There was no answer. A primitive silence hovered over the tiny
clearing. I dismounted, tied my horse and approached the crude, heavy
door. Perhaps this cabin held a clue to the mystery of Saul Stark; at
least it doubtless contained the implements and paraphernalia of his
noisome craft. The faint breeze dropped suddenly. The stillness became
so intense it was like a physical impact. I paused, startled; it was as
if some inner instinct had shouted urgent warning.
As I stood there every fiber of me quivered in response to that
subconscious warning; some obscure, deep-hidden instinct sensed peril,
as a man senses the presence of the rattlesnake in the darkness, or
the swamp-panther crouching in the bushes. I drew a pistol, sweeping
the trees and bushes, but saw no shadow or movement to betray the
ambush I feared. But my instinct was unerring; what I sensed was not
lurking in the woods about me; it was inside the cabin--_waiting_.
Trying to shake off the feeling, and irked by a vague half-memory that
kept twitching at the back of my brain, I again advanced. And again
I stopped short, with one foot on the tiny stoop, and a hand half
advanced to pull open the door. A chill shivering swept over me, a
sensation like that which shakes a man to whom a flicker of lightning
has revealed the black abyss into which another blind step would
have hurled him. For the first time in my life I knew the meaning of
fear; I knew that black horror lurked in that sullen cabin under the
moss-bearded cypresses--a horror against which every primitive instinct
that was my heritage cried out in panic.
And that insistent half-memory woke suddenly. It was the memory of a
story of how voodoo men leave their huts guarded in their absence by
a powerful ju-ju spirit to deal madness and death to the intruder.
White men ascribed such deaths to superstitious fright and hypnotic
suggestion. But in that instant I understood my sense of lurking peril;
I comprehended the horror that breathed like an invisible mist from
that accursed hut. I sensed the reality of the ju-ju, of which the
grotesque wooden images which voodoo men place in their huts are only a
symbol.
Saul Stark was gone; but he had left a Presence to guard his hut.
I backed away, sweat beading the backs of my hands. Not for a bag of
gold would I have peered into the shuttered windows or touched that
unbolted door. My pistol hung in my hand, useless I knew against the
_Thing_ in that cabin. What it was I could not know, but I knew it was
some brutish, soulless entity drawn from the black swamps by the spells
of voodoo. Man and the natural animals are not the only sentient beings
that haunt this planet. There are invisible _Things_--black spirits of
the deep swamps and the slimes of the river beds--the negroes know of
them....
* * * * *
My horse was trembling like a leaf and he shouldered close to me as if
seeking security in bodily contact. I mounted and reined away, fighting
a panicky urge to strike in the spurs and bolt madly down the trail.
I breathed an involuntary sigh of relief as the somber clearing fell
away behind me and was lost from sight. I did not, as soon as I was out
of sight of the cabin, revile myself for a silly fool. My experience
was too vivid in my mind. It was not cowardice that prompted my retreat
from that empty hut; it was the natural instinct of self-preservation,
such as keeps a squirrel from entering the lair of a rattlesnake.
My horse snorted and shied violently. A gun was in my hand before I saw
what had startled me. Again a rich musical laugh taunted me.
She was leaning against a bent tree-trunk, her hands clasped behind
her sleek head, insolently posing her sensuous figure. The barbaric
fascination of her was not dispelled by daylight; if anything, the glow
of the low-hanging sun enhanced it.
"Why did you not go into the ju-ju cabin, Kirby Buckner?" she mocked,
lowering her arms and moving insolently out from the tree.
She was clad as I had never seen a swamp woman, or any other woman,
dressed. Snakeskin sandals were on her feet, sewn with tiny sea-shells
that were never gathered on this continent. A short silken skirt
of flaming crimson molded her full hips, and was upheld by a broad
bead-worked girdle. Barbaric anklets and armlets clashed as she moved,
heavy ornaments of crudely hammered gold that were as African as her
loftily piled coiffure. Nothing else she wore, and on her bosom,
between her arching breasts, I glimpsed the faint lines of tattooing on
her brown skin.
She posed derisively before me, not in allure, but in mockery.
