The Best of Robert E. Howard Volume 2: Grim Lands

--olonel, I don't know what to say. I--e been a blind fool. I feel that the lives of murdered men are hung about my neck for all Eternity! All through my blindness and stupidity!----hat do you mean, John?--ejaculated Colonel Hopkins.

--olonel, Miller talked at last. He just finished telling me the whole dirty business. I have his confession, written as he dictated.----e named the chief of the Vultures?--exclaimed Hopkins eagerly.

--e did!--answered Middleton grimly, producing a paper and unfolding it. Joel Miller-- unmistakable signature sprawled at the bottom.--ere is the name of the leader, dictated by Miller to me!----ood God!--whispered Hopkins.--ill McNab!----es! My deputy! The man I trusted next to Corcoran. What a fool--what a blind fool I--e been. Even when his actions seemed peculiar, even when you voiced your suspicions of him, I could not bring myself to believe it. But it's all clear now. No wonder the gang always knew my plans as soon as I knew them myself! No wonder my deputies--before Corcoran came--were never able to kill or capture any Vultures. No wonder, for instance, that Tom Deal--scaped,--before we could question him. That bullet hole in McNab-- arm, supposedly made by Deal--Miller told me McNab got that in a quarrel with one of his own gang. It came in handy to help pull the wool over my eyes.

--olonel Hopkins, I--l turn in my resignation tomorrow. I recommend Corcoran as my successor. I shall be glad to serve as deputy under him.----onsense, John!--Hopkins laid his hand sympathetically on Middleton't shoulder.--t-- not your fault. You--e played a man't part all the way through. Forget that talk about resigning. Wahpeton doesn't need a new sheriff; you just need some new deputies. Just now we--e got some planning to do. Where is McNab?----t the jail, guarding the prisoners. I couldn't remove him without exciting his suspicion. Of course he doesn't dream that Miller has talked. And I learned something else. They plan a jail-break shortly after midnight.----e might have expected that!----es. A band of masked men will approach the jail, pretend to overpower the guards--yes, Stark and Richardson are Vultures, too--and release the prisoners. Now this is my plan. Take fifty men and conceal them in the trees near the jail. You can plant some on one side, some on the other. Corcoran and I will be with you, of course. When the bandits come, we can kill or capture them all at one swoop. We have the advantage of knowing their plans, without their knowing we know them.----hat-- a good plan, John!--warmly endorsed Hopkins.--ou should have been a general. I--l gather the men at once. Of course, we must use the utmost secrecy.----f course. If we work it right, we--l bag prisoners, deputies and rescuers with one stroke. We--l break the back of the Vultures!----ohn, don't ever talk resignation to me again!--exclaimed Hopkins, grabbing his hat and buckling on his gun-belt.--man like you ought to be in the Senate. Go get Corcoran. I--l gather my men and we--l be in our places before midnight. McNab and the others in the jail won't hear a sound.----ood! Corcoran and I will join you before the Vultures reach the jail.-- Leaving Hopkins--cabin, Middleton hurried to the bar of the King of Diamonds. As he drank, a rough-looking individual moved casually up beside him. Middleton bent his head over his whisky glass and spoke, hardly moving his lips. None could have heard him a yard away.

----e just talked to Hopkins. The vigilantes are afraid of a jail break. They--e going to take the prisoners out just before daylight and hang them out of hand. That talk about legal proceedings was just a bluff. Get all the boys, go to the jail and get the prisoners out within a half hour after midnight. Wear your masks, but let there be no shooting or yelling. I--l tell McNab our plan't been changed. Go silently. Leave your horses at least a quarter of a mile down the gulch and sneak up to the jail on foot, so you won't make so much noise. Corcoran and I will be hiding in the brush to give you a hand in case anything goes wrong.-- The other man had not looked toward Middleton; he did not look now. Emptying his glass, he strolled deliberately toward the door. No casual onlooker could have known that any words had passed between them.

When Glory Bland ran from the backroom of the Golden Garter, her soul was in an emotional turmoil that almost amounted to insanity. The shock of her brutal disillusionment vied with passionate shame of her own gullibility and an unreasoning anger. Out of this seething cauldron grew a blind desire to hurt the man who had unwittingly hurt her. Smarting vanity had its part, too, for with characteristic and illogical feminine conceit, she believed that he had practiced an elaborate deception in order to fool her into falling in love with him--or rather with the man she thought he was. If he was false with men, he must be false with women, too. That thought sent her into hysterical fury, blind to all except a desire for revenge. She was a primitive, elemental young animal, like most of her profession of that age and place; her emotions were powerful and easily stirred, her passions stormy. Love could change quickly to hate.

She reached an instant decision. She would find Hopkins and tell him everything Corcoran had told her! In that instant she desired nothing so much as the ruin of the man she had loved.

She ran down the crowded street, ignoring men who pawed at her and called after her. She hardly saw the people who stared after her. She supposed that Hopkins would be at the jail, helping guard the prisoners, and she directed her steps thither. As she ran up on the porch Bill McNab confronted her with a leer, and laid a hand on her arm, laughing when she jerked away.

--ome to see me, Glory? Or are you lookin'tfor Corcoran?-- She struck his hand away. His words, and the insinuating guffaws of his companions were sparks enough to touch off the explosives seething in her.

--ou fool! You--e being sold out, and don't know it!-- The leer vanished.

--hat do you mean?--he snarled.

-- mean that your boss is fixing to skip out with all the gold you thieves have grabbed!--she blurted, heedless of consequences, in her emotional storm, indeed scarcely aware of what she was saying.--e and Corcoran are going to leave you holding the sack, tonight!-- And not seeing the man she was looking for, she eluded McNab-- grasp, jumped down from the porch and darted away in the darkness.

The deputies stared at each other, and the prisoners, having heard everything, began to clamor to be turned out.

--hut up!--snarled McNab.--he may be lyin't Might have had a quarrel with Corcoran and took this fool way to get even with him. We can't afford to take no chances. We--e got to be sure we know what we--e doin'tbefore we move either way. We can't afford to let you out now, on the chance that she might be lyin't But we--l give you weapons to defend yourselves.

--ere, take these rifles and hide--m under the bunks. Pete Daley, you stay here and keep folks shooed away from the jail till we get back. Richardson, you and Stark come with me! We--l have a show-down with Middleton right now!-- When Glory left the jail she headed for Hopkins--cabin. But she had not gone far when a reaction shook her. She was like one waking from a nightmare, or a dope-jag. She was still sickened by the discovery of Corcoran't duplicity in regard to the people of the camp, but she began to apply reason to her suspicions of his motives in regard to herself. She began to realize that she had acted illogically. If Corcoran't attitude toward her was not sincere, he certainly would not have asked her to leave the camp with him. At the expense of her vanity she was forced to admit that his attentions to her had not been necessary in his game of duping the camp. That was something apart; his own private business; it must be so. She had suspected him of trifling with her affections, but she had to admit that she had no proof that he had ever paid the slightest attention to any other woman in Wahpeton. No; whatever his motives or actions in general, his feeling toward her must be sincere and real.

With a shock she remembered her present errand, her reckless words to McNab. Despair seized her, in which she realized that she loved Steve Corcoran in spite of all he might be. Chill fear seized her that McNab and his friends would kill her lover. Her unreasoning fury died out, gave way to frantic terror.

Turning she ran swiftly down the gulch toward Corcoran't cabin. She was hardly aware of it when she passed through the blazing heart of the camp. Lights and bearded faces were like a nightmarish blur, in which nothing was real but the icy terror in her heart.

She did not realize it when the clusters of cabins fell behind her. The patter of her slippered feet in the road terrified her, and the black shadows under the trees seemed pregnant with menace. Ahead of her she saw Corcoran't cabin at last, a light streaming through the open door. She burst in to the office-room, panting--and was confronted by Middleton who wheeled with a gun in his hand.

--hat the devil are you doing here?--He spoke without friendliness, though he returned the gun to its scabbard.

--here-- Corcoran?--she panted. Fear took hold of her as she faced the man she now knew was the monster behind the grisly crimes that had made a reign of terror over Wahpeton Gulch. But fear for Corcoran overshadowed her own terror.

-- don't know. I looked for him through the bars a short time ago, and didn't find him. I-- expecting him here any minute. What do you want with him?----hat-- none of your business,--she flared.

--t might be.--He came toward her, and the mask had fallen from his dark, handsome face. It looked wolfish.

--ou were a fool to come here. You pry into things that don't concern you. You know too much. You talk too much. Don't think I-- not wise to you! I know more about you than you suspect.-- A chill fear froze her. Her heart seemed to be turning to ice. Middleton was like a stranger to her, a terrible stranger. The mask was off, and the evil spirit of the man was reflected in his dark, sinister face. His eyes burned her like actual coals.

-- didn't pry into secrets,--she whispered with dry lips.--didn't ask any questions. I never before suspected you were the chief of the Vultures--

The expression of his face told her she had made an awful mistake.

--o you know that!--His voice was soft, almost a whisper, but murder stood stark and naked in his flaming eyes.--didn't know that. I was talking about something else. Conchita told me it was you who told Corcoran about the plan to lynch McBride. I wouldn't have killed you for that, though it interfered with my plans. But you know too much. After tonight it wouldn't matter. But tonight-- not over yet--

--h!--she moaned, staring with dilated eyes as the big pistol slid from its scabbard in a dull gleam of blue steel. She could not move, she could not cry out. She could only cower dumbly until the crash of the shot knocked her to the floor.

As Middleton stood above her, the smoking gun in his hand, he heard a stirring in the room behind him. He quickly upset the long table, so it could hide the body of the girl, and turned, just as the door opened. Corcoran came from the back room, blinking, a gun in his hand. It was evident that he had just awakened from a drunken sleep, but his hands did not shake, his pantherish tread was sure as ever, and his eyes were neither dull nor bloodshot.

Nevertheless Middleton swore.

--orcoran, are you crazy?----ou shot?----shot at a snake that crawled across the floor. You must have been mad, to soak up liquor today, of all days!------ all right,--muttered Corcoran, shoving his gun back in its scabbard.

--ell, come on. I--e got the mules in the clump of trees next to my cabin. Nobody will see us load them. Nobody will see us go. We--l go up the ravine beyond my cabin, as we planned. There-- nobody watching my cabin tonight. All the Vultures are down in the camp, waiting for the signal to move. I-- hoping none will escape the vigilantes, and that most of the vigilantes themselves are killed in the fight that-- sure to come. Come on! We--e got thirty mules to load, and that job will take us from now until midnight, at least. We won't pull out until we hear the guns on the other side of the camp.----isten!-- It was footsteps, approaching the cabin almost at a run. Both men wheeled and stood motionless as McNab loomed in the door. He lurched into the room, followed by Richardson and Stark. Instantly the air was supercharged with suspicion, hate, tension. Silence held for a tick of time.

--ou fools!--snarled Middleton.--hat are you doing away from the jail?----e came to talk to you,--said McNab.--e--e heard that you and Corcoran planned to skip with the gold.-- Never was Middleton't superb self-control more evident. Though the shock of that blunt thunderbolt must have been terrific, he showed no emotion that might not have been showed by any honest man, falsely accused.

--re you utterly mad?--he ejaculated, not in a rage, but as if amazement had submerged whatever anger he might have felt at the charge.

McNab shifted his great bulk uneasily, not sure of his ground. Corcoran was not looking at him, but at Richardson, in whose cold eyes a lethal glitter was growing. More quickly than Middleton, Corcoran sensed the inevitable struggle in which this situation must culminate.

---- just sayin'twhat we heard. Maybe it's so, maybe it ain't. If it ain't, there-- no harm done,--said McNab slowly.--n the chance that it was so, I sent word for the boys not to wait till midnight. They--e goin'tto the jail within the next half hour and take Miller and the rest out.-- Another breathless silence followed that statement. Middleton did not bother to reply. His eyes began to smolder. Without moving, he yet seemed to crouch, to gather himself for a spring. He had realized what Corcoran had already sensed; that this situation was not to be passed over by words, that a climax of violence was inevitable.

Richardson knew this; Stark seemed merely puzzled. McNab, if he had any thoughts, concealed the fact.

--ay you was intendin'tto skip,--he said,--his might be a good chance, while the boys was takin'tMiller and them off up into the hills. I don't know. I ain't accusin'tyou. I-- just askin'tyou to clear yourself. You can do it easy. Just come back to the jail with us and help get the boys out.-- Middleton't answer was what Richardson, instinctive man-killer, had sensed it would be. He whipped out a gun in a blur of speed. And even as it cleared leather, Richardson't gun was out. But Corcoran had not taken his eyes off the cold-eyed gunman, and his draw was the quicker by a lightning-flicker. Quick as was Middleton, both the other guns spoke before his, like a double detonation. Corcoran't slug blasted Richardson't brains just in time to spoil his shot at Middleton. But the bullet grazed Middleton so close that it caused him to miss McNab with his first shot.

McNab-- gun was out and Stark was a split second behind him. Middleton't second shot and McNab-- first crashed almost together, but already Corcoran't guns had sent lead ripping through the giant-- flesh. His ball merely flicked Middleton't hair in passing, and the chief--slug smashed full into his brawny breast. Middleton fired again and yet again as the giant was falling. Stark was down, dying on the floor, having pulled trigger blindly as he fell, until the gun was empty.

Middleton stared wildly about him, through the floating blue fog of smoke that veiled the room. In that fleeting instant, as he glimpsed Corcoran't image-like face, he felt that only in such a setting as this did the Texan appear fitted. Like a somber figure of Fate he moved implacably against a background of blood and slaughter.

--od!--gasped Middleton.--hat was the quickest, bloodiest fight I was ever in!--Even as he talked he was jamming cartridges into his empty gun chambers.

--e--e got no time to lose now! I don't know how much McNab told the gang of his suspicions. He must not have told them much, or some of them would have come with him. Anyway, their first move will be to liberate the prisoners. I have an idea they--l go through with that just as we planned, even when McNab doesn't return to lead them. They won't come looking for him, or come after us, until they turn Miller and the others loose.

