, half hidden under the
trees, but always it stood silent and deserted. Empty nigger cabins
meant but one thing: the blacks were collecting at Goshen, some miles
to the east on the Tularoosa; and that gathering, too, could have but
one meaning.
My goal was Saul Stark's hut. My intention had been formed when I heard
Tope Sorley's incoherent tale. There could be no doubt that Saul Stark
was the dominant figure in this web of mystery. With Saul Stark I meant
to deal. That I might be risking my life was a chance any man must take
who assumes the responsibility of leadership.
The sun slanted through the lower branches of the cypresses when I
reached it--a log cabin set against a background of gloomy tropical
jungle. A few steps beyond it began the uninhabitable swamp in which
Tularoosa emptied its murky current into Black River. A reek of decay
hung in the air; gray moss bearded the trees, and poisonous vines
twisted in rank tangles.
I called: "Stark! Saul Stark! Come out here!"
There was no answer. A primitive silence hovered over the tiny
clearing. I dismounted, tied my horse and approached the crude, heavy
door. Perhaps this cabin held a clue to the mystery of Saul Stark; at
least it doubtless contained the implements and paraphernalia of his
noisome craft. The faint breeze dropped suddenly. The stillness became
so intense it was like a physical impact. I paused, startled; it was as
if some inner instinct had shouted urgent warning.
As I stood there every fiber of me quivered in response to that
subconscious warning; some obscure, deep-hidden instinct sensed peril,
as a man senses the presence of the rattlesnake in the darkness, or
the swamp-panther crouching in the bushes. I drew a pistol, sweeping
the trees and bushes, but saw no shadow or movement to betray the
ambush I feared. But my instinct was unerring; what I sensed was not
lurking in the woods about me; it was inside the cabin--_waiting_.
Trying to shake off the feeling, and irked by a vague half-memory that
kept twitching at the back of my brain, I again advanced. And again
I stopped short, with one foot on the tiny stoop, and a hand half
advanced to pull open the door. A chill shivering swept over me, a
sensation like that which shakes a man to whom a flicker of lightning
has revealed the black abyss into which another blind step would
have hurled him. For the first time in my life I knew the meaning of
fear; I knew that black horror lurked in that sullen cabin under the
moss-bearded cypresses--a horror against which every primitive instinct
that was my heritage cried out in panic.
And that insistent half-memory woke suddenly. It was the memory of a
story of how voodoo men leave their huts guarded in their absence by
a powerful ju-ju spirit to deal madness and death to the intruder.
White men ascribed such deaths to superstitious fright and hypnotic
suggestion. But in that instant I understood my sense of lurking peril;
I comprehended the horror that breathed like an invisible mist from
that accursed hut. I sensed the reality of the ju-ju, of which the
grotesque wooden images which voodoo men place in their huts are only a
symbol.
Saul Stark was gone; but he had left a Presence to guard his hut.
I backed away, sweat beading the backs of my hands. Not for a bag of
gold would I have peered into the shuttered windows or touched that
unbolted door. My pistol hung in my hand, useless I knew against the
_Thing_ in that cabin. What it was I could not know, but I knew it was
some brutish, soulless entity drawn from the black swamps by the spells
of voodoo. Man and the natural animals are not the only sentient beings
that haunt this planet. There are invisible _Things_--black spirits of
the deep swamps and the slimes of the river beds--the negroes know of
them....
* * * * *
My horse was trembling like a leaf and he shouldered close to me as if
seeking security in bodily contact. I mounted and reined away, fighting
a panicky urge to strike in the spurs and bolt madly down the trail.
I breathed an involuntary sigh of relief as the somber clearing fell
away behind me and was lost from sight. I did not, as soon as I was out
of sight of the cabin, revile myself for a silly fool. My experience
was too vivid in my mind. It was not cowardice that prompted my retreat
from that empty hut; it was the natural instinct of self-preservation,
such as keeps a squirrel from entering the lair of a rattlesnake.
My horse snorted and shied violently. A gun was in my hand before I saw
what had startled me. Again a rich musical laugh taunted me.
She was leaning against a bent tree-trunk, her hands clasped behind
her sleek head, insolently posing her sensuous figure. The barbaric
fascination of her was not dispelled by daylight; if anything, the glow
of the low-hanging sun enhanced it.
"Why did you not go into the ju-ju cabin, Kirby Buckner?" she mocked,
lowering her arms and moving insolently out from the tree.
She was clad as I had never seen a swamp woman, or any other woman,
dressed. Snakeskin sandals were on her feet, sewn with tiny sea-shells
that were never gathered on this continent. A short silken skirt
of flaming crimson molded her full hips, and was upheld by a broad
bead-worked girdle. Barbaric anklets and armlets clashed as she moved,
heavy ornaments of crudely hammered gold that were as African as her
loftily piled coiffure. Nothing else she wore, and on her bosom,
between her arching breasts, I glimpsed the faint lines of tattooing on
her brown skin.
She posed derisively before me, not in allure, but in mockery.
Triumphant malice blazed in her dark eyes; her red lips curled with
cruel mirth. Looking at her then I found it easy to believe all the
tales I had heard of torture and mutilations inflicted by the women of
savage races on wounded enemies. She was alien, even in this primitive
setting; she needed a grimmer, more bestial background, a background
of steaming jungle, reeking black swamps, flaring fires and cannibal
feasts, and the bloody altars of abysmal tribal gods.
