Why Not You and I?

SIGN OF THE SALAMANDER

By Curtiss Stryker With an Introduction by Kent Allard

One seeks hard with Curtiss Stryker for a mot juste. Let us say that he was an enigma to all, perhaps most of all to himself.

While many of the pulp writers of the 1930s had survived improbable and checkered pasts before merging their careers into fiction, Curtiss Stryker begs the extreme. Sailor, soldier-off or tune, gunrunner, World War I hero, aviator, bootlegger, big-game hunter, member of a dozen secret cults: If even half of his boasts were true, it would be too much for any one man — to say nothing of a writer who drifted from the pulps into hackwork obscurity. And yet…

Stryker brought a distinct and convincing verisimilitude to all genres in which he wrote, present through the excesses of the pulp formula and the demands of deadlines. A fellow pulp writer once remarked: “Sure, I’ve never been to Asia or Africa even though I write yarns about those places. I’ve never been to Hell, either — but I still write about it. ” With Curtiss Stryker one wonders.

This is most evident in Stryker’s best known work, a series of stories involving the battles of occult investigator, John Chance, against his evil counterpart, Dread, master of black magic. These episodic novellas (billed, as the pulps liked to do, as “A Complete Novel In Every Issue!”) began in the January 1934 issue of Black Circle Mystery and ran monthly until that pulp folded in June 1936. Part of the notorious Black Circle Publishing Group, Black Circle Mystery was not one of the higher paying pulps, nor did the series begin to attract the readership of such character pulps as Doc Savage, The Shadow, or The Spider. Nonetheless, John Chance vs. Dread was one of the longer-lived minor pulp series, and the stories eventually acquired a cult following among pulp collectors. “Sign of the Salamander,” the first episode of the series, is here reprinted for the first time.

The novella is typical of the series, displaying the eccentricities of Stryker’s style. One senses immediately that he is striving to break away from the confines of the pulp formula, all the while restrained by the editorial considerations of his day.

An author is invariably accused of identifying with his characters — of projecting his idealized self-image into his heroes. I rather think that both John Chance and Dread were a part of Curtiss Stryker — and I hesitate to believe that Stryker’s visions of Hell were taken exclusively from guidebooks.

— Kent Allard, author of

Drive-Thru Fiction,

The Futility of Awareness,

etc.

Fog hung like a dismal mask over the small mountain town. The headlamps of the Packard roadster poked yellow beams through the grey blanket, probing recklessly up the narrow road that climbed Laurel Mountain. The car scarcely slowed as it reached the gap that enclosed the town of Dillon, and its headlights picked out the main street with its double row of storefronts.

Its cream finish ghostly in the mist-hung night, the powerful roadster moved past the darkened storefronts, many with windows boarded and an NRA eagle peering from the murky panes. A few lights shone from outlying houses, and on ahead a big puddle of light spread out from a pair of gas pumps. The Packard braked and pulled into the station.

The stenciled lettering on the dusty windows read Martin’s General Merchandise and below that, in a different stencil, & Service Station. It was past ten o’clock, but this one place of business remained open. Half a dozen overalled patrons lounged about the pair of benches that flanked the screened doorway, chewing tobacco and furtively passing a quart fruit jar whose contents warded off the late evening chill. They watched with careful curiosity as the Packard drove up. Behind the storefront windows, other blurred faces craned inquisitively.

The roadster looked sleek and new and expensive. Despite the chill mountain air, its top was down, suggesting it had been driven hard up from the summer heat of the lowlands that evening. A girl reclined easily on the leather cushions of the passenger side, looking sleek and expensive herself with a fox fur wrap drawn over the trim shoulders of her summer frock. Blonde hair was marcelled beneath a white beret, and there was a pleasant windblown effect that offset her patrician features. The driver was a dark, athletically built young man with that sort of tan that makes one think of tennis courts and swimming pools. He wore casual evening dress, but was hatless. Leisurely he stepped down from the car, tossed his coat over the seat and stretched taut limbs.

“Evening, folks.” A heavy-set figure emerged from the screened door. “Can I help you?”

“A tank of ethyl for the car, if you please,” the driver told him. “And some information for me.”

The attendant busied himself with the pump. “Sure. What can I help you all with?”

“You got a phone in here?”

“Got a public phone there at the back.”

“A gentleman phoned Knoxville from there this afternoon,” the young man explained. “Asked to speak with John Chance. Very important, he said.”

“Well, it’s a public telephone, but there’s a door on the booth,” the attendant said testily.

“The fellow said he was calling from Martin’s Store,” the other continued. “Said he’d meet us here tonight. Said his name was Cullin Shelton. We had rather a late start, so I wondered whether he’d grown tired of waiting. Perhaps I might phone him, if he’s not here now.”

“That’s two-fifty,” said the attendant, cutting off the pump. “Shelton was around here most of the evening, Mr. Chance. I reckon he’s gone back to his place over at the hotel by now, seeing as he’s not here.”

“And which hotel is that?”

“There’s only one, the Dillon Hotel,” replied the other with ponderous patience. “On down the street there’s the sign.”

“Then I’ll go look him up.”

“Doubt you’ll get much use out of that,” the attendant advised. “Shelton was hitting it pretty hard all day.”

“Well, he said it was important,” said the driver, climbing back into the roadster. He cranked the engine.

“Must be to make you all drive all this way from Knoxville,” hazarded the beefy proprietor.

“Good night.” The Packard slipped smoothly into gear and rolled away from the pumps. The idlers at Martin’s Store watched it drive away with cool appraisal.

“I wonder if we should have phoned,” suggested the girl, speaking in a faintly accented voice.

“Oh, leave it to me, Kirsten,” her companion assured her. “It was worth the wild-goose chase just to get away from the muggy heat of the city.”

“The way they watched us…” she began. “There’s evil here.”

“Rot. Mountaineers are a close-lipped lot. Did you see them hide that moonshine when we drove up? Good job you were along, or they’d have marked me down for a revenuer.”

“I rather think we should have waited — or phoned,” she persisted.

“But you were the one in so great a hurry. Hello — here it is.”

The Packard turned in before a two-storey structure of dark mountain stone. A sign out front of the wide veranda said Dillon Hotel and Vacancy. Only a few lights burned in the shaded windows.

“Honeymoon Hotel, here we are,” laughed the driver.

“Oh, stop it.” Penciled brows drew in a frown of annoyance. She peered anxiously at the darkened hotel to her right.

A lean figure suddenly lurched forth from the shadows of the porch, overturning a rocker with a startling crash. He shambled across the veranda, half-fell down the wide steps to the ground. He wore surveyor’s boots and field dress, and a canvas coat that flapped about his gaunt frame. Supporting himself against the banister, he stared back at them through red-rimmed eyes.

“John Chance.” Raw whiskey wafted along with his hoarse whisper. “John Chance — is that you?”

“Are you Mr. Cullin Shelton?” demanded the other man smoothly.

“Oh, God!” the drunken man moaned. “Let’s get away from here!” He staggered across the walk for the car.

“Now see here, old fellow!” protested the driver, as the girl shrank away from the door. “Can’t we talk right here?”

“No!” A bony hand fumbled for the door latch. “Let’s get away!”

The night mists flickered with a sudden, eerie glare — like heat lightning behind distant clouds.

Shelton screamed and fell back from the running board. “Too late!” he bawled in terror. “Get away!”

The light flickered again — closer, more intense — dazzling their eyes like a magnesium flare. Its sudden brilliance made the fog opaque, blinding them. And with the white glare, a sudden hiss like escaping steam.

Shelton had started to run. Now he recoiled, screaming hideously. “No, Dread! No!” He fell back against the car.

The girl screamed as the man’s flailing arms hooked over her door, his face turned toward them — sagging below the level of the sill as he crumpled.

His hands were shriveled stumps, the flesh of his face seared and shrunken to his skull — charring and peeling even as they watched. Cullin Shelton was being burned to a crisp in the passage of seconds, before their horrified gaze — but his clothing was untouched, nor could they feel a trace of the intolerable heat that was burning flesh to cinder in a matter of seconds.

The scream rasped silent as vocal cords seared and cracked. The nightmare face and blackened arms fell away from the sill, trailing a sooty smear down the cream finish of the door. Then the Packard was tearing away from the curb, and Shelton’s corpse was flung aside like a smouldering scarecrow.

The Packard roared headlong down the steep slope of Laurel Mountain, and the town and its horror vanished into the mist. Tires moaned as the heavy roadster skidded dangerously on the sharp curves. The driver’s tanned face was set in a pallid grimace of unreasoning fear.

“John! For God’s sake, slow down! We’ll be killed!”

The girl’s sharp exclamation broke through his panic, and he braked the car’s suicidal speed. “God! Sorry, Kirsten!” he murmured shakily. “That — that thing back there — God! That’s the worst scare I’ve had in my life! Didn’t stop to think what I was doing!”

He slowed the car to a near crawl, searched the fog-hidden shoulder of the road.

“What are you doing?” she asked uneasily. “Help me find a place to turn around,” he told her, his voice steadier. “We’ve got to go back.”

“Why?” she demanded in a note of panic. “There’s nothing we can do for that man.”

“Of course not, poor devil. But we were witnesses — and we’ve got to warn the rest before someone else dies like that.”

“But what happened?”

His self-assurance was returning. “Electrocuted, of course. Had to be. Maybe a freak lightning discharge — St. Elmo’s fire or something like that. But probably there’s a high-power line come down there or something of the sort. Poor drunken fool blundered into it trying to run from his pink elephants, and we were in too great a funk by it all to realize what was happening.” He pulled the Packard onto a turnout.

“I don’t want to go back there,” the girl said resolutely.

“Well, I’m not relishing it myself,” he muttered, starting to back the car.

“No! There’s danger there you don’t understand!”

“Rot, Kirsten. Stop acting like a frightened child.”

The mist shimmered with a blue-white glow. Kirsten screamed.

“More lightning!” he growled, hitting the accelerator. The roadster slung gravel and lurched back onto the roadway.

Lambent flame in the mist ahead of them — harsh incandescence that burned through the fog. Floating on the white-opaque mist — a pair of eyes, glowing like white-hot steel. Materializing in front of them — an obscene phantom of flame — a fantastic lizard-shape. Its jaws gape wide — a sudden shrill hiss…

The driver howled in death-agony, throwing stumps of hands in front of seared and blackened face.

The Packard hurtled from the road — snapping the guardrail. The cacophony of splintered trees, smashing boulders, and tearing metal drowned out all else and seemed to go on forever.

In a rundown stucco cottage in Vestal, Compton Moore sat with a glass of absinthe in one hand and a Luger in the other. He considered the tall glass with its opalescent liqueur, then the cold black automatic with its walnut grips. It was fitting, he thought, with that somber and poetic introspection that comes upon a man late at night and deep in drink.

Yes, it was all entirely fitting. Vestal, unwanted stepchild of Knoxville, half-caste bastard community the city would not annex, instead grew around and ignored. This tawdry house, part of a cheap suburban development project that went bust in the Depression along with everyone else. Half the houses remained unfinished in their gullied and weedgrown lots, shunned even by vagrants. This one had been finished — a shabby stucco eyesore of what the developers had called variously Roman or Moorish architecture, and named the rutted dirt lanes things like “Via Roma” or “Castille Lane.” The shoddy structure was already falling apart, going the way of all bright and glittering dreams.

And here he sat in a broken-springed chair, in a dirty room with crumbling plaster and threadbare fake-oriental carpet. His blond hair turned prematurely thin, a stained lounging jacket covering an athletically slim frame that had gone softly to seed. Only these two objects had substance and reality: Absinthe, that slow, insidious poison, a taste for which he had cultivated in the old days of wealth and refined decadence. The Luger, sleek and deadly, all that remained of his days of courage and glory, a winged knight fighting the Hun dragon in the skies of France to win the war that would end all wars.

God, but wasn’t it fitting! “Dulce et decorum est…” he quoted to himself, taking another long sip of absinthe. A witchery of distilled dream in the bitter, heavy sweetness of anise perfume. With practiced ease he pressed the magazine release catch of the Luger, examined the clip with its eight 9 mm. cartridges, replaced the magazine. One would be enough; he wouldn’t miss.

His shadowed blue eyes again stared at the evening News-Sentinel, lying crumpled on the dirty carpet beside his chair. At this distance his vision was no longer keen enough to read beyond the headlines, but he had long since committed every word to memory.

FIERY CRASH CLAIMS NOTED

OCCULTIST AND FIANCÉE

Dillon, N.C. The brilliant career of noted occultist, John Chance, ended tragically yesterday in a late night auto crash not far from this small mountain community. The tragedy also claimed the life of Miss Kirsten von Brocken, Dr. Chance’s fiancée and research assistant.

