Delphi Works of Robert E. Howard (Illustrated) (Series Four)

by Robert E. Howard

  As the man staggered up, Constance rose and reeled into his arms, crying hysterically.

  “It’s all right now, Constance,” he panted, crushing her to him. “The Zemba’s dead; De Albor’s dead; Ballville’s dead; the negroes have run away. There’s nothing to prevent us leaving now. The Moon of Zambebwei was the end for them. But it’s the beginning of life for us.”

  BLACK HOUND OF DEATH

  First published in Weird Tales, November 1936

  CONTENTS

  I. — THE KILLER IN THE DARK

  II.— “DEAD MEN WITH TORN THROATS!”

  III. — BLACK HANDS

  IV. — THE HOUND OF SATAN

  I. — THE KILLER IN THE DARK

  Egyptian darkness! The phrase is too vivid for complete comfort, suggesting not only blackness, but unseen things lurking in that blackness; things that skulk in the deep shadows and shun the light of day; slinking figures that prowl beyond the edge of normal life.

  Some such thoughts flitted vaguely through my mind that night as I groped along the narrow trail that wound through the deep pinelands. Such thoughts are likely to keep company with any man who dares invade, in the night, that lonely stretch of densely timbered river-country which the black people call Egypt, for some obscurely racial reason.

  There is no blackness this side of Hell’s unlighted abyss as absolute as the blackness of the pine woods. The trail was but a half-guessed trace winding between walls of solid ebony. I followed it as much by the instincts of the piney woods dweller as by the guidance of the external senses. I went as hurriedly as I dared, but stealth was mingled with my haste, and my ears were whetted to knife-edge alertness. This caution did not spring from the uncanny speculations roused by the darkness and silence. I had good, material reason to be wary. Ghosts might roam the pinelands with gaping, bloody throats and cannibalistic hunger as the Negroes maintained, but it was no ghost I feared. I listened for the snap of a twig under a great, splay foot, for any sound that would presage murder striking from the black shadows. The creature which, I feared, haunted Egypt was more to be dreaded than any gibbering phantom. That morning the worst Negro desperado in that part of the state had broken from the clutches of the law, leaving a ghastly toll of dead behind him. Down along the river, bloodhounds were baying through the brush and hard-eyed men with rifles were beating up the thickets.

  They were seeking him in the fastnesses near the scattered black settlements, knowing that a Negro seeks his own kind in his extremity. But I knew Tope Braxton better than they did; I knew he deviated from the general type of his race. He was unbelievably primitive, atavistic enough to plunge into uninhabited wilderness and live like a blood-mad gorilla in solitude that would have terrified and daunted a more normal member of his race.

  So while the hunt flowed away in another direction, I rode toward Egypt, alone. But it was not altogether to look for Tope Braxton that I plunged into that isolated fastness. My mission was one of warning, rather than search. Deep in the mazy pine labyrinth, a white man and his servant lived alone, and it was the duty of any man to warn them that a red-handed killer might be skulking about their cabin.

  I was foolish, perhaps, to be traveling on foot; but men who wear the name of Garfield are not in the habit of turning back on a task once attempted. When my horse unexpectedly went lame, I left him at one of the Negro cabins which fringe the edge of Egypt, and went on afoot. Night overtook me on the path, and I intended remaining until morning with the man I was going to warn — Richard Brent. He was a taciturn recluse, suspicious and peculiar, but he could scarcely refuse to put me up for the night. He was a mysterious figure; why he chose to hide himself in a southern pine forest none knew. He had been living in an old cabin in the heart of Egypt for about six months.

  Suddenly, as I forged through the darkness, my speculations regarding the mysterious recluse were cut short, wiped clear out of my mind. I stopped dead, the nerves tingling in the skin on the backs of my hands. A sudden shriek in the dark has that effect, and this scream was edged with agony and terror. It came from somewhere ahead of me. Breathless silence followed that cry, a silence in which the forest seemed to hold its breath and the darkness shut in more blackly still.