"Kirby Buckner!" She seemed to caress the syllables with her red
tongue, yet the very intonation was an obscene insult. "Why did you
not enter Saul Stark's cabin? It was not locked! Did you fear what you
might see there? Did you fear you might come out with your hair white
like an old man's, and the drooling lips of an imbecile?"
"What's in that hut?" I demanded.
She laughed in my face, and snapped her fingers with a peculiar gesture.
"One of the ones which come oozing like black mist out of the night
when Saul Stark beats the ju-ju drum and shrieks the black incantation
to the gods that crawl on their bellies in the swamp."
"What is he doing here? The black-folk were quiet until he came."
Her red lips curled disdainfully. "Those black dogs? They are his
slaves. If they disobey he kills them, _or puts them in the swamp_.
For long we have looked for a place to begin our rule. We have chosen
Canaan. You whites must go. And since we know that white people can
never be driven away from their land, we must kill you all."
It was my turn to laugh, grimly.
"They tried that, back in '45."
"They did not have Saul Stark to lead them, then," she answered calmly.
"Well, suppose they won? Do you think that would be the end of it?
Other white men would come into Canaan and kill them all."
"They would have to cross water," she answered. "We can defend the
rivers and creeks. Saul Stark will have many _servants in the swamps_
to do his bidding. He will be king of black Canaan. No one can cross
the waters to come against him. He will rule his tribe, as his fathers
ruled their tribes in the Ancient Land."
"Mad as a loon!" I muttered. Then curiosity impelled me to ask: "Who is
this fool? What are you to him?"
"He is the son of a Kongo witch-finder, and he is the greatest voodoo
priest out of the Ancient Land," she answered, laughing at me again.
"I? You shall learn who _I_ am, tonight in the swamp, in the House of
Damballah."
"Yes?" I grunted. "What's to prevent me from taking you into
Grimesville with me? You know the answers to questions I'd like to ask."
Her laughter was like the slash of a velvet whip.
"_You_ drag me to the village of the whites? Not all death and hell
could keep me from the Dance of the Skull, tonight in the House of
Damballah. You are _my_ captive, already." She laughed derisively as
I started and glared into the shadows about me. "No one is hiding
there. I am alone, and you are the strongest man in Canaan. Even Saul
Stark fears you, for he sent me with three men to kill you before you
could reach the village. Yet you are my captive. I have but to beckon,
so"--she crooked a contemptuous finger--"and you will follow to the
fires of Damballah and the knives of the torturers."
I laughed at her, but my mirth rang hollow. I could not deny the
incredible magnetism of this brown enchantress; it fascinated and
impelled, drawing me toward her, beating at my will-power. I could not
fail to recognize it any more than I could fail to recognize the peril
in the ju-ju hut.
* * * * *
My agitation was apparent to her, for her eyes flashed with unholy
triumph.
"Black men are fools, all but Saul Stark," she laughed. "White men are
fools, too. I am the daughter of a white man, who lived in the hut of a
black king and mated with his daughters. I know the strength of white
men, and their weakness. I failed last night when I met you in the
woods, but now I cannot fail!" Savage exultation thrummed in her voice.
"By the blood in your veins I have snared you. The knife of the man
you killed scratched your hand--seven drops of blood that fell on the
pine needles have given me your soul! I took that blood, and Saul Stark
gave me the man who ran away. Saul Stark hates cowards. With his hot,
quivering heart, and seven drops of your blood, Kirby Buckner, deep in
the swamps I have made such magic as none but a Bride of Damballah can
make. Already you feel its urge! Oh, you are strong! The man you fought
with the knife died less than an hour later. But you cannot fight me.
Your blood makes you my slave. I have put a conjurement upon you."
By heaven, it was not mere madness she was mouthing! Hypnotism, magic,
call it what you will, I felt its onslaught on my brain and will--a
blind, senseless impulse that seemed to be rushing me against my will
to the brink of some nameless abyss.
"I have made a charm you cannot resist!" she cried. "When I call you,
you will come! Into the deep swamps you will follow me. You will see
the Dance of the Skull, and you will see the doom of a poor fool who
sought to betray Saul Stark--who dreamed he could resist the Call of
Damballah when it came. Into the swamp he goes tonight, with Tunk Bixby
and the other four fools who opposed Saul Stark. You shall see that.
You shall know and understand your own doom. And then you too shall
go into the swamp, into darkness and silence deep as the darkness of
nighted Africa! But before the darkness engulfs you there will be sharp
knives, and little fires--oh, you will scream for death, even for the
death that is beyond death!"
With a choking cry I whipped out a pistol and leveled it full at
her breast. It was cocked and my finger was on the trigger. At that
range I could not miss. But she looked full into the black muzzle and
laughed--laughed--laughed, in wild peals that froze the blood in my
veins.
And I sat there like an image pointing a pistol I could not fire! A
frightful paralysis gripped me. I knew, with numbing certainty, that
my life depended on the pull of that trigger, but I could not crook my
finger--not though every muscle in my body quivered with the effort and
sweat broke out on my face in clammy beads.
She ceased laughing, then, and stood looking at me in a manner
indescribably sinister.