Triumphant malice blazed in her dark eyes; her red lips curled with
cruel mirth. Looking at her then I found it easy to believe all the
tales I had heard of torture and mutilations inflicted by the women of
savage races on wounded enemies. She was alien, even in this primitive
setting; she needed a grimmer, more bestial background, a background
of steaming jungle, reeking black swamps, flaring fires and cannibal
feasts, and the bloody altars of abysmal tribal gods.
"Kirby Buckner!" She seemed to caress the syllables with her red
tongue, yet the very intonation was an obscene insult. "Why did you
not enter Saul Stark's cabin? It was not locked! Did you fear what you
might see there? Did you fear you might come out with your hair white
like an old man's, and the drooling lips of an imbecile?"
"What's in that hut?" I demanded.
She laughed in my face, and snapped her fingers with a peculiar gesture.
"One of the ones which come oozing like black mist out of the night
when Saul Stark beats the ju-ju drum and shrieks the black incantation
to the gods that crawl on their bellies in the swamp."
"What is he doing here? The black-folk were quiet until he came."
Her red lips curled disdainfully. "Those black dogs? They are his
slaves. If they disobey he kills them, _or puts them in the swamp_.
For long we have looked for a place to begin our rule. We have chosen
Canaan. You whites must go. And since we know that white people can
never be driven away from their land, we must kill you all."
It was my turn to laugh, grimly.
"They tried that, back in '45."
"They did not have Saul Stark to lead them, then," she answered calmly.
"Well, suppose they won? Do you think that would be the end of it?
Other white men would come into Canaan and kill them all."
"They would have to cross water," she answered. "We can defend the
rivers and creeks. Saul Stark will have many _servants in the swamps_
to do his bidding. He will be king of black Canaan. No one can cross
the waters to come against him. He will rule his tribe, as his fathers
ruled their tribes in the Ancient Land."
"Mad as a loon!" I muttered. Then curiosity impelled me to ask: "Who is
this fool? What are you to him?"
"He is the son of a Kongo witch-finder, and he is the greatest voodoo
priest out of the Ancient Land," she answered, laughing at me again.
"I? You shall learn who _I_ am, tonight in the swamp, in the House of
Damballah."
"Yes?" I grunted. "What's to prevent me from taking you into
Grimesville with me? You know the answers to questions I'd like to ask."
Her laughter was like the slash of a velvet whip.
"_You_ drag me to the village of the whites? Not all death and hell
could keep me from the Dance of the Skull, tonight in the House of
Damballah. You are _my_ captive, already." She laughed derisively as
I started and glared into the shadows about me. "No one is hiding
there. I am alone, and you are the strongest man in Canaan. Even Saul
Stark fears you, for he sent me with three men to kill you before you
could reach the village. Yet you are my captive. I have but to beckon,
so"--she crooked a contemptuous finger--"and you will follow to the
fires of Damballah and the knives of the torturers."
I laughed at her, but my mirth rang hollow. I could not deny the
incredible magnetism of this brown enchantress; it fascinated and
impelled, drawing me toward her, beating at my will-power. I could not
fail to recognize it any more than I could fail to recognize the peril
in the ju-ju hut.
* * * * *
My agitation was apparent to her, for her eyes flashed with unholy
triumph.
"Black men are fools, all but Saul Stark," she laughed. "White men are
fools, too. I am the daughter of a white man, who lived in the hut of a
black king and mated with his daughters. I know the strength of white
men, and their weakness. I failed last night when I met you in the
woods, but now I cannot fail!" Savage exultation thrummed in her voice.
"By the blood in your veins I have snared you. The knife of the man
you killed scratched your hand--seven drops of blood that fell on the
pine needles have given me your soul! I took that blood, and Saul Stark
gave me the man who ran away. Saul Stark hates cowards. With his hot,
quivering heart, and seven drops of your blood, Kirby Buckner, deep in
the swamps I have made such magic as none but a Bride of Damballah can
make. Already you feel its urge! Oh, you are strong! The man you fought
with the knife died less than an hour later. But you cannot fight me.
Your blood makes you my slave. I have put a conjurement upon you."