--t just means the fight will come within the half hour instead of at midnight. The vigilantes will be there by that time. They--e probably lying in ambush already. Come on! We--e got to sling gold on those mules like devils. We may have to leave some of it; we--l know when the fight-- started, by the sound of the guns! One thing, nobody will come up here to investigate the shooting. All attention is focused on the jail!-- Corcoran followed him out of the cabin, then turned back with a muttered:--eft a bottle of whisky in that back room.----ell, hurry and get it and come on!--Middleton broke into a run toward his cabin, and Corcoran re-entered the smoke-veiled room. He did not glance at the crumpled bodies which lay on the crimson-stained floor, staring glassily up at him. With a stride he reached the back room, groped in his bunk until he found what he wanted, and then strode again toward the outer door, the bottle in his hand.

The sound of a low moan brought him whirling about, a gun in his left hand. Startled, he stared at the figures on the floor. He knew none of them had moaned; all three were past moaning. Yet his ears had not deceived him.

His narrowed eyes swept the cabin suspiciously, and focused on a thin trickle of crimson that stole from under the upset table as it lay on its side near the wall. None of the corpses lay near it.

He pulled aside the table and halted as if shot through the heart, his breath catching in a convulsive gasp. An instant later he was kneeling beside Glory Bland, cradling her golden head in his arm. His hand, as he brought the whisky bottle to her lips, shook queerly.

Her magnificent eyes lifted toward him, glazed with pain. But by some miracle the delirium faded, and she knew him in her last few moments of life.

--ho did this?--he choked. Her white throat was laced by a tiny trickle of crimson from her lips.

--iddleton--she whispered.--teve, oh, Steve--I tried--And with the whisper uncompleted she went limp in his arms. Her golden head lolled back; she seemed like a child, a child just fallen asleep. Dazedly he eased her to the floor.

Corcoran't brain was clear of liquor as he left the cabin, but he staggered like a drunken man. The monstrous, incredible thing that had happened left him stunned, hardly able to credit his own senses. It had never occurred to him that Middleton would kill a woman, that any white man would. Corcoran lived by his own code, and it was wild and rough and hard, violent and incongruous, but it included the conviction that womankind was sacred, immune from the violence that attended the lives of men. This code was as much a vital, living element of the life of the Southwestern frontier as was personal honor, and the resentment of insult. Without pompousness, without pretentiousness, without any of the tawdry glitter and sham of a false chivalry, the people of Corcoran't breed practiced this code in their daily lives. To Corcoran, as to his people, a woman't life and body were inviolate. It had never occurred to him that that code would, or could, be violated, or that there could be any other kind.

Cold rage swept the daze from his mind and left him crammed to the brim with murder. His feelings toward Glory Bland had approached the normal love experienced by the average man as closely as was possible for one of his iron nature. But if she had been a stranger, or even a person he had disliked, he would have killed Middleton for outraging a code he had considered absolute.

He entered Middleton't cabin with the soft stride of a stalking panther. Middleton was bringing bulging buckskin sacks from the cave, heaping them on a table in the main room. He staggered with their weight. Already the table was almost covered.

--et busy!--he exclaimed. Then he halted short, at the blaze in Corcoran't eyes. The fat sacks spilled from his arms, thudding on the floor.

--ou killed Glory Bland!--It was almost a whisper from the Texan't livid lips.

--es.--Middleton't voice was even. He did not ask how Corcoran knew, he did not seek to justify himself. He knew the time for argument was past. He did not think of his plans, or of the gold on the table, or that still back there in the cave. A man standing face to face with Eternity sees only the naked elements of life and death.

--raw!--A catamount might have spat the challenge, eyes flaming, teeth flashing.

Middleton't hand was a streak to his gun butt. Even in that flash he knew he was beaten--heard Corcoran't gun roar just as he pulled trigger. He swayed back, falling, and in a blind gust of passion Corcoran emptied both guns into him as he crumpled.

For a long moment that seemed ticking into Eternity the killer stood over his victim, a somber, brooding figure that might have been carved from the iron night of the Fates. Off toward the other end of the camp other guns burst forth suddenly, in salvo after thundering salvo. The fight that was plotted to mask the flight of the Vulture chief had begun. But the figure which stood above the dead man in the lonely cabin did not seem to hear.

Corcoran looked down at his victim, vaguely finding it strange, after all, that all those bloody schemes and terrible ambitions should end like that, in a puddle of oozing blood on a cabin floor. He lifted his head to stare somberly at the bulging sacks on the table. Revulsion gagged him.

A sack had split, spilling a golden stream that glittered evilly in the candle-light. His eyes were no longer blinded by the yellow sheen. For the first time he saw the blood on that gold, it was black with blood; the blood of innocent men; the blood of a woman. The mere thought of touching it nauseated him, made him feel as if the slime that had covered John Middleton't soul would befoul him. Sickly he realized that some of Middleton't guilt was on his own head. He had not pulled the trigger that ripped a woman't life from her body; but he had worked hand-in-glove with the man destined to be her murderer--Corcoran shuddered and a clammy sweat broke out upon his flesh.

Down the gulch the firing had ceased, faint yells came to him, freighted with victory and triumph. Many men must be shouting at once, for the sound to carry so far. He knew what it portended; the Vultures had walked into the trap laid for them by the man they trusted as a leader. Since the firing had ceased, it meant the whole band were either dead or captives. Wahpeton't reign of terror had ended.

But he must stir. There would be prisoners, eager to talk. Their speech would weave a noose about his neck.

He did not glance again at the gold, gleaming there where the honest people of Wahpeton would find it. Striding from the cabin he swung on one of the horses that stood saddled and ready among the trees. The lights of the camp, the roar of the distant voices fell away behind him, and before him lay what wild destiny he could not guess. But the night was full of haunting shadows, and within him grew a strange pain, like a revelation; perhaps it was his soul, at last awakening.

Gents on the Lynch

Blue Lizard, Colorado, September 1, 1879.

Mister Washington Bearfield, Antioch, Colorado.

Dear Brother Wash:

Well, Wash, I reckon you think you air smart persuading me to quit my job with the Seven Prong Pitchfork outfit and come way up here in the mountains to hunt gold. I knowed from the start I warn't no prospector, but you talked so much you got me addled and believing what you said, and the first thing I knowed I had quit my job and withdrawed from the race for sheriff of Antioch and was on my way. Now I think about it, it is a dern funny thing you got so anxious for me to go prospecting jest as elections was coming up. You never before showed no anxiety for me to git rich finding gold or no other way. I am going to hunt me a quiet spot and set down and study this over for a few hours, and if I decide you had some personal reason for wanting me out of Antioch, I aim to make you hard to ketch.

All my humiliating experiences in Blue Lizard is yore fault, and the more I think about it, the madder I git. And yet it all come from my generous nature which cain't endure to see a feller critter in distress onless I got him that way myself.

Well, about four days after I left Antioch I hove into the Blue Lizard country one forenoon, riding Satanta and leading my pack mule, and I was passing through a canyon about three mile from the camp when I heard dawgs baying. The next minute I seen three of them setting around a big oak tree barking fit to bust yore ear-drums. I rode up to see what they-- treed and I-- a Injun if it warn't a human being! It was a tall man without no hat nor gun in his scabbard, and he was cussing them dawgs so vigorous he didn't hear me till I rode up and says:--ey, what you doin'tup there?-- He like to fell out of the crotch he was setting in, and then he looked down at me very sharp for a instant, and said:--taken refuge from them vicious beasts. I was goin'talong mindin'tmy own business when they taken in after me. I think they got hyderphoby. I--l give you five bucks if you--l shoot--m. I lost my gun.----don't want no five bucks,--I says.--ut I ain't goin'tto shoot--m. They--e pecooliar lookin'tcritters, and they may be valurebul. I notice the funnier-lookin'ta animal is, the more money they--e generally wuth. I--l shoo--m off.-- So I got down and says:--it!--and they immejitly laid holt of my laigs, which was very irritating because I didn't have no other boots but them. So I fotched each one of them fool critters a hearty kick in the rear, and they give a yowl and scooted for the tall timber.

--ou can come down now,--I says.--ern it, them varmints has rooint my boots.----ake mine!--says he, sliding down and yanking off his boots.

--w, I don't want to do that,--I says, but he says :--insists! It-- all I can do for you. Witherington T. Jones always pays his debts, even in adversity! You behold in me a lone critter buffeted on the winds of chance, penniless and friendless, but grateful! Take my boots, kind stranger, do!--

Well, I was embarrassed and sorry for him, so I said all right, and taken his boots and give him mine. They was too big for him, but he seemed mighty pleased when he hauled--m on. His-- was very handsome, all fancy stitching. He shaken my hand and said I-- made him very happy, but all to once he bust into tears and sobbed:--ore Joe!----ore who?--I ast.

--oe!--says he, wiping his eyes on my bandanner.--y partner, up on our claim in the hills. I warned him agen drinkin'ta gallon of corn juice to inoculate hisself agen snake-bite--before the snake bit him--but he wouldn't listen, so now he's writhin'tin the throes of delirium tremens. It would bust yore heart to hear the way he shrieks for me to shoot the polka-dotted rhinocerhosses which he thinks is gnawin'this toes. I left him tied hand and foot and howlin'tthat a striped elephant was squattin'ton his bosom, and I went to Blue Lizard for medicine. I got it, but them cussed dawgs scairt my hoss and he got away from me, and it'sl take me till midnight to git back to our claim afoot. Pore Joe--l be a ravin'tcorpse by then.-- Well, I never heard of a corpse raving, but I couldn't stand the idee of a man dying from the d.t.--, so I shucked my pack offa my mule, and said:--ere, take this mule and skeet for yore claim. He--l be better-- walkin't I-- lend you Satanta only he won't let nobody but me ride him.-- Mister Witherington T. Jones was plumb overcome by emotion. He shaken my hand again and said:--y noble friend, I--l never forgit this!--And then he jumped on the mule and lit out, and from the way he was kicking the critter-- ribs I reckoned he's pull into his claim before noon, if it was anywheres within a hundred miles of there. He sure warn't wasting no time. I could see that.

I hung his boots onto my saddle horn and I had started gathering up my plunder when I heard men yelling and then a whole gang with Winchesters come busting through the trees, and they seen me and hollered:--here is he?----e heard the dawgs bayin'tover here,--says a little short one.--don't hear--m now. But they must of had him treed somewheres clost by.----h, Mr. Jones,--I said.--ell, don't worry about him. He-- all right. I druv the dawgs off and and lent him my mule to git back to his claim.-- At this they let forth loud frenzied yells. It was plumb amazing. Here I-- jest rescued a feller human from a pack of ferocious animals, and these hombres acted like I-- did a crime or something.

--e helped him git awayl--they hollered.--e-- lynch him, the derned outlaw!----ho you callin'ta outlaw?--I demanded.---- a stranger in these parts. I-- headin'tfor Blue Lizard to work me a claim.----ou jest helped a criminal to escape!--gnashed they, notably a big black-bearded galoot with a sawed-off shotgun.--his feller Jones as you call him tried to rob a stage coach over on Cochise Mountain less-- a hour ago. The guard shot his pistol out of his hand, and his hoss got hit too, so he broke away on foot. We sot the dawgs on his trail, and we-- of had him by now, if you hadn't butted in! Now the dawgs cain't track him no more.----all--m back and set--m on the mule-- trail,--sejests a squint-eyed cuss.--s for you, you cussed Texas hill-billy, you keep on travelin't We don't want no man like you in Blue Lizard.----o to the devil, you flat-nosed buzzard,--I retort with typical Southern courtesy.--his here-- a free country. I come up here to hunt gold and I aim to hunt it if I have to lick every prospector in Lizard Ca--on! You cain't ride me jest because I made a honest mistake that anybody could of made. Anyway, I-- the loser,--ause he got off with my mule.----w, come on and le-- find the dawgs,--says a bow-legged gun-toter with warts. So they went off up the ca--on, breathing threats and vengeance, and I taken my plunder on my shoulder and went on down the ca--on, leading Satanta. I put on Mister Jones-- boots first, and they was too small for me, of course, but I could wear--m in a pinch. (That there is a joke, Wash, but I don't suppose you got sense enough to see the p--nt.)

I soon come to the aidge of the camp, which was spread all over the place where the canyon widened out and shallowed, and the first man I seen was old Polk Williams. You remember him, Wash, we knowed him over to Trinidad when we first come to Colorado with the Seven Prong Pitchfork outfit. I hailed him and ast him where I could find a good claim, and he said all the good ones had been took. So I said, well, I-- strike out up in the hills and hunt me one, and he says:--hat you know about prospectin't I advises you to git a job of workin'tsome other man't claim at day wages till they-- a new strike up in the hills somewheres. They-- bound to be one any day, because the mountains is full of prospectors which got here too late to git in on this--. Plenty of jobs here at big wages, because nobody wants to work. They all wants to wade creeks till they stub their fool toe on a pocket of nuggets.----ll right,--I said.----l pitch my camp down on the creek.----ou better not,--says he.--hese mountains is full of hyderphoby skunks. They crawls in yore blankets at night and bites you, and you foam at the mouth and go bite yore best friends. Now, it jest happens I got a spare cabin which I ain't usin't The feller who had it rented ain't with us this mornin'taccount of a extry ace in a poker game last night. I--l rent it to you dirt cheap--ten dollars a day. You--l be safe from them cussed skunks there.-- So I said:--ll right. I don't want to git hyderphoby.-- So I give him ten dollars in advance and put my plunder in the cabin which was on a slope west of the camp, and hobbled Satanta to graze. He said I better look out or somebody would steal Satanta. He said Mustang Stirling and his outlaws was hiding in the hills clost by and terrorizing the camp which didn't even have a sheriff yet, because folks hadn't had time to elect one, but they was gittin so sick of being robbed all the time they probably would soon, and maybe organize a Vigilante Committee, too. But I warn't scairt of anybody stealing Satanta. A stranger had better take a cougar by the whiskers than to monkey with Satanta. That hoss has got a disposition like a sore-tailed rattlesnake.

Well, while we was talking I seen a gal come out from amongst the cluster of stores and saloons and things, and head up the canyon with a bucket in her hand. She was so purty my heart skipped a beat and my corns begun to throb. That-- a sure sign of love at first sight.

--ho-- that gal?--I ast.

--annah Sprague,--says Polk.--he belle of Blue Lizard. But you needn't start castin'tsheep-- eyes at her. They-- a dozen young bucks sparkin'ther already. I think Blaze Wellington't the favorite to put his brand onto her, though. She wouldn't look twicet at a hill-billy like you.----might remove the compertition,--I sejested.