"You cannot shoot me, Kirby Buckner," she said quietly. "I have
enslaved your soul. You cannot understand my power, but it has ensnared
you. It is the Lure of the Bride of Damballah--the blood I have mixed
with the mystic waters of Africa drawing the blood in your veins.
Tonight you will come to me, in the House of Damballah."
"You lie!" My voice was an unnatural croak bursting from dry lips.
"You've hypnotized me, you she-devil, so I can't pull this trigger.
But you can't drag me across the swamps to you."
"It is you who lie," she returned calmly. "You know you lie. Ride back
toward Grimesville or wherever you will, Kirby Buckner. But when the
sun sets and the black shadows crawl out of the swamps, you will see me
beckoning you, and you will follow me. Long I have planned your doom,
Kirby Buckner, since first I heard the white men of Canaan talking of
you. It was I who sent the word down the river that brought you back to
Canaan. Not even Saul Stark knows of my plans for you.
"At dawn Grimesville shall go up in flames, and the heads of the
white men will be tossed in the blood-running streets. But tonight is
the Night of Damballah, and a white sacrifice shall be given to the
black gods. Hidden among the trees you shall watch the Dance of the
Skull--and then I shall call you forth--to die! And now, go, fool! Run
as far and as fast as you will. At sunset, wherever you are, you will
turn your footsteps toward the House of Damballah!"
And with the spring of a panther she was gone into the thick brush, and
as she vanished the strange paralysis dropped from me. With a gasped
oath I fired blindly after her, but only a mocking laugh floated back
to me.
Then in a panic I wrenched my horse about and spurred him down the
trail. Reason and logic had momentarily vanished from my brain,
leaving me in the grasp of blind, primitive fear. I had confronted
sorcery beyond my power to resist. I had felt my will mastered by the
mesmerism in a brown woman's eyes. And now one driving urge overwhelmed
me--a wild desire to cover as much distance as I could before that
low-hanging sun dipped below the horizon and the black shadows came
crawling from the swamps.
And yet I knew I could not outrun the grisly specter that menaced
me. I was like a man fleeing in a nightmare, trying to escape from a
monstrous phantom which kept pace with me despite my desperate speed.
* * * * *
I had not reached the Richardson cabin when above the drumming of my
flight I heard the clop of hoofs ahead of me, and an instant later,
sweeping around a kink in the trail, I almost rode down a tall, lanky
man on an equally gaunt horse.
He yelped and dodged back as I jerked my horse to its haunches, my
pistol presented at his breast.
"Look out, Kirby! It's me--Jim Braxton! My God, you look like you'd
seen a ghost! What's chasin' you?"
"Where are you going?" I demanded, lowering my gun.
"Lookin' for you. Folks got worried as it got late and you didn't come
in with the refugees. I 'lowed I'd light out and look for you. Miz
Richardson said you rode into the Neck. Where in tarnation you been?"
"To Saul Stark's cabin."
"You takin' a big chance. What'd you find there?"
The sight of another white man had somewhat steadied my nerves. I
opened my mouth to narrate my adventure, and was shocked to hear myself
saying, instead: "Nothing. He wasn't there."
"Thought I heard a gun crack, a while ago," he remarked, glancing
sharply at me, sidewise.
"I shot at a copperhead," I answered, and shuddered. This reticence
regarding the brown woman was compulsory; I could no more speak of her
than I could pull the trigger of the pistol aimed at her. And I cannot
describe the horror that beset me when I realized this. The conjer
spells the black men feared were not lies, I realized sickly; demons in
human form _did_ exist who were able to enslave men's will and thoughts.
Braxton was eyeing me strangely.
"We're lucky the woods ain't full of black copperheads," he said. "Tope
Sorley's pulled out."
"What do you mean?" By an effort I pulled myself together.
"Just that. Tom Breckinridge was in the cabin with him. Tope hadn't
said a word since you talked to him. Just laid on that bunk and
shivered. Then a kind of holler begun way out in the woods, and Tom
went to the door with his rifle-gun, but couldn't see nothin'. Well,
while he was standin' there he got a lick on the head from _behind_,
and as he fell he seen that crazy nigger Tope jump over him and light
out for the woods. Tom he taken a shot at him, but missed. Now what you
make of that?"
"The Call of Damballah!" I muttered, a chill perspiration beading my
body. "God! The poor devil!"
"Huh? What's that?"
"For God's sake let's not stand here mouthing! The sun will soon be
down!" In a frenzy of impatience I kicked my mount down the trail.
Braxton followed me, obviously puzzled. With a terrific effort I got a
grip on myself. How madly fantastic it was that Kirby Buckner should be
shaking in the grip of unreasoning terror! It was so alien to my whole
nature that it was no wonder Jim Braxton was unable to comprehend what
ailed me.
"Tope didn't go of his own free will," I said. "That call was a summons
he couldn't resist. Hypnotism, black magic, voodoo, whatever you want
to call it, Saul Stark has some damnable power that enslaves men's
will-power. The blacks are gathered somewhere in the swamp, for some
kind of a devilish voodoo ceremony, which I have reason to believe
will culminate in the murder of Tope Sorley. We've got to get to
Grimesville if we can. I expect an attack at dawn."
Braxton was pale in the dimming light. He did not ask me where I got my
knowledge.
"We'll lick 'em when they come; but it'll be a slaughter."