  Again the scream was repeated, this time closer. Then I heard the pound of bare feet along the trail, and a form hurled itself at me out of the darkness. My revolver was in my hand, and I instinctively thrust it out to fend the creature off. The only thing that kept me from pulling the trigger was the noise the object was making — gasping, sobbing noises of fear and pain. It was a man, and direly stricken. He blundered full into me, shrieked again, and fell sprawling, slobbering and yammering.

  “Oh, my God, save me! Oh, God have mercy on me!”

  “What the devil is it?” I demanded, my hair stirring on my scalp at the poignant agony in the gibbering voice.

  The wretch recognized my voice; he clawed at my knees.

  “Oh, Mas’ Kirby, don’ let him tetch me! He’s done killed my body, and now he wants my soul! It’s me — po’ Jim Tike. Don’ let him git me!”

  I struck a match, and stood staring in amazement, while the match burned down to my fingers. A black man groveled in the dust before me, his eyes rolling up whitely. I knew him well — one of the Negroes who lived in their tiny log cabins along the fringe of Egypt. He was spotted and splashed with blood, and I believed he was mortally wounded. Only abnormal energy rising from frenzied panic could have enabled him to run as far as he had. Blood jetted from torn veins and arteries in breast, shoulder and neck, and the wounds were ghastly to see, great ragged tears, that were never made by bullet or knife. One ear had been torn from his head, and hung loose, with a great piece of flesh from the angle of his jaw and neck, as if some gigantic beast had ripped it out with his fangs.

  “What in God’s name did this?” I ejaculated as the match went out, and he became merely an indistinct blob in the darkness below me. “A bear?” Even as I spoke I knew that no bear had been seen in Egypt for thirty years.

  “He done it!” The thick, sobbing mumble welled up through the dark. “De white man dat come by my cabin and ask me to guide him to Mistuh Brent’s house. He said he had a tooth-ache, so he had his head bandaged; but de bandages slipped and I seen his face — he killed me for seein’ him.”

  “You mean he set dogs on you?” I demanded, for his wounds were such as I have seen on animals worried by vicious hounds.

  “No, suh,” whimpered the ebbing voice. “He done it hisself — aaaggghhh!”

  The mumble broke in a shriek as he twisted his head, barely visible in the gloom, and stared back the way he had come. Death must have struck him in the midst of that scream, for it broke short at the highest note. He flopped convulsively once, like a dog hit by a truck, and then lay still. I strained my eyes into the darkness, and made out a vague shape a few yards away in the trail. It was erect and tall as a man; it made no sound. I opened my mouth to challenge the unknown visitant, but no sound came. An indescribable chill flowed over me, freezing my tongue to my palate. It was fear, primitive and unreasoning, and even while I stood paralyzed I could not understand it, could not guess why that silent, motionless figure, sinister as it was, should rouse such instinctive dread.

  Then suddenly the figure moved quickly toward me, and I found my voice. “Who comes there?”

  No answer; but the form came on in a rush, and as I groped for a match, it was almost upon me. I struck the match — with a ferocious snarl the figure hurled itself against me, the match was struck from my hand and extinguished, and I felt a sharp pain on the side of my neck. My gun exploded almost involuntarily and without aim, and its flash dazzled me, obscuring rather than revealing the tall man-like figure that struck at me; then with a crashing rush through the trees my assailant was gone, and I staggered alone on the forest trail. Swearing angrily, I felt for another match. Blood was trickling down my shoulder, soaking through my shirt. When I struck the match and investigated, another chill swept down m
y spine. My shirt was torn and the flesh beneath slightly cut; the wound was little more than a scratch, but the thing that roused nameless fear in my mind was the fact that the wound was similar to those on poor Jim Tike.

  * * *

  II.— “DEAD MEN WITH TORN THROATS!”

  Jim Tike was dead, lying face down in a pool of his own blood, his red- dabbled limbs sprawling drunkenly. I stared uneasily at the surrounding forest that hid the thing that had killed him. That it was a man I knew; the outline, in the brief light of the match, had been vague, but unmistakably human. But what sort of a weapon could make a wound like the merciless champing of great bestial teeth? I shook my head, recalling the ingenuity of mankind in the creation of implements of slaughter, and considered a more acute problem. Should I risk my life further by continuing upon my course, or should I return to the outer world and bring in men and dogs, to carry out poor Jim Tike’s corpse, and hunt down his murderer?

