The Best of Robert E. Howard: Crimson Shadows (Volume 1) Page 9

  It must have been about that time, as she afterward told me, that Ellen’s horse stumbled and threw her. Before she could rise, the black had leaped from his horse and seized her in his arms. She screamed and fought, but he gripped her, held her helpless and laughed at her. Tearing her jacket to pieces, he bound her arms and legs, remounted and started back, carrying the half-fainting girl in front of him.

  Back in front of the hut I rose slowly. I rubbed my arms where the ropes had been, moved a little closer to the black, stretched, stooped and rubbed my legs; then with a catlike bound I was on him, my knife flashing from my boot. The trade-musket crashed and the charge whizzed above my head as I knocked up the barrel and closed with him. Hand to hand, I would have been no match for the black giant; but I had the knife. Clinched close together we were too close for him to use the trade-musket for a club. He wasted time trying to do that, and with a desperate effort I threw him off his balance and drove the dagger to the hilt in his black chest.

  I wrenched it out again; I had no other weapon, for I could find no more ammunition for the trade-musket.

  I had no idea which way Ellen had fled. I assumed she had gone toward the ranch, and in that direction I took my way. Smith must be warned. The warriors were far ahead of me. Even then they might be creeping up about the unsuspecting ranch.

  I had not covered a fourth of the distance, when a drumming of hoofs behind me caused me to turn my head. Ellen’s horse was thundering toward me, riderless. I caught her as she raced past me, and managed to stop her. The story was plain. The girl had either reached a place of safety and had turned the horse loose, or what was much more likely, had been captured, the horse escaping and fleeing toward the ranch, as a horse will do. I gripped the saddle, torn with indecision. Finally I leaped on the horse and sent her flying toward Smith’s ranch. It was not many miles; Smith must not be massacred by those black devils, and I must find a gun if I escaped to rescue the girl from Senecoza.

  A half-mile from Smith’s I overtook the raiders and went through them like drifting smoke. The workers at Smith’s place were startled by a wild-riding horseman charging headlong into the stockade, shouting, “Masai! Masai! A raid, you fools!” snatching a gun and flying out again.

  So when the savages arrived they found everybody ready for them, and they got such a warm reception that after one attempt they turned tail and fled back across the veldt.

  And I was riding as I never rode before. The mare was almost exhausted, but I pushed her mercilessly. On, on!

  I aimed for the only place I knew likely. The hut among the trees. I assumed that the fetish-man would return there.

  And long before the hut came into sight, a horseman dashed from the grass, going at right angles to my course, and our horses, colliding, sent both tired animals to the ground.

  “Steve!” It was a cry of joy mingled with fear. Ellen lay, tied hand and foot, gazing up at me wildly as I regained my feet.

  Senecoza came with a rush, his long knife flashing in the sunlight. Back and forth we fought — slash, ward and parry, my ferocity and agility matching his savagery and skill.

  A terrific lunge which he aimed at me, I caught on my point, laying his arm open, and then with a quick engage and wrench, disarmed him. But before I could use my advantage, he sprang away into the grass and vanished.

  I caught up the girl, slashing her bonds, and she clung to me, poor child, until I lifted her and carried her toward the horses. But we were not yet through with Senecoza. He must have had a rifle cached away somewhere in the bush, for the first I knew of him was when a bullet spat within a foot above my head.

  I caught at the bridles, and then I saw that the mare had done all she could, temporarily. She was exhausted. I swung Ellen up on the horse.

  “Ride for our ranch,” I ordered her. “The raiders are out, but you can get through. Ride low and ride fast!”

  “But you, Steve!”

  “Go, go!” I ordered, swinging her horse around and starting it. She dashed away, looking at me wistfully over her shoulder. Then I snatched the rifle and a handful of cartridges I had gotten at Smith’s, and took to the bush. And through the hot African day, Senecoza and I played a game of hide-and-seek. Crawling, slipping in and out of the scanty veldt-bushes, crouching in the tall grass, we traded shots back and forth. A movement of the grass, a snapping twig, the rasp of grass-blades, and a bullet came questing, another answering it.

