Black Hounds of Death Read online

  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 Stalk’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 Damhallah.”

  “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 be 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 Dumallah 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 willpower. 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 — 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 willpower. 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 l
ips. “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.”