I did not reply. My eyes were fixed with savage intensity on the
sinking sun, and as it slid out of sight behind the trees I was shaken
with an icy tremor. In vain I told myself that no occult power could
draw me against my will. If she had been able to compel me, why had
she not forced me to accompany her from the glade of the ju-ju hut? A
grisly whisper seemed to tell me that she was but playing with me, as a
cat allows a mouse almost to escape, only to be pounced upon again.
"Kirby, what's the matter with you?" I scarcely heard Braxton's anxious
voice. "You're sweatin' and shakin' like you had the aggers. What--hey,
what you stoppin' for?"
I had not consciously pulled on the rein, but my horse halted, and
stood trembling and snorting, before the mouth of a narrow trail which
meandered away at right angles from the road we were following--a trail
that led north.
"Listen!" I hissed tensely.
"What is it?" Braxton drew a pistol. The brief twilight of the
pinelands was deepening into dusk.
"Don't you hear it?" I muttered. "Drums! Drums beating in Goshen!"
"I don't hear nothin'," he mumbled uneasily. "If they was beatin' drums
in Goshen you couldn't hear 'em this far away."
"Look there!" My sharp sudden cry made him start. I was pointing down
the dim trail, at the figure which stood there in the dusk less than
a hundred yards away. There in the dusk I saw her, even made out the
gleam of her strange eyes, the mocking smile on her red lips. "Saul
Stark's brown wench!" I raved, tearing at my scabbard. "My God, man,
are you stone-blind? Don't you see her?"
"I don't see nobody!" he whispered, livid. "What are you talkin' about,
Kirby?"
With eyes glaring I fired down the trail, and fired again, and yet
again. This time no paralysis gripped my arm. But the smiling face
still mocked me from the shadows. A slender, rounded arm lifted, a
finger beckoned imperiously; and then she was gone and I was spurring
my horse down the narrow trail, blind, deaf and dumb, with a sensation
as of being caught in a black tide that was carrying me with it as it
rushed on to a destination beyond my comprehension.
Dimly I heard Braxton's urgent yells, and then he drew up beside me
with a clatter of hoofs, and grabbed my reins, setting my horse back on
its haunches. I remember striking at him with my gun-barrel, without
realizing what I was doing. All the black rivers of Africa were surging
and foaming within my consciousness, roaring into a torrent that was
sweeping me down to engulf me in an ocean of doom.
"Kirby, are you crazy? This trail leads to Goshen!"
I shook my head dazedly. The foam of the rushing waters swirled in my
brain, and my voice sounded far away. "Go back! Ride for Grimesville!
I'm going to Goshen."
"Kirby, you're mad!"
"Mad or sane, I'm going to Goshen this night," I answered dully. I was
fully conscious. I knew what I was saying, and what I was doing. I
realized the incredible folly of my action, and I realized my inability
to help myself. Some shred of sanity impelled me to try to conceal
the grisly truth from my companion, to offer a rational reason for my
madness. "Saul Stark is in Goshen. He's the one who's responsible for
all this trouble. I'm going to kill him. That will stop the uprising
before it starts."
He was trembling like a man with the ague.
"Then I'm goin' with you."
"You must go on to Grimesville and warn the people," I insisted,
holding to sanity, but feeling a strong urge begin to seize me, an
irresistible urge to be in motion--to be riding in the direction toward
which I was so horribly drawn.
"They'll be on their guard," he said stubbornly. "They won't need my
warnin'. I'm goin' with you. I don't know what's got in you, but I
ain't goin' to let you die alone among these black woods."
I did not argue. I could not. The blind rivers were sweeping me
on--on--on! And down the trail, dim in the dusk, I glimpsed a supple
figure, caught the gleam of uncanny eyes, the crook of a lifted
finger.... Then I was in motion, galloping down the trail, and I heard
the drum of Braxton's horse's hoofs behind me.
_4. The Dwellers in the Swamp_
Night fell and the moon shone through the trees, blood-red behind the
black branches. The horses were growing hard to manage.
"They got more sense'n us, Kirby," muttered Braxton.
"Panther, maybe," I replied absently, my eyes searching the gloom of
the trail ahead.
"Naw, t'ain't. Closer we git to Goshen, the worse they git. And every
time we swing nigh to a creek they shy and snort."
The trail had not yet crossed any of the narrow, muddy creeks that
criss-crossed that end of Canaan, but several times it had swung so
close to one of them that we glimpsed the black streak that was water
glinting dully in the shadows of the thick growth. And each time, I
remembered, the horses showed signs of fear.
But I had hardly noticed, wrestling as I was with the grisly compulsion
that was driving me. Remember, I was not like a man in a hypnotic
trance. I was fully awake, fully conscious. Even the daze in which I
had seemed to hear the roar of black rivers had passed, leaving my mind
clear, my thoughts lucid. And that was the sweating hell of it: to
realize my folly clearly and poignantly, but to be unable to conquer
it. Vividly I realized that I was riding to torture and death, and
leading a faithful friend to the same end. But on I went. My efforts
to break the spell that gripped me almost unseated my reason, but on I
went. I cannot explain my compulsion, any more than I can explain why a
sliver of steel is drawn to a magnet. It was a black power beyond the
ring of white man's knowledge; a basic, elemental thing of which formal
hypnotism is but scanty crumbs, spilled at random. A power beyond my
control was drawing me to Goshen, and beyond; more I cannot explain,
any more than the rabbit could explain why the eyes of the swaying
serpent draw him into its gaping jaws.