By heaven, it was not mere madness she was mouthing! Hypnotism, magic,
call it what you will, I felt its onslaught on my brain and will--a
blind, senseless impulse that seemed to be rushing me against my will
to the brink of some nameless abyss.
"I have made a charm you cannot resist!" she cried. "When I call you,
you will come! Into the deep swamps you will follow me. You will see
the Dance of the Skull, and you will see the doom of a poor fool who
sought to betray Saul Stark--who dreamed he could resist the Call of
Damballah when it came. Into the swamp he goes tonight, with Tunk Bixby
and the other four fools who opposed Saul Stark. You shall see that.
You shall know and understand your own doom. And then you too shall
go into the swamp, into darkness and silence deep as the darkness of
nighted Africa! But before the darkness engulfs you there will be sharp
knives, and little fires--oh, you will scream for death, even for the
death that is beyond death!"
With a choking cry I whipped out a pistol and leveled it full at
her breast. It was cocked and my finger was on the trigger. At that
range I could not miss. But she looked full into the black muzzle and
laughed--laughed--laughed, in wild peals that froze the blood in my
veins.
And I sat there like an image pointing a pistol I could not fire! A
frightful paralysis gripped me. I knew, with numbing certainty, that
my life depended on the pull of that trigger, but I could not crook my
finger--not though every muscle in my body quivered with the effort and
sweat broke out on my face in clammy beads.
She ceased laughing, then, and stood looking at me in a manner
indescribably sinister.
"You cannot shoot me, Kirby Buckner," she said quietly. "I have
enslaved your soul. You cannot understand my power, but it has ensnared
you. It is the Lure of the Bride of Damballah--the blood I have mixed
with the mystic waters of Africa drawing the blood in your veins.
Tonight you will come to me, in the House of Damballah."
"You lie!" My voice was an unnatural croak bursting from dry lips.
"You've hypnotized me, you she-devil, so I can't pull this trigger.
But you can't drag me across the swamps to you."
"It is you who lie," she returned calmly. "You know you lie. Ride back
toward Grimesville or wherever you will, Kirby Buckner. But when the
sun sets and the black shadows crawl out of the swamps, you will see me
beckoning you, and you will follow me. Long I have planned your doom,
Kirby Buckner, since first I heard the white men of Canaan talking of
you. It was I who sent the word down the river that brought you back to
Canaan. Not even Saul Stark knows of my plans for you.
"At dawn Grimesville shall go up in flames, and the heads of the
white men will be tossed in the blood-running streets. But tonight is
the Night of Damballah, and a white sacrifice shall be given to the
black gods. Hidden among the trees you shall watch the Dance of the
Skull--and then I shall call you forth--to die! And now, go, fool! Run
as far and as fast as you will. At sunset, wherever you are, you will
turn your footsteps toward the House of Damballah!"
And with the spring of a panther she was gone into the thick brush, and
as she vanished the strange paralysis dropped from me. With a gasped
oath I fired blindly after her, but only a mocking laugh floated back
to me.
Then in a panic I wrenched my horse about and spurred him down the
trail. Reason and logic had momentarily vanished from my brain,
leaving me in the grasp of blind, primitive fear. I had confronted
sorcery beyond my power to resist. I had felt my will mastered by the
mesmerism in a brown woman's eyes. And now one driving urge overwhelmed
me--a wild desire to cover as much distance as I could before that
low-hanging sun dipped below the horizon and the black shadows came
crawling from the swamps.
And yet I knew I could not outrun the grisly specter that menaced
me. I was like a man fleeing in a nightmare, trying to escape from a
monstrous phantom which kept pace with me despite my desperate speed.
* * * * *
I had not reached the Richardson cabin when above the drumming of my
flight I heard the clop of hoofs ahead of me, and an instant later,
sweeping around a kink in the trail, I almost rode down a tall, lanky
man on an equally gaunt horse.
He yelped and dodged back as I jerked my horse to its haunches, my
pistol presented at his breast.
"Look out, Kirby! It's me--Jim Braxton! My God, you look like you'd
seen a ghost! What's chasin' you?"
"Where are you going?" I demanded, lowering my gun.