  I did not waste much time in indecision. I had set out to perform a task. If a murderous criminal besides Tope Braxton were abroad in the piney woods, there was all the more reason for warning the men in that lonely cabin. As for my own danger, I was already more than halfway to the cabin. It would scarcely be more dangerous to advance than to retreat. If I did turn back, and escape from Egypt alive, before I could rouse a posse, anything might happen in that isolated cabin under the black trees.

  So I left Jim Tike’s body there in the trail, and went on, gun in hand, and nerves sharpened by the new peril. That visitant had not been Tope Braxton. I had the dead man’s word for it that the attacker was a mysterious white man; the glimpse I had had of the figure had confirmed the fact that he was not Tope Braxton. I would have known that squat, apish body even in the dark. This man was tall and spare, and the mere recollection of that gaunt figure made me shiver, unreasoningly.

  It is no pleasant experience to walk along a black forest trail with only the stars glinting through the dense branches, and the knowledge that a ruthless murderer is lurking near, perhaps within arm’s length in the concealing darkness. The recollection of the butchered black man burned vividly in my brain. Sweat beaded my face and hands, and I wheeled a score of times, glaring into the blackness where my ears had caught the rustle of leaves or the breaking of a twig — how could I know whether the sounds were but the natural noises of the forest, or the stealthy movements of the killer? Once I stopped, with an eery crawling of my skin, as far away, through the black trees, I glimpsed a faint, lurid glow. It was not stationary; it moved, but it was too far away for me to make out the source. With my hair prickling unpleasantly I waited, for I knew not what; but presently the mysterious glow vanished, and so keyed up I was to unnatural happenings, that it was only then that I realized the light might well have been made by a man walking with a pine-knot torch. I hurried on, cursing myself for my fears, the more baffling because they were so nebulous. Peril was no stranger to me in that land of feud and violence where century-old hates still smoldered down the generations. Threat of bullet or knife openly or from ambush had never shaken my nerves before; but I knew now that I was afraid — afraid of something I could not understand, or explain.

  I sighed with relief when I saw Richard Brent’s light gleaming through the pines, but I did not relax my vigilance. Many a man, danger-dogged, has been struck down at the very threshold of safety. Knocking on the door, I stood sidewise, peering into the shadows that ringed the tiny clearing and seemed to repel the faint light from the shuttered windows.

  “Who’s there?” came a deep harsh voice from within. “Is that you, Ashley?” “No; it’s me — Kirby Garfield. Open the door.”

  The upper half of the door swung inward, and Richard Brent’s head and shoulders were framed in the opening. The light behind him left most of his face in shadow, but could not obscure the harsh gaunt lines of his features nor the gleam of the bleak gray eyes.

  “What do you want, at this time of night?” he demanded, with his usual bruqueness.

  I replied shortly, for I did not like the man; courtesy in our part of the country is an obligation no gentleman thinks of shirking.

  “I came to tell you that it’s very likely that a dangerous Negro is prowling in your vicinity. Tope Braxton killed Constable Joe Sorley and a Negro trusty, and broke out of jail this morning. I think he took refuge in Egypt. I thought you ought to be warned.”

  “Well, you’ve warned me,” he snapped, in his short-clipped Eastern accent. “Why don’t you be off?”

  “Because I have no intention of going back through those woods tonight,” I answered angrily. “I came in here to warn you, not because of any love of you, but simply because you’re a white man. The least you can do is to let me put up in your cabin until morning. All I ask is a pallet on the floor; you don’t even have to feed me.”

  That last was an insult I could not withhold, in my resentment; at least in the piney woods it is considered an insult. But Richard Brent ignored my thrust at his penuriousness and discourtesy. He scowled at me. I could not see his hands.

  “Did you see Ashley anywhere along the trail?” he asked finally. Ashley was his servant, a saturnine figure as taciturn as his master, who drove into the distant river village once a month for supplies.

  “No; he might have been in town, and left after I did.”