We were not far from Goshen when Braxton's horse unseated its rider,
and my own began snorting and plunging.
"They won't go no closer!" gasped Braxton, fighting at the reins.
I swung off, threw the reins over the saddle-horn.
"Go back, for God's sake, Jim! I'm going on afoot."
I heard him whimper an oath, then his horse was galloping after mine,
and he was following me on foot. The thought that he must share my doom
sickened me, but I could not dissuade him; and ahead of me a supple
form was dancing in the shadows, luring me on--on--on....
I wasted no more bullets on that mocking shape. Braxton could not see
it, and I knew it was part of my enchantment, no real woman of flesh
and blood, but a hell-born will-o'-the-wisp, mocking me and leading me
through the night to a hideous death. A "sending," the people of the
Orient, who are wiser than we, call such a thing.
* * * * *
Braxton peered nervously at the black forest walls about us, and I knew
his flesh was crawling with the fear of sawed-off shotguns blasting
us suddenly from the shadows. But it was no ambush of lead or steel I
feared as we emerged into the moonlit clearing that housed the cabins
of Goshen.
The double line of log cabins faced each other across the dusty street.
One line backed against the bank of Tularoosa Creek. The back stoops
almost overhung the black waters. Nothing moved in the moonlight. No
lights showed, no smoke oozed up from the stick-and-mud chimneys. It
might have been a dead town, deserted and forgotten.
"It's a trap!" hissed Braxton, his eyes blazing slits. He bent forward
like a skulking panther, a gun in each hand. "They're layin' for us in
them huts!"
Then he cursed, but followed me as I strode down the street. I did
not hail the silent huts. I _knew_ Goshen was deserted. I felt its
emptiness. Yet there was a contradictory sensation as of spying eyes
fixed upon us. I did not try to reconcile these opposite convictions.
"They're gone," muttered Braxton, nervously. "I can't smell 'em. I can
always smell niggers, if they're a lot of 'em, or if they're right
close. You reckon they've already gone to raid Grimesville?"
"No," I muttered. "They're in the House of Damballah."
He shot a quick glance at me.
"That's a neck of land in the Tularoosa about three miles west of here.
My grandpap used to talk about it. The niggers held their heathen
palavers there back in slave times. You ain't--Kirby--you----"
"Listen!" I wiped the icy sweat from my face. "_Listen!_"
Through the black woodlands the faint throb of a drum whispered on the
wind that glided up the shadowy reaches of the Tularoosa.
Braxton shivered. "It's them, all right. But for God's sake,
Kirby--_look out!_"
With an oath he sprang toward the houses on the bank of the creek. I
was after him just in time to glimpse a dark clumsy object scrambling
or tumbling down the sloping bank into the water. Braxton threw up his
long pistol, then lowered it, with a baffled curse. A faint splash
marked the disappearance of the creature. The shiny black surface
crinkled with spreading ripples.
"What was it?" I demanded.
"A nigger on his all-fours!" swore Braxton. His face was strangely
pallid in the moonlight. "He was crouched between them cabins there,
watchin' us!"
"It must have been an alligator." What a mystery is the human mind! I
was arguing for sanity and logic, I, the blind victim of a compulsion
beyond sanity and logic. "A nigger would have to come up for air."
"He swum under the water and come up in the shadder of the bresh where
we couldn't see him," maintained Braxton. "Now he'll go warn Saul
Stark."
"Never mind!" The pulse was thrumming in my temples again, the roar of
foaming waters rising irresistibly in my brain. "I'm going--straight
through the swamp. For the last time, go back!"
"No! Sane or mad, I'm goin' with you!"
* * * * *
The pulse of the drum was fitful, growing more distinct as we advanced.
We struggled through jungle-thick growth; tangled vines tripped us; our
boots sank in scummy mire. We were entering the fringe of the swamp
which grew deeper and denser until it culminated in the uninhabitable
morass where the Tularoosa flowed into Black River, miles farther to
the west.
The moon had not yet set, but the shadows were black under the
interlacing branches with their mossy beards. We plunged into the
first creek we must cross, one of the many muddy streams flowing into
the Tularoosa. The water was only thigh-deep, the moss-clogged bottom
fairly firm. My foot felt the edge of a sheer drop, and I warned
Braxton: "Look out for a deep hole; keep right behind me."
His answer was unintelligible. He was breathing heavily, crowding close
behind me. Just as I reached the sloping bank and pulled myself up by
the slimy, projecting roots, the water was violently agitated behind
me. Braxton cried out incoherently, and hurled himself up the bank,
almost upsetting me. I wheeled, gun in hand, but saw only the black
water seething and whirling, after his thrashing rush through it.
"What the devil, Jim?"
"Somethin' grabbed me!" he panted. "Somethin' out of the deep hole.
I tore loose and busted up the bank. I tell you, Kirby, somethin's
follerin' us! Somethin' that swims under the water."
"Maybe it was that nigger you saw. These swamp people swim like fish.
Maybe he swam up under the water to try to drown you."
He shook his head, staring at the black water, gun in hand.
"It _smelt_ like a nigger, and the little I saw of it _looked_ like a
nigger. But it didn't _feel_ like any kind of a human."