There were no witnesses to the crash, which local authorities estimate to have occurred shortly before midnight. Apparently Chance, who was driving Miss von Brocken’s late model Packard, lost control on a curve and plunged down the steep mountain slope. While thick fog delayed discovery of the accident for several hours, local authorities state that the couple was killed instantly. Their automobile was totally demolished and the bodies burned beyond recognition. Identification was made from personal effects.

Chance, 37, was a native of Knoxville who spent much of his life abroad. Prior to America’s active entry in the World War, he flew for the R.F.C. and was credited with 18 victories before crashing behind lines. Reported dead, he survived German prison hospitals to escape shortly before Armistice. In 1920, sole heir to the Chance estate, he liquidated his family’s extensive holdings in the munitions industry with the avowed intention to devote his life and fortune in the study of the underlying causes that drive men to make war. In the years of globetrotting that followed, he earned doctorate degrees in Anthropology and Psychology, and studied in numerous prestigious universities and institutes. He was considered one of the world’s foremost authorities in the esoteric realms of parapsychology and legitimate occult phenomena, as well as a scholar of folk myths and superstitions. He was the author of several books, among them Supernatural or Paranormal? and The Veil of Superstition.

Miss von Brocken, 30, was the daughter of an ancient and distinguished Prussian house. She became a naturalized American citizen following the recent move to the political forefront of National-Socialism in Germany. Miss von Brocken, considered herself to have significant clairvoyant abilities, had for several years assisted Dr. Chance in his research. The couple met in Berlin while Dr. Chance was studying there and had traveled extensively. They only recently had returned to Knoxville to announce their engagement.

Funeral arrangements are incomplete.

Moore took another long sip of absinthe, letting its licorice fire blaze through his senses. Yes, incomplete, he thought with a bitter smile. But not for long. He glared at the newspaper photo of Chance, standing big and uncomfortable in dinner dress, with Kirsten on his arm, a poised blonde goddess in her daring black evening gown. God, why had he stayed in Knoxville…

He set aside the tall glass, gripped the knurled knobs of the Luger’s toggle joint in his free hand, pulled back sharply and released — watching the gleam of brass as the 9 mm. cartridge was driven into the firing chamber. Geladen.

Moore recovered his glass and grimly considered the loaded automatic. He remembered the day he had claimed the Luger from the broken body of the Fokker pilot whose triplane he had sent spinning broken-winged to earth on the Allied side. Kill number ten for him. He and Chance had gotten gloriously drunk.

What friends they had been — two idealistic scions of American industrial wealth, off on a lark to destroy the Hun — before the War changed them both. He remembered the shock of their reunion after Chance had crawled through Hell to escape from that German prison hospital. It was a haggard, demon-haunted John Chance who had returned from that ordeal — a driven man, obsessed with half-mad theories and vaguely hinted-at memories of his experiences. Moore in those intervening months had followed his natural talents toward dissipation, and in the whirl of alcohol, drugs, and women was scarcely bothered with the knowledge that for him killing had become the greatest thrill of all.

Strangely, they had not drifted apart entirely after the war. While Chance went from university to university, and Moore squandered his family fortune in the casinos and vice dens of the world, their paths occasionally crossed. So it was in Berlin in 1929.

Moore had been drawn to Berlin by the splendid decadence of that city’s frenzied bacchanalia, where the vices of the old aristocracy and the new intelligentsia promised surcease from even his ennui. Chance had gravitated there in his peripatetic quest from one intellectual center to another, searching for answers that seemed forever hidden. It was Moore who introduced Chance to Kirsten von Brocken.

The Grafin von Brocken had a wide circle of admirers, of whom Compton Moore was perhaps most ardent. She was a spiritualist, a crystal-gazer — whose aristocratic beauty was all the more sensational for the aura of mysticism in which she cloaked herself. Men hovered mothlike about her presence when she appeared at the cabaret or theatre, at Bohemian revels or dinner parties of the social elite. With that hint of notoriety that guaranteed social triumph, the Grafin had conquered Berlin that summer, and to be permitted to attend a séance at her apartment was an honor jealously sought after by the blood and chivalry of the city.

Moore had spent many long summer evenings hovering near the Grafin’s flame. Did she love him? She invited; she retreated — as with all the others. He was certain he was in love with her. All of her admirers, after all, were in love with her — from stolid old General von Hoffmannsthal to that consumptive Austrian artist Meier.

Then a sudden encounter with John Chance, and in a gush of enthusiasm Moore had described Kirsten and invited him along to a séance. Chance went along solemnly skeptical, came away thoughtful and impressed. She and Chance saw more of one another thereafter, soon to the exclusion of Kirsten’s previous admirers — Moore as well.

The summer burned away. Chance was a fascinating man and could speak with calm authority on esoteric and recondite matters wherein he and Kirsten shared interest. Moore never learned who it was that told Kirsten about the Luger and holster where dark stains could still be seen of her brother’s blood.

Eventually frantic telegrams from the States had forced him back to Knoxville to give belated attention to his family investments. The Crash did its work too well for his distracted and incapable management. Enough remained to keep him out of the bread lines, but not much more. Ten years of frenzied dissipation had left him with a legacy of debts and bitter memories. Work was out of the question, assuming employment were available — or that he desired it. Moore was a first-rate combat pilot, but other than his wartime experience the closest he had come to working for a living involved no more physical effort than the clipping of stock coupons.

The contents of his safe deposit vault and the sale of family property had allowed him to drift along for a few years—“a gentleman of the world in reduced circumstances.” From time to time he received a letter from old acquaintances, read an item in the papers — enough to know Kirsten von Brocken and John Chance had not outgrown their fascination for one another. When Chance recently returned to Knoxville with news of their engagement, Moore had not troubled to call upon them.

Well that was all over with now, too. Moore drained the last swallow of the pungent liqueur. He reflected that he had gone on living these last few years solely from inertia anyway — that and the faint hope of the gambler that his luck would change. It hadn’t.

He tossed the empty glass at the living room’s non-operable fireplace. As he raised the Luger to his temple he wondered if the pistol’s former owner would rest more easily in his grave knowing his weapon had at last avenged him.

Moore pulled the trigger.

The blast was deafening in the small room, but he never fully heard it. The high-velocity jacketed slug tore through his right temple, barely expanding as it pulped his brain and blew out the left side of his skull. The Luger recoiled from nerveless fingers, as the shock of the bullet flung him sidewise in the overstuffed chair, sprawling him in a heap on the rug.

From a disembodied vantage he seemed to look down over his corpse — blood and gore matting the thin blond hair, the pale blue eyes staring dreamily at nothing, the aquiline features set in a startled grimace, the long-limbed frame sprawled ludicrously half in and half out of the chair, soaking the red carpet with a darker stain. It looked very little like the alert, rangy young man in aviator’s togs who smiled down from the old photograph on the mantel.

The door swung silently open. Silent as a shadow, a figure entered. A man dressed entirely in black. Unhurriedly he crossed the shabby living room, looked down at the grotesquely sprawled corpse.

“Get up,” the figure commanded.

Compton Moore picked himself up, slumped back in the chair — stared at the figure in fear. “Are you death?” he asked in an awestricken whisper.

“I am Dread.”

Shakily Moore raised a hand to his temple. There was no pain, no blood, no wound. In stunned bewilderment he stared at his uncanny visitor.

The stranger stood well over six feet in height and was clad solely in black from boots to turtleneck jersey. Powerful muscles flexed beneath the close-fitting garments, belying the silver-white of his combed-back hair and trim beard. His features were hidden behind a mask of black metal that concealed the upper portion of his face from high forehead to just below the cheekbone. The featureless metal mask reminded Moore suddenly of the robot’s face in that strange movie he had seen in Berlin—Metropolis. The mouth beneath the mask was thin-lipped, the bearded jaw almost pointed. Through slits in the mask, eyes so dark as to seem almost entirely pupil regarded him with unwavering intensity. Moore thought of a cat’s stare across a darkened room.

“I don’t understand,” Moore managed to stammer. “What’s happened? Who are you? I thought…”

The figure extended a black-gloved hand. The long fingers held out a small metallic object, gleaming like gold. It was a copper-jacketed 9 mm. slug, grooved from the rifling of a gun barrel.

Moore reached uncertainly for the bullet. The black fist closed over it, and a cruel laugh stopped his movement.

“That bullet killed you, Compton Moore,” came a mocking whisper. “Have you forgotten?”

“Killed…?”

“You no longer wanted your life, Compton Moore,” the derisive voice continued. “You threw it away. But I have use for your life, Compton Moore — and so I have claimed you.” Moore felt his brain whirling in a vortex of madness. He remembered — vividly remembered — the black despair, the decision, the gun against his temple, the shot exploding his consciousness into dissolving agony, the disembodied vision of his corpse… His fingers clutched the arms of his chair, clinging to reality.

“What are you!”

“But I’ve already told you, Compton Moore. I am Dread. And you are my creature.”

The masked face gazed down at him, lips drawn in a demonic smile. “You thought to die, but I forbade it. What you would cast away, I have claimed. You are mine, Compton Moore. You will obey me without fail — whenever and whatsoever I command. My will is yours and your life is mine, nor shall you again die except by my will.”

The gloved fingers held the grooved bullet before his swimming vision. “Through my power I have altered fate,” the sibilant voice continued. “Fate ordained that this bullet should blow out your pitiful brains. But the hand of Dread has halted fate and plucked the fatal bullet from its course. For so long as it is my will, this bullet shall remain in timeless limbo. For that space, Compton Moore, you shall live to serve me well.

“But listen well, Compton Moore! Fail to obey me — let your heart even think of rebellion — and this bullet will complete the fatal mission on which you yourself have sent it!”

A sudden flame of desperate rebellion stirred through him, and Moore recoiled like a cornered, terror-stricken animal. Clumsily he grabbed for the bullet. Satanic laughter mocked him, as the black-gloved fist checked his lunge with a numbing blow — and Compton Moore sprawled into oblivion.

A knocking at the door aroused him. Automatically Moore picked himself up, pulled his thoughts together. He ran his fingers unthinkingly through his disarranged blond hair — then with a start glanced at his hand. No — no blood, no gobbets of brain and shattered bone.

His head ached. The liqueur? Absinthe was treacherous. On the tile hearth lay the broken glass. The ice cubes were only starting to melt. Beside the chair lay the Luger. Its barrel felt warm. Shuddering, he dropped it into the pocket of his lounge jacket — not daring to check the clip.

The knocking persisted, more forcefully.

Dully he turned toward the door. Something rolled beneath his slipper. Something brass-bright. It was a fired 9 mm. Parabellum case.

“Oh, my God…” Moore swayed, caught himself.

The knocking was louder.

Like an automaton, Moore stumbled to the door. His mind refused to grapple with anything more than the need to answer that summons. He fumbled with the knob.

The door swung open. The full moon was bright in the yard.

John Chance stood on his threshold.

Compton Moore uttered a strangled cry, and the cold circle of the moon swung like a pendulum. He would have fallen — but John Chance leapt forward and caught him.

“Steady, old fellow!” muttered Chance, supporting him as he crumpled. “I’m sorry — I should have prepared you for the shock!” Like a bouncer with a belligerent drunk, he swung the loose-kneed man around and marched him to the chair he had just quit.

Moore collapsed where he left him — slumped in shock, his soul tottering on the edge of madness. Even the most ordered mind can endure only so much stress before fragmenting into gibbering insanity, and Moore had never been considered a stable personality. Without recognition, his staring eyes watched Chance fumble through the clutter of empty bottles about the liquor cabinet.

“Oh.” Moore heard his voice speak in slow tones of understanding. “Oh. So you’re dead too, John. Is Kirsten here with us?”

Chance looked up at him in sharp concern, finally found a passed-over bottle of cheap scotch and sloshed its oily contents into a dirty tumbler. Tennessee had never repealed the Prohibition, but from the array of bottles he saw that Moore was an old and valued customer of the area’s still thriving bootleggers.

“Here! Drink it down!” Chance held the full tumbler to the other’s lips, and Moore automatically gulped it down.

It must have been half paint thinner, but Moore drank it like milk. “Wouldn’t he let you die either, John?” he asked calmly — his voice steadier.

Chance emptied the dregs of the scotch into the glass, handed it again to Moore, who swallowed it without flinching. He lay back in the chair, closed his eyes and gave a shuddering sigh. “Is Kirsten coming in, too?”

But Chance had caught the scent of anise on his breath, noted the shattered tumbler with its spatter of melting ice. He examined the empty absinthe bottle. Opalescent dreams and green venom in 170 proof. He watched the raw scotch cut through its grey mists, wondering what madness lurked behind.