--ou better not try no Wolf Mountain rough stuff in Blue Lizard,--warned he.--he folks is so worked up over all these robberies and killin't they--e jest in a mood to lynch somebody, especially a stranger.-- But I give no heed. Folks is always wanting to lynch me, and quite a few has tried, as numerous tombstones on the boundless prairies testifies.

--here-- she goin'twith that bucket?--I ast him, and he said:--he's takin'tbeer to her old man which is workin'ta claim up the creek.----ell, listen,--I says.--ou git over there behind that thicket and when she comes past you make a noise like a Injun.----hat kind of damfoolishness is this?--he demanded.--ou want to stampede the hull camp?----on't make a loud whoop,--I says.--est make it loud enough for her to hear it.----ir you crazy?--says he.

--o, dern it!--I said fiercely, because she was tripping along purty fast.--it in there and do like I say. I--l rush up from the other side and pertend to rescue her from the Injuns, and that--l make her like me.----mistrusts you--e a blasted fool,--he grumbled.--ut I--l do it jest this oncet.--

He snuck into the thicket which she's have to pass on the other side, and I circled around so she couldn't see me till I was ready to rush out and save her from being sculped. Well, I warn't hardly in place when I heard a kind of mild war-whoop and it sounded jest like a Blackfoot, only not so loud. But immejitly there come the crack of a pistol and another yell which warn't subdued like the first. It was lusty and energetic.

I run towards the thicket, but before I could git into the open trail old Polk come b--lin'tout of the back side of the clump with his hands to the seat of his britches.

--ou planned this a-purpose, you snake in the grass!--he squalled.--it outa my way!----hy, Polk!--I says.--hat happened?----bet you knowed she had a derringer in her stocking,--he howled as he run past me with his pants smoking.--t-- all yore fault! When I whooped she pulled it and shot into the bresh! Don't speak to me! I-- lucky that I warn't hit in a vital spot. I--l git even with you for this if it takes a hundred years!-- He headed on into the deep bresh, and I run around the thicket and seen Hannah Sprague peering into it with her gun smoking in her hand. She looked up as I come onto the trail, and I taken off my hat and said perlite:--owdy, Miss. Can I be of no assistance to you?----jest shot a Injun,--says she.--heard him holler. You might go in there and git the sculp, if you don't mind. I-- like to have it for a soovenear.------l be glad to, Miss,--I says gallantly.----l likewise kyore and tan it for you myself.----h, thank you, sir!--she says, dimpling.--t-- a pleasure to meet a real gent like you!----he pleasure-- all mine,--I assured her, and went into the bresh and stomped around a little, and then come out and says:---- arful sorry, Miss, but the varmint ain't nowheres to be found. You must of jest winged him. If you want me to, I--l take his trail and run him down.----h, I wouldn't think of puttin'tyou to sech trouble,--she says, much to my relief, because I was jest thinking that if she did demand a sculp, the only thing I could do would be to ketch old Polk and sculp him, and I-- hate to have to do that. I bet it would of made him arful mad.

But she looked me over admiringly and says:---- Hannah Sprague. Who--e you?----knowed you the minute I seen you,--I says.--he fame of yore beauty has reached clean to Wolf Mountain, Texas. I-- Pike Bearfield.----lad to meetcha, Mister Bearfield,--says she.--hey must grow big men in Texas. Well, I got to go now. Pap gits arful tetchy if he don't git his beer along with his dinner.------ admire powerful to call on you this evenin't--I says, and she says,--ell, I dunno. Mister Blaze Wellington was goin'tto call--

--e cain't come,--I says.

--hy, how do you know?--she ast surprised.--e said--

-- unforeseen circumstance,--I says gently.--t ain't happened to him yet, but it's goin'tto right away.----ell,--she says, kind of confused,--reckon in that case you can come on, if you want. We live in that cabin down yonder by that big fir. But when you git within hearin'tholler and tell us who you be, if it's after dark. Pap is arful nervous account of all these outlaws which is robbin'tpeople.--

So I said I would, and she went on, and I headed for the camp. People give me some suspicious looks, and I heard a lot of folks talking about this here Mustang Stirling and his gang. Seems like them critters hid in the hills and robbed somebody nearly every day and night, and nobody could hardly git their gold out of camp without gittin'tstuck up. But I didn't have no gold yet, and wouldn't of been scairt of Mustang Stirling if I had, so I went on to the biggest saloon, which they called the Belle of New York. I taken a dram and ast the bartender if he knowed Blaze Wellington. He said sure he did, and I ast him where Blaze Wellington was, and he p--nted out a young buck which was setting at a table with his head down on his hands like he was trying to study out something. So I went over and sot down opposite him, and he looked up and seen me, and fell out of his chair backwards hollering:--on't shoot!----hy, how did you know?--I ast, surprised.

--y yore evil face,--he gibbered.--o ahead! Do yore wust!----hey ain't no use to git highsterical,--I says.--f you--l be reasonable nobody won't git hurt.----won't tell you whar it's hid!--he defied, gitting onto his feet and looking like a cornered wharf-rat.

--here what-- hid?--I ast in amazement.

At this he looked kind of dumfounded.

--ay,--says he cautiously,--in't you one of Mustang Stirling-- spies, after the gold?----aw, I ain't,--I says angrily.--jest come here to ast you like a gent not to call on Hannah Sprague tonight.----hat the devil?--says he, looking kind of perplexed and relieved and mad all at the same time.--hat you mean, not call on Hannah?----ecause I am,--I says, hitching my guns for--rd.

--ho the devil air you?--he demanded, convulsively picking up a beer mug like he aimed to throw it at me.

--ike Bearfield of Wolf Mountain,--I says, and he says:--h!--and after a minute he puts the beer mug down and stood there studying a while.

Then he says:--hy, Bearfield, they warn't no use in you threatenin'tme. I bet you think I-- in love with Hannah Sprague! Well, I ain't. I-- a friend of her old man, that-- all. I been keepin'this gold over to my shack, guardin'tit for him, so Mustang Stirling-- outlaws wouldn't git it, and the old man is so grateful he wants me to marry the gal. But I don't keer nothin'tabout her.

--o tell you the truth, if it warn't that I like the old man, I-- throw up the job, it's so dangerous. Mustang Stirling has got spies in the camp, and they dogs me night and day. I thought you was one of--m when I seen yore arful face--ell, I-- glad the old man't goin'tto send it out on the stage tomorrer. It-- been an arful strain on me and my partner, which is over at the shack now. Somebody-- got to stay there on guard all the time, or them cussed outlaws would come right in and tear the shack apart and find where I got it hid. Tonight--l be the wust. They--l make a desprut effort to git it before mornin't----ou mean old man Sprague wants you to marry Hannah because yo--e guardin'this gold?--I ast, and he says yes, but the responsibility was aging him prematurely. I says:--ooky here! Lemme take this job off--yore hands! Lemme guard the gold tonight! I hates to see a promisin'tyoung man like you wore down to a nubbin by care and worry.----hate to do that,--he demurred, but I said:--ome on, be a good feller! I--l do as much for you, some time.-- He thought it over a while, shaking his head, whilst I was on needles and pins, and then he stuck out his hand and said:----l do it! Shake! But don't tell nobody. I wouldn't do it for nobody but you--hat-- that noise?-- Because we heard a lot of men running up the street and yelling:--it yore guns ready, boys! We--e right on his trail!-- Somebody hollered--ho?--And somebody else yelled:--ones! The hounds picked up his foot-tracks whilst we was tryin'tto git--m after the mule--! He musta jumped offa the mule and doubled back afoot! We--e trailed him right down Main Street!-- Then somebody else whooped:--hey--e goin'tinto the Belle of New York! We got him cornered! Don't let him git away!--

The next minute here come them three fool bloodhounds b--lin'tin at the front door and grabbed me by the hind laig again. It was most ann'ting. I dunno when I was ever so sick of a pack of hounds in my life. But I controlled my temper and merely jerked--m loose from my laig and throwed--m out the winder, and they run off. Then a crowd of faces jammed in the door and looked at me wildly and said:--ou again!-- I recognized Black-Beard and Squint-Eye and Shorty and Warts and the rest of the men which was in the posse chasing Mister Jones, and I said fretfully:--ol-dern it, whyn't you all lemme alone?-- But they ignored my remark, and Squint-Eye said:--thought we told you not to stop in Blue Lizard!-- Before I could think of anything insulting enough to say in response, Warts give a yelp and p--nted at my laigs.

--ook there!--he howled.--e-- got on Jones-- boots! I was on the stage coach when Jones tried to hold it up, and he had on a mask, but I remember them boots! Don't you remember--this hill-billy didn't have on no boots when we seen him before! He traded boots with Jones to fool the dawgs! No wonder they wouldn't foller the mule! He-- a derned outlaw! He knowed what Jones-- name was! He-- one of Stirling-- spies! Git him!-- I started to tell Blaze to tell--m I was all right, but at this moment Shorty was so overcome by excitement that he throwed a cuspidor at me. I ducked and it hit Blaze betwixt the eyes and he curled up under the table with a holler gasp.

--ow look what you done!--I says wrathfully, but all Shorty says is to holler:--rab him, boys! Here-- where we starts cleaning up this camp right now! Let the hangin't commence!-- If he hadn't made that last remark, I probably wouldn't of broke his arm when he tried to stab me with his bowie, but I-- kind of sensitive about being hung. I would of avoided vi--ence if I could of, but sech remarks convinced me that them idjits was liable to do me bodily harm, especially when some of--m grabbed me around the laigs and five or six more tried to twist my arms around behind my back. So I give a heave and slung them loose from me which was hanging onto my arms, and then I ast the others ca--ly and with dignity to let go of me before I injured--m fatally, but they replied profanely that I was a dadgasted outlaw and they was going to hang me if it was the last thing any of--m done. They also tried to rassle me off my feet and Black-Beard hit me over the head with a beer bottle.

This made me mad, so I walked over to the bar with nine or ten of--m hanging onto me and bracing their feet in a futile effort to stop me, and I stooped and tore up a ten-foot section of brass rail, and at the first swipe I laid out Black-Beard and Squint-Eye and Warts, and at the second I laid out four more gents which was perfect strangers to me, and when I heaved her up for the third swipe they warn't nobody in the saloon but me and them on the floor. It is remarkable the number of men you can fotch at one lick with a ten-foot section of brass railing. The way the survivors stampeded out the front door yelling blue murder you-- of thought it was the first time anybody had ever used a brass rail on--m.

Blaze was beginning to come to, so I hauled him out from under the table, and lugged him out onto the street with me. Some fellers on the other side of the street immejitly started shooting at me, so I drawed my pistols and shot back at--m, and they broke and run every which a way. So I got Blaze onto my back and started up the street with him, and after I-- went a few hundred yards he could walk hisself, though he weaved considerable, and he taken the lead and led me to his cabin which was back of some stores and clost to the bank of the creek. They warn't nobody in sight but a loafer setting under a tree on the bank fishing, with his slouch hat pulled down to shade his eyes. The door was shet, so Blaze hollered, still kind of dizzy:--t-- me, Branner; open up!-- So another young feller opened the door and looked out cautious with a double-barreled shotgun, and Blaze says to me:--ait here whilst I go in and git the gold.-- So I did and after a while he come out lugging a good-sized buckskin poke which I jedged from the weight they must be several thousand dollars worth of nuggets in there.

----l never forget this,--I said warmly.--ou go tell Hannah I cain't come to see her tonight because I-- guardin'ther old man't gold. I--l see her tomorrer after the stage coach has left with it.------l tell her, pal,--says he with emotion, shaking my hand, so I headed for my cabin, feeling I had easily won the first battle in the campaign for Hannah Sprague-- hand. Imagine that pore sap Blaze throwing away a chance like that! I felt plumb sorry for him for being so addle-headed.

The sun was down by the time I got back to my cabin, and oncet I thought somebody was follering me, and I looked around, but it warn't nobody but the feller I-- seen fishing, trudging along about a hundred yards behind me with his pole onto his shoulder.

Well, when I arriv--at my cabin, I seen a furtive figger duck out the back way. It looked like old Polk, so I called to him, but he scooted off amongst the trees. I decided I must of been mistook, because likely old Polk was still off somewheres sulking on account of gitting shot in the britches. He was a onreasonable old cuss.

I went in and throwed the buckskin poke on the table and lit a candle, and jest then I heard a noise at the winder and wheeled quick jest in time to see somebody jerk his face away from the winder. I run to the door, and seen somebody sprinting off through the trees, and was jest fixing to take a shot at him when I recognized that old slouch hat. I wondered what that fool fisherman had follered me and looked in at my winder for, and I wondered why he run off so fast, but I-- already found out that Blue Lizard was full of idjits, so I give the matter no more thought. I ain't one of these here fellers which wastes their time trying to figger out why things is like they is, and why people does things like they does. I got better employment for my spare time, sech as sleeping.

Satanta come up to the door and nickered, and I give him some oats, and then I built a fire in the fireplace and cooked some bacon and made some coffee, and I-- jest got through eating and cleaned up the pot and skillet when somebody hailed me outside.

I quick blowed out the candle and stepped to the door with a gun in each hand. I could see a tall figger standing in the starlight, so I ast who the devil he was and what he wanted.

-- friend of Old Man Sprague--,--says he.--uddleston is the name, my enormous young friend, Carius Z. Huddleston. Mister Sprague sent me over to help you guard his gold tonight.-- That didn't set well with me, because it looked like Old Man Sprague didn't think I was capable of taking care of it by myself, and I said so right out.

--ot at all,--says Mister Huddleston.--e-- so grateful to you for assumin'tthe responsibility that he said he couldn't endure it if you come to any harm on account of it, so he sent me to help you.--

Well, that was all right. It looked like Old Man Sprague had took a fancy to me already, even before he's saw me, and I felt that I was nigh as good as married to Hannah already. So I told Mr. Huddleston to come in, and I lit the candle and shet the door. He was a tall man with the biggest black mustache I ever seen, and he had on a frock tail coat and a broad-brim hat. I seen two ivory-handled six-shooters under his coattails. His eyes kind of bulged in the candlelight when he seen the big poke on the table and he ast me was that the gold and I said yes. So he hauled out a bottle of whiskey and said:--ell, my gigantic young friend, le-- drink to Old Man Sprague-- gold, may it arrive at its proper destination.-- So we had a drink and I sot down on the bench and he sot on a rawhide bottomed chair, and he got to telling me stories, and he knowed more things about more people than I ever seen. He told me about a feller named Paul Revere which thrived during the Revolution when we licked the Britishers, and I got all het up hearing about him. He said the Britishers was going to sneak out of a town named Boston which I jedge must of been a right sizable cowtown or mining camp or something, and was going to fall on the people unawares and confiscate their stills and weppins and steers and things, but one of Paul-- friends signaled him what was going on by swinging a lantern, and Paul forked his cayuse and fogged it down the trail to warn the folks.