"Well, it was an alligator then," I muttered absently as I turned
away. As always when I halted, even for a moment, the roar of
peremptory and imperious rivers shook the foundations of my reason.
He splashed after me without comment. Scummy puddles rose about our
ankles, and we stumbled over moss-grown cypress knees. Ahead of us
there loomed another, wider creek, and Braxton caught my arm.
"Don't do it, Kirby!" he gasped. "If we go into that water, it'll git
us sure!"
"What?"
"I don't know. Whatever it was that flopped down that bank back there
in Goshen. The same thing that grabbed me in that creek back yonder.
Kirby, let's go back."
"Go back?" I laughed in bitter agony. "I wish to God I could! I've got
to go on. Either Saul Stark or I must die before dawn."
He licked dry lips and whispered. "Go on, then; I'm with you, come
heaven or hell." He thrust his pistol back into its scabbard, and drew
a long keen knife from his boot. "Go ahead!"
I climbed down the sloping bank and splashed into the water that rose
to my hips. The cypress branches bent a gloomy, moss-trailing arch over
the creek. The water was black as midnight. Braxton was a blur, toiling
behind me. I gained the first shelf of the opposite bank and paused, in
water knee-deep, to turn and look back at him.
Everything happened at once, then. I saw Braxton halt short, staring at
something on the bank behind me. He cried out, whipped out a gun and
fired, just as I turned. In the flash of the gun I glimpsed a supple
form reeling backward, a brown face fiendishly contorted. Then in the
momentary blindness that followed the flash, I heard Jim Braxton scream.
Sight and brain cleared in time to show me a sudden swirl of the murky
water, a round, black object breaking the surface behind Jim--and then
Braxton gave a strangled cry and went under with a frantic thrashing
and splashing. With an incoherent yell I sprang into the creek,
stumbled and went to my knees, almost submerging myself. As I struggled
up I saw Braxton's head, now streaming blood, break the surface
for an instant, and I lunged toward it. It went under and another
head appeared in its place, a shadowy black head. I stabbed at it
ferociously, and my knife cut only the blank water as the thing dipped
out of sight.
I staggered from the wasted force of the blow, and when I righted
myself, the water lay unbroken about me. I called Jim's name, but there
was no answer. Then panic laid a cold hand on me, and I splashed to the
bank, sweating and trembling. With the water no higher than my knees I
halted and waited, for I knew not what. But presently, down the creek
a short distance, I made out a vague object lying in the shallow water
near the shore.
I waded to it, through the clinging mud and crawling vines. It was Jim
Braxton, and he was dead. It was not the wound in his head which had
killed him. Probably he had struck a submerged rock when he was dragged
under. But the marks of strangling fingers showed black on his throat.
At the sight a nameless horror oozed out of that black swamp water and
coiled itself clammily about my soul; for no human fingers ever left
such marks as those.
I had seen a head rise in the water, a head that looked like that of a
negro, though the features had been indistinct in the darkness. But no
man, white or black, ever possessed the fingers that had crushed the
life out of Jim Braxton. The distant drum grunted as if in mockery.
* * * * *
I dragged the body up on the bank and left it. I could not linger
longer, for the madness was foaming in my brain again, driving me
with white-hot spurs. But as I climbed the bank, I found blood on the
bushes, and was shaken by the implication.
I remembered the figure I had seen staggering in the flash of Braxton's
gun. _She_ had been there, waiting for me on the bank, then--not a
spectral illusion, but the woman herself, in flesh and blood! Braxton
had fired at her, and wounded her. But the wound could not have been
mortal; for no corpse lay among the bushes, and the grim hypnosis that
dragged me onward was unweakened. Dizzily I wondered if she could be
killed by mortal weapons.
The moon had set. The starlight scarcely penetrated the interwoven
branches. No more creeks barred my way, only shallow streams, through
which I splashed with sweating haste. Yet I did not expect to be
attacked. Twice the dweller in the depths had passed me by to attack
my companion. In icy despair I knew I was being saved for a grimmer
fate. Each stream I crossed might be hiding the monster that killed
Jim Braxton. Those creeks were all connected in a network of winding
waterways. It could follow me easily. But my horror of it was less than
the horror of the jungle-born magnetism that lurked in a witch-woman's
eyes.
And as I stumbled through the tangled vegetation, I heard the drum
rumbling ahead of me, louder and louder, in demoniacal mockery. Then
a human voice mingled with its mutter, in a long-drawn cry of horror
and agony that set every fiber of me quivering with sympathy. Sweat
coursed down my clammy flesh; soon my own voice might be lifted like
that, under unnamable torture. But on I went, my feet moving like
automatons, apart from my body, motivated by a will not my own.
The drum grew loud, and a fire glowed among the black trees. Presently,
crouching among the bushes, I stared across the stretch of black water
that separated me from a nightmare scene. My halting there was as
compulsory as the rest of my actions had been. Vaguely I knew the stage
for horror had been set, but the time for my entry upon it was not yet.
When the time had come, I would receive my summons.
A low, wooded island split the black creek, connected with the shore
opposite me by a narrow neck of land. At its lower end the creek split
into a network of channels threading their way among hummocks and
rotting logs and moss-grown, vine-tangled clumps of trees. Directly
across from my refuge the shore of the island was deeply indented by an
arm of open, deep black water. Bearded trees walled a small clearing,
and partly hid a hut. Between the hut and the shore burned a fire that
sent up weird twisting snake-tongues of green flames. Scores of black
people squatted under the shadows of the overhanging branches. When
the green fire lit their faces it lent them the appearance of drowned
corpses.