“I’m as alive as you are, Compton,” he began. Badly.

Moore caught his breath in a sob, not opening his eyes. “Am I alive, then?” he laughed bitterly.

Chance sighed wearily and dropped into a chair to wait. He was a big man, though it took a second glance to realize that — for his two hundred pounds were compactly distributed over his big-boned six-foot frame, hard muscle and sinew without apparent bulk. Too, he moved with the quick stride and gestures of a smaller, more wiry man, rather than the ponderous self-assuredness usually associated with strength and bulk. The suns and winds of seven continents and at least as many oceans had weathered his skin to a worn, leathery brown, flawed with sudden streaks of pale scar. His hair was black and straight and thick, and always seemed in need of trimming. His forehead was wide and intelligent despite the rawboned quality of his features. A second glance would also notice that the straight nose and square jaw were somehow not right, and a third glance might note the fine scars of reconstructive surgery. Deep-set eyes of startling blue were watchful beneath thick brows.

Moore’s breath came less ragged.

“I’m sorry. I wish I could have given you some sort of warning,” Chance repeated, judging that the sedative effect of the alcohol had finally dulled the shock. “Of course I’m still alive. The radio carried a late bulletin — I thought you would have heard. I’d have phoned, but you don’t have a line.” Looking about the dingy room, he didn’t see a radio either.

“I thought we were all dead,” said Moore, eyes still closed.

Chance cut him off. “Kirsten’s alive, too — at least I think she’s still alive!”

Moore’s eyes snapped open. “Alive?” he whispered.

“She’s in danger, Compton. Deadly danger. But I know for certain she didn’t die in that crash last night! Compton, you’ve got to help me find her!”

“I’ve got to help you?” Compton muttered thickly.

“There’s something at work here that I can’t attempt to explain to the police!” Chance pressed him, reaching out to shake him to alertness. “Something sinister — an evil whose nature and extent their workaday minds could never begin to grasp. They’d call me a madman or hophead — at best make routine and useless inquiries. Damn you, Compton — you’re the only man here I can turn to if Kirsten can be saved!”

With sudden strength, Moore pushed the other man’s hands away from his shoulders. “John, this is all moving just a little too fast for my brain, and even for a nightmare this is making no sense. Who is dead, then?”

“John Wingfield and some girl I can’t identify — but I know it isn’t Kirsten. And probably a mining engineer named Cullin Shelton was killed too.”

“I think you’d better start at the beginning,” Moore said, getting to his feet uncertainly. “There’s coffee in the kitchen. Who’s John Wingfield?”

“A friend from New York — or rather, a friend of Kirsten’s,” Chance amended, following him into the cramped kitchen-dinette. “I didn’t know him all that well. He was one of her former satellites — part of a mixed bag of old acquaintances we’d had down for the week for a homecoming-engagement party sort of affair.”

Moore boiled water. He remembered tearing the invitation into tiny fragments and burning them into fine white ash.

“Wingfield hung around awhile after the general festivities — still not giving up the chase, I suppose. But Kirsten knows so few friends here, and she enjoyed the attention. Yesterday I drove over to Cherokee to try to follow up some bits of Indian legend concerning the lost mines of the Ancients that are said to lie hidden in the mountains here. As luck had it, an afternoon shower left me mired to the door latches on some Godforsaken trail I had no business attempting by car. Eventually I hiked out to a phone, called Kirsten the news — then spent the evening and half this morning slogging the machine out to the road with a team of mules. I limped back to Knoxville by afternoon to learn I was supposed to be dead.”

Chance frowned and went on. “On my desk there was a quick note from Kirsten to the effect that a man named Cullin Shelton, a mining engineer, had phoned yesterday evening from Dillon. Sounded like he had his wind up, and he begged for me to drive over to meet him right away. Said he had the information I’d been asking around about. Kirsten thought it was important, and talked Wingfield into driving her up to Dillon in the middle of the night. Doubt it took much persuading him.”

Moore poured out black coffee into a pair of cracked cups. “And Wingfield drove off the road in the fog and killed them both,” he finished for him. “The car identified Kirsten, and with the connection what was left of Wingfield looked enough like you to fool some backwoods medical examiner.”

Not seeming to notice the scalding heat, Chance swallowed the sour java. “I drove up to Dillon as soon as I found out,” he stated. “That took some people by surprise.”

“I imagine.”

“The Packard was a total wreck, but it didn’t burn — not at the crash site. There was a lot of mashed-up rhododendron, but not a single scorched blossom on the slope. Oh, somebody had set fire to the wreck afterward — after it had been towed up the ridge — but the tank had punctured, and there was barely enough gas to peel the finish and scorch the upholstery.”

Moore refilled his cup. The coffee set his teeth on edge, but cleared his head. “I thought the bodies were burned beyond recognition.”

“They were.” Chance’s seamed brow furrowed at the memory. “The corpses looked like they’d been through an electric-arc furnace. Remember the poor burned devils we saw in the War? Remember how clothing cakes into the melting flesh and forms a sort of scab? Well, they’ve got some nice and clean charred clothing in the morgue there, but it still smells of the gasoline someone sloshed on the heap to ignite it. Hell — heat intense enough to burn bone to near ash — and there’s still sections of unmelted elastic left!”

Choking down a third cup of coffee, Moore felt his thoughts begin to steady. He forced himself to concentrate on Chance’s incredible account. “Electricity can play tricks like that,” he suggested. “I saw a man hit by lightning once — barely raised a blister on his skin, but he was charred meat inside. Did they hit a power line?” Chance swore. “That’s what the local constabulary said when I pointed out the discrepancy in the degree of incineration. And when I pointed out that there were no power lines where the car went over, they told me it must have been lightning. Lots of freak lightning in the hills this season, it seems.”

“Well, maybe it was lightning.”

“There’s too many things that still don’t follow. Like the identification of the bodies.”

“Well, surely with your logic you convinced them you weren’t one of the victims,” Moore commented acidly. His head was throbbing suddenly and his stomach was knotting itself.

“On going back over the crash site we found Wingfield’s dinner jacket with his billfold inside — must have had it off, and it flew off under the rhododendron when they rolled. That might have been an honest mistake in identification.”

“Kirsten?” Moore asked finally.

“The girl they say is Kirsten — well, there’s not much left to identify. Skull and jaw were completely crushed — forget dental work.” Chance drew a breath and thrust his hands in the pockets of his rumpled tweeds. “But they’d made a token effort at autopsy there. They’d opened the chest and abdominal cavities. Heat may char limbs to ashes and bone to cinder — but the internal organs maintain relative integrity. At least their positions don’t shift.”

Chance paused for understanding to light. Moore had been one of Kirsten’s intimate circle of friends, and this had been an amusement to her.

“Good lord!” Moore exploded in sudden awareness. “Kirsten had complete situs inversus! Her heart was on the right side of her body — she always thought it was a fine jest!”

Chance nodded. “This girl’s body had the heart on the left side. It was a blunder they couldn’t possibly have allowed for.”

“But why! Why this ghastly charade!”

“Because Kirsten is still alive — and she knows something important enough to kill for!” said Chance grimly. “Cullin Shelton ‘left town’ last night, no forwarding address. No one knows a thing. But there’s a sooty smear of burned animal grease on the curb in front of the Dillon Hotel where Shelton had his room. And wedged between the passenger door and the running board of the wreck I found this.” Chance tossed a knotted handkerchief to the kitchen table.

Gingerly Moore unwrapped it. Inside was a charred human finger — a man’s gold wedding band fixed into the cindered flesh.

“Wingfield’s?”

“Not hardly.”

Moore pushed the thing away. His stomach had endured enough.

Chance struggled to pull together the pieces of the puzzle for him. “Ever since I’ve been back I’ve been hearing vague hints of trouble in the mountains — strange things you can’t quite pin down. I wouldn’t have paid attention if it weren’t my life’s work to note and study the inexplicable and the unusual. Lately I’ve learned someone has been making serious efforts to learn the secrets of the lost mines of the Ancients. Sure there have been a lot of people interested in this legend — except there appears to be a sinister purpose behind this exploration. Shelton was a mining engineer hired by someone to delve into this matter. Shelton, I’m convinced, is dead.

“Cullin Shelton had something to tell me,” Chance counted it off. “Something important enough that he died horribly trying to tell it. He met Kirsten and Wingfield — they must have discovered something from him. So the thing killed again — whoever and whatever it is. But somehow Kirsten escaped. To prevent a search for her, someone went to a great deal of effort to make it appear she had died in the crash along with, supposedly, me.”

“But why haven’t you heard from Kirsten in all this time?”

Chance’s blue eyes smouldered. “Because she’s either trapped somewhere hiding from them — or else they’ve got her and…”

No need to finish that, assuming Chance’s logic, Moore reflected. “But why all this inhuman murder and mysterious plotting?” he protested. “Who would do it?”

Chance sighed and dug out a cheroot. “I suppose it’s time to try to tell you about a creature who calls himself Dread.”

Moore choked on a sudden rush of bile and collapsed on the floor.

Kirsten von Brocken pressed her slim body closer against the angle of the rock, staring back toward the direction of the sound. It had come from back upstream, an eerie ululation echoing down the boulder-strewn ravine. The small mountain stream along which she fled roared and rushed down its rocky bed, making it difficult to hear sounds of pursuit.

There — again. That uncanny howl, closer now at hand.

Kirsten shivered. Her bruised and weary limbs were barely capable of holding her erect after hours of clambering over rocks and tree trunks. She pulled herself further into the crevice of overturned boulders, knowing there possibly was no hope either of eluding or hiding from the thing that hunted her in the deepening twilight.

The night before was impressed in her memory with the blurred unreality of a nightmare.

The moment of horror on the mountain road — the salamander glowing in its elemental flame — John Wingfield’s hideous death as the fire-elemental turned its wrath on him. Kirsten’s inbred fear of fire made the terror of the crash dwindle in comparison — for she had escaped Wingfield’s fate by an instant when the Packard veered and hurtled from the roadway.

The heavy roadster had clipped the guardrail and pitched nose-first down the steep incline. A tree smashed into its hood almost instantly, overturning the Packard and sending it rolling and bounding over the rocky slope. That first collision threw Kirsten from the open car and into the dense thicket of rhododendron that covered the mountainside. The resilient tangle of rhododendron cushioned her impact as the car bounded and flung itself past her, narrowly missing her limp form. The girl’s head struck the soft earth with stunning force. Blackness engulfed her terror and pain, and she never heard the heavy car careen past her and smash itself into twisted wreckage down the slopes of the ravine far below.

After an indefinite space of deep blackness, Kirsten awoke to the sound of distant voices. Men’s voices, calling back and forth. Slowly she opened her eyes, trying to collect her thoughts. From instinct she remained still.

Her forehead ached terribly and she seemed bruised in every limb, but the thick branches of the rhododendron had broken her fall onto the dense leafmold of the hillside. Carefully she touched her fingers to her forehead. She winced. A branch had left a bad bruise there, but she was lucky she hadn’t broken her neck. Gingerly she moved her other limbs. She was sore, but no bones seemed broken.

Memory came back to her in a rush of horror. The salamander — was it…? But no. The night was chill and dark. No loathsome creature of flame sought her through its mists. The elemental had vanished, and instead men’s voices pierced the mists. Someone had found the wreck; they would help her.

Kirsten started to call out, but her voice felt too shaky for words. She paused a moment to compose herself — and had time to grasp the words of the unseen searchers.

“Chance is finished right enough!” someone shouted nasally from the slope far below. “What’s left of him is jammed against the steering column like a piece of shish kebab! No sign of the skirt though!”

“Sure she’s not in the wreckage?” another voice demanded, not too many yards from where she lay.

“Damn right I’m sure!” came the answer. “Ain’t nowhere in this heap of scrap iron she could be stuck! Ain’t even any blood I can see!” The nearer voice swore. “Then she must’ve been thrown out when they rolled. Bring your lights back up and look careful for the body. We got to find it before anyone else stops to see about that busted guardrail.”

“What if she’s still alive?” a third voice from below wanted to know. The new voice had a mountain twang.

“Bust her head in with a rock or something. If we go back and she’s still alive, Dread will feed us to that pet of his!”

Kirsten’s heart stopped at the sound of that name. These weren’t rescuers. They were some of Dread’s henchmen. And she had almost called out to them…

She had to get away. Already she could see the yellow beams of electric torches searching through the fog below. They were backtracking along the path torn through the undergrowth by the car’s plunge. The dense leaves and blossoms of the rhododendron thicket had hidden her unconscious body from them minutes before, but now they were searching carefully through the broken branches.