When he was telling about Paul-- friend signaling him Mister Huddleston got so excited he grabbed the candle and went over to the west winder and waved the candle back and forth three times to show me how it was done. It was a grand story, Wash, and I got goose bumps on me jest listening to it.

Well, it was gitting late by now, and Mister Huddleston ast me if I warn't sleepy. I said no, and he said:--o ahead and lay down and sleep. I--l stand guard the rest of the night.----hucks,--I said.--ain't sleepy. You git some rest.----e--l throw dice to see who sleeps first,--says he, hauling out a pair, but I says:--o, sir! It-- my job. I-- settin'tup with the gold. You go on and lay down on that bunk over there if you wanta.-- Well, for a minute Mister Huddleston got a most pecooliar expression onto his face, or it might of been the way the candlelight shined on it, because for a minute he looked jest like I--e seen men look who was ready to pull out their pistol on me. Then he says:--ll right. I believe I will take a snooze. You might as well kill the rest of that whisky. I got all I want.--

So he went over to the bunk which was in a corner where the light didn't shine into very good, and he sot down on it to take off his boots. But he's no sooner sot than he give a arful yell and bounded convulsively out into the middle of the room, clutching at his rear, and I seen a b--r trap hanging onto the seat of his britches! I instantly knowed old Polk had sot it in the bunk for me, the revengeful old polecat.

From the way Mr. Huddleston was hollering I knowed it warn't only pants which was nipped betwixt the jaws; they was quite a chunk of Mister Huddleston betwixt--m too. He went prancing around the cabin like one of them whirling derfishes and his langwidge was plumb terrible.

--it it off, blast you!--he howled, but he was circling the room at sech speed I couldn't ketch him, so I grabbed the chain which dangled from the trap and give a heave and tore it loose from him by main strength. The seat of his pants and several freckles come with it, and the howls he's let out previous warn't a circumstance to the one which he emitted now, also bounding about seven foot in the air besides.

--ou----screamed he, and I likewise give a beller of amazement because his mustash had come off and revealed a familiar face!

--itherington T. Jones!--I roared, dumfounded.--hat the devil you doin'there in disguise?----ow!--says he, pulling a gun.--ands up, curse you, or--

I knocked the gun out of his hand before he could pull the trigger, and I was so overcome with resentment that I taken him by the neck and shaken him till his spurs flew off.

--s this any way to treat a man as risked his repertation to rescue you from bloodhounds?--I inquired with passion.--here-- my mule, you ornery polecat?-- I had forgot about his other gun, but he hadn't. But I was shaking him so energetic that somehow he missed me even when he had the muzzle almost agen my belly. The bullet tore the hide over my ribs and the powder burnt me so severe that I lost my temper.

--o you tries to murder me after obtainin'tmy mule under false pretenses!--I bellered, taking the gun away from him and impulsively slinging him acrost the cabin.--ou ain't no friend of Old Man Sprague--.-- At this moment he got hold of a butcher knife I used to slice bacon with and come at me, yelling:--lim! Mike! Arizona! Jackson! Where-- hell air you?-- I taken the blade in my arm-muscles and then grabbed him and we was rassling all over the place when six men come storming through the door with guns in their hands. One of them yelled:--thought you said you-- wait till he was asleep or drunk before you signaled us!----e wouldn't go to sleep!--howled Mister Jones, spitting out a piece of my ear he's bit off.--ammit, do somethin't Don't you see he's klllin'tme?-- But we was so tangled up they couldn't shoot me without hitting him, so they clubbed their pistols and come for me, so I swung Mister Jones off his feet and throwed him at--m. They was all in a bunch and he hit--m broadside and knocked--m all over and they crashed into the table and upsot it and the candle went out. The next minute they was a arful commotion going on as they started fighting each other in the dark, each one thinking it was me he had holt of.

I was feeling for--m when the back door busted open and I had a brief glimpse of a tall figger darting out, and it was carrying something on its shoulder. Then I remembered that the poke had been on that table. Mister Jones had got holt of the gold and was skedaddling with it!

I run out of the back door after him jest as a mob of men come whooping and yelling up to the front door with torches and guns and ropes. I heard one of--m yell:--omebody-- fightin'tin there! Listen at--m!-- Somebody else yelled:--aybe the whole gang-- in there with the hill-billy! Git--m!--So they went smashing into the cabin jest as I run in amongst the trees after Mister Jones.

And there I was stumped. I couldn't see where he went and it was too dark to find his trail. Then all to oncet I heard Satanta squeal and a man yelled for help, and they come a crash like a man makes when a hoss bucks him off into a blackjack thicket. I run in the direction of the noise and by the starlight I seen Satanta grazing and a pair of human laigs sticking out of the bresh. Mister Jones had tried to git away on Satanta.

-- told you he wouldn't let nobody but me ride him,--I says as I hauled him out, but his langwidge ain't fit to be repeated. The poke was lying clost by, busted open. When I picked it up, it didn't look right. I struck a match and looked.

That there poke was full of nothing but scrap iron!

I was so stunned I didn't hardly know what I was doing when I taken the poke in one hand and Mister Jones--neck in the other--, and lugged--m back to the cabin. The mob had Mister Jones-- six men outside tied up, and was wiping the blood off--m, and I seen Shorty and Black-Beard and Squint-Eye and the others, and about a hundred more.

--hey--e Stirling-- men all right,--says Warts.--ut where-- Mustang, and that hill-billy? Anyway, le-- string these up right here.----ou ain't,--says Black-Beard.--ou all elected me sheriff before we come up here, and I aims to uphold the law--ho-- that?----t-- Old Man Sprague,--says somebody, as a bald-headed old coot come prancing through the crowd waving a shotgun.

--hat you want?--says Black-Beard.--on't you see we--e busy?----demands jestice!--I howled Old Man Sprague.--been abused!-- At this moment I shouldered through the crowd with a heavy heart, and slang the poke of scrap iron down in front of him.

--here it is,--I says,--nd I--l swear it ain't been monkeyed with since Blaze Wellington gave it to me!----ho-- that?--howled Sprague.

--he hill-billy!--howled the mob.--rab him!----o, you don't!--I roared, drawing a gun.----e took enough offa you Blue Lizard jackasses! I-- a honest man, and I--e brung back Mister Jones to prove it.-- I then flang him down in front of them, and Warts give a howl and pounced on him.--ones, nothing!--he yelled.--hat-- Mustang Stirling!----confesses,--says Mustang groggily.--ock me up where I can be safe from that hill-billy! The critter ain't human.----omebody listen to me!--howled Old Man Sprague, jumping up and down.--demands to be heard!----done the best I could!--I roared, plumb out of patience.--hen Blaze Wellington give me yore gold to guard--

--hat the devil air you talkin'tabout?--he squalled.--hat wuthless scoundrel never had no gold of mine.----hat!--I hollered, going slightly crazy. Jest then I seen a feller in the crowd I recognized. I made a jump and grabbed him.

--ranner!--I roared.--ou was at Wellington't shack when he give me that poke! You tell me quick what this is all about, or--

--eggo!--he gasped.--t warn't Sprague-- gold we hid. It was our--. We couldn't git it outa camp because we knowed Stirling-- spies was watchin'tus all the time. When you jumped Blaze in the Belle of New York, he seen a chance to git--m off our necks. He filled that poke with scrap iron and give it to you where the spy could see it and hear what was said. The spy didn't know whether it was our gold or Sprague--, but we knowed if he thought you had it, Stirling would go after you and let us alone. He did, too, and that give Blaze a chance to sneak out early tonight with it.----nd that ain't all!--bellered Old Man Sprague.--e taken Hannah with him! They--e eloped!-- My yell of mortal agony drownded out his demands for the sheriff to pursue--m. Hannah! Eloped! It was too much for a critter to endure!

--w, don't you keer, partner,--says Shorty, slapping me on the back with the arm I hadn't busted.--ou been vindicated as a honest citizen! You--e the hero of the hour!----pare yore praise,--I says bitterly.---- the victim of female perfidy. I have lost my faith in my feller man and my honest heart is busted all to perdition! Leave me to my sorrer!-- So they gathered up their prisoners and went away in awed silence. I am a rooint man. All I want to do is to become a hermit and forgit my aching heart in the untrodden wilderness.

Your pore brother,

PIKE

P. S.--The Next Morning. I have jest learnt that after I withdrawed from the campaign and left Antioch, you come out for sheriff and got elected. So that-- why you persuaded me to come up here. I am heading for Antioch and when I git there I am going to whup you within a inch of yore wuthless life, I don't care if you air sheriff of Antioch. I am going to kick the seat of yore britches up around yore neck and sweep the streets with you till you don't know whether yo--e setting or standing. Hoping this finds you in good health and spirits, I am,

Yore affectionate brother,

P. BEARFIELD ESQUIRE.

The Grim Land

From Sonora to Del Rio is a hundred barren miles

Where the sotol weave and shimmer in the sun--Like a horde of rearing serpents swaying down the bare defiles

When the scarlet, silver webs of dawn are spun.

There are little--obe ranchos brooding far along the sky,

On the sullen dreary bosoms of the hills;

Not a wolf to break the quiet, not a desert bird to fly

Where the silence is so utter that it thrills.

With an eery sense of vastness, with a curious sense of age,

And the ghosts of eons gone uprear and glide

Like a horde of drifting shadows gleaming through the wilted sage--They are riding where of old they used to ride.

Muleteer and caballero, with their plunder and their slaves--Oh, the clink of ghostly stirrups in the morn!

Oh, the soundless flying clatter of the feathered, painted braves,

Oh, the echo of the spur and hoof and horn.

Maybe, in the heat of evening, comes a wind from Mexico

Laden with the heat of seven Hells,

And the rattlers in the yucca and the buzzard dark and slow

Hear and understand the grisly tales it tells.

Gaunt and stark and bare and mocking rise the everlasting cliffs

Like a row of sullen giants hewn of stone,

Till the traveler, mazed with silence, thinks to look on hieroglyphs,

Thinks to see a carven Pharaoh on his throne.

Once these sullen hills were beaches and they saw the ocean flee

In the misty ages never known of men,

And they wait in brooding silence till the everlasting sea

Comes foaming forth to claim her own again.

Pigeons from Hell

I

THE WHISTLER IN THE DARK

Griswell awoke suddenly, every nerve tingling with a premonition of imminent peril. He stared about wildly, unable at first to remember where he was, or what he was doing there. Moonlight filtered in through the dusty windows, and the great empty room with its lofty ceiling and gaping black fireplace was spectral and unfamiliar. Then as he emerged from the clinging cobwebs of his recent sleep, he remembered where he was and how he came to be there. He twisted his head and stared at his companion, sleeping on the floor near him. John Branner was but a vaguely bulking shape in the darkness that the moon scarcely grayed.

Griswell tried to remember what had awakened him. There was no sound in the house, no sound outside except the mournful hoot of an owl, far away in the piny woods. Now he had captured the illusive memory. It was a dream, a nightmare so filled with dim terror that it had frightened him awake. Recollection flooded back, vividly etching the abominable vision.

Or was it a dream? Certainly it must have been, but it had blended so curiously with recent actual events that it was difficult to know where reality left off and fantasy began.

Dreaming, he had seemed to relive his past few waking hours, in accurate detail. The dream had begun, abruptly, as he and John Branner came in sight of the house where they now lay. They had come rattling and bouncing over the stumpy, uneven old road that led through the pinelands, he and John Branner, wandering far afield from their New England home, in search of vacation pleasure. They had sighted the old house with its balustraded galleries rising amidst a wilderness of weeds and bushes, just as the sun was setting behind it. It dominated their fancy, rearing black and stark and gaunt against the low lurid rampart of sunset, barred by the black pines.

They were tired, sick of bumping and pounding all day over woodland roads. The old deserted house stimulated their imagination with its suggestion of antebellum splendor and ultimate decay. They left the automobile beside the rutty road, and as they went up the winding walk of crumbling bricks, almost lost in the tangle of rank growth, pigeons rose from the balustrades in a fluttering, feathery crowd and swept away with a low thunder of beating wings.

The oaken door sagged on broken hinges. Dust lay thick on the floor of the wide, dim hallway, on the broad steps of the stair that mounted up from the hall. They turned into a door opposite the landing, and entered a large room, empty, dusty, with cobwebs shining thickly in the corners. Dust lay thick over the ashes in the great fireplace.

They discussed gathering wood and building a fire, but decided against it. As the sun sank, darkness came quickly, the thick, black, absolute darkness of the pinelands. They knew that rattlesnakes and copperheads haunted Southern forests, and they did not care to go groping for firewood in the dark. They ate frugally from tins, then rolled in their blankets fully clad before the empty fireplace, and went instantly to sleep.

This, in part, was what Griswell had dreamed. He saw again the gaunt house looming stark against the crimson sunset; saw the flight of the pigeons as he and Branner came up the shattered walk. He saw the dim room in which they presently lay, and he saw the two forms that were himself and his companion, lying wrapped in their blankets on the dusty floor. Then from that point his dream altered subtly, passed out of the realm of the commonplace and became tinged with fear. He was looking into a vague, shadowy chamber, lit by the gray light of the moon which streamed in from some obscure source. For there was no window in that room. But in the gray light he saw three silent shapes that hung suspended in a row, and their stillness and their outlines woke chill horror in his soul. There was no sound, no word, but he sensed a Presence of fear and lunacy crouching in a dark corner-- Abruptly he was back in the dusty, high-ceilinged room, before the great fireplace.

He was lying in his blankets, staring tensely through the dim door and across the shadowy hall, to where a beam of moonlight fell across the balustraded stair, some seven steps up from the landing. And there was something on the stair, a bent, misshapen, shadowy thing that never moved fully into the beam of light. But a dim yellow blur that might have been a face was turned toward him, as if something crouched on the stair, regarding him and his companion. Fright crept chilly through his veins, and it was then that he awoke--if indeed he had been asleep.