  I had but a few cartridges and I fired carefully, but presently I pushed my one remaining cartridge into the rifle — a big, six-bore, single-barrel breech-loader, for I had not had time to pick when I snatched it up.

  I crouched in my covert and watched for the black to betray himself by a careless movement. Not a sound, not a whisper among the grasses. Away off over the veldt a hyena sounded his fiendish laugh and another answered, closer at hand. The cold sweat broke out on my brow.

  What was that? A drumming of many horses’ hoofs! Raiders returning? I ventured a look and could have shouted for joy. At least twenty men were sweeping toward me, white men and ranch-boys, and ahead of them all rode Ellen! They were still some distance away. I darted behind a tall bush and rose, waving my hand to attract their attention.

  They shouted and pointed to something beyond me. I whirled and saw, some thirty yards away, a huge hyena slinking toward me, rapidly. I glanced carefully across the veldt. Somewhere out there, hidden by the billowing grasses, lurked Senecoza. A shot would betray to him my position — and I had but one cartridge. The rescue party was still out of range.

  I looked again at the hyena. He was still rushing toward me. There was no doubt as to his intentions. His eyes glittered like a fiend’s from Hell, and a scar on his shoulder showed him to be the same beast that had once before attacked me. Then a kind of horror took hold of me, and resting the old elephant rifle over my elbow, I sent my last bullet crashing through the bestial thing. With a scream that seemed to have a horribly human note in it, the hyena turned and fled back into the bush, reeling as it ran.

  And the rescue party swept up around me.

  A fusillade of bullets crashed through the bush from which Senecoza had sent his last shot. There was no reply.

  “Ve hunt ter snake down,” quoth Cousin Ludtvik, his Boer accent increasing with his excitement. And we scattered through the veldt in a skirmish line, combing every inch of it warily.

  Not a trace of the fetish-man did we find. A rifle we found, empty, with empty shells scattered about, and (which was very strange) hyena tracks leading away from the rifle.

  I felt the short hairs of my neck bristle with intangible horror. We looked at each other, and said not a word, as with a tacit agreement we took up the trail of the hyena.

  We followed it as it wound in and out in the shoulder-high grass, showing how it had slipped up on me, stalking me as a tiger stalks its victim. We struck the trail the thing had made, returning to the bush after I had shot it. Splashes of blood marked the way it had taken. We followed.

  “It leads toward the fetish-hut,” muttered an Englishman. “Here, sirs, is a damnable mystery.”

  And Cousin Ludtvik ordered Ellen to stay back, leaving two men with her.

  We followed the trail over the kopje and into the clump of trees. Straight to the door of the hut it led. We circled the hut cautiously, but no tracks led away. It was inside the hut. Rifles ready, we forced the rude door.

  No tracks led away from the hut and no tracks led to it except the tracks of the hyena. Yet there was no hyena within that hut; and on the dirt floor, a bullet through his black breast, lay Senecoza, the fetish-man.

  REMEMBRANCE

  Weird Tales, April 1928

  Eight thousand years ago a man I slew;

  I lay in wait beside a sparkling rill

  There in an upland valley green and still.

  The white stream gurgled where the rushes grew;

  The hills were veiled in dreamy hazes blue.

  He came along the trail; with savage ski
ll

  My spear leaped like a snake to make my kill —

  Leaped like a striking snake and pierced him through.

  And still when blue haze dreams along the sky

  And breezes bring the murmur of the sea,

  A whisper thrills me where at ease I lie

  Beneath the branches of some mountain tree;

  He comes, fog-dim, the ghost that will not die,

  And with accusing finger points at me.

  SEA CURSE

  Weird Tales, May 1928

  And some return by the failing light

  And some in the waking dream,

  For she hears the heels of the dripping ghosts

  That ride the rough roofbeam.

  — Kipling.

  They were the brawlers and braggarts, the loud boasters and hard drinkers, of Faring town, John Kulrek and his crony Lie-lip Canool. Many a time have I, a tousled-haired lad, stolen to the tavern door to listen to their curses, their profane arguments and wild sea songs; half-fearful and half in admiration of these wild rovers. Aye, all the people of Faring town gazed on them with fear and admiration, for they were not like the rest of the Faring men; they were not content to ply their trade along the coasts and among the shark-teeth shoals. No yawls, no skiffs for them! They fared far, farther than any other man in the village, for they shipped on the great sailing-ships that went out on the white tides to brave the restless gray ocean and make ports in strange lands.