The afternoon rain had left the ground spongy and damp. No leaves cracked as Kirsten stealthily edged away from the path of the wreck. The twisted loops of rhododendron branches made a labyrinthine crawlspace beneath their dense outer foliage. As quickly as she dared, the girl slithered away beneath their shelter.

She could glimpse the murky figures of the searchers as they climbed toward her. She prayed that a chance beam of light wouldn’t pick out her white body beneath the leaves. Twigs tore at her silk frock, and in her haste branches shook and stones scraped as she wriggled to escape. It seemed impossible that they hadn’t heard her — but there were several men noisily stamping about along the slope, and the fog muffled her furtive movements.

“No sign of her!” the nasal voice bawled out, more distant now. She had made considerable progress through the sheltering underbrush.

“Well, she’s got to be here somewhere!” cursed the man who seemed to be in charge. His tone sounded round and soft. “Spread out and find her!”

Kirsten crawled several yards farther from the searchers. But now the rhododendron bank was thinning out, and in a moment she broke into open forest. Rising to her feet, she saw the lights of the searchers in the distance — perhaps a hundred yards away. It hurt to stand and her side ached, but fright dulled her pain. She only knew she must get away from this place and these men. Quickly.

Her heels catching in the loose soil, Kirsten fled stumbling down the mountainside. The night became delirium fraught with panic. In the thick mist she could only dimly see her way. Time and again an unseen root or clutching tree branch caught at her, sent her reeling to the ground. The agony in her skull throbbed ever more intensely, bursting to white pain each time she fell. Vaguely she realized that she was completely lost, that she ought to stop and make some effort to get her bearings, wait for help to come. But always she remembered who else sought her in the fog-hidden mountains, and fear sent her stumbling onward.

Until, finally, when she fell and tried to rise, her legs were too exhausted for terror to lend further strength. Gasping for breath, Kirsten had managed to drag herself into the cover of another rhododendron bank before consciousness left her.

She had lain there in a stupor until dawn. With daylight Kirsten awoke from her nightmare-haunted sleep to stare about her in confused fear. Memory returned, and with it the realization that she was totally lost in these desolate mountains where horror yet stalked her. The purling of a stream close by made her aware of her intense thirst. Unsteadily she hauled herself to her feet and made her way down the bank of rhododendron to the small stream that cascaded along the bottom of the ravine.

The tumbling stream was cold and clear as ice, and a thin mist hovered over it in the early morning light. Its rocky bed, a chaotic jumble of polished boulders and gravel, made a thousand tiny waterfalls and pools. Kirsten was reminded of her native Harz Mountains, as she knelt to suck in the crystal water.

Her body felt lame and sore, and she was covered with dirt and dried blood. Her green silk dress was stained and ragged, and somewhere in the night she had lost one shoe entirely and snapped the heel off the other. Kirsten grimaced at her reflection and splashed water on her bruised and grimy face. The cold water stung her skin and drove the clouds of night-horror from her hair. Quickly she pulled off her torn frock and lacy silk shimmy, kicked off her remaining shoe and peeled off her tattered stockings — then waded into the pool. The icy stream took her breath away as she briskly splashed about.

Moments later when she stepped out, her skin was numb and tingling, but she felt refreshed. Washed clean, her white figure was marred with purple-green bruises and livid red scratches. But she at least had a whole skin, Kirsten mused grimly — so far.

She felt a pang of sorrow over Wingfield’s hideous death, now that the shock of it was receding enough for thought of anything other than panic-sped flight. Poor Wingfield had been a persistent admirer, though she had never cared for him except as a social partner. Her expressed concern over Cullin Shelton’s phone call had spurred him to take over Chance’s role and investigate for her sake. In an indirect manner, Kirsten felt responsible for his death. But for the moment her own danger demanded full attention.

Making a bundle of her shredded stockings and broken-heeled shoe, Kirsten waded back out to hide them under a rock at the bottom of the pool. Shaking herself dry, she rested on a smooth boulder and finger-combed her short blonde hair — looking like a bobbed and battered Lorelei in the midst of the cascading stream. The morning chill covered her lithe body with goose-pimples, and the sun was driving off the mists. Again she remembered the wild forests of the Harz Mountains. It seemed impossible that a supernatural horror of another age could shadow the unspoiled freedom of this mountain wilderness… Kirsten knew otherwise.

She wriggled her silken shimmy onto her still damp skin, fastidiously brushed dirt and leaves from her torn frock before getting dressed. The rounded gravel bruised her bare feet, but there was no help for that. Someone had once told her that the thing to do when lost was to find a river or such and follow it downstream, as it would eventually go past some habitation. Having no other ideas, Kirsten had decided to put this advice to the test. Resolutely she began to make her way along the streambed.

The sun appeared over the tops of the trees, grew high overhead, then began its decline. Kirsten was exhausted and hungry, the soles of her tiny feet were bruised and sore from clambering over the rocks. Twice she had come upon major forks in the stream; once she took the left branch, next time the right. She must have wandered for miles along the streambed without catching sight of any sign of civilization.

Bleakly she had forced herself to keep moving, frequently wading along the shallows to throw off pursuit. If Dread suspected she had lived, Kirsten knew he would seek her. Chance had only begun to grasp the extent of Dread’s powers — only had recently found confirmation of his vague suspicions of Dread’s presence in these mountains. But Kirsten realized that if Dread were hunting her, it would take more than running water to hide her trail.

Her knowledge of American history and geography was spotty — learned from books rather than culturally acquired. She knew the southern Appalachians were a desolate region. The Depression had sent a good number of its inhabitants elsewhere in a hopeless search for security, and the Rockefellers had recently bought up vast stretches of the mountains to turn into a national park. While she was aware that marauding Indians no longer hunted white men here as they did in Karl May’s thrilling novels, nonetheless, it still was very possible to get lost in these mountains and never be found. And there were bears, probably mountain lions… Kirsten kept moving.

As twilight overtook her, the girl paused to rest her fatigued limbs. Each step had been agony for her stone-bruised feet. She had munched handfuls of blackberries from the thickets that grew along the streambed. Blackberries had been her only nourishment, and they barely assuaged her hunger. The sun had been warm on her shoulders, but now with twilight the chill mountain breeze was biting through her thin silk dress. Kirsten shivered and wished again for the lighter in her lost handbag. She hated fire, but right now a fire would have been welcome.

Then she heard the eerie howl, echoing along the rocky streambed. She froze in terror. The sound came from back along the direction she had wandered. Could it have been the wind?

Again the ululant cry, closer.

Desperately Kirsten forced her overtaxed legs to stumble a few score yards farther downstream. The pain of her feet made her gasp through clenched teeth. Her knees were rubbery with exhaustion. Flight was hopeless.

Dragging her fatigue-racked body into the damp shadow where two massive boulders leaned together, Kirsten waited in heart-stopping fear for her pursuer to appear.

The howling came closer. She could hear the crunch of a heavy tread on the polished gravel, approaching her refuge.

John Chance stood pensively gazing at Moore’s bookshelves, waiting for the other man to return. From the bathroom, sounds of dry-retching no longer grated, and he could hear water running in the sink. Chance drew down a thick black volume stamped in red and gold. He was paging through it when Moore returned.

“I see you have Guy Endore’s new translation of Hanns Heinz Ewers’ Alraune,” Chance commented. “Do you know Ewers?”

Moore found a cigarette and struggled to light it. His face was drawn and pallid, his lips a bloodless line. The hand that held the match shook a little, but his red-rimmed eyes were sober.

“I met Ewers socially in Berlin,” he answered. “At Kirsten’s mostly. We hit it off pretty well, but I wouldn’t call him a bosom friend.”

Chance nodded. “He’s a fascinating man — a genius, however twisted. We’ve talked together throughout the night a time or two. I’ve never been sure where the line between genius and madness lies with Ewers.”

He read aloud from the opening lines of Alraune:

“ ‘You cannot deny, my dear friend, that there are in existence creatures who are neither man nor beast, but strange unearthly creations, born of the nefarious passions that arise in distorted minds.”’

Chance thoughtfully closed the book and returned it to the shelf. “I’ve often thought of those lines,” he said, “as an apt portrayal of Dread.”

Producing a lighter from the pocket of his tweed trousers, Chance reignited the cheroot he’d set aside an hour earlier when Moore had collapsed. Harsh whiskey and strong colfee had first rallied his old friend’s sanity, then purged his benumbed senses. Chance judged Moore to be rational enough now, though not long ago he had conjectured whether or not this time the man had pushed himself past the brink.

But then, Chance reflected, he had himself been past the brink. And, after a fashion, he had returned.

“I don’t remember very much of the first few months after the crash,” he began, involuntarily rubbing his artist’s fingers over the hairline scars that seamed his face. “You were there when that Fokker dropped onto my tail out of the sun over the Somme. Ironically it was ground fire that did it for me — after I leveled off from the dive that tore the tripe’s wings off. I got hit over the trenches and went into a spin. Low. Full engine. Hit the mud like a shell going off. Reported dead.

“Instead I went out of the cockpit into mud hip-deep when I smashed. The Huns were amazed when they pulled what was left of me out of the slime and found I was still alive. It was novelty enough to rate evacuation from the field hospital to a special hospital deep in the Harz Mountains.

“Jerry was interested even then in ‘superior beings’—wondered what made a fellow tick who could survive all I’d been through. I won’t attempt to go into the things that were done — a lot of it I have no memory of myself, thank God! They rebuilt me from the scrap parts I was — stuck me back together, taking microscope slides and lab notes each step of the way. I suppose I should be grateful to those soulless doctors for saving my life. I’m not, really.

“There were others of us there — other ‘experimental subjects.’ I think most of them died — or I hope they did. I later learned that the Germans had destroyed all records of that hospital shortly before the Armistice.

“I became friends of a sort with one of my fellow inmates — a Dr. Gerhard Modred. I never learned all that much about his life before the War — we were all a bit distant and reticent. But I gathered he’d been an up-and-coming physician and researchist. Volunteered as a battlefront surgeon. Shells don’t recognize red crosses, and the Huns picked what was left of him up after a successful push.

“Dr. Modred was not one of their most successful reconstructions. I never saw him except with his upper face enswathed in bandages. I think he rather resented the fact that the surgeons used techniques perfected on such as him to reconstruct my own physiognomy.

“The hospital was in an old half-ruined castle — isolated in the Harz. The Huns didn’t want publicity. There were certain experiments… But I’d rather not dwell on it. Many of us died and were better so. It was somewhat like a transition back into the dark ages…

“Dr. Modred and I used to discuss this at length. Oh, they gave us some little freedom — liberty to bemoan our plight among ourselves. I’m certain none of us were ever intended to be released, regardless of the outcome of the War. Modred was an incredibly well-read, erudite person. In my sophomoric flush, I felt rather his disciple. Modred would go on for hours on his pet subjects. I always wondered how such a medievalist of Modred’s brilliance ever ended up in the area of medical research. Lord, the things we’d lie there in the darkness carrying on about — quite mad, most of it. Here in this hell-world of barbed wire, machine guns, poison gas, tanks, dysentery, aeroplanes, mud and patriotism and wholesale slaughter — Modred would rant on and on about a spiritual Hell: a Hell of actual demons and devils and elemental creatures and dark forces who shaped man’s destiny…

“‘Why talk of reason and free will!’ Dr. Modred would shout, ‘I’ll show you artists and accountants, Calvinists and drunkards, beggars and baronets — name the class and intellect — who’ll rise from vermin-infested trenches and march like puppets into machine gun and shell! Why? Why! Out of reason? Out of free will?

“‘Damn it, man! We are not creatures of reason and of free will! We are prisoners of nameless powers and hidden forces who move us about like chess pieces! What do they care of our suffering? With a yawn, they can scrap the whole board and begin the game anew!’

“As I say, we were all a bit mad there. Dr. Modred more so than most of us, perhaps. But I agreed with him — and that bound us together. For among these drudges, Modred and I had, in theory, volunteered to die for our personal ethical rationale. And neither of us was pleased with the blow our high aspirations had dealt us. When one seeks martyrdom, after having seen the pious smiles of the saints, it comes as a shock to see the reality of pain and death…

“So we were agreed on the insane injustice, the evil portent of it all. Man, we agreed, has little or no idea of the hostile cosmic forces that play with him. He believes himself to be rational, and his universe to be logical and bound by laws of science — but this is a lie. Mankind is but a struggling swimmer, perilously floating over a vortex whose depths and currents are beyond his comprehension.

“Modred and I were of like mind in these dark and pessimistic philosophies. And then we differed:

“I vowed to learn to understand these forces, so that I might combat them…

“Modred swore to do the same — so that he might control them.