He blinked his eyes. The beam of moonlight fell across the stair just as he had dreamed it did; but no figure lurked there. Yet his flesh still crawled from the fear the dream or vision had roused in him; his legs felt as if they had been plunged in ice-water. He made an involuntary movement to awaken his companion, when a sudden sound paralyzed him.

It was the sound of whistling on the floor above. Eery and sweet it rose, not carrying any tune, but piping shrill and melodious. Such a sound in a supposedly deserted house was alarming enough; but it was more than the fear of a physical invader that held Griswell frozen. He could not himself have defined the horror that gripped him. But Branner-- blankets rustled, and Griswell saw he was sitting upright. His figure bulked dimly in the soft darkness, the head turned toward the stair as if the man were listening intently. More sweetly and more subtly evil rose that weird whistling.

--ohn!--whispered Griswell from dry lips. He had meant to shout--to tell Branner that there was somebody upstairs, somebody who could mean them no good; that they must leave the house at once. But his voice died dryly in his throat.

Branner had risen. His boots clumped on the floor as he moved toward the door. He stalked leisurely into the hall and made for the lower landing, merging with the shadows that clustered black about the stair.

Griswell lay incapable of movement, his mind a whirl of bewilderment. Who was that whistling upstairs? Why was Branner going up the stairs? Griswell saw him pass the spot where the moonlight rested, saw his head tilted back as if he were looking at something Griswell could not see, above and beyond the stair. But his face was like that of a sleepwalker. He moved across the bar of moonlight and vanished from Griswell-- view, even as the latter tried to shout to him to come back. A ghastly whisper was the only result of his effort.

The whistling sank to a lower note, died out. Griswell heard the stairs creaking under Branner-- measured tread. Now he had reached the hallway above, for Griswell heard the clump of his feet moving along it. Suddenly the footfalls halted, and the whole night seemed to hold its breath. Then an awful scream split the stillness, and Griswell started up, echoing the cry.

The strange paralysis that had held him was broken. He took a step toward the door, then checked himself. The footfalls were resumed. Branner was coming back. He was not running. The tread was even more deliberate and measured than before. Now the stairs began to creak again. A groping hand, moving along the balustrade, came into the bar of moonlight; then another, and a ghastly thrill went through Griswell as he saw that the other hand gripped a hatchet--a hatchet which dripped blackly. Was that Branner who was coming down that stair?

Yes! The figure had moved into the bar of moonlight now, and Griswell recognized it. Then he saw Branner-- face, and a shriek burst from Griswell-- lips. Branner-- face was bloodless, corpse-like; gouts of blood dripped darkly down it; his eyes were glassy and set, and blood oozed from the great gash which cleft the crown of his head!

Griswell never remembered exactly how he got out of that accursed house. Afterward he retained a mad, confused impression of smashing his way through a dusty cobwebbed window, of stumbling blindly across the weed-choked lawn, gibbering his frantic horror. He saw the black wall of the pines, and the moon floating in a blood-red mist in which there was neither sanity nor reason.

Some shred of sanity returned to him as he saw the automobile beside the road. In a world gone suddenly mad, that was an object reflecting prosaic reality; but even as he reached for the door, a dry chilling whir sounded in his ears, and he recoiled from the swaying undulating shape that arched up from its scaly coils on the driver-- seat and hissed sibilantly at him, darting a forked tongue in the moonlight.

With a sob of horror he turned and fled down the road, as a man runs in a nightmare. He ran without purpose or reason. His numbed brain was incapable of conscious thought. He merely obeyed the blind primitive urge to run--run--run until he fell exhausted.

The black walls of the pines flowed endlessly past him; so he was seized with the illusion that he was getting nowhere. But presently a sound penetrated the fog of his terror--the steady, inexorable patter of feet behind him. Turning his head, he saw something loping after him--wolf or dog, he could not tell which, but its eyes glowed like balls of green fire. With a gasp he increased his speed, reeled around a bend in the road, and heard a horse snort; saw it rear and heard its rider curse; saw the gleam of blue steel in the man't lifted hand.

He staggered and fell, catching at the rider-- stirrup.

--or God-- sake, help me!--he panted.--he thing! It killed Branner--it's coming after me! Look!-- Twin balls of fire gleamed in the fringe of bushes at the turn of the road. The rider swore again, and on the heels of his profanity came the smashing report of his six-shooter--again and yet again. The fire-sparks vanished, and the rider, jerking his stirrup free from Griswell-- grasp, spurred his horse at the bend. Griswell staggered up, shaking in every limb. The rider was out of sight only a moment; then he came galloping back.

--ook to the brush. Timber wolf, I reckon, though I never heard of one chasin'ta man before. Do you know what it was?-- Griswell could only shake his head weakly.

The rider, etched in the moonlight, looked down at him, smoking pistol still lifted in his right hand. He was a compactly-built man of medium height, and his broad-brimmed planter-- hat and his boots marked him as a native of the country as definitely as Griswell-- garb stamped him as a stranger.

--hat-- all this about, anyway?----don't know,--Griswell answered helplessly.--y name-- Griswell. John Branner--my friend who was travelling with me--we stopped at a deserted house back down the road to spend the night. Something--at the memory he was choked by a rush of horror.--y God!--he screamed.--must be mad! Something came and looked over the balustrade of the stair--something with a yellow face! I thought I dreamed it, but it must have been real. Then somebody began whistling upstairs, and Branner rose and went up the stairs walking like a man in his sleep, or hypnotized. I heard him scream--or someone screamed; then he came down the stair again with a bloody hatchet in his hand--and my God, sir, he was dead! His head had been split open. I saw brains and clotted blood oozing down his face, and his face was that of a dead man. But he came down the stair! As God is my witness, John Branner was murdered in that dark upper hallway, and then his dead body came stalking down the stairs with a hatchet in its hand--to kill me!-- The rider made no reply; he sat his horse like a statue, outlined against the stars, and Griswell could not read his expression, his face shadowed by his hat-brim.

--ou think I-- mad,--he said hopelessly.--erhaps I am.----don't know what to think,--answered the rider.--f it was any house but the old Blassenville Manor--well, we--l see. My name-- Buckner. I-- sheriff of this country. Took a nigger over to the county seat in the next county and was ridin'tback late.-- He swung off his horse and stood beside Griswell, shorter than the lanky New Englander, but much harder knit. There was a natural manner of decision and certainty about him, and it was easy to believe that he would be a dangerous man in any sort of a fight.

--re you afraid to go back to the house?--he asked, and Griswell shuddered, but shook his head, the dogged tenacity of Puritan ancestors asserting itself.

--he thought of facing that horror again turns me sick. But poor Branner--he choked again.--e must find his body. My God!--he cried, unmanned by the abysmal horror of the thing;--hat will we find? If a dead man walks, what--

--e--l see.--The sheriff caught the reins in the crook of his left elbow and began filling the empty chambers of his big blue pistol as they walked along.

As they made the turn Griswell-- blood was ice at the thought of what they might see lumbering up the road with bloody, grinning death-mask, but they saw only the house looming spectrally among the pines, down the road. A strong shudder shook Griswell.

--od, how evil that house looks, against those black pines! It looked sinister from the very first--when we went up the broken walk and saw those pigeons fly up from the porch--

--igeons?--Buckner cast him a quick glance.--ou saw the pigeons?----hy, yes! Scores of them perching on the porch railing.-- They strode on for a moment in silence, before Buckner said abruptly:----e lived in this country all my life. I--e passed the old Blassenville place a thousand times, I reckon, at all hours of the day and night. But I never saw a pigeon anywhere around it, or anywhere else in these woods.----here were scores of them,--repeated Griswell, bewildered.

----e seen men who swore they-- seen a flock of pigeons perched along the balusters just at sundown,--said Buckner slowly.--iggers, all of them except one man. A tramp. He was buildin'ta fire in the yard, aimin'tto camp there that night. I passed along there about dark, and he told me about the pigeons. I came back by there the next mornin't The ashes of his fire were there, and his tin cup, and skillet where he's fried pork, and his blankets looked like they-- been slept in. Nobody ever saw him again. That was twelve years ago. The niggers say they can see the pigeons, but no nigger would pass along this road between sundown and sun-up. They say the pigeons are the souls of the Blassenvilles, let out of hell at sunset. The niggers say the red glare in the west is the light from hell, because then the gates of hell are open, and the Blassenvilles fly out.----ho were the Blassenvilles?--asked Griswell, shivering.

--hey owned all this land here. French-English family. Came here from the West Indies before the Louisiana Purchase. The Civil War ruined them, like it did so many. Some were killed in the War; most of the others died out. Nobody-- lived in the Manor since 1890 when Miss Elizabeth Blassenville, the last of the line, fled from the old house one night like it was a plague spot, and never came back to it--this your auto?-- They halted beside the car, and Griswell stared morbidly at the grim house. Its dusty panes were empty and blank; but they did not seem blind to him. It seemed to him that ghastly eyes were fixed hungrily on him through those darkened panes. Buckner repeated his question.

--es. Be careful. There-- a snake on the seat--or there was.----ot there now,--grunted Buckner, tying his horse and pulling an electric torch out of the saddle-bag.--ell, let-- have a look.-- He strode up the broken brick-walk as matter-of-factly as if he were paying a social call on friends. Griswell followed close at his heels, his heart pounding suffocatingly. A scent of decay and moldering vegetation blew on the faint wind, and Griswell grew faint with nausea, that rose from a frantic abhorrence of these black woods, these ancient plantation houses that hid forgotten secrets of slavery and bloody pride and mysterious intrigues. He had thought of the South as a sunny, lazy land washed by soft breezes laden with spice and warm blossoms, where life ran tranquilly to the rhythm of black folk singing in sun-bathed cottonfields. But now he had discovered another, unsuspected side--a dark, brooding, fear-haunted side, and the discovery repelled him.

The oaken door sagged as it had before. The blackness of the interior was intensified by the beam of Buckner-- light playing on the sill. That beam sliced through the darkness of the hallway and roved up the stair, and Griswell held his breath, clenching his fists. But no shape of lunacy leered down at them. Buckner went in, walking light as a cat, torch in one hand, gun in the other.

As he swung his light into the room across from the stairway, Griswell cried out--and cried out again, almost fainting with the intolerable sickness at what he saw. A trail of blood drops led across the floor, crossing the blankets Branner had occupied, which lay between the door and those in which Griswell had lain. And Griswell-- blankets had a terrible occupant. John Branner lay there, face down, his cleft head revealed in merciless clarity in the steady light. His outstretched hand still gripped the haft of a hatchet, and the blade was imbedded deep in the blanket and the floor beneath, just where Griswell-- head had lain when he slept there.

A momentary rush of blackness engulfed Griswell. He was not aware that he staggered, or that Buckner caught him. When he could see and hear again, he was violently sick and hung his head against the mantel, retching miserably.

Buckner turned the light full on him, making him blink. Buckner-- voice came from behind the blinding radiance, the man himself unseen.

--riswell, you--e told me a yarn that-- hard to believe. I saw something chasin'tyou, but it might have been a timber wolf, or a mad dog.

--f you--e holdin'tback anything, you better spill it. What you told me won't hold up in any court. You--e bound to be accused of killin'tyour partner. I--l have to arrest you. If you--l give me the straight goods now, it'sl make it easier. Now, didn't you kill this fellow, Branner?

--asn't it something like this: you quarreled, he grabbed a hatchet and swung at you, but you dodged and then let him have it?-- Griswell sank down and hid his face in his hands, his head swimming.

--reat God, man, I didn't murder John! Why, we--e been friends ever since we were children in school together. I--e told you the truth. I don't blame you for not believing me. But God help me, it is the truth!-- The light swung back to the gory head again, and Griswell closed his eyes.

He heard Buckner grunt.

-- believe this hatchet in his hand is the one he was killed with. Blood and brains plastered on the blade, and hairs stickin'tto it--hairs exactly the same color as his. This makes it tough for you, Griswell.----ow so?--the New Englander asked dully.

--nock any plea of self-defense in the head. Branner couldn't have swung at you with this hatchet after you split his skull with it. You must have pulled the ax out of his head, stuck it into the floor and clamped his fingers on it to make it look like he's attacked you. And it would have been damned clever--if you-- used another hatchet.----ut I didn't kill him,--groaned Griswell.--have no intention of pleading self-defense.----hat-- what puzzles me,--Buckner admitted frankly, straightening.--hat murderer would rig up such a crazy story as you--e told me, to prove his innocence? Average killer would have told a logical yarn, at least. Hmmm! Blood drops leadin'tfrom the door. The body was dragged--no, couldn't have been dragged. The floor isn't smeared. You must have carried it here, after killin'thim in some other place. But in that case, why isn't there any blood on your clothes? Of course you could have changed clothes and washed your hands. But the fellow hasn't been dead long.----e walked downstairs and across the room,--said Griswell hopelessly.--e came to kill me. I knew he was coming to kill me when I saw him lurching down the stair. He struck where I would have been, if I hadn't awakened. That window--I burst out at it. You see it's broken.----see. But if he walked then, why isn't he walkin'tnow?----don't know! I-- too sick to think straight. I--e been fearing that he's rise up from the floor where he lies and come at me again. When I heard that wolf running up the road after me, I thought it was John chasing me--John, running through the night with his bloody ax and his bloody head, and his death-grin!-- His teeth chattered as he lived that horror over again.

Buckner let his light play across the floor.

--he blood drops lead into the hall. Come on. We--l follow them.-- Griswell cringed.--hey lead upstairs.-- Buckner-- eyes were fixed hard on him.

--re you afraid to go upstairs, with me?-- Griswell-- face was gray.

--es. But I-- going, with you or without you. The thing that killed poor John may still be hiding up there.----tay behind me,--ordered Buckner.--f anything jumps us, I--l take care of it. But for your own sake, I warn you that I shoot quicker than a cat jumps, and I don't often miss. If you--e got any ideas of layin'tme out from behind, forget them.----on't be a fool!--Resentment got the better of his apprehension, and this outburst seemed to reassure Buckner more than any of his protestations of innocence.

-- want to be fair,--he said quietly.--haven't indicted and condemned you in my mind already. If only half of what you--e tellin'tme is the truth, you--e been through a hell of an experience, and I don't want to be too hard on you. But you can see how hard it is for me to believe all you--e told me.-- Griswell wearily motioned for him to lead the way, unspeaking. They went out into the hall, paused at the landing. A thin string of crimson drops, distinct in the thick dust, led up the steps.

