The Afterglow

CHAPTER XIV. ON THE TRAIL OF THE MONSTER

Stern's cry of horror as he scrambled from the ravaged, desecrated cave, and the ghastly horror of his face, seen by the firelight, brought Zangamon and Bremilu to him, in terror.

“Master! Master! What--”

“My God! The girl--she's gone!” he stammered, leaning against the cliff in mortal anguish.

“Gone, master? Where?”

“Gone! Dead, perhaps! Find her for me! Find her! You can see--in the dark! I--I am as though blind! Quick, on the trail!”

“But tell us--”

“Something has taken her! Some savage thing! Some wild man! Even now he may be killing her! Quick--after them!”

Bremilu stood staring for a moment, unable to grasp this catastrophe on the very moment of arrival. But Zangamon, of swifter wit, had already fallen on his knees, there by the mouth of the cave, and now--seeing clearly by the dim light which more than sufficed for him--was studying the traces of the struggle.

Stern, meanwhile, clutching his head between both hands, dumb-mad with agony, was choking with dry sobs.

“Master! See!”

Zangamon held up a piece of splintered wood, with the bark deeply scarred by teeth.

Stern snatched it.

“Part of the pole I gave her to brace the rock with,” he realized. “Even that was of no avail.”

“Master--this way they went!”

Zangamon pointed up along the rock-terrace. Stern's eyes could distinguish no slightest trace on the stone, but the Merucaan spoke with certainty. He added:

“There was fighting, all the way along here, master. And then, here, the girl was dragged.”

Stern stumbled blindly after him as he led the way.

“There was fighting here? She struggled?”

“Yes, master.”

“Thank God! She was alive here, anyhow! She wasn't killed in the cave. Maybe, in the open, she might--”

“Now there is no more fighting, master. The wild thing carried her here.”

He pointed at the rock. Stern, trembling and very sick, flashed his electric-lamp upon it. With eyes of dread and horror he looked for blood-stains.

What? A drop! With a dull, shuddering groan, he pressed forward again.

Out he jerked his pistol and fired, straight up, their prearranged signal: One shot, then a pause, then two. Some bare possibility existed and that she still might live and hear and know that rescue came--if it could come before it were eternally too late!

“On, on!” cried Allan. “Go on, Zangamon! Quick! Lead me on the trail!”

The Merucaan, now aided by Bremilu, who had recovered his wits, scouted ahead like a blood-hound on the spoor of a fugitive. One gripped his stone ax, the other a javelin.

Bent half double, scrutinizing in the dark the stony path which Allan followed behind them only by the aid of his flash, they proceeded cautiously up toward the brow of the cliff again.

But ere they reached the top they branched off onto another lateral path, still rougher and more tortuous, that led along the breast of the cañon.

“This way, master. It was here, most surely, the thing carried her.”

“What kind of marks? Do you see signs of claws?”

“Claws? What are claws?”

“Sharp, long nails, like our nails, only much larger and longer. Do you see any such marks?”

Zangamon paused a second to peer.

“I seem to see marks as of hands, master, but--”

“No matter! On! We must find her! Quick--lead the way!”

Five minutes of agonizing suspense for Allan brought him, still following the guides, without whom all would have been utterly lost, to a kind of thickly wooded dell that descended sharply to the edge of the cañon. Into this the trail led.

Even he himself could now here and there make out, by the aid of his light, a broken twig, trampled ferns and down-crushed grass. Once he distinguished a blood-stain on a limb--fresh blood, not coagulated. A groan burst from between his chattering teeth.

He turned his light on the grass beneath. All at once a blade moved.

“Oh, thank God!” he wheezed. “They passed here only a few minutes ago. They can't be far now!”

Something drew his attention. He snatched at a sapling.

“Hair!”

Caught in a roughness of the bark a few short, stiff, wiry hairs, reddish-brown, were twisted.

“One of the Horde?” he stammered.

A lightning-flash of memory carried him back to Madison Forest, more than a year ago. He seemed to see again the obeah, as that monster advanced upon the girl, clutching, supremely hideous.

“The hair! The same kind of hair! In the power of the Horde!” he gasped.