“We escaped together one night… and separated. I never knew for certain whether Dr. Gerhard Modred survived the morass of mud and barbed wire and machine guns. Somehow I did make it through.”

Chance looked into the smoke of his cigar. After a moment he began again. “You know most of the rest. Later I became a student of the occult, of the paranormal — of the dark, undefined forces that move mankind and his world in defiance of all sane logic. The obsession drove me to strange places here and abroad, to study at the feet of madmen and geniuses. And as I searched through the shadows, I now and again encountered whispers of another demon-driven madman such as I — a sinister, masked creature who called himself Dread.”

Moore dragged on his cigarette and stared at him, listening in silence. He seemed to have aged a century that night — from the bitter, self-indulgent bon vivant who had sought death in the face of failure and self-pity, to a man cut adrift from all certainty who now clung to life with the hopeless tenacity of a castaway holding to his broken bit of wreckage in a growing hurricane. He had sought oblivion and found instead horror.

What wonder that his closest friend whom he had grown to hate had returned to him from the dead? What marvel that this man whom the world proclaimed a brilliant scientist talked to him now in sober tones of medieval witchcraft and elder sorceries, of creatures from time’s dawn and monstrosities of depraved science, of Carsultyal and Carcosa and those who dwelt there, of the Somme and Verdun and those who died there, of ancient grimoires and suppressed tomes of forbidden research, of fiends from blackest Hell and demons spawned by man himself.

The night was haunted with soulless horror, for Chance spoke to him of Dread. And Compton Moore could only listen and believe, for earlier he had examined the Luger’s magazine and found only seven bright bullets, and he knew that even in death there was no refuge from Dread.

The clatter of spurned gravel was a death-knell to her terrified senses. Kirsten bit her lips to stifle a scream. Polished bits of river gravel sifted down from on top of the boulder beneath which she crouched. Her keen nostrils caught an animal stench on the mountain air — then a sudden frantic scramble as something heavy slid down the smooth rock.

A black muzzle thrust into her refuge, foul breath and gnashing teeth inches from her cringing flesh. A fierce growling ululation deafened her. Kirsten screamed. The muzzle lunged closer.

Booted feet hit the gravel bar. “Hold him, Ben!” a hoarse voice yelled. “Hold him, boy!”

A beefy hand dragged at the Plott hound’s collar, pulling him back from the crevice. An unshaven face peered in at her. The eyes beneath the slouch hat were round and black and nearly as close-set as the double barrels of the ten-gauge shotgun whose muzzle replaced that of the hound at the opening.

“All right now!” The voice warned, undercutting the bearhound’s growl. “I reckon you’d best skin out of there!”

A human face was a relief to Kirsten — whose terror of the salamander outweighed all other fears. Friend, or one of Dread’s henchmen, mattered little in that instant of relief. The barrel of the shotgun gestured impatiently, and the girl obediently crawled out from her useless concealment.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” The mountaineer whistled — then hastily: “Begging your pardon, ma’am.”

Kirsten was glad at this touch of courtesy, for she was very conscious of the man’s open stare. Barefoot and tousled, the falling sun made witchery of her slim figure through the torn frock of thin green silk, as she emerged like a bedraggled woodsprite from beneath the boulders. The big mountain man, roughly dressed in flannel shirt, overalls, and boots, might have been an ogre from her native Harz Mountains. He could be worse than an ogre if so inclined, Kirsten reflected, grimly aware that this was a very lonely place.

But the mountaineer lowered his stare and touched his slouch hat in rough gallantry. There was a touch of grey in his slicked-back hair, and his face was big and square. “Begging your pardon for the fright I set you, ma’am,” he rumbled awkwardly. “I didn’t know what old Ben was onto.”

The bright black eyes studied her face. “Ma’am, I don’t allow as you’re any ghost since old Ben sure enough tracked you. But aren’t you Kirsten von Brocken?”

His puzzled tone reassured her. “Yes, I’m Kirsten von Brocken,” she smiled, pronouncing it “Kursten” as he did so as not to appear punctilious.

She stuck out her hand in the American fashion, and he clumsily shook it in his spade-like paw. The touch seemed to relieve his aloofness.

“My name’s Hampton Wells, Miss von Brocken,” he told her. “And I guess your folks’ll be pleased to know that you’re still alive, inasmuch as the papers all are saying you ain’t. Your picture’s in there right on the front page, though I don’t guess I’d of called your name right off if I hadn’t seen you drive up last night at Jack Martin’s store.”

Kirsten wondered who among the idlers he had been, puzzled at his talk of ghosts. “And I’m very glad you’ve found me, Mr. Wells. I’ve been hobbling about all day, quite lost. If there were search parties about, I’m afraid I wasn’t very helpful.”

There was shrewd intelligence in the eyes that studied her from beneath the hatbrim. “Weren’t no search parties, Miss von Brocken,” he said carefully. “There was sure enough two bodies found all burnt up in that wreck. They say one was John Chance and they say the other was you. Ain’t nobody been searching for you.”

He added: “Or nobody I guess you’d want finding you.”

Kirsten’s green eyes stared at him. She said nothing — poised like some wild creature uncertain which way to leap from the deadly danger she sensed was closing in upon her.

“There’s some mistake,” she stammered, knowing the evil that lurked behind the lies in the newspaper. “That wasn’t John Chance who was driving — it was a friend, John Wingfield. And there was no one else with us in the car…” Wells studied her for a long silent interval. The girl was in a frightened quandary. She was uncertain how much to confide. Would this stolid mountain man think her a raving fool if she dared be frank? Dared she trust him? And how much did Wells himself suspect of the evil that cast its dark shadow over these mountains?

Wells seemed to read her anxious thoughts. “Seems to me, Miss von Brocken,” he said gently, “like someone ain’t anxious that you be found. Maybe you know why that would be. I know about John Chance what they print in the papers, and I reckon could be a man like him would be interested in some of the things been happening around here lately.”

“Go on,” she prodded when he paused.

“Always assuming,” he carefully qualified. “But if someone didn’t want John Chance butting in on something… Well, I guess you could better tell me just what kind of accident that was last night, and maybe why hadn’t nothing been seen of Cullin Shelton since you went looking for him from Martin’s. So they pulled two bodies out of that wreck, and the sheriff is satisfied — but you tell me one wasn’t John Chance and you’re here to show the other one wasn’t you. Now then it follows that there’s someone who maybe don’t know that one of them ain’t Chance’s body — but who sure to God knows that the other one ain’t your body what was put there to find. And that somebody wouldn’t be planning on your showing up otherwise. And so, Miss von Brocken, you’d be well advised to take care just who you let find out you’re still alive…”

Wells waited to see the effect of his words.

Kirsten fought to keep her face a mask. “You are a detective, Mr. Wells,” she said with brittle levity. “To have guessed so much, you must know still more.”

A wide-armed gesture took in the darkening slopes. “This here’s Split-Fork Creek on Walnut Mountain, and it’s been Wells land ever since white folk settled. We don’t make a quarrel over what don’t concern us; the right sort know and respect us, and the wrong sort don’t trouble to call. We go about our business and the law don’t much come around.”

Kirsten nodded, but had not understood the inferences.

“So today I’m curious to know why there’s some folks using around these parts like they was sure enough hunting for something. I seen their tracks going up this ridge and down — and I’m here to find out who it is, and why they’re snooping around where they ain’t been asked.”

“You say there are men who search…” Kirsten demanded, losing her composure.

“That’s what I figured I was after finding out when Ben tore off tracking you,” Wells told her. “But now I’m thinking there’s something worse than revenuers poking about here.”

A low growl cut him short. The Plott hound’s nose snuffled the breeze that carried downstream. His hackles made a ridge along his thick, black neck.

“Miss von Brocken,” said Wells, “I think you’d best slip back behind that big twisty hemlock over yonder.”

They made their way confidently down the streambed. Three men, Kirsten saw from where she crouched behind the dead hemlock — three men and an ugly, black hound whose pointed snout hovered inches above the rocks. Two of the men wore outdoor clothing that looked like it had been recently purchased from a hunting goods store. The third wore faded overalls and looked skinny without any shirt; he carried a scoped hunting rifle that looked new. The hound was of a breed unlike Kirsten had ever seen. It was dark and shaggy and rawboned; its legs were too long and there was something repulsive about the way its joints splayed out to let it run close to the ground.

Then Hampton Wells stepped out from the shadow of a boulder and faced them, shotgun ready. They halted at his appearance, imperceptibly fanned out. The shaggy hound darted into the underbrush and vanished.

“Stand there, Ford Colby,” Wells called out. “And tell me where you stole that rifle, and what you’re doing on my land where you know you got a standing dare to set foot.”

They stood there in the mist-hung streambed with shadows deepening about them and cloaking the ridges in grey moss, and the clear water purling past their feet. Over the left of the ravine the full moon had risen and shone bright enough to turn the still pools silver. The two men in city-bought clothes glanced at the third, wanting him to show them how to play it. One looked plump and red-faced and slow; the other was tall and straight as a stiletto and wore a hat whose brim appeared wider than his shoulders.

“Now don’t you fret yourself none, Hampton,” inveigled the man addressed as Colby.

“We’re not fixing to bother about that still you’re running back up there on the ridge.”

“We’re hunters,” explained the red-faced man glibly. “We’ve hired Mr. Colby here as guide.” His was the soft voice she had heard giving orders last night, Kirsten recognized with a sick chill — just as Colby’s had been the mountain twang that had answered from below.

“Whatever it is you’re hunting, you’d best be doing your hunting on somebody else’s land,” Wells growled. He nudged the shotgun muzzle a fraction higher. His eyes never wavered from the rifle Colby cradled in his arms. “Now get on out of here the way you come.”

The thin man’s nasal voice cut like a knife. “Don’t deal in when you don’t know the stakes, redneck. This is none of your business.”

He started forward, but Colby warned him back. “That scatter-gun’ll cut you in half!” Wells declined to contradict him.

“Be reasonable, Mr. Wells,” argued the plump man, who seemed to know the mountaineer’s name. “We’ll gladly pay for the unintended trespass.”

“Don’t want your money,” Wells grated. “Just get off my land. Right now.”

The tableau held for a breathless interval — tension straining to an unendurable silent scream.

Beside Kirsten’s place of concealment something rustled in the rhododendron thicket. She tore her stare away from the impasse in the streambed. A few feet from where she crouched, the heavy foliage parted. A pointed, yellow-fanged muzzle poked through the long waxy leaves and pink blossoms. Eyes large and round as an owl’s stared back at her.

Their hound… thought Kirsten. Then the animal raised itself on its hindlegs, and she saw that it wasn’t a hound. Its front paws were spade-nailed and long-toed, and they gripped the branches like hands to push them aside. The possum muzzle grinned to show double rows of sharp-pointed teeth.

Kirsten’s nerve broke in that instant. A frightened cry escaped her tight-pressed lips.

Then a sudden rush from the other side of the dead hemlock trunk, and Ben launched himself for the creature’s throat. The bearhound struck the animal like a black thunderbolt of muscle and snarling fangs, driving it back into the rhododendron bank. Floral branches lashed to hide their combat.

In that same instant Kirsten’s sharp outcry broke the tableau, as heads jumped toward the sound. Colby saw his chance and jerked his rifle into line.

The blast from Wells’s ten-gauge thundered in the ravine. Colby squawled like a stepped-on toad and flipped a broken somersault — the rifle flung from his grip by the charge of leaden shot that caved in his chest.

Already the thin man had jerked a.45 Colt automatic from the holster at the small of his back. His shot ricocheted wild as the second shotgun blast caught him at beltline. The ten-gauge was long-barreled and full-choked, and Colby had not exaggerated.

Echoes walloped and rolled down the stream-bed, and in the moonlight the silvered water showed tarnish.

The plump man was slower than he looked. It saved his life. On the far side of the stream only a few pellets spattered past him. The.45 Colt New Service he’d dug out of his waistband looked too big for his chubby fist. His round face was cruel and colorless from the close brush of death.

“That’s both barrels, redneck,” he sneered, raising his revolver. “Want to try to reload?” Brandishing the empty shotgun, Wells stood on the blood-tainted water, waiting for death.

“You can live if you just show me where you got her hid, redneck,” the fat man hissed. “You know who I mean. We all heard her yell. Just call her to come out.”

Wells gauged the distance to cover, didn’t like the odds. “You can go right to hell,” he told him.

The plump face twisted in a grin. “First one goes right through your belly button.”

“Wait! I’ll come out!”