--an't tracks in the dust,--grunted Buckner.--o slow, I--e got to be sure of what I see, because we--e obliteratin'tthem as we go up. Hmmm! One set goin'tup, one comin'tdown. Same man. Not your tracks. Branner was a bigger man than you are. Blood drops all the way--blood on the bannisters like a man had laid his bloody hand there--a smear of stuff that looks--brains. Now what--

--e walked down the stair, a dead man,--shuddered Griswell.--roping with one hand--the other gripping the hatchet that killed him.----r was carried,--muttered the sheriff.--ut if somebody carried him--where are the tracks?--

They came out into the upper hallway, a vast, empty space of dust and shadows where time-crusted windows repelled the moonlight and the ring of Buckner-- torch seemed inadequate. Griswell trembled like a leaf. Here, in the darkness and horror, John Branner had died.

--omebody whistled up here,--he muttered.--ohn came, as if he were being called.-- Buckner-- eyes were blazing strangely in the light.

--he footprints lead down the hall,--he muttered.--ame as on the stair--one set going, one coming. Same prints--Judas!-- Behind him Griswell stifled a cry, for he had seen what prompted Buckner-- exclamation. A few feet from the head of the stair Branner-- footprints stopped abruptly, then returned, treading almost in the other tracks. And where the trail halted there was a great splash of blood on the dusty floor--and other tracks met it--tracks of bare feet, narrow but with splayed toes. They too receded in a second line from the spot.

Buckner bent over them, swearing.

--he tracks meet! And where they meet there-- blood and brains on the floor! Branner must have been killed on that spot--with a blow from a hatchet. Bare feet coming out of the darkness to meet shod feet--then both turned away again; the shod feet went downstairs, the bare feet went back down the hall.--He directed his light down the hall. The footprints faded into darkness, beyond the reach of the beam. On either hand the closed doors of chambers were cryptic portals of mystery.

--uppose your crazy tale was true,--Buckner muttered, half to himself.--hese aren't your tracks. They look like a woman't. Suppose somebody did whistle, and Branner went upstairs to investigate. Suppose somebody met him here in the dark and split his head. The signs and tracks would have been, in that case, just as they really are. But if that-- so, why isn't Branner lyin'there where he was killed? Could he have lived long enough to take the hatchet away from whoever killed him, and stagger downstairs with it?----o, no!--Recollection gagged Griswell.--saw him on the stair. He was dead. No man could live a minute after receiving such a wound.----believe it,--muttered Buckner.--ut--it's madness! Or else it's too clever--yet, what sane man would think up and work out such an elaborate and utterly insane plan to escape punishment for murder, when a simple plea of self-defense would have been so much more effective? No court would recognize that story. Well, let-- follow these other tracks. They lead down the hall--here, what-- this?-- With an icy clutch at his soul, Griswell saw the light was beginning to grow dim.

--his battery is new,--muttered Buckner, and for the first time Griswell caught an edge of fear in his voice.--ome on--out of here quick!-- The light had faded to a faint red glow. The darkness seemed straining into them, creeping with black cat-feet. Buckner retreated, pushing Griswell stumbling behind him as he walked backward, pistol cocked and lifted, down the dark hall. In the growing darkness Griswell heard what sounded like the stealthy opening of a door. And suddenly the blackness about them was vibrant with menace. Griswell knew Buckner sensed it as well as he, for the sheriff--hard body was tense and taut as a stalking panther--.

But without haste he worked his way to the stair and backed down it, Griswell preceding him, and fighting the panic that urged him to scream and burst into mad flight. A ghastly thought brought icy sweat out on his flesh. Suppose the dead man were creeping up the stair behind them in the dark, face frozen in the death-grin, blood-caked hatchet lifted to strike?

This possibility so overpowered him that he was scarcely aware when his feet struck the level of the lower hallway, and he was only then aware that the light had grown brighter as they descended, until it now gleamed with its full power--but when Buckner turned it back up the stairway, it failed to illuminate the darkness that hung like a tangible fog at the head of the stair.

--he damn thing was conjured,--muttered Buckner.--othin'telse. It couldn't act like that naturally.----urn the light into the room,--begged Griswell.--ee if John--if John is--

He could not put the ghastly thought into words, but Buckner understood.

He swung the beam around, and Griswell had never dreamed that the sight of the gory body of a murdered man could bring such relief.

--e-- still there,--grunted Buckner.--f he walked after he was killed, he hasn't walked since. But that thing--

Again he turned the light up the stair, and stood chewing his lip and scowling. Three times he half lifted his gun. Griswell read his mind. The sheriff was tempted to plunge back up that stair, take his chance with the unknown. But common sense held him back.

-- wouldn't have a chance in the dark,--he muttered.--nd I--e got a hunch the light would go out again.-- He turned and faced Griswell squarely.

--here-- no use dodgin'tthe question. There-- somethin'thellish in this house, and I believe I have an inklin'tof what it is. I don't believe you killed Branner. Whatever killed him is up there--now. There-- a lot about your yarn that don't sound sane; but there-- nothin'tsane about a flashlight goin'tout like this one did. I don't believe that thing upstairs is human. I never met anything I was afraid to tackle in the dark before, but I-- not goin'tup there until daylight. It-- not long until dawn. We--l wait for it out there on that gallery.--

The stars were already paling when they came out on the broad porch. Buckner seated himself on the balustrade, facing the door, his pistol dangling in his fingers. Griswell sat down near him and leaned back against a crumbling pillar. He shut his eyes, grateful for the faint breeze that seemed to cool his throbbing brain. He experienced a dull sense of unreality. He was a stranger in a strange land, a land that had become suddenly imbued with black horror. The shadow of the noose hovered above him, and in that dark house lay John Branner, with his butchered head--like the figments of a dream these facts spun and eddied in his brain until all merged in a gray twilight as sleep came uninvited to his weary soul.

He awoke to a cold white dawn and full memory of the horrors of the night. Mists curled about the stems of the pines, crawled in smoky wisps up the broken walk. Buckner was shaking him.

--ake up! It-- daylight.-- Griswell rose, wincing at the stiffness of his limbs. His face was gray and old.

---- ready. Let-- go upstairs.------e already been!--Buckner-- eyes burned in the early dawn.--didn't wake you up. I went as soon as it was light. I found nothin't----he tracks of the bare feet--

--one!----one?----es, gone! The dust had been disturbed all over the hall, from the point where Branner-- tracks ended; swept into corners. No chance of trackin'tanything there now. Something obliterated those tracks while we sat here, and I didn't hear a sound. I--e gone through the whole house. Not a sign of anything.-- Griswell shuddered at the thought of himself sleeping alone on the porch while Buckner conducted his exploration.

--hat shall we do?--he asked listlessly.--ith those tracks gone, there goes my only chance of proving my story.----e--l take Branner-- body into the county seat,--answered Buckner.--et me do the talkin't If the authorities knew the facts as they appear, they-- insist on you being confined and indicted. I don't believe you killed Branner--but neither a district attorney, judge nor jury would believe what you told me, or what happened to us last night. I-- handlin'tthis thing my own way. I-- not goin'tto arrest you until I--e exhausted every other possibility.

--ay nothin'tabout what-- happened here, when we get to town. I--l simply tell the district attorney that John Branner was killed by a party or parties unknown, and that I-- workin'ton the case.

--re you game to come back with me to this house and spend the night here, sleepin'tin that room as you and Branner slept last night?-- Griswell went white, but answered as stoutly as his ancestors might have expressed their determination to hold their cabins in the teeth of the Pequots:----l do it.----et-- go then; help me pack the body out to your auto.-- Griswell-- soul revolted at the sight of John Branner-- bloodless face in the chill white dawn, and the feel of his clammy flesh. The gray fog wrapped wispy tentacles about their feet as they carried their grisly burden across the lawn.

II

THE SNAKE-- BROTHER

Again the shadows were lengthening over the pinelands, and again two men came bumping along the old road in a car with a New England license plate.

Buckner was driving. Griswell-- nerves were too shattered for him to trust himself at the wheel. He looked gaunt and haggard, and his face was still pallid. The strain of the day spent at the county seat was added to the horror that still rode his soul like the shadow of a black-winged vulture. He had not slept, had not tasted what he had eaten.

-- told you I-- tell you about the Blassenvilles,--said Buckner.--hey were proud folks, haughty, and pretty damn ruthless when they wanted their way. They didn't treat their niggers as well as the other planters did--got their ideas in the West Indies, I reckon. There was a streak of cruelty in them--especially Miss Celia, the last one of the family to come to these parts. That was long after the slaves had been freed, but she used to whip her mulatto maid just like she was a slave, the old folks say--he niggers said when a Blassenville died, the devil was always waitin'tfor him out in the black pines.

--ell, after the Civil War they died off pretty fast, livin'tin poverty on the plantation which was allowed to go to ruin. Finally only four girls were left, sisters, livin'tin the old house and ekin'tout a bare livin't with a few niggers livin'tin the old slave huts and workin'tthe fields on the share. They kept to themselves, bein'tproud, and ashamed of their poverty. Folks wouldn't see them for months at a time. When they needed supplies they sent a nigger to town after them.

--ut folks knew about it when Miss Celia came to live with them. She came from somewhere in the West Indies, where the whole family originally had its roots--a fine, handsome woman, they say, in the early thirties. But she didn't mix with folks any more than the girls did. She brought a mulatto maid with her, and the Blassenville cruelty cropped out in her treatment of this maid. I knew an old nigger, years ago, who swore he saw Miss Celia tie this girl up to a tree, stark naked, and whip her with a horsewhip. Nobody was surprized when she disappeared. Everybody figured she's run away, of course.

--ell, one day in the spring of 1890 Miss Elizabeth, the youngest girl, came in to town for the first time in maybe a year. She came after supplies. Said the niggers had all left the place. Talked a little more, too, a bit wild. Said Miss Celia had gone, without leaving any word. Said her sisters thought she's gone back to the West Indies, but she believed her aunt was still in the house. She didn't say what she meant. Just got her supplies and pulled out for the Manor.

-- month went past, and a nigger came into town and said that Miss Elizabeth was livin'tat the Manor alone. Said her three sisters weren't there any more, that they-- left one by one without givin'tany word or explanation. She didn't know where they-- gone, and was afraid to stay there alone, but didn't know where else to go. She's never known anything but the Manor, and had neither relatives nor friends. But she was in mortal terror of something. The nigger said she locked herself in her room at night and kept candles burnin'tall night--

--t was a stormy spring night when Miss Elizabeth came tearin'tinto town on the one horse she owned, nearly dead from fright. She fell from her horse in the square; when she could talk she said she's found a secret room in the Manor that had been forgotten for a hundred years. And she said that there she found her three sisters, dead, and hangin'tby their necks from the ceilin't She said something chased her and nearly brained her with an ax as she ran out the front door, but somehow she got to the horse and got away. She was nearly crazy with fear, and didn't know what it was that chased her--said it looked like a woman with a yellow face.

--bout a hundred men rode out there, right away. They searched the house from top to bottom, but they didn't find any secret room, or the remains of the sisters. But they did find a hatchet stickin'tin the doorjamb downstairs, with some of Miss Elizabeth-- hairs stuck on it, just as she's said. She wouldn't go back there and show them how to find the secret door; almost went crazy when they suggested it.

--hen she was able to travel, the people made up some money and loaned it to her--she was still too proud to accept charity--and she went to California. She never came back, but later it was learned, when she sent back to repay the money they-- loaned her, that she's married out there.

--obody ever bought the house. It stood there just as she's left it, and as the years passed folks stole all the furnishings out of it, poor white trash, I reckon. A nigger wouldn't go about it. But they came after sun-up and left long before sundown.--

--hat did the people think about Miss Elizabeth-- story?--asked Griswell.

--ell, most folks thought she's gone a little crazy, livin'tin that old house alone. But some people believed that mulatto girl, Joan, didn't run away, after all. They believed she's hidden in the woods, and glutted her hatred of the Blassenvilles by murderin'tMiss Celia and the three girls. They beat up the woods with bloodhounds, but never found a trace of her. If there was a secret room in the house, she might have been hidin'tthere--if there was anything to that theory.----he couldn't have been hiding there all these years,--muttered Griswell.--nyway, the thing in the house now isn't human.-- Buckner wrenched the wheel around and turned into a dim trace that left the main road and meandered off through the pines.

--here are you going?----here-- an old nigger that lives off this way a few miles. I want to talk to him. We--e up against something that takes more than white man't sense. The black people know more than we do about some things. This old man is nearly a hundred years old. His master educated him when he was a boy, and after he was freed he traveled more extensively than most white men do. They say he's a voodoo man.-- Griswell shivered at the phrase, staring uneasily at the green forest walls that shut them in. The scent of the pines was mingled with the odors of unfamiliar plants and blossoms. But underlying all was a reek of rot and decay. Again a sick abhorrence of these dark mysterious woodlands almost overpowered him.

--oodoo!--he muttered.---- forgotten about that--I never could think of black magic in connection with the South. To me witchcraft was always associated with old crooked streets in waterfront towns, overhung by gabled roofs that were old when they were hanging witches in Salem; dark musty alleys where black cats and other things might steal at night. Witchcraft always meant the old towns of New England, to me--but all this is more terrible than any New England legend--these somber pines, old deserted houses, lost plantations, mysterious black people, old tales of madness and horror--God, what frightful, ancient terrors there are on this continent fools call--oung------ere-- old Jacob-- hut,--announced Buckner, bringing the automobile to a halt.

Griswell saw a clearing and a small cabin squatting under the shadows of the huge trees. There pines gave way to oaks and cypresses, bearded with gray trailing moss, and behind the cabin lay the edge of a swamp that ran away under the dimness of the trees, choked with rank vegetation. A thin wisp of blue smoke curled up from the stick-and-mud chimney.

He followed Buckner to the tiny stoop, where the sheriff pushed open the leather-hinged door and strode in. Griswell blinked in the comparative dimness of the interior. A single small window let in a little daylight. An old negro crouched beside the hearth, watching a pot stew over the open fire. He looked up as they entered, but did not rise. He seemed incredibly old. His face was a mass of wrinkles, and his eyes, dark and vital, were filmed momentarily at times as if his mind wandered.

Buckner motioned Griswell to sit down in a string-bottomed chair, and himself took a rudely-made bench near the hearth, facing the old man.