In the midst of the glade stood a giant negro, an awesome statue in
black marble. He was clad in ragged trousers, but on his head was a
band of beaten gold set with a huge red jewel, and on his feet were
barbaric sandals. His features reflected titanic vitality no less than
his huge body. But he was all negro--flaring nostrils, thick lips,
ebony skin. I knew I looked upon Saul Stark, the conjure man.
He was regarding something that lay in the sand before him, something
dark and bulky that moaned feebly. Presently, lifting his head, he
rolled out a sonorous invocation across the black waters. From the
blacks huddled under the trees there came a shuddering response, like
a wind wailing through midnight branches. Both invocation and response
were framed in an unknown tongue--a guttural, primitive language.
Again he called out, this time a curious high-pitched wail. A
shuddering sigh swept the black people. All eyes were fixed on the
dusky water. And presently an object rose slowly from the depths. A
sudden trembling shook me. It looked like the head of a negro. One
after another it was followed by similar objects until five heads
reared above the black, cypress-shadowed water. They might have been
five negroes submerged except for their heads--but I knew this was not
so. There was something diabolical here. Their silence, motionlessness,
their whole aspect was unnatural. From the trees came the hysterical
sobbing of women, and someone whimpered a man's name.
Then Saul Stark lifted his hands, and the five heads silently sank out
of sight. Like a ghostly whisper I seemed to hear the voice of the
African witch: "_He puts them in the swamp!_"
Stark's deep voice rolled out across the narrow water: "And now the
Dance of the Skull, to make the conjer sure!"
What had the witch said? "_Hidden among the trees you shall watch the
dance of the Skull!_"
* * * * *
The drum struck up again, growling and rumbling. The blacks swayed on
their haunches, lifting a wordless chant. Saul Stark paced measuredly
about the figure on the sand, his arms weaving cryptic patterns. Then
he wheeled and faced toward the other end of the glade. By some sleight
of hand he now grasped a grinning human skull, and this he cast upon
the wet sand beyond the body. "Bride of Damballah!" he thundered. "The
sacrifice awaits!"
There was an expectant pause; the chanting sank. All eyes were glued
on the farther end of the glade. Stark stood waiting, and I saw him
scowl as if puzzled. Then as he opened his mouth to repeat the call, a
barbaric figure moved out of the shadows.
At the sight of her a chill shuddering shook me. For a moment she stood
motionless, the firelight glinting on her gold ornaments, her head
hanging on her breast. A tense silence reigned and I saw Saul Stark
staring at her sharply. She seemed to be detached, somehow, standing
aloof and withdrawn, head bent strangely.
Then, as if rousing herself, she began to sway with a jerky rhythm,
and presently whirled into the mazes of a dance that was ancient when
the ocean drowned the black kings of Atlantis. I cannot describe it.
It was bestiality and diabolism set to motion, framed in a writhing,
spinning whirl of posturing and gesturing that would have appalled a
dancer of the Pharaohs. And that cursed skull danced with her; rattling
and clashing on the sand, it bounded and spun like a live thing in time
with her leaps and prancings.
[Illustration: "And that cursed skull danced with her, rattling and
clashing on the sand."]
But there was something amiss. I sensed it. Her arms hung limp,
her drooping head swayed. Her legs bent and faltered, making her
lurch drunkenly and out of time. A murmur rose from the people, and
bewilderment etched Saul Stark's black countenance. For the domination
of a conjure man is a thing hinged on a hair-trigger. Any trifling
dislocation of formula or ritual may disrupt the whole web of his
enchantment.
As for me, I felt the perspiration freeze on my flesh as I watched
the grisly dance. The unseen shackles that bound me to that gyrating
she-devil were strangling, crushing me. I knew she was approaching a
climax, when she would summon me from my hiding-place, to wade through
the black waters to the House of Damballah, to my doom.
Now she whirled to a floating stop, and when she halted, poised on her
toes, she faced toward the spot where I lay hidden, and I knew that she
could see me as plainly as if I stood in the open; knew, too, somehow,
that only she knew of my presence. I felt myself toppling on the edge
of the abyss. She raised her head and I saw the flame of her eyes,
even at that distance. Her face was lit with awful triumph. Slowly she
raised her hand, and I felt my limbs begin to jerk in response to that
terrible magnetism. She opened her mouth----
But from that open mouth sounded only a choking gurgle, and suddenly
her lips were dyed crimson. And suddenly, without warning, her knees
gave way and she pitched headlong into the sands.
And as she fell, so I too fell, sinking into the mire. Something burst
in my brain with a shower of flame. And then I was crouching among
the trees, weak and trembling, but with such a sense of freedom and
lightness of limb as I never dreamed a man could experience. The black
spell that gripped me was broken; the foul incubus lifted from my soul.
It was as if light had burst upon a night blacker than African midnight.
At the fall of the girl a wild cry arose from the blacks, and they
sprang up, trembling on the verge of panic. I saw their rolling white
eyeballs, their bared teeth glistening in the firelight. Saul Stark had
worked their primitive natures up to a pitch of madness, meaning to
turn this frenzy, at the proper time, into a fury of battle. It could
as easily turn into an hysteria of terror. Stark shouted sharply at
them.