The big revolver didn’t waver from Wells’s midriff, but he shot a glance in the direction of the sound. The fat man’s grin grew broader. From the hound’s angry baying, fast growing distant, he judged that Dread’s stalker had fled — and he knew his chances of finding the girl by himself in the gathering darkness were nil. The chance that she was still close enough to see her defender’s plight — and would be fool enough to think her surrender could save him — was all that had kept Wells alive for a few minutes longer.

“That’s smart, sister,” he barked. “Come on over here with your big friend.”

The full moon bathed the water with silver light. Too bright, thought Wells, blinking his eyes. The water cascaded in droplets of bright silver, the rushing stream was a torrent of silver light, the quiet pools were vast mirrors of blinding silver-white. He wanted to shout to the girl to run, not to throw her life away in a useless effort to save his. His head felt dizzy. The words would not come.

“Here I am,” sang Kirsten, stepping into the moonlight. “Come to me.”

She had slipped out of her clothing. Her body was silver-white in the moonlight as she stood at the edge of the stream. Her eyes were a lambent green glow.

“Come to me,” Kirsten purred. “Come to me.” Her smiling lips were red as blood, and her teeth were white and sharp.

The pudgy face went slack. The hand with the revolver drooped. Vacant-eyed, the man took a step toward her. Another step. His feet reached the edge of a deep, silvery pool. He stumbled forward woodenly, like a sleepwalker — except the icy water would awaken any sleeper.

“Come to me,” Kirsten crooned.

The water rose over his waist. He staggered as his feet groped over the uneven bottom. He reeled drunkenly.

There must have been a deep hole, or maybe he lost footing on the slippery-smooth boulders that pieced together the streambed. The fat man staggered another step, and suddenly the water was up around his double-chin. Silver water ran into his gaping mouth.

It couldn’t have been silver-white arms that rose from the water to embrace the gunman, to drag him under in a sudden swirl of ripples… It was only a trick of the moonlight, Wells told himself. Silver-white moonlight reflecting on the drowning man’s splashes. Ripples raced across the pool for a moment. Then the silver-white mirror was smooth once more.

Wells shook his head, blinking the moon-dazzle from his eyes. Mists trailed down over the ridges, night was deepening in the ravine, and it was a very ordinary full moon that shone its pale light on the two gory bodies sprawled over the polished boulders. Of the third gunman there was no trace.

Kirsten touched his arm and Wells jumped. But she was dressed in her tattered frock and looked like a smudged woodsprite, and not a silver-white Lorelei whose consuming beauty was deadly sorcery.

“Are you all right?”

Wells shook his head. Had it been a dream? Not likely. “What — what was that!” he managed to reply.

“Call it hypnotism, Mr. Wells,” the girl told him. “A very old form of hypnotism — but I think you’d better just call it hypnotism.”

Wells shrugged, his self-presence returning. “Lady, I’ll call it whatever you say, because I don’t rightly know what else there is to call it. And, because I’ve seen some other things in these hills that it’s best you just put some scientific name on it, and let the matter rest without thinking on it.”

“Like that — that teufelhund—that hound-thing they were stalking me with?”

Wells broke open his shotgun, extracted the spent shells and replaced them with two new ones from his pocket. “Did you get a close look at it, then? Well, as to that, Miss von Brocken, let’s just say it was a kind of hound most folks never see — and thank your lucky stars they couldn’t use the thing until it got dark enough for its eyes to stand being out in places where it don’t normal belong.”

The Plott hound loped back to join them, sniffed the corpses curiously. His black fur was streaked in places with blood, but from his evident satisfaction not all of it was his own.

The mountaineer whistled to him, closed the shotgun with a snap. “Guns can fight guns,” he mused, “and teeth can fight against teeth. I may look like a ignorant old hill-billy to you, but I was a sergeant overseas in the War, and I still read books and the papers. I can make sense out of words like ‘clairvoyant’ and ‘occult research’ and maybe read between the lines of what they print about such things.”

Kirsten looked at him expectantly. “And so.”

“And so I reckon I can guess why this fellow Dread is so hot after killing you and John Chance first chance he gets,” Wells said. “And now that we’ve said what we’re both of us fighting against, we’d best be getting up to my place and think about what we’re going to have to do next. These boys here can wait till morning, but I got a feeling Dread won’t.”

“No,” said Kirsten. “He won’t.”

Chance’s Duesenberg SJ bored into the night. Slumped in the seat beside him, Moore felt the wind rush past them. Its cool blast whipped over the windshield, reviving him fully from the horror and shock he had endured earlier. The lighted clock on the dash read not much after ten.

God, was that all the late it was! It seemed to Moore that it must be close to dawn. Would this night ever end? For him, perhaps not…

Was he mad? Surely this was madness. It was all a dream of absinthe and hashish. Doubtless Chance could explain it to him, but then Chance too was possibly part of the dream. But his head throbbed with the surge of the SJ’s powerful supercharged engine, and his knotted stomach cringed each time Chance took a curve or dip at daredevil speed. If he could feel pain and cold, sickness and fear, then he must be awake — and alive.

The suicide? Moore pushed it from his thoughts, or tried to. He was alive, therefore he had not killed himself that evening. Cogito ergo sum, or perhaps the reverse, and damn the fired cartridge. If his suicide had all been a mad nightmare, then why trust his memory as to the number of bullets in the clip? Or maybe he’d fired the gun unconsciously under the spell of absinthe, and tomorrow he’d find a small round hole in the floor or wall. Absinthe is a strange liqueur, and God knows his nerves were strained beyond endurance…

But the appearance of Dread — had Dread been a part of the nightmare? And how could that be? Until less than an hour or so ago, Compton Moore had never heard of this uncanny creature. Even now he scarcely knew whether he dared believe the fantastic tale John Chance had unfolded. Call it prescience? Chance perhaps could explain that too; it would interest him. Moore thought about telling him, decided against it. He couldn’t think why. Another time he’d tell him.

Chance’s insane tale. Somehow Chance had dragged him back from the black abyss of horror and despair, sobered him up, stuffed him into his unpressed linen suit, flung him still dazed into the seat beside him. Now he tore along with Chance at a suicidal clip on a madman’s mission to save the woman he had loved for the friend he hated. All because of Chance’s insane tale…

“You’re the only man I can rely on to help me in time!” Chance had argued. “The local police are either fools or under Dread’s influence! By the time I could convince the state or federal authorities to start an investigation, it will be too late to save Kirsten! It’s been almost twenty-four hours since the wreck, and there’s still no word from her — she’s in deadly danger if she’s still alive at all!”

And thus Moore let himself be dragged into the night. Chance’s plans were at best sketchy. Mainly he wanted someone he could trust to back him up in a dangerous game. Just how dangerous, Moore was only beginning to realize.

The Duesenberg sped down Cherokee Boulevard and slewed into the drive of Chance’s sprawling Tudor estate. Chance meant to gather together such supplies and paraphernalia as he deemed of possible use to them, before setting out for Dillon that night. He knew enough already to realize that Dread’s hold over the mountain region was deeply rooted and insidious — presumably reaching into levels of local government. If Kirsten still lived, Chance reasoned, then she must either be Dread’s captive or else lost somewhere in the wild desolation of the mountains. Either way, it was a question first of finding her — and that meant personal search and investigation.

“Any word?” demanded Chance, as Reynolds, his majordomo, met them at the door.

“No word from Miss von Brocken, sir,” the hulking red-haired butler informed him. “Good evening, Mr. Moore. How good to see you here once again.”

Moore nodded. “Evening, Reynolds. Been a few years, hasn’t it.” He glanced around. There were changes — mostly exotic souvenirs of Chance’s travels that had replaced the mansion’s staid Edwardian furnishings.

Reynolds followed them into the huge library that served as Chance’s study. “There have been a number of calls and inquiries, of course, sir. From friends, the press and such. I’ve answered them as best I could with the information you left me, and told them you were unavailable for the present yourself, sir. You’ll find notations of all communications here on your desk.”

“That’s fine, Reynolds,” Chance said distractedly, glancing over the notes. “Damn! De Grandin can’t be reached! Is everything packed?”

“Yes sir. Blankets and camping gear, your clothes and other items. Also as requested the Winchester Model 12 and the.416 Rigby, along with ammunition.”

“Fine. Throw in a few boxes of 9 mm. Parabellum for Compton’s Luger as well. Pack whatever will fit into the SJ, and don’t bother too much with clothing — we’ll buy what we need in Dillon. We’ll be down as soon as I pull together some material here. Oh — and a thermos of coffee.”

“Already prepared, sir.” Reynolds bowed and left the room.

“I see you have Kirsten’s crystal,” observed Moore.

Chance was paging through a yellowed quarto volume. He looked down at the crystal — a translucent globe of emerald-green crystal some six inches across. In its silver tripod mounting, it rested on a small ebony table beside the alcove window. If Kirsten herself knew what manner of crystal the globe was fashioned from, she kept that knowledge to herself.

“Yes,” Chance acknowledged. “Kirsten keeps it with her wherever she travels, of course. She likes to sit along the window there at night and gaze into the crystal.”

Moore reached out to touch its murky green smoothness. The globe flickered with a pulse of light. Moore leapt back as if shocked.

“Good lord! Kirsten!” Chance exploded. “She’s trying to reach us!” He pounced upon the suddenly alive crystal.

“But how…?”

Chance peered into the globe. “You attended her seances in Berlin, man! You know that wasn’t sham — that Kirsten actually has powers of crystalomancy!”

“I knew she wasn’t fake,” Moore protested, recalling numerous frustrated attempts by skeptics to find hidden electric wires. “But I thought it was showmanship. Mass suggestion or hypnosis — coupled with a dash of true clairvoyance.”

“God! And you wonder why Kirsten grew bored with all her friends there!”

Moore colored and clenched his fists — but if Chance was too distracted to be tactful, Moore was too bewildered to take offense. “Good lord, John!” he burst out. “What you’re proposing isn’t paranormal psychic phenomena! It’s frank black magic — sorcery!”

“So they called it when they burned Kirsten’s ancestress for witchcraft,” Chance told him levelly. “Today we live in a so-called enlightened age and use different terms to safely categorize what we cannot explain — and Kirsten is less overt about her powers than was her unfortunate ancestress.”

“Then you’re seriously saying that Kirsten…”

“In terms of another age — is a witch, a sorceress, an enchantress,” Chance finished for him. “But to conform to modern rationality, let’s simply call her a psychic adept who uses objects such as globes, prisms, mirrors, reflecting surfaces, or the like to focus her occult powers into observable phenomena. And while you’re grappling with that, be still and let me concentrate on her crystal.”

Moore bit his lip and subsided. Tomorrow he would perhaps laugh about this night of madness and sorcery. Tonight he had little choice but to accept matters as they presented.

Chance seated himself beside the ebony table, hunched his big shoulders forward over the sphere. Concentration creased his brow and accented the tiny surgical scars that lined his face. He had only minor ability at crystal-gazing himself — only his latent psychic talents trained and molded during his studies, augmented by what Kirsten had taught him. But Kirsten was projecting most of the power here — reaching out to the focus of her crystal globe — and Chance need be little more than the equivalent of a trained technician who adjusts his radio apparatus to receive a distant transmission.

The green sphere waxed to an intense glow, making Moore think of Kirsten’s green eyes as he had so often seen them reflected over her crystal. In a near-trance, Chance stared into its swirling depths.

Images took shape in the globe. Moore watched them appear and understood with a chill that this was indeed sorcery from another age.

The images were confused — dreamlike as they flashed from nebulous blur to sudden clarity, then dissolved again. There were mountains, dark trees, a sense of danger and flight. Kirsten’s face flashed into focus time and again, and Moore could read the terror there. Then a view of a mountain cove, and a two-storey log cabin with barn and outbuildings. The cabin was halfhidden back against the ridge near the head of the cove, and in the level extent where the tiny valley fanned out, he could see vegetable gardens and a grassy stretch of pasture.

New figures appeared. On the cabin porch, peering anxiously into the darkened cove — a blocky man in overalls with a rifle, beside him a black hound that snarled at the darkness. Kirsten stood with them, disheveled but unharmed, her attitude one of fear.

Quickly another image. A tall figure in black, his features hidden behind a sculptured metal mask. Then a sudden swirl of light and a vision of horror. A bloated lizard-shape swam in the crystal — its huge form bathed in flame, its obscene head searching about in hellish hunger. Flame oozed from its gaping maw…

Then the scene dissolved, and the globe became once again a sphere of translucent crystal, though it glowed still with pale emerald fire.

Chance swore and drew his hand over his strained features. He looked like a man awakening from a deep dream.

“What does it mean?” Moore demanded, shaking his shoulder. “What was that… that lizard-thing!”