  “I guess I’ll have to let you in,” he muttered, grudgingly.

  “Well, hurry up,” I requested. “I’ve got a gash in my shoulder I want to wash and dress. Tope Braxton isn’t the only killer abroad tonight.”

  At that he halted in his fumbling at the lower door, and his expression changed.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s a dead nigger a mile or so up the trail. The man who killed him tried to kill me. He may be after you, for all I know. The nigger he killed was guiding him here.”

  Richard Brent started violently, and his face went livid.

  “Who — what do you mean?” His voice cracked, unexpectedly falsetto. “What man?”

  “I don’t know. A fellow who manages to rip his victims like a hound—”

  “A hound!” The words burst out in a scream. The change in Brent was hideous. His eyes seemed starting from his head; his hair stood up stiffly on his scalp, and his skin was the hue of ashes. His lips drew back from his teeth in a grin of sheer terror.

  He gagged and then found voice.

  “Get out!” he choked. “I see it, now! I know why you wanted to get into my house! You bloody devil! He sent you! You’re his spy! Go!” The last was a scream and his hands rose above the lower half of the door at last. I stared into the gaping muzzles of a sawed-off shotgun. “Go, before I kill you!”

  I stepped back off the stoop, my skin crawling at the thought of a close- range blast from that murderous implement of destruction. The black muzzles and the livid, convulsed face behind them promised sudden demolition.

  “You cursed fool!” I growled, courting disaster in my anger. “Be careful with that thing. I’m going. I’d rather take a chance with a murderer than a madman.”

  Brent made no reply; panting and shivering like a man smitten with ague, he crouched over his shotgun and watched me as I turned and strode across the clearing. Where the trees began I could have wheeled and shot him down without much danger, for my .45 would out-range his shortened scatter-gun. But I had come there to warn the fool, not to kill him.

  The upper door slammed as I strode in under the trees, and the stream of light was cut abruptly off. I drew my gun and plunged into the shadowy trail, my ears whetted again for sounds under the black branches.

  My thoughts reverted to Richard Brent. It was surely no friend who had sought guidance to his cabin! The man’s frantic fear had bordered on insanity. I wondered if it had been to escape this man that Brent had exiled himself in this lonely stretch of pinelands and river. Surely it had been to escape something that he had come; for he never concealed his hatred of the country nor his contempt for the native people, whit
e and black. But I had never believed that he was a criminal, hiding from the law.

  The light fell away behind me, vanished among the black trees. A curious, chill, sinking feeling obsessed me, as if the disappearance of that light, hostile as was its source, had severed the only link that connected this nightmarish adventure with the world of sanity and humanity. Grimly taking hold of my nerves, I strode on up the trail. But I had not gone far when again I halted.

  This time it was the unmistakable sound of horses running; the rumble of wheels mingled with the pounding of hoofs. Who would be coming along that nighted trail in a rig but Ashley? But instantly I realized that the team was headed in the other direction. The sound receded rapidly, and soon became only a distant blur of noise.

  I quickened my pace, much puzzled, and presently I heard hurried, stumbling footsteps ahead of me, and a quick, breathless panting that seemed indicative of panic. I distinguished the footsteps of two people, though I could see nothing in the intense darkness. At that point the branches interlaced over the trail, forming a black arch through which not even the stars gleamed.

  “Ho, there!” I called cautiously. “Who are you?”

  Instantly the sounds ceased abruptly, and I could picture two shadowy figures standing tensely still, with bated breath.

  “Who’s there?” I repeated. “Don’t be afraid. It’s me — Kirby Garfield.”

  “Stand where you are!” came a hard voice I recognized as Ashley’s. “You sound like Garfield — but I want to be sure. If you move you’ll get a slug through you.”

  There was a scratching sound and a tiny flame leaped up. A human hand was etched in its glow, and behind it the square, hard face of Ashley peering in my direction. A pistol in his other hand caught the glint of the fire; and on that arm rested another hand — a slim, white hand, with a jewel sparkling on one finger. Dimly I made out the slender figure of a woman; her face was like a pale blossom in the gloom.