--acob,--he said bluntly,--he time-- come for you to talk. I know you know the secret of Blassenville Manor. I--e never questioned you about it, because it wasn't in my line. But a man was murdered there last night, and this man here may hang for it, unless you tell me what haunts that old house of the Blassenvilles.-- The old man't eyes gleamed, then grew misty as if clouds of extreme age drifted across his brittle mind.

--he Blassenvilles,--he murmured, and his voice was mellow and rich, his speech not the patois of the piny woods darky.--hey were proud people, sirs--proud and cruel. Some died in the war, some were killed in duels--the men-folks, sirs. Some died in the Manor--the old Manor--His voice trailed off into unintelligible mumblings.

--hat of the Manor?--asked Buckner patiently.

--iss Celia was the proudest of them all,--the old man muttered.--he proudest and the cruelest. The black people hated her; Joan most of all. Joan had white blood in her, and she was proud, too. Miss Celia whipped her like a slave.----hat is the secret of Blassenville Manor?--persisted Buckner.

The film faded from the old man't eyes; they were dark as moonlit wells.

--hat secret, sir? I do not understand.--

--es, you do. For years that old house has stood there with its mystery. You know the key to its riddle.-- The old man stirred the stew. He seemed perfectly rational now.

--ir, life is sweet, even to an old black man.----ou mean somebody would kill you if you told me?-- But the old man was mumbling again, his eyes clouded.

--ot somebody. No human. No human being. The black gods of the swamps. My secret is inviolate, guarded by the Big Serpent, the god above all gods. He would send a little brother to kiss me with his cold lips--a little brother with a white crescent moon on his head. I sold my soul to the Big Serpent when he made me maker of zuvembies--

Buckner stiffened.

-- heard that word once before,--he said softly,--rom the lips of a dying black man, when I was a child. What does it mean?-- Fear filled the eyes of old Jacob.

--hat have I said? No--no! I said nothing!----uvembies,--prompted Buckner.

--uvembies,--mechanically repeated the old man, his eyes vacant.--zuvembie was once a woman--on the Slave Coast they know of them. The drums that whisper by night in the hills of Haiti tell of them. The makers of zuvembies are honored of the people of Damballah. It is death to speak of it to a white man--it is one of the Snake God-- forbidden secrets.--

--ou speak of the zuvembies,--said Buckner softly.

-- must not speak of it,--mumbled the old man, and Griswell realized that he was thinking aloud, too far gone in his dotage to be aware that he was speaking at all.--o white man must know that I danced in the Black Ceremony of the voodoo, and was made a maker of zombies and zuvembies. The Big Snake punishes loose tongues with death.----zuvembie is a woman?--prompted Buckner.

--as a woman,--the old Negro muttered.--he knew I was a maker of zuvembies--she came and stood in my hut and asked for the awful brew--the brew of ground snake-bones, and the blood of vampire bats, and the dew from a nighthawk-- wings, and other elements unnamable. She had danced in the Black Ceremony--she was ripe to become a zuvembie--the Black Brew was all that was needed--the other was beautiful--I could not refuse her.----ho?--demanded Buckner tensely, but the old man't head was sunk on his withered breast, and he did not reply. He seemed to slumber as he sat. Buckner shook him.--ou gave a brew to make a woman a zuvembie--what is a zuvembie?-- The old man stirred resentfully and muttered drowsily.

-- zuvembie is no longer human. It knows neither relatives nor friends. It is one with the people of the Black World. It commands the natural demons--owls, bats, snakes and werewolves, and can fetch darkness to blot out a little light. It can be slain by lead or steel, but unless it is slain thus, it lives for ever, and it eats no such food as humans eat. It dwells like a bat in a cave or an old house. Time means naught to the zuvembie; an hour, a day, a year, all is one. It cannot speak human words, nor think as a human thinks, but it can hypnotize the living by the sound of its voice, and when it slays a man, it can command his lifeless body until the flesh is cold. As long as the blood flows, the corpse is its slave. Its pleasure lies in the slaughter of human beings.----nd why should one become a zuvembie?--asked Buckner softly.

--ate,--whispered the old man.--ate! Revenge!----as her name Joan?--murmured Buckner.

It was as if the name penetrated the fogs of senility that clouded the voodoo-man't mind. He shook himself and the film faded from his eyes, leaving them hard and gleaming as wet black marble.

--oan?--he said slowly.--have not heard that name for the span of a generation. I seem to have been sleeping, gentlemen; I do not remember--I ask your pardon. Old men fall asleep before the fire, like old dogs. You asked me of Blassenville Manor? Sir, if I were to tell you why I cannot answer you, you would deem it mere superstition. Yet the white man't God be my witness--

As he spoke he was reaching across the hearth for a piece of firewood, groping among the heaps of sticks there. And his voice broke in a scream, as he jerked back his arm convulsively. And a horrible, thrashing, trailing thing came with it. Around the voodoo-man't arm a mottled length of that shape was wrapped and a wicked wedge-shaped head struck again in silent fury.

The old man fell on the hearth, screaming, upsetting the simmering pot and scattering the embers, and then Buckner caught up a billet of firewood and crushed that flat head. Cursing, he kicked aside the knotting, twisting trunk, glaring briefly at the mangled head. Old Jacob had ceased screaming and writhing; he lay still, staring glassily upward.

--ead?--whispered Griswell.

--ead as Judas Iscariot,--snapped Buckner, frowning at the twitching reptile.--hat infernal snake crammed enough poison into his veins to kill a dozen men his age. But I think it was the shock and fright that killed him.----hat shall we do?--asked Griswell, shivering.

--eave the body on that bunk. Nothin'tcan hurt it, if we bolt the door so the wild hogs can't get in, or any cat. We--l carry it into town tomorrow. We--e got work to do tonight. Let-- get goin't-- Griswell shrank from touching the corpse, but he helped Buckner lift it on the rude bunk, and then stumbled hastily out of the hut. The sun was hovering above the horizon, visible in dazzling red flame through the black stems of the trees.

They climbed into the car in silence, and went bumping back along the stumpy terrain.

--e said the Big Snake would send one of his brothers,--muttered Griswell.

--onsense!--snorted Buckner.--nakes like warmth, and that swamp is full of them. It crawled in and coiled up among that firewood. Old Jacob disturbed it, and it bit him. Nothin'tsupernatural about that.--After a short silence he said, in a different voice,--hat was the first time I ever saw a rattler strike without singin'tand the first time I ever saw a snake with a white crescent moon on its head.-- They were turning into the main road before either spoke again.

--ou think that the mulatto Joan has skulked in the house all these years?--Griswell asked.

--ou heard what old Jacob said,--answered Buckner grimly.--ime means nothin'tto a zuvembie.-- As they made the last turn in the road, Griswell braced himself against the sight of Blassenville Manor looming black against the red sunset. When it came into view he bit his lip to keep from shrieking. The suggestion of cryptic horror came back in all its power.

--ook!--he whispered from dry lips as they came to a halt beside the road. Buckner grunted.

From the balustrades of the gallery rose a whirling cloud of pigeons that swept away into the sunset, black against the lurid glare--

III

THE CALL OF ZUVEMBIE

Both men sat rigid for a few moments after the pigeons had flown.

--ell, I--e seen them at last,--muttered Buckner.

--nly the doomed see them, perhaps,--whispered Griswell.--hat tramp saw them--

--ell, we--l see,--returned the Southerner tranquilly, as he climbed out of the car, but Griswell noticed him unconsciously hitch forward his scabbarded gun.

The oaken door sagged on broken hinges. Their feet echoed on the broken brick walk. The blind windows reflected the sunset in sheets of flame. As they came into the broad hall Griswell saw the string of black marks that ran across the floor and into the chamber, marking the path of a dead man.

Buckner had brought blankets out of the automobile. He spread them before the fireplace.

----l lie next to the door,--he said.--ou lie where you did last night.----hall we light a fire in the grate?--asked Griswell, dreading the thought of the blackness that would cloak the woods when the brief twilight had died.

--o. You--e got a flashlight and so have I. We--l lie here in the dark and see what happens. Can you use that gun I gave you?----suppose so. I never fired a revolver, but I know how it's done.----ell, leave the shootin'tto me, if possible.--The sheriff seated himself cross-legged on his blankets and emptied the cylinder of his big blue Colt, inspecting each cartridge with a critical eye before he replaced it.

Griswell prowled nervously back and forth, begrudging the slow fading of the light as a miser begrudges the waning of his gold. He leaned with one hand against the mantelpiece, staring down into the dust-covered ashes. The fire that produced those ashes must have been built by Elizabeth Blassenville, more than forty years before. The thought was depressing. Idly he stirred the dusty ashes with his toe. Something came to view among the charred debris--a bit of paper, stained and yellowed. Still idly he bent and drew it out of the ashes. It was a note-book with moldering cardboard backs.

--hat have you found?--asked Buckner, squinting down the gleaming barrel of his gun.

--othing but an old note-book. Looks like a diary. The pages are covered with writing--but the ink is so faded, and the paper is in such a state of decay that I can't tell much about it. How do you suppose it came in the fireplace, without being burned up?----hrown in long after the fire was out,--surmised Buckner.--robably found and tossed in the fireplace by somebody who was in here stealin'tfurniture. Likely somebody who couldn't read.-- Griswell fluttered the crumbling leaves listlessly, straining his eyes in the fading light over the yellowed scrawls. Then he stiffened.

--ere-- an entry that-- legible! Listen!--He read:

--I know someone is in the house besides myself. I can hear someone prowling about at night when the sun has set and the pines are black outside. Often in the night I hear it fumbling at my door. Who is it? Is it one of my sisters? Is it Aunt Celia? If it is either of these, why does she steal so subtly about the house? Why does she tug at my door, and glide away when I call to her? Shall I go to the door and go out to her? No, no! I dare not! I am afraid. Oh God, what shall I do? I dare not stay here--but where am I to go?--

--y God!--ejaculated Buckner.--hat must be Elizabeth Blassenville-- diary! Go on!----can't make out the rest of the page,--answered Griswell.--ut a few pages further on I can make out some lines.--He read:

--Why did the negroes all run away when Aunt Celia disappeared? My sisters are dead. I know they are dead. I seem to sense that they died horribly, in fear and agony. But why? Why? If someone murdered Aunt Celia, why should that person murder my poor sisters? They were always kind to the black people. Joan----He paused, scowling futilely.

-- piece of the page is torn out. Here-- another entry under another date--at least I judge it's a date; I can't make it out for sure.

----the awful thing that the old negress hinted at? She named Jacob Blount, and Joan, but she would not speak plainly; perhaps she feared to--Part of it gone here; then:--o, no! How can it be? She is dead--or gone away. Yet--she was born and raised in the West Indies, and from hints she let fall in the past, I know she delved into the mysteries of the voodoo. I believe she even danced in one of their horrible ceremonies--how could she have been such a beast? And this--this horror. God, can such things be? I know not what to think. If it is she who roams the house at night, who fumbles at my door, who whistles so weirdly and sweetly--no, no, I must be going mad. If I stay here alone I shall die as hideously as my sisters must have died. Of that I am convinced.--

The incoherent chronicle ended as abruptly as it had begun. Griswell was so engrossed in deciphering the scraps that he was not aware that darkness had stolen upon them, hardly aware that Buckner was holding his electric torch for him to read by. Waking from his abstraction he started and darted a quick glance at the black hallway.

--hat do you make of it?----hat I--e suspected all the time,--answered Buckner.--hat mulatto maid Joan turned zuvembie to avenge herself on Miss Celia. Probably hated the whole family as much as she did her mistress. She's taken part in voodoo ceremonies on her native island until she was--ipe,--as old Jacob said. All she needed was the Black Brew--he supplied that. She killed Miss Celia and the three older girls, and would have gotten Elizabeth but for chance. She's been lurkin'tin this old house all these years, like a snake in a ruin.----ut why should she murder a stranger?----ou heard what old Jacob said,--reminded Buckner.--zuvembie finds satisfaction in the slaughter of humans. She called Branner up the stair and split his head and stuck the hatchet in his hand, and sent him downstairs to murder you. No court will ever believe that, but if we can produce her body, that will be evidence enough to prove your innocence. My word will be taken, that she murdered Branner. Jacob said a zuvembie could be killed--n reporting this affair I don't have to be too accurate in detail.----he came and peered over the balustrade of the stair at us,--muttered Griswell.--ut why didn't we find her tracks on the stair?----aybe you dreamed it. Maybe a zuvembie can project her spirit--hell! Why try to rationalize something that-- outside the bounds of rationality? Let-- begin our watch.----on't turn out the light!--exclaimed Griswell involuntarily. Then he added:--f course. Turn it out. We must be in the dark as----he gagged a bit----s Branner and I were.-- But fear like a physical sickness assailed him when the room was plunged in darkness. He lay trembling and his heart beat so heavily he felt as if he would suffocate.

--he West Indies must be the plague spot of the world,--muttered Buckner, a blur on his blankets.----e heard of zombies. Never knew before what a zuvembie was. Evidently some drug concocted by the voodoo-men to induce madness in women. That doesn't explain other things, though: the hypnotic powers, the abnormal longevity, the ability to control corpses--no, a zuvembie can't be merely a madwoman. It-- a monster, something more and less than a human being, created by the magic that spawns in black swamps and jungles--well, we--l see.-- His voice ceased, and in the silence Griswell heard the pounding of his own heart. Outside in the black woods a wolf howled eerily, and owls hooted. Then silence fell again like a black fog.

Griswell forced himself to lie still on his blankets. Time seemed at a standstill. He felt as if he were choking. The suspense was growing unendurable; the effort he made to control his crumbling nerves bathed his limbs in sweat. He clenched his teeth until his jaws ached and almost locked, and the nails of his fingers bit deeply into his palms.

He did not know what he was expecting. The fiend would strike again--but how? Would it be a horrible, sweet whistling, bare feet stealing down the creaking steps, or a sudden hatchet-stroke in the dark? Would it choose him or Buckner? Was Buckner already dead? He could see nothing in the blackness, but he heard the man't steady breathing. The Southerner must have nerves of steel. Or was that Buckner breathing beside him, separated by a narrow strip of darkness? Had the fiend already struck in silence, and taken the sheriff--place, there to lie in ghoulish glee until it was ready to strike?--a thousand hideous fancies assailed Griswell tooth and claw.