“A salamander,” Chance told him grimly. “A fire-elemental. I’d suspected this from something I found at the crash site, and from the condition of those bodies — they’d been touched by elemental fire. Somehow Dread has gained control of the creature. He’ll send it for Kirsten once he knows how to find her — and she can’t remain hidden from Dread! We’ve got to get to her — and soon! Lord — it’s an hour of midnight!”

Moore groaned and knotted his fists. “But how!” he shouted. “Do you know where that cabin is where she’s hiding? Damn it, John! It’s over a hundred miles from Knoxville to those mountains! Not even your Duesenberg can travel those mountain roads in less than several hours — assuming we could even find the place!”

“We’ll find it,” Chance assured him, touching the glowing sphere. “Kirsten’s crystal will guide us there.”

“But to get there in time…”

“We’ll have to fly.” Chance’s voice was deadly calm. “I have a plane at the airfield only a few miles from here.”

Moore choked. “John — you’re mad! Land in the mountains at night!”

“We saw a pasture there — and I have parachute flares. A light plane like my Stinson Reliant might make it — if the pilot was good enough. I’ve seen you land your Camel under worse conditions.”

Moore remembered dead engines and shell-torn patches of field. “That was fifteen years ago, and I was damn lucky to walk away from some of those.”

“I’ll have to give full concentration to the crystal,” Chance argued. “You’ll have to fly us there. Just get us down in time. We’ll worry about taking off again once we’re there.”

“It’s suicide!”

“It’s death for Kirsten otherwise! She can’t defend herself from Dread’s salamander. I’m not even certain I can. But we’ve got to try!”

Moore reflected that he had planned to throw away his life a few hours earlier. Why scruple over crashing into the side of a mountain now? “All right,” he shrugged. “I’m with you.”

The lights of Knoxville dropped quickly away below them, and in minutes they were flying over darkened countryside where only an occasional light yet shone. Overhead it was cloudless and clear beneath the full moon — perfect for night flying, and Chance’s new Stinson Reliant responded agilely to the controls.

She was a sweet craft to fly, Moore concluded. He had flown a Reliant a few times before — courtesy of a wealthy acquaintance who got a thrill over having a famous ace for his pilot — so he was familiar with the controls. It felt good to fly again, and Moore let the powerful Lycoming radial full out. The highwing monoplane droned rapidly toward the black mountains ahead.

In the seat beside him in the four-passenger cabin, John Chance cradled the glowing crystal. Its soft luminance seemed to grow brighter as the miles fled past below them.

“We should make it there by midnight,” Chance judged, glancing at his watch. The mountains were coming up fast, and the Reliant climbed to meet them.

“If we can find wherever it is we’re going,” Moore commented, watching the moonlit countryside for landmarks. “That’s Newport coming up on the horizon now. This time of night we’ll be lucky to catch the lights in any of these mountain towns until we get to Asheville.”

“We’ll pick up the French Broad River after Newport,” Chance assured him. “With this moon it should show up quite clearly. The French Broad flows past Dillon, and if we fly along the river, we’ll pass straight overhead, lights or no. Kirsten can’t have gotten too far away from that general area, so we just need to circle and watch the crystal.”

Moore grunted. “And when we get there?”

“If you can land us in one piece, we’ll pick up Kirsten and take off again. Dread has so far shown no desire to attack us on my own ground. We’ll be safe for the moment if we can get back to my house.”

“What about the salamander? Can you do anything against a creature like that?”

Chance shook his head uncertainly. “I don’t know. A fire-elemental has enormous power. It’s an awesome accomplishment that Dread can even control one.”

He touched the inside pocket of his tweed jacket to make certain of the folded envelope with the object he had discovered that afternoon at the site of the wreck. If his reasoning was correct, it held the secret to Dread’s control of the elemental. Chance prayed he wouldn’t be forced to put his deductions to the test. “Assuming one is an adept,” Chance went on, “it isn’t too major a conjuration to evoke a salamander. But the distinction between holding a salamander for a few moments safely imprisoned in a pentagram, as opposed to actually releasing the creature to send it forth against those you wish to destroy — it’s like the difference between just looking at a picture of a tiger in a magazine, and hauling one out of its den by the scruff of its neck to take home to chase mice in your kitchen. You can’t just conjure forth something this powerful and turn it loose — the more so because any such creature bears malice toward the practitioner who has evoked it from its plane. Dread has discovered some means to control the salamander. I’m gambling that I understand his secret, and that I can reverse his sending.”

“Then why bring along the assortment of firepower?” Moore asked, jerking a thumb at the rifle and shotgun. “Will that high-power rifle drop a salamander?”

“No.” Chance grinned mirthlessly. “But I don’t think even Dread is proof against a.416 Rigby. There’s a good chance we’ll catch him off guard by breaking in on him like this.”

Moore felt sudden uneasiness. There was something he ought to tell Chance. What was it? He’d been thinking about it just a second ago… Best concentrate on flying.

The mountains lay below them like worn black teeth. Moonlight made a twisting silver ribbon of the French Broad. Moore flew a course that followed the river’s deep valley. He checked his watch. It was getting on toward midnight.

“That’s probably Dillon coming up now,” he judged. “We’ll know damn soon how good a gambler you are.”

The glow from the crystal waxed brighter, filling the cabin with soft emerald radiance. Chance concentrated on its shimmering light.

High on the side of Walnut Mountain the mists that flowed along the streams and rivers had not crept. The night was crisp and clear without the rain and cloud cover of the previous evening. Looming overhead the full moon shone so brightly as to dim the stars that flecked the sky. In the cove where Wells’s cabin lay, sharp moon-shadows pooled beneath the trees and rocks. If danger prowled in the moonlit hollow, it would make a target as it crossed the clearing.

Wells leaned back in his chair beside the cracked-open cabin door, wishing he could light his pipe. Not wanting to show fire as he waited in the shadows of the porch, he contented himself with chewing on the pipestem. In his lap he cradled his old Winchester Model 95.45–70, and the shotgun stood in easy reach just around inside the door. In the moonlight he could watch the wagon trail that crawled up to his cabin, and the pasture and garden that fanned out from the head of the cove. Beside his chair stretched a blacker patch of darkness that was Ben. The Plott hound sensed the danger that waited beyond the clearing and watched with his master.

Inside the cabin a single kerosene lamp made a soft yellow glow on the smooth-hewn log walls. There was a massive stone fireplace at one end of the front room, and two small windows piercing the wall at the other end. A kitchen jutted off back, and overhead were two low-ceilinged bedrooms. Wells’s wife and youngest daughter had earlier that day taken the truck down to Canton where the middle daughter had just presented him with a grandson. They’d be gone till the first of the week, and Wells was glad that they at least were beyond the evil that closed in upon the cabin.

Where the moonlight lanced past the curtained window, Kirsten crouched on the puncheon floor. The girl had carried down the heavy beveled-glass mirror that had been his wife’s wedding gift from her grandmother. Laying the mirror flat where the moonlight touched the floor, Kirsten knelt motionless beside it. Her green eyes stared without wavering into the reflected moonlight. Once Wells had asked her whether she wanted a sweater, but she remained silent. When he glanced at the mirror he saw no reflection other than the green glow of her eyes. Quickly he returned to his station on the porch.

“Good evening, Hampton Wells.”

The mountaineer all but fell out of his chair. By reflex his thumb hauled back the hammer of the Winchester. Ben showed his teeth in a sudden low snarl. Then neither man nor hound moved.

Standing where the shadow of the porch spilled out into the yard was a tall figure dressed in black. Above the featureless metal mask the silver hair was frost in the moonlight, and the thin-lipped smile was not a pleasant thing to see at night.

Wells would have staked his life that no man could have stolen upon him like that without warning. And indeed, he had staked his life on that firm belief.

Behind the mask, eyes black as chipped flint regarded him. “Sometimes it is necessary to attend to matters for yourself in order to be certain they’re concluded to satisfaction, don’t you agree,” the derisive voice goaded him.

Wells wanted to leap to his feet, level his rifle on that arrogant figure in black — pump lead into it as fast as his hand could lever the shells. He might have done so had he not looked into those pupilless eyes. Instead he remained in his chair, sweat twitching on his straining muscles.

Dread set a black boot on the porchstep, then drew it back. “Forgive my bad manners — I haven’t been invited in. And how quaint! Someone’s drawn a Solomon’s Seal on your threshold. The Grafin von Brocken has learned much from John Chance. A pity she didn’t think more closely on her ancestress’ fate when she became Chance’s protegée.”

Far away in the silence of the night they could hear the throbbing drone of an aircraft engine.

“John Chance is punctual,” Dread exulted. “Very thoughtful for the condemned not to keep his executioner waiting. This time I think there will be no problem over mistaken identities — assuming my pet leaves enough when he’s through to tell one pile of ashes from another.”

The sinister intruder withdrew something from his trousers pocket. “Come here,” he commanded.

Wells came to his feet, walked woodenly across the porch. The Winchester clattered to the planks beside the motionless hound.

Dread extended a black-gloved fist. “Take this,” he ordered.

Though he fought to hold his arm at his side, Wells could only obey. He held out his open palm. Dread opened his fist. A bright flicker of red — like a drop of blood — fell from the black-gloved fingers and into Wells’s calloused palm.

“Give that to the Grafin von Brocken with my compliments,” Dread sneered.

The roar of the plane’s engine pierced the star-flecked darkness directly overhead now. The sound passed over, circled and returned. A sudden burst of white exploded against the stars, throwing stark shadows on the open ground as it drifted down over the hollow.

The harsh brilliance of the parachute flare momentarily blinded Wells’s eyes. When his dazzled vision cleared, he saw that he stood alone on the porch steps.

Whining dismally, Ben slunk over to his feet. The Plott hound was shaking like a dog bad scared in a thunderstorm — though Wells had never seen him spooked before in his life. The mountain man knew how the bearhound felt. He was shaking too.

A stirring from behind, and Kirsten emerged from the cabin door. Her face was pale, and she looked like someone who has just started up from a deep sleep.

“John! John Chance is here!” she exclaimed, joining Wells at the porch step. “Where…?”

A second parachute flare burst overhead. By its glare they could see the monoplane low over the treetops in a flat circle as it glided down for the short stretch of open pasture.

Kirsten threw her fist to her mouth. “Herr Gott! He’ll crash!”

Sideslipping to lose speed, the Reliant cleared the treetops close enough for the highest branches to slap at the landing gear. Then the plane straightened out and floated down onto the pasture, its tail well down as it pancaked onto the grassy field. The landing was jolting, but the grass was cropped close and the thin soil hard beneath. The landing gear took the shock and kept rolling. Tall weeds and bushes smacked at the undercarriage, but the high wings cleared potential snags. Bouncing and shaking, the Stinson somehow dodged the limestone boulders that poked like dragons’ teeth through the rocky soil. The plane rolled to a halt with ten yards to spare of the rail fence at the head of the pasture, then taxied to face about in the direction it had landed. The radial engine throttled down and idled.

The door on the left of the fuselage opened. Twisting his big frame past the door and ducking the wing strut, John Chance dropped to the ground. Warily he crossed the split-rail fence and came toward the cabin. The porch lay in shadow, but he could see the two figures who stood there. Chance wondered at their silence.

“John!” he heard Kirsten’s choked cry.

Chance sprinted to the porch. “Come on!” he called. “Compton’s holding her revved up. Let’s get out of here before Dread comes calling!” Kirsten’s voice was frightened. She held out her hand to him. “Dread has already been here.” In the moonlight there seemed to be a droplet of bright blood on her white palm. It was a dime-sized seal of carved red stone, probably carnelian. Its device was an equilateral triangle from which spread a nimbus of flame. Within the triangle curled a salamander, its tiny jaws wrath-fully agape with a breath of flame.

“He was here just a minute before you landed,” Wells explained, still shaken. “Just all of a sudden there Dread was, standing right where you are like he’d dropped down out of a tree. I sat here like a bird that’s been hypnotized by a snake, and I guess if Dread had told me to crawl down his throat, I’d’ve had to try, because I was like a stranger in my own body. He handed me that little chip of stone and directed me to give it to Miss von Brocken with his respects, and I couldn’t do otherwise even though when I looked again Dread had fair disappeared.”

“I’m sure you couldn’t,” Chance nodded grimly. “Not if Dread caught you staring out here into moonlight and shadow. His hypnotic powers are enormous.”

“I was inside,” Kirsten added. “Using a mirror to call you here. I’d drawn a Solomon’s Seal across the doorway.”

“Protection against some of Dread’s creatures, though not against Dread himself,” Chance told her.

“This is Hampton Wells,” Kirsten remembered to introduce them. “And John Chance. Mr. Wells killed two of Dread’s hirelings when they were hunting me this evening.”