"Lookin' for you. Folks got worried as it got late and you didn't come
in with the refugees. I 'lowed I'd light out and look for you. Miz
Richardson said you rode into the Neck. Where in tarnation you been?"
"To Saul Stark's cabin."
"You takin' a big chance. What'd you find there?"
The sight of another white man had somewhat steadied my nerves. I
opened my mouth to narrate my adventure, and was shocked to hear myself
saying, instead: "Nothing. He wasn't there."
"Thought I heard a gun crack, a while ago," he remarked, glancing
sharply at me, sidewise.
"I shot at a copperhead," I answered, and shuddered. This reticence
regarding the brown woman was compulsory; I could no more speak of her
than I could pull the trigger of the pistol aimed at her. And I cannot
describe the horror that beset me when I realized this. The conjer
spells the black men feared were not lies, I realized sickly; demons in
human form _did_ exist who were able to enslave men's will and thoughts.
Braxton was eyeing me strangely.
"We're lucky the woods ain't full of black copperheads," he said. "Tope
Sorley's pulled out."
"What do you mean?" By an effort I pulled myself together.
"Just that. Tom Breckinridge was in the cabin with him. Tope hadn't
said a word since you talked to him. Just laid on that bunk and
shivered. Then a kind of holler begun way out in the woods, and Tom
went to the door with his rifle-gun, but couldn't see nothin'. Well,
while he was standin' there he got a lick on the head from _behind_,
and as he fell he seen that crazy nigger Tope jump over him and light
out for the woods. Tom he taken a shot at him, but missed. Now what you
make of that?"
"The Call of Damballah!" I muttered, a chill perspiration beading my
body. "God! The poor devil!"
"Huh? What's that?"
"For God's sake let's not stand here mouthing! The sun will soon be
down!" In a frenzy of impatience I kicked my mount down the trail.
Braxton followed me, obviously puzzled. With a terrific effort I got a
grip on myself. How madly fantastic it was that Kirby Buckner should be
shaking in the grip of unreasoning terror! It was so alien to my whole
nature that it was no wonder Jim Braxton was unable to comprehend what
ailed me.
"Tope didn't go of his own free will," I said. "That call was a summons
he couldn't resist. Hypnotism, black magic, voodoo, whatever you want
to call it, Saul Stark has some damnable power that enslaves men's
will-power. The blacks are gathered somewhere in the swamp, for some
kind of a devilish voodoo ceremony, which I have reason to believe
will culminate in the murder of Tope Sorley. We've got to get to
Grimesville if we can. I expect an attack at dawn."
Braxton was pale in the dimming light. He did not ask me where I got my
knowledge.
"We'll lick 'em when they come; but it'll be a slaughter."
I did not reply. My eyes were fixed with savage intensity on the
sinking sun, and as it slid out of sight behind the trees I was shaken
with an icy tremor. In vain I told myself that no occult power could
draw me against my will. If she had been able to compel me, why had
she not forced me to accompany her from the glade of the ju-ju hut? A
grisly whisper seemed to tell me that she was but playing with me, as a
cat allows a mouse almost to escape, only to be pounced upon again.
"Kirby, what's the matter with you?" I scarcely heard Braxton's anxious
voice. "You're sweatin' and shakin' like you had the aggers. What--hey,
what you stoppin' for?"
I had not consciously pulled on the rein, but my horse halted, and
stood trembling and snorting, before the mouth of a narrow trail which
meandered away at right angles from the road we were following--a trail
that led north.
"Listen!" I hissed tensely.
"What is it?" Braxton drew a pistol. The brief twilight of the
pinelands was deepening into dusk.
"Don't you hear it?" I muttered. "Drums! Drums beating in Goshen!"
"I don't hear nothin'," he mumbled uneasily. "If they was beatin' drums
in Goshen you couldn't hear 'em this far away."
"Look there!" My sharp sudden cry made him start. I was pointing down
the dim trail, at the figure which stood there in the dusk less than
a hundred yards away. There in the dusk I saw her, even made out the
gleam of her strange eyes, the mocking smile on her red lips. "Saul
Stark's brown wench!" I raved, tearing at my scabbard. "My God, man,
are you stone-blind? Don't you see her?"