But just then the girl in a last convulsion, rolled over on the wet
sand, and the firelight shone on a round hole between her breasts,
which still oozed crimson. Jim Braxton's bullet had found its mark.
* * * * *
From the first I had felt that she was not wholly human; some black
jungle spirit sired her, lending her the abysmal subhuman vitality that
made her what she was. She had said that neither death nor hell could
keep her from the Dance of the Skull. And, shot through the heart and
dying, she had come through the swamp from the creek where she had
received her death-wound to the House of Damballah. And the Dance of
the Skull had been her death dance.
Dazed as a condemned man just granted a reprieve, at first I hardly
grasped the meaning of the scene that now unfolded before me.
The blacks were in a frenzy. In the sudden, and to them inexplicable,
death of the sorceress they saw a fearsome portent. They had no way
of knowing that she was dying when she entered the glade. To them,
their prophetess and priestess had been struck down under their very
eyes, by an invisible death. This was magic blacker than Saul Stark's
wizardry--and obviously hostile to them.
Like fear-maddened cattle they stampeded. Howling, screaming, tearing
at one another they blundered through the trees, heading for the neck
of land and the shore beyond. Saul Stark stood transfixed, heedless of
them as he stared down at the brown girl, dead at last. And suddenly
I came to myself, and with my awakened manhood came cold fury and the
lust to kill. I drew a gun, and aiming in the uncertain firelight,
pulled the trigger. Only a click answered me. The powder in the
cap-and-ball pistols was wet.
Saul Stark lifted his head and licked his lips. The sounds of flight
faded in the distance, and he stood alone in the glade. His eyes rolled
whitely toward the black woods around him. He bent, grasped the
man-like object that lay on the sand, and dragged it into the hut. The
instant he vanished I started toward the island, wading through the
narrow channels at the lower end. I had almost reached the shore when a
mass of driftwood gave way with me and I slid into a deep hole.
Instantly the water swirled about me, and a head rose beside me; a dim
face was close to mine--the face of a negro--_the face of Tunk Bixby_.
But now it was inhuman; as expressionless and soulless as that of a
catfish; the face of a being no longer human, and no longer mindful of
its human origin.
Slimy, misshapen fingers gripped my throat, and I drove my knife into
that sagging mouth. The features vanished in a wave of blood; mutely
the thing sank out of sight, and I hauled myself up the bank, under the
thick bushes.
Stark had run from his hut, a pistol in his hand. He was staring wildly
about, alarmed by the noise he had heard, but I knew he could not see
me. His ashy skin glistened with perspiration. He who had ruled by fear
was now ruled by fear. He feared the unknown hand that had slain his
mistress; feared the negroes who had fled from him; feared the abysmal
swamp which had sheltered him, and the monstrosities he had created. He
lifted a weird call that quavered with panic. He called again as only
four heads broke the water, but he called in vain.
But the four heads began to move toward the shore and the man who stood
there. He shot them one after another. They made no effort to avoid the
bullets. They came straight on, sinking one by one. He had fired six
shots before the last head vanished. The shots drowned the sounds of my
approach. I was close behind him when he turned at last.
* * * * *
I know he knew me; recognition flooded his face and fear went with it,
at the knowledge that he had a human being to deal with. With a scream
he hurled his empty pistol at me and rushed after it with a lifted
knife.
I ducked, parried his lunge and countered with a thrust that bit
deep into his ribs. He caught my wrist and I gripped his, and there
we strained, breast to breast. His eyes were like a mad dog's in the
starlight, his muscles like steel cords.
I ground my heel down on his bare foot, crushing the instep. He howled
and lost balance, and I tore my knife hand free and stabbed him in the
belly. Blood spurted and he dragged me down with him. I jerked loose
and rose, just as he pulled himself up on his elbow and hurled his
knife. It sang past my ear, and I stamped on his breast. His ribs caved
in under my heel. In a red killing-haze I knelt, jerked back his head
and cut his throat from ear to ear.
There was a pouch of dry powder in his belt. Before I moved further I
re-loaded my pistols. Then I went into the hut with a torch. And there
I understood the doom the brown witch had meant for me. Tope Sorley lay
moaning on a bunk. The transmutation that was to make him a mindless,
soulless semi-human dweller in the water was not complete, but his mind
was gone. Some of the physical changes had been made--by what godless
sorcery out of Africa's black abyss I have no wish to know. His body
was rounded and elongated, his legs dwarfed; his feet were flattened
and broadened, his fingers horribly long, and _webbed_. His neck was
inches longer than it should be. His features were not altered, but the
expression was no more human than that of a great fish. And there, but
for the loyalty of Jim Braxton, lay Kirby Buckner. I placed my pistol
muzzle against Tope's head in grim mercy and pulled the trigger.
And so the nightmare closed, and I would not drag out the grisly
narration. The white people of Canaan never found anything on the
island except the bodies of Saul Stark and the brown woman. They think
to this day that a swamp negro killed Jim Braxton, after he had killed
the brown woman, and that I broke up the threatened uprising by killing
Saul Stark. I let them think it. They will never know the shapes the
black water of Tularoosa hides. That is a secret I share with the cowed
and terror-haunted black people of Goshen, and of it neither they nor I
have ever spoken.
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