He began to feel that he would go mad if he did not leap to his feet, screaming, and burst frenziedly out of that accursed house--not even the fear of the gallows could keep him lying there in the darkness any longer--the rhythm of Buckner-- breathing was suddenly broken, and Griswell felt as if a bucket of ice-water had been poured over him. From somewhere above them rose a sound of weird, sweet whistling--

Griswell-- control snapped, plunging his brain into darkness deeper than the physical blackness which engulfed him. There was a period of absolute blankness, in which a realization of motion was his first sensation of awakening consciousness. He was running, madly, stumbling over an incredibly rough road. All was darkness about him, and he ran blindly. Vaguely he realized that he must have bolted from the house, and fled for perhaps miles before his overwrought brain began to function. He did not care; dying on the gallows for a murder he never committed did not terrify him half as much as the thought of returning to that house of horror. He was overpowered by the urge to run--run--run as he was running now, blindly, until he reached the end of his endurance. The mist had not yet fully lifted from his brain, but he was aware of a dull wonder that he could not see the stars through the black branches. He wished vaguely that he could see where he was going. He believed he must be climbing a hill, and that was strange, for he knew there were no hills within miles of the Manor. Then above and ahead of him a dim glow began.

He scrambled toward it, over ledge-like projections that were more and more and more taking on a disquieting symmetry. Then he was horror-stricken to realize that a sound was impacting on his ears--a weird mocking whistle. The sound swept the mists away. Why, what was this? Where was he? Awakening and realization came like the stunning stroke of a butcher-- maul. He was not fleeing along a road, or climbing a hill; he was mounting a stair. He was still in Blassenville Manor! And he was climbing the stair!

An inhuman scream burst from his lips. Above it the mad whistling rose in a ghoulish piping of demoniac triumph. He tried to stop--to turn back--even to fling himself over the balustrade. His shrieking rang unbearably in his own ears. But his will-power was shattered to bits. It did not exist. He had no will. He had dropped his flashlight, and he had forgotten the gun in his pocket. He could not command his own body. His legs, moving stiffly, worked like pieces of mechanism detached from his brain, obeying an outside will. Clumping methodically they carried him shrieking up the stair toward the witch-fire glow shimmering above him.

--uckner!--he screamed.--uckner! Help, for God-- sake!-- His voice strangled in his throat. He had reached the upper landing. He was tottering down the hallway. The whistling sank and ceased, but its impulsion still drove him on. He could not see from what source the dim glow came. It seemed to emanate from no central focus. But he saw a vague figure shambling toward him. It looked like a woman, but no human woman ever walked with that skulking gait, and no human woman ever had that face of horror, that leering yellow blur of lunacy--he tried to scream at the sight of that face, at the glint of keen steel in the uplifted claw-like hand--but his tongue was frozen.

Then something crashed deafeningly behind him, the shadows were split by a tongue of flame which lit a hideous figure falling backward. Hard on the heels of the report rang an inhuman squawk.

In the darkness that followed the flash Griswell fell to his knees and covered his face with his hands. He did not hear Buckner-- voice. The Southerner-- hand on his shoulder shook him out of his swoon.

A light in his eyes blinded him. He blinked, shaded his eyes, looked up into Buckner-- face, bending at the rim of the circle of light. The sheriff was pale.

--re you hurt? God, man, are you hurt? There-- a butcher knife there on the floor--

---- not hurt,--mumbled Griswell.--ou fired just in time--the fiend! Where is it? Where did it go?----isten!-- Somewhere in the house there sounded a sickening flopping and flapping as of something that thrashed and struggled in its death convulsions.

--acob was right,--said Buckner grimly.--ead can kill them. I hit her, all right. Didn't dare use my flashlight, but there was enough light. When that whistlin'tstarted you almost walked over me gettin'tout. I knew you were hypnotized, or whatever it is. I followed you up the stairs. I was right behind you, but crouchin'tlow so she wouldn't see me, and maybe get away again. I almost waited too long before I fired--but the sight of her almost paralyzed me. Look!-- He flashed his light down the hall, and now it shone bright and clear. And it shone on an aperture gaping in the wall where no door had showed before.

--he secret panel Miss Elizabeth found!--Buckner snapped.--ome on!-- He ran across the hallway and Griswell followed him dazedly. The flopping and thrashing came from beyond that mysterious door, and now the sounds had ceased.

The light revealed a narrow, tunnel-like corridor that evidently led through one of the thick walls. Buckner plunged into it without hesitation.

--aybe it couldn't think like a human,--he muttered, shining his light ahead of him.--ut it had sense enough to erase its tracks last night so we couldn't trail it to that point in the wall and maybe find the secret panel. There-- a room ahead--the secret room of the Blassenvilles!-- And Griswell cried out:--y God! It-- the windowless chamber I saw in my dream, with the three bodies hanging--ahhhhh!-- Buckner-- light playing about the circular chamber became suddenly motionless. In that wide ring of light three figures appeared, three dried, shriveled, mummy-like shapes, still clad in the moldering garments of the last century. Their slippers were clear of the floor as they hung by their withered necks from chains suspended from the ceiling.

--he three Blassenville sisters!--muttered Buckner.--iss Elizabeth wasn't crazy, after all.----ook!--Griswell could barely make his voice intelligible.--here--over there in the corner!-- The light moved, halted.

--as that thing a woman once?--whispered Griswell.--od, look at that face, even in death. Look at those claw-like hands, with black talons like those of a beast. Yes, it was human, though--even the rags of an old ballroom gown. Why should a mulatto maid wear such a dress, I wonder?----his has been her lair for over forty years,--muttered Buckner, brooding over the grinning grisly thing sprawling in the corner.--his clears you, Griswell--a crazy woman with a hatchet--that-- all the authorities need to know. God, what a revenge!--what a foul revenge! Yet what a bestial nature she must have had, in the beginnin't to delve into voodoo as she must have done--

--he mulatto woman?--whispered Griswell, dimly sensing a horror that overshadowed all the rest of the terror.

Buckner shook his head.--e misunderstood old Jacob-- maunderin't, and the things Miss Elizabeth wrote--she must have known, but family pride sealed her lips. Griswell, I understand now; the mulatto woman had her revenge, but not as we supposed. She didn't drink the Black Brew old Jacob fixed for her. It was for somebody else, to be given secretly in her food, or coffee, no doubt. Then Joan ran away, leavin'tthe seeds of the hell she's sowed to grow.----hat--that-- not the mulatto woman?--whispered Griswell.

--hen I saw her out there in the hallway I knew she was no mulatto. And those distorted features still reflect a family likeness. I--e seen her portrait, and I can't be mistaken. There lies the creature that was once Celia Blassenville.--

Never Beyond the Beast

Rise to the peak of the ladder

Where the ghosts of the planets feast--Out of the reach of the adder--Never beyond the Beast.

He is there, in the abyss brooding,

Where the nameless black fires fall;

He is there, in the stars intruding,

Where the sun is a silver ball.

Beyond all weeping or revel,

He lurks in the cloud and the sod;

He grips the doors of the Devil

And the hasp on the gates of God.

Build and endeavor and fashion--Never can you escape

The blind black brutish passion--The lust of the primal Ape.

Wild Water

Saul Hopkins was king of Locust Valley, but kingship never turned hot lead. In the wild old days, not so long distant, another man was king of the Valley, and his methods were different and direct. He ruled by the guns, wire-clippers and branding irons of his wiry, hard-handed, hard-eyed riders. But those days were past and gone, and Saul Hopkins sat in his office in Bisley and pulled strings to which were tied loans and mortgages and the subtle tricks of finance.

Times have changed since Locust Valley reverberated to the guns of rival cattlemen, and Saul Hopkins, by all modern standards, should have lived and died king of the Valley by virtue of his gold and lands; but he met a man in whom the old ways still lived.

It began when John Brill-- farm was sold under the hammer. Saul Hopkins--representative was there to bid. But three hundred hard-eyed ranchers and farmers were there, too. They rode in from the river bottoms and the hill country to the west and north, in ramshackle flivvers, in hacks, and on horseback. Some of them came on foot. They had a keg of tar, and half a dozen old feather pillows. The representative of big business understood. He stood aside and made no attempt to bid. The auction took place, and the farmers and ranchers were the only bidders. Land, implements and stock sold for exactly $7.55; and the whole was handed back to John Brill.

When Saul Hopkins heard of it, he turned white with fury. It was the first time his kingship had ever been flouted. He set the wheels of the law to grinding, and before another day passed, John Brill and nine of his friends were locked in the old stone jail at Bisley. Up along the bare oak ridges and down along the winding creeks where poverty-stricken farmers labored under the shadow of Saul Hopkins--mortgages, went the word that the scene at Brill-- farm would not be duplicated. The next foreclosure would be attended by enough armed deputies to see that the law was upheld. And the men of the creeks and the hills knew that the promise was no idle one. Meanwhile, Saul Hopkins prepared to have John Brill prosecuted with all the power of his wealth and prestige. And Jim Reynolds came to Bisley to see the king.

Reynolds was John Brill-- brother-in-law. He lived in the high postoak country north of Bisley. Bisley lay on the southern slope of that land of long ridges and oak thickets. To the south the slopes broke into fan shaped valleys, traversed by broad streams. The people in those fat valleys were prosperous; farmers who had come late into the country, and pushed out the cattlemen who had once owned it all.

Up on the high ridges of the Lost Knob country, it was different. The land was rocky and sterile, the grass thin. The ridges were occupied by the descendants of old pioneers, nesters, tenant farmers, and broken cattlemen. They were poor, and there was an old feud between them and the people of the southern valleys. Money had to be borrowed from somebody of the latter clan, and that intensified the bitterness.

Jim Reynolds was an atavism, the personification of anachronism. He had lived a comparatively law-abiding life, working on farms, ranches, and in the oil fields that lay to the east, but in him always smoldered an unrest and a resentment against conditions that restricted and repressed him. Recent events had fanned these embers into flame. His mind leaped as naturally toward personal violence as that of the average modern man turns to processes of law. He was literally born out of his time. He should have lived his life a generation before, when men threw a wide loop and rode long trails.

He drove into Bisley in his Ford roadster at nine o--lock one night. He stopped his car on French Street, parked, and turned into an alley that led into Hopkins Street--named for the man who owned most of the property on it. It was a quirk in the man't nature that he should cling to the dingy little back street office in which he first got his start.

Hopkins Street was narrow, lined mainly with small offices, warehouses, and the backs of buildings that faced on more pretentious streets. By night it was practically deserted. Bisley was not a large town, and except on Saturday night, even her main streets were not thronged after dark. Reynolds saw no one as he walked swiftly down the narrow sidewalk toward a light which streamed through a door and a plate glass window.

There the king of Locust Valley worked all day and late into the night, establishing and strengthening his kingship.

The grim old warrior who had kinged it in the Valley in an earlier generation knew the men he had to deal with. He wore two guns in loose scabbards, and cold-eyed gunmen rode with him, night or day. Saul Hopkins had dealt in paper and figures so long he had forgotten the human equation. He understood a menace only as a threat against his money--not against himself.

He bent over his desk, a tall, gaunt, stooped man, with a mop of straggly grey hair and the hooked nose of a vulture. He looked up irritably as some one bulked in the door that opened directly on the street. Jim Reynolds stood there--broad, dark as an Indian, one hand under his coat. His eyes burned like coals. Saul Hopkins went cold, as he sensed, for the first time in his life, a menace that was not directed against his gold and his lands, but against his body and his life. No word was passed between them, but an electric spark of understanding jumped across the intervening space.

With a strangled cry old Hopkins sprang up, knocking his swivel chair backward, stumbling against his desk. Jim Reynolds--hand came from beneath his coat gripping a Colt .45. The report thundered deafeningly in the small office. Old Saul cried out chokingly and rocked backward, clutching at his breast. Another slug caught him in the groin, crumpling him down across the desk, and as he fell, he jerked sidewise to the smash of a third bullet in his belly. He sprawled over the desk, spouting blood, and clawing blindly at nothing, slid off and blundered to the floor, his convulsive fingers full of torn papers which fell on him in a white, fluttering shower from the blood splashed desk.

Jim Reynolds eyed him unemotionally, the smoking gun in his hand. Acrid powder fumes filled the office, and the echoes seemed to be still reverberating. Whistling gasps slobbered through Saul Hopkins--grey lips and he jerked spasmodically. He was not yet dead, but Reynolds knew he was dying. And galvanized into sudden action, Reynolds turned and went out on the street. Less than a minute had passed since the first shot crashed, but a man was running up the street, gun in hand, shouting loudly. It was Mike Daley, a policeman. Reynolds knew that it would be several minutes, at least, before the rest of the small force could reach the scene. He stood motionless, his gun hanging at his side.

Daley rushed up, panting, poking his pistol at the silent killer.

--ands up, Reynolds!--he gasped.--hat the hell have you done? My God, have you shot Mr. Hopkins? Give me that gun--give it to me.-- Reynolds reversed his .45, dangling it by his index finger through the trigger guard, the butt toward Daley. The policeman grabbed for it, lowering his own gun unconsciously as he reached. The big Colt spun on Reynolds--finger, the butt slapped into his palm, and Daley glared wild eyed into the black muzzle. He was paralyzed by the trick--a trick which in itself showed Reynolds--anachronism. That roll, reliance of the old time gunman, had not been used in that region for a generation.

--rop your gun!--snapped Reynolds. Daley dumbly opened his fingers and as his gun slammed on the sidewalk, the long barrel of Reynolds--Colt lifted, described an arc and smashed down on the policeman't head. Daley fell beside his fallen gun, and Reynolds ran down the narrow street, cut through an alley and came out on French Street a few steps from where his car was parked.

Behind him he heard men shouting and running. A few loiterers on French Street gaped at him, shrank back at the sight of the gun in his hand. He sprang to the wheel and roared down French Street, shot across the bridge that spanned Locust Creek, and raced up the road. There were few residences in that end of town, where the business section abutted on the very bank of the creek. Within a few minutes he was in open country, with only scattered farmhouses here and there.

He had not even glanced toward the rock jail where his friends lay. He knew the uselessness of an attempt to free them, even were it successful. He had only followed his instinct when he killed Saul Hopkins. He felt neither remorse nor exultation, only the grim satisfaction of a necessary job well done. His nature was exactly that of the old-time feudist, who, when pushed beyond endurance, killed his man, took to the hills and fought it out with all who came against him. Eventual escape did not enter his calculations. His was the grim fatalism of the old time gun fighter. He merely sought a lair where he could turn at bay. Otherwise he would have stayed and shot it out with the Bisley police.