Chance offered his hand. “Mr. Wells, I’m in your debt. But I’m afraid you’ve cut yourself in on a deadly piece of business.”

The mountaineer’s handshake was firm. “Guess I thought it was a fight worth winning, Mr. Chance. Been trouble in these parts since this spring when this devil Dread sent his people prying about for information on the lost mines of the Ancients.”

Chance gauged the man. “I found out some little about that just lately. I’d guess I’d have found out a good bit more if Cullin Shelton had lived to tell what he knew.”

The circle of red stone glinted evilly in the moonlight. In the pasture the Stinson’s engine throbbed impatiently.

“We’ll have to hurry,” Chance warned. “Dread must only have held his hand until he had us all together.”

“What is it?” Kirsten asked, staring fixedly at the stone sigil.

“The sign of the salamander,” Chance said tensely. “Dread has marked you for its victim.” Wells moved faster than thought. His big hand lashed out and slapped the deadly sigil from the girl’s grasp — like brushing off a crawling spider. The carnelian seal fell to the puncheon floor, and Wells’s heavy boot stamped hard — as a man stamps his heel at the striking head of a venomous snake.

“Don’t!” Chance shouted in horror. He lunged for Wells, knocking him off-balance. The boot heel smashed inches away from the skittering bit of red stone.

Wells staggered for balance, goggled at the other man.

“Why did you do that?” Chance demanded, swiftly retrieving the salamander carving.

Wells shook his head. “Why, I don’t know. The thought just came to me…”

“Dread’s thought came to you is more likely,” Chance supplied. “This talisman explains Dread’s control over the salamander. He marks his intended victim with the sign of the salamander, then sends his elemental seeking the person who bears the sigil.”

“Then destroy the thing!” Wells argued.

“A spell doesn’t work that way!” Chance insisted. “The only release will be to give the sigil back to Dread. If it’s destroyed, that’s impossible — and the salamander will still seek its prey!”

“But last night…?” Kirsten began.

“Dread must have somehow found a way to pass the salamander sign to Shelton — and to Wingfield — and to any other victims of his sorcery.”

“But John never received any such talisman.”

“Yes, he did.” Chance dug out the rolled envelope from his inside pocket, tore it open. A mate to the first sinister stone carving slid onto his palm.

“I found this near where your Packard smashed to a stop,” he explained. “I wasn’t certain what it meant until Dread took such pains to present you with this one here tonight.

My guess is Dread had one of them placed in your car at some point.”

“I was thrown clear just as we went over,” Kirsten filled in. “Knocked unconscious.”

“Doubtless saved your life. Presumably Dread’s salamander would have attacked any living presence in the immediate circle of the sign’s influence.”

“Then why are you carrying that thing, John? It’s deadly!”

“Because I’d hoped to find Dread here and return the sigil to him. Then his spell would have backfired on him. It seemed worth the gamble.”

“Suppose we just leave these devil’s signs setting here on the stoop and make a run for it,” Wells suggested in a practical tone.

“It won’t help Kirsten. Dread personally presented her with the sigil. Unless she finds a way to give it back to Dread, the salamander will come for her regardless — according to the laws of magic, she and the sign of the salamander are bound together because she accepted it. Our best chance is to get back to Knoxville with this sigil and use the facilities I have at my disposal there in an effort to break the spell and exorcise Dread’s sending before the salamander seeks us out even there.”

“You’re forgetting,” Wells stated. “Dread didn’t give Kirsten that salamander sign-thing. I did. And now, ma’am, I’ll be obliged if you’ll return that devil sign to me.”

“Brave of you, Wells,” Chance clapped his shoulder. “But no use. You were acting under Dread’s influence at the time — so in a sense you were only an extension of Dread himself.”

Wells set his jaw. “All the same, give it back to me. Then you two make a dash for it in your plane. That’ll split the trail, and besides which I’m not going to be run off from my own house and land by any kind of low witchery.”

Chance started to protest further. A sudden roar of the aircraft engine spun him around. “Moore!” he yelled. “You fool!”

Silver in the moonlight, the monoplane jerked into forward motion. Engine building power, it jolted across the rocky pasture — gathering speed. The high wings barely cleared sudden outcrops of limestone as it lurched toward the mouth of the cove.

“The madman! He’ll never reach flying speed in time to clear the trees!” Kirsten moaned.

A silver-winged juggernaut, the Stinson raced suicidally toward the tree line. With a quick rush the plane was airborne. The Lycoming radial poured on power. It headed straight for the waiting trees.

Then with inches to spare the plane staggered for altitude — clearing the treetops at the last instant. For a moment they saw it hover ghostlike over the ridges — then the monoplane disappeared into the night — taking with it Chance’s equipment and their only means to escape.

“Forget that one,” Chance growled. “We’re stuck here on our own!”

“I don’t understand..Kirsten stammered. “Compton deserted us!”

“I don’t get it either. I can’t believe Moore’s nerve broke. Either I misjudged the man and the depth of his jealousy — or Dread has shown his hand again.”

The night about them flickered, as if from distant lightning. The skies were cloudless.

Kirsten’s face twisted in fear. “John! That’s the way it came upon us last night!”

“Will walls hold the thing out?” Wells broke in. “These logs are a foot thick or better, and seasoned hardwood.”

“No protection from a fire-elemental!” Chance advised bleakly. “But Kirsten’s Solomon’s Seal may slow it for the moment.”

“Against a salamander!” Kirsten scoffed. “We’ve no choice! We haven’t a chance if we try to run! Inside, quick!”

Silent lightning flashed again. Closer.

Together they retreated into Wells’s cabin, dragging the snarling Plott hound with them. At the threshold, Chance paused to study Kirsten’s Solomon’s Seal. He nodded approval. The girl had constructed it carefully despite her haste — using some old paint Wells had saved to draw the erect triangle in red and the inverse triangle in blue. In the center she had drawn a crux ansata. Chance pulled an artist’s pencil from his shirt pocket and hurriedly added certain Names of Power in a circle about the ankh. Stepping around the figure, he joined the others and helped bolt the heavy door.

“Got a rifle or a shotgun, whichever you like,” Wells told him. “Maybe honest lead won’t do nothing against this salamander-thing — but I’m sure for giving it a hard try.”

Chance thanked him, not bothering to explain that shooting at the salamander would be about as effective as tossing mudballs at a tank. But at least having a gun in your hands made things appear less hopeless.

“Kirsten, we might try forming a large pentacle on the floor here,” he suggested. “One we could stand in as a sort of redoubt.”

The girl stooped to lay out the angles with practiced skill. It would keep her occupied, Chance figured. With his entire library at his disposal — along with access to all manner of esoteric paraphernalia, and the entire night to work in — they might contrive a protective pentacle of the necessary potency to withstand a salamander.

But they weren’t going to have all night. A sudden electric glare shone eerily across the clearing about the cabin. The salamander was getting nearer, writhing up from the nether abysses whence Dread’s sorcery had compelled it.

Chance groaned inwardly, cursing his own unpreparedness. He should have taken precautions the very instant he first had suspected Dread’s involvement in the wave of inexplicable events that had recently centered on this mountain region. Bitterly he considered the deadly salamander sigils he still clenched in his fist. Little chance of returning these messengers of death to Dread now — although he was certainly out there in the dark, exulting over his trapped enemies as they helplessly awaited death. Chance only wished Dread would show himself to them now — no feat of mesmerism would hold Chance’s finger from the trigger.

Chance looked again at the shotgun Wells had offered him.

“That’s a ten-gauge, right?”

Wells nodded from where he peered through the window. “Had her a long time, and I wouldn’t trade her for any two of your twelve-gauge pumps. She’ll just about tear your shoulder off, but both barrels together will sure clear off the front porch.”

“You got rifled slugs for it?”

“Box in the drawer bottom of the gun cabinet there,” Wells indicated. “Nothing like them big slugs of lead to cut through brush for a sure knockdown on a deer.”

Chance dove for the cabinet drawer, dug out the box of shells. There were half a dozen left. More than enough either way — whether this mad scheme worked or not. He broke open the shotgun, extracted the buckshot shells — then pulled open his pocket knife and sat down on the floor with the box of rifled slugs.

Another blast of lightning. Chance tensed, expecting thunder that never boomed.

“Oh, Lord!” Wells gasped. “It’s here!”

Kirsten leapt to her feet, too terrified to continue her efforts on the pentacle. The threat of fire would make a mad thing of her, Chance knew from experience.

“Kirsten! Keep working on the pentacle! Don’t look outside!” he shouted, snapping her back from panic. Her face a marble mask, the girl bent back to her hopeless task — fear making her usually nimble movements clumsy.

At the window, Wells yelled defiance. His.45–70 boomed deafeningly in the tiny cabin. Again and again he levered new shells into the Winchester’s chamber, firing at the thing he saw in the cabin yard. White light glared through the windows, stabbed past chinks in the log walls. The Plott hound howled and flung itself at the door.

Desperately Chance broke open the crimping of the shotgun shells and dug out the heavy rifled slugs from two of them. The Solomon’s Seal would hold the fire-elemental for only a moment — while it gathered into itself power to overwhelm and then to cross its protective barrier.

Wells stubbornly reloaded his rifle, unable to convince himself of its uselessness. Or perhaps it was that final defiance that makes a cornered animal turn and fight against hopeless odds. The.45–70 opened up again.

Not wasting a glance outside to see what he knew must be out there, Chance carved into the inverted conical bases of the rifled slugs. His pocket knife gouged out fat slivers of the soft lead. The ten-gauge slugs were massive blobs of about an ounce-and-a-half of lead — their sides rifled so that they would pick up spin in passing through the shotgun’s smooth bore. Charged with these, the huge ten-gauge was in effect a hand-held cannon.

Forcing his fingers to work swiftly despite his growing panic, Chance inserted the fingernail-sized carnelian sigils into the hollowed-out bases of the two slugs. Carefully he jammed torn wadding over them to protect the deadly bits of carved stone and secure them in place.

Needles of hellish-bright incandescence pierced the cabin’s front wall in a thousand stinging rays — seeking past every crack and loose chinking. Ben retreated from the door and backed to the wall with frothing jaws.

Kirsten, wild-eyed as the maddened hound, abandoned her distracted attempts to complete the pentacle. Her fists pressed to her chin, she crouched in abject terror, staring at the door.

Wells swore and mechanically reloaded his rifle — pivoting toward the door from his post at the window.

The door was beginning to exude smoke.

Frantically Chance replaced the modified slugs in their cardboard shells, reset the crimping.

The thick planks of the door were warping and sagging from intolerable heat. Cracks edged in glowing coal opened with fatal progression. Streamers of blue-white brilliance stabbed past the crumbling barrier — a dozen too-bright searchlights to pick out the tableau of fear within.

Chance jammed the shells into the double-barrel, slammed shut its breech. He brought the weapon to his shoulder.

On the threshold the power of the Solomon’s Seal crumbled beneath the relentless onslaught of the fire-elemental. The cabin door collapsed in a tumble of glowing ashes.

Across the open doorway crouched the salamander — a squatting lizard-shape larger than a lion, as it drew into itself the limitless power of elemental flame. Its fat tail lashed in anger, and its eyes were blinding coals of wrath. Great wreaths of blue-white flame bathed its obscene bulk, somehow not scorching the wood of the porch. Incandescent spittle drooled from its wide jaws — as the elemental opened them to feed…

At point-blank range, Chance fired both barrels into the opening maw. The recoil sent him backward against the wall.

In that instant of horror when time slowed to eternity, it seemed they could see the massive lead slugs as they blasted into the elemental’s opening jaws. A pair of flashes marked the instantaneous transmuting of solid lead to molten to vapor. Two bright bits of red continued their path into the waiting throat.

The salamander screamed — a cry like a ton of white-hot steel dumped into the sea. Writhing back in rage — or agony — it flung itself away from the smouldering doorway, out into the night.

It raked its foreclaws into its jaws, tearing at its throat — vomiting great gouts of flame. Its hissing roar pierced the night, as the elemental rolled and bucked across the clearing. Still writhing in great spasms, the salamander turned and crawled like a broken-backed thing into the forested ridge beyond the clearing.

For a minute they saw its eerie brilliance flashing along the ridge, then the trees completely hid the creature.

Wells finished dumping water onto the smouldering wreckage of his doorway. He produced a crockery jug of his own blockade whiskey and took a long pull.

“I told you that shotgun would sure enough clear off the porch,” he managed to say, handing the jug to Chance.

High up on the mountainside, a blue-white volcano burst upward for an instant against the night — then faded slowly out.

John Chance took a deep drink.