A mental picture of extermination flashed before his mind's eye. Whether the girl lived or died, he knew now that his life work was to include a total slaughter of the Anthropoids. The destruction he had already wrought among them was but child's play to what would be.

And in his soul flamed the foreknowledge of a hunt à l'outrance, to the bitter end. So long as one, a single one of that foul breed should live, he would not rest from killing.

“Master! This way! Here, master!”

The voice of Zangamon sent him once more crashing through the jungle, after his questing guides. Again he fired the signal-shot, and now with the full power of his lungs he yelled.

His voice rang, echoing, through the black and tangled growths, startling the night-life of the depths. Something chippered overhead. Near-by a serpent slid away, hissing venomously. Death lurked on every hand.

Stern took no thought of it, but pressed forward, shouting the girl's name, hallooing, beating down the undergrowth with mad fury. And here, there, all about he flung the light-beam.

Perhaps she might yet hear his hails; perhaps she might even catch some distant glimmer of his light, and know that help was coming, that rescuers were fighting onward to her.

Silent, lithe, confident even among these new and terribly strange conditions, the two men of the Folk slid through the jungle.

No hounds ever trailed fugitive more surely and with greater skill than these strange, white barbarians from the underworld. Through all his fear and agony, Stern blessed their courage and their skill.

“Men, by God! They're men!” he muttered, as he thrashed his painful way behind them in the night.

Of a sudden, there somewhere ahead, far ahead in the wilderness--a cry?

Allan stopped short, his heart leaping.

Again he fired, and his voice set all the echoes ringing.

A cry! He knew it now. There could be no mistake--a cry!

“Beatrice!” he shouted in a terrible voice, leaping forward. The guides broke into a crouching run. All three crashed through the thickets, split the fern-masses, struggled through the tall saber-grass that here and there rose higher than their heads.

Allan cursed himself for a fool. That other cry he had heard while on his way from the Pauillac to Settlement Cliffs--that had been her cry for help--and he had neither known nor heeded.

“Fool that I was! Oh, damnable idiot that I was!” he panted as he ran.

From moment to moment he fired. He paused a few seconds to jack a fresh cartridge-clip into the automatic.

“Thank God I've got a belt full of ammunition!” thought he, and again smashed along with the two Merucaans.

All at once a formidable roar gave them pause.

Hollow, booming, deep, yet rising to a wild shriek of rage and horrid brutality, the beast-cry flung itself through the jungle.

And, following it, they heard again that muffled drumming, as though gigantic fists were flailing a tremendous tambour in the darkness.

“Master!” whispered Zangamon, recoiling a step. “Oh, Kromno, what is that?”

“Never have we heard such in our place!” added Bremilu, gripping his ax the tighter. “Is that a man-cry, or the cry of a beast--one of the beasts you told us of, that we have never seen?”

“Both! A man-beast! Kill! Kill!”

Now, Allan, sure of his direction, took the lead. No longer he flashed the light, and only once more he called:

“Beatrice! O Beatrice! We're coming!”

Again he heard her cry, but suddenly it died as though swiftly choked in her very throat. Allan spat a blasphemy and surged on.

The two white barbarians followed, peering with those strange, pinkish eyes of theirs, courageous still, yet utterly at a loss to know what manner of thing they were now drawing near.

They burst through a thicket, waded a marshy swale and went splashing, staggering and slipping among tufts of coarse and knife-edged grasses, the haunt of unknown venomous reptiles.

Up a slope they won; and now, all at once the roar burst forth again close at hand, a rending tumult, wild, earthshaking, inexpressibly terrible.

All three stopped.

“Beatrice! Are you there? Answer!” shouted Stern.

Silence, save for a peculiar mumbling snuffle off ahead, among the deeper shadows of a fern-tree thicket.

“Beatrice!”

No answer. With a groan Allan shot his light toward the thicket. He seemed to distinguish something moving. To his ears now came a sound of twigs and brushwood snapping.

Absolutely void of fear he pressed forward, and the two colonists with him, their weapons ready. Stern held his revolver poised for instant action. His heart was hammering, and his breath surged pantingly; but within him his consciousness and soul lay calm.

For he knew one of two things were now to happen. Either that beast ahead there in the gloom, or he, must die.