“What are you talking about?” I demanded.
Far out in the woods rose a strange, shrill cry, like the cry of a bird. But no such bird ever called before in Canaan. Tope cried out as if in answer, and shriveled into himself. He sank down on the bunk in a veritable palsy of fear.
“That was a signal!” I snapped. “Some of you go out there.”
Half a dozen men hastened to follow my suggestion, and I returned to the task of making Tope renew his revelations. It was useless. Some hideous fear had sealed his lips. He lay shuddering like a stricken animal, and did not even seem to hear our questions. No one suggested the use of the blacksnake.
Anyone could see the Negro was paralyzed with terror.
Presently the searchers returned, empty-handed. They had seen no one, and the thick carpet of pine needles showed no foot-prints. The men looked at me expectantly. As Colonel Buckner’s son, leadership was expected of me.
“What about it, Kirby?” asked McBride. “Breckinridge and the others have just rode in. They couldn’t find that nigger you cut up.”
“There was another nigger I hit with a pistol,” I said. “Maybe he came back and helped him.” Still I could not bring myself to mention the brown girl. “Leave Tope alone. Maybe he’ll get over his scare after a while. Better keep a guard in the cabin all the time. The swamp niggers may try to get him as they got Ridge Jackson. Better scour the roads around the town, Esau; there may be some of them hiding in the woods.”
“I will. I reckon you’ll want to be gettin’ up to the house, now, and seein’ your folks.”
“Yes. And I want to swap these toys for a couple of .44s. Then I’m going to ride out and tell the country people to come into Grimesville. If it’s to be an uprising, we don’t know when it will commence.”
“You’re not goin’ alone!” protested McBride.
“I’ll be all right,” I answered impatiently. “All this may not amount to anything, but it’s best to be on the safe side. That’s why I’m going after the country folks. No, I don’t want anybody to go with me. Just in case the niggers do get crazy enough to attack the town, you’ll need every man you’ve got. But if I can get hold of some of the swamp niggers and talk to them, I don’t think there’ll be any attack.”
“You won’t get a glimpse of them,” McBride predicted.
III
SHADOWS OVER CANAAN
It was not yet noon when I rode out of the village westward along the old road. Thick woods swallowed me quickly. Dense walls of pines marched with me on either hand, giving way occasionally to fields enclosed with straggling rail fences, with the log cabins of the tenants or owners close by, with the usual litters of tow-headed children and lank hound dogs.
Some of the cabins were empty. The occupants, if white, had already gone into Grimesville; if black they had gone into the swamps, or fled to the hidden refuge of the town niggers, according to their affiliations.
In any event, the vacancy of their hovels was sinister in its suggestion.
A tense silence brooded over the pinelands, broken only by the occasional wailing call of a plowman. My progress was not swift, for from time to time I turned off the main road to give warning to some lonely cabin huddled on the bank of one of the many thicket-fringed creeks. Most of these farms were south of the road; the white settlements did not extend far to the north; for in that direction lay Tularoosa Creek with its jungle-grown marshes that stretched inlets southward like groping fingers.
The actual warning was brief; there was no need to argue or explain. I called from the saddle: “Get into town; trouble’s brewing on Tularoosa.” Faces paled, and people dropped whatever they were doing: the men to grab guns and jerk mules from the plow to hitch to the wagons, the women to bundle necessary belongings together and shrill the children in from their play. As I rode I heard the cow-horns blowing up and down the creeks, summoning men from distant fields–blowing as they had not blown for a generation, a warning and a defiance which I knew carried to such ears as might be listening in the edges of the swamplands. The country emptied itself behind me, flowing in thin but steady streams toward Grimesville.
The sun was swinging low among the topmost branches of the pines when I reached the Richardson cabin, the westernmost “white” cabin in Canaan. Beyond it lay the Neck, the angle formed by the junction of Tularoosa with Black River, a jungle-like expanse occupied only by scattered negro huts.