  Ah, I mind it was swift times in the little seacoast village of Faring when John Kulrek came home, with his furtive Lie-lip at his side, swaggering down the gangplank, in his tarry sea-clothes, and the broad leather belt that held his ever-ready dagger; shouting condescending greeting to some favored acquaintance, kissing some maiden who ventured too near; then up the street, roaring some scarcely decent song of the sea. How the cringers and the idlers, the hangers-on, would swarm about the two desperate heroes, flattering and smirking, guffawing hilariously at each nasty jest. For to the tavern loafers and to some of the weaker among the straightforward villagers, these men with their wild talk and their brutal deeds, their tales of the Seven Seas and the far countries, these men, I say, were valiant knights, nature’s noblemen who dared to be men of blood and brawn.

  And all feared them, so that when a man was beaten or a woman insulted, the villagers muttered — and did nothing. And so when Moll Farrell’s niece was put to shame by John Kulrek, none dared even to put in words what all thought. Moll had never married, and she and the girl lived alone in a little hut down close to the beach, so close that in high tide the waves came almost to the door.

  The people of the village accounted old Moll something of a witch, and she was a grim, gaunt old dame who had little to say to anyone. But she minded her own business, and eked out a slim living by gathering clams, and picking up bits of driftwood.

  The girl was a pretty, foolish little thing, vain and easily befooled, else she had never yielded to the shark-like blandishments of John Kulrek.

  I mind the day was a cold winter day with a sharp breeze out of the east when the old dame came into the village street shrieking that the girl had vanished. All scattered over the beach and back among the bleak inland hills to search for her — all save John Kulrek and his cronies who sat in the tavern dicing and toping. All the while beyond the shoals, we heard the never-ceasing droning of the heaving, restless grey monster, and in the dim light of the ghostly dawn Moll Farrell’s girl came home.

  The tides bore her gently across the wet sands and laid her almost at her own door. Virgin-white she was, and her arms were folded across her still bosom; calm was her face, and the gray tides sighed about her slender limbs. Moll Farrell’s eyes were stones, yet she stood above her dead girl and spoke no word till John Kulrek and his crony came reeling down from the tavern, their drinking-jacks still in their hands. Drunk was John Kulrek, and the people gave back for him, murder in their souls; so he came and laughed at Moll Farrell across the body of her girl.

  “Zounds!” swore John Kulrek; “The wench has drowned herself, Lie-lip!”

  Lie-lip laughed, with the twist of his thin mouth. He always hated Moll Farrell, for it was she that had given him the name of Lie-lip.

  Then John Kulrek lifted his drinking-jack, swaying on his uncertain legs. “A health to the wench’s ghost!” he bellowed, while all stood aghast.

  Then Moll Farrell spoke, and the words broke from her in a scream which sent ripples of cold up and down the spines of the throng.

  “The curse of the Foul Fiend upon you, John Kulrek!” she screamed. “The curse of God rest upon your vile soul throughout eternity! May you gaze on sights that shall sear the eyes of you and scorch the soul of you! May you die a bloody death and writhe in Hell’s flames for a million and a million and yet a million years! I curse you by sea and by land, by earth and by air, by the demons of the oceans and the demons of the swamplands, the fiends of the forests and the goblins of the hills! And you” — her lean finger stabbed at Lie-lip Canool and he started backward, his face paling — “you shall be the death of John Kulrek and he shall be the death of you! You shall bring John Kulrek to the doors of Hell and John Kulrek shall bring you to the gallows-tree! I set the seal of death upon your brow, John Kulrek! You shall live in terror and die in horror far out upon the cold grey sea! But the sea that took the soul of innocence to her bosom shall not take you, but shall fling forth your vile carcass to the sands! Aye, John Kulrek” — and she spoke with such a terrible intensity that the drunken mockery on the man’s face changed to one of swinish stupidity — “the sea roars for the victim it will not keep! There is snow upon the hills, John Kulrek, and ere it melts your corpse will lie at my feet. And I shall spit upon it and be content.”