"I don't see nobody!" he whispered, livid. "What are you talkin' about,
Kirby?"
With eyes glaring I fired down the trail, and fired again, and yet
again. This time no paralysis gripped my arm. But the smiling face
still mocked me from the shadows. A slender, rounded arm lifted, a
finger beckoned imperiously; and then she was gone and I was spurring
my horse down the narrow trail, blind, deaf and dumb, with a sensation
as of being caught in a black tide that was carrying me with it as it
rushed on to a destination beyond my comprehension.
Dimly I heard Braxton's urgent yells, and then he drew up beside me
with a clatter of hoofs, and grabbed my reins, setting my horse back on
its haunches. I remember striking at him with my gun-barrel, without
realizing what I was doing. All the black rivers of Africa were surging
and foaming within my consciousness, roaring into a torrent that was
sweeping me down to engulf me in an ocean of doom.
"Kirby, are you crazy? This trail leads to Goshen!"
I shook my head dazedly. The foam of the rushing waters swirled in my
brain, and my voice sounded far away. "Go back! Ride for Grimesville!
I'm going to Goshen."
"Kirby, you're mad!"
"Mad or sane, I'm going to Goshen this night," I answered dully. I was
fully conscious. I knew what I was saying, and what I was doing. I
realized the incredible folly of my action, and I realized my inability
to help myself. Some shred of sanity impelled me to try to conceal
the grisly truth from my companion, to offer a rational reason for my
madness. "Saul Stark is in Goshen. He's the one who's responsible for
all this trouble. I'm going to kill him. That will stop the uprising
before it starts."
He was trembling like a man with the ague.
"Then I'm goin' with you."
"You must go on to Grimesville and warn the people," I insisted,
holding to sanity, but feeling a strong urge begin to seize me, an
irresistible urge to be in motion--to be riding in the direction toward
which I was so horribly drawn.
"They'll be on their guard," he said stubbornly. "They won't need my
warnin'. I'm goin' with you. I don't know what's got in you, but I
ain't goin' to let you die alone among these black woods."
I did not argue. I could not. The blind rivers were sweeping me
on--on--on! And down the trail, dim in the dusk, I glimpsed a supple
figure, caught the gleam of uncanny eyes, the crook of a lifted
finger.... Then I was in motion, galloping down the trail, and I heard
the drum of Braxton's horse's hoofs behind me.
_4. The Dwellers in the Swamp_
Night fell and the moon shone through the trees, blood-red behind the
black branches. The horses were growing hard to manage.
"They got more sense'n us, Kirby," muttered Braxton.
"Panther, maybe," I replied absently, my eyes searching the gloom of
the trail ahead.
"Naw, t'ain't. Closer we git to Goshen, the worse they git. And every
time we swing nigh to a creek they shy and snort."
The trail had not yet crossed any of the narrow, muddy creeks that
criss-crossed that end of Canaan, but several times it had swung so
close to one of them that we glimpsed the black streak that was water
glinting dully in the shadows of the thick growth. And each time, I
remembered, the horses showed signs of fear.
But I had hardly noticed, wrestling as I was with the grisly compulsion
that was driving me. Remember, I was not like a man in a hypnotic
trance. I was fully awake, fully conscious. Even the daze in which I
had seemed to hear the roar of black rivers had passed, leaving my mind
clear, my thoughts lucid. And that was the sweating hell of it: to
realize my folly clearly and poignantly, but to be unable to conquer
it. Vividly I realized that I was riding to torture and death, and
leading a faithful friend to the same end. But on I went. My efforts
to break the spell that gripped me almost unseated my reason, but on I
went. I cannot explain my compulsion, any more than I can explain why a
sliver of steel is drawn to a magnet. It was a black power beyond the
ring of white man's knowledge; a basic, elemental thing of which formal
hypnotism is but scanty crumbs, spilled at random. A power beyond my
control was drawing me to Goshen, and beyond; more I cannot explain,
any more than the rabbit could explain why the eyes of the swaying
serpent draw him into its gaping jaws.
We were not far from Goshen when Braxton's horse unseated its rider,
and my own began snorting and plunging.
"They won't go no closer!" gasped Braxton, fighting at the reins.