  Kulrek and his crony sailed at dawn for a long voyage, and Moll went back to her hut and her clam gathering. She seemed to grow leaner and more grim than ever and her eyes smoldered with a light not sane. The days glided by and people whispered among themselves that Moll’s days were numbered, for she faded to a ghost of a woman; but she went her way, refusing all aid.

  That was a short, cold summer and the snow on the barren inland hills never melted; a thing very unusual, which caused much comment among the villagers. At dusk and at dawn Moll would come up on the beach, gaze up at the snow which glittered on the hills, then out to sea with a fierce intensity in her gaze.

  Then the days grew shorter, the nights longer and darker, and the cold grey tides came sweeping along the bleak strands, bearing the rain and sleet of the sharp east breezes.

  And upon a bleak day a trading-vessel sailed into the bay and anchored. And all the idlers and the wastrels flocked to the wharfs, for that was the ship upon which John Kulrek and Lie-lip Canool had sailed. Down the gangplank came Lie-lip, more furtive than ever, but John Kulrek was not there.

  To shouted queries, Canool shook his head. “Kulrek deserted ship at a port of Sumatra,” said he. “He had a row with the skipper, lads; wanted me to desert, too, but no! I had to see you fine lads again, eh, boys?”

  Almost cringing was Lie-lip Canool, and suddenly he recoiled as Moll Farrell came through the throng. A moment they stood eyeing each other; then Moll’s grim lips bent in a terrible smile.

  “There’s blood on your hand, Canool!” she lashed out suddenly — so suddenly that Lie-lip started and rubbed his right hand across his left sleeve.

  “Stand aside, witch!” he snarled in sudden anger, striding through the crowd which gave back for him. His admirers followed him to the tavern.

  Now, I mind that the next day was even colder; grey fogs came drifting out of the east and veiled the sea and the beaches. There would be no sailing that day, and so all the villagers were in their snug houses or matching tales at the tavern. So it came about that Joe, my friend, a lad of my own age, and I, were the ones who saw the first of the strange thing that happened.

  Being harum-scarum lads of no wisdom, we were sitting in a small rowboat, floating at the end of
the wharfs, each shivering and wishing the other would suggest leaving, there being no reason whatever for our being there, save that it was a good place to build air-castles undisturbed.

  Suddenly Joe raised his hand. “Say,” he said, “d’ye hear? Who can be out on the bay upon a day like this?”

  “Nobody. What d’ye hear?”

  “Oars. Or I’m a lubber. Listen.”

  There was no seeing anything in that fog, and I heard nothing. Yet Joe swore he did, and suddenly his face assumed a strange look.

  “Somebody rowing out there, I tell you! The bay is alive with oars from the sound! A score of boats at the least! Ye dolt, can ye not hear?”

  Then, as I shook my head, he leaped and began to undo the painter.

  “I’m off to see. Name me liar if the bay is not full of boats, all together like a close fleet. Are you with me?”

  Yes, I was with him, though I heard nothing. Then out in the greyness we went, and the fog closed behind and before so that we drifted in a vague world of smoke, seeing naught and hearing naught. We were lost in no time, and I cursed Joe for leading us upon a wild goose chase that was like to end with our being swept out to sea. I thought of Moll Farrell’s girl and shuddered.

  How long we drifted I know not. Minutes faded into hours, hours into centuries. Still Joe swore he heard the oars, now close at hand, now far away, and for hours we followed them, steering our course toward the sound, as the noise grew or receded. This I later thought of, and could not understand.

  Then, when my hands were so numb that I could no longer hold the oar, and the forerunning drowsiness of cold and exhaustion was stealing over me, bleak white stars broke through the fog which glided suddenly away, fading like a ghost of smoke, and we found ourselves afloat just outside the mouth of the bay. The waters lay smooth as a pond, all dark green and silver in the starlight, and the cold came crisper than ever. I was swinging the boat about, to put back into the bay, when Joe gave a shout, and for the first time I heard the clack of oarlocks. I glanced over my shoulder and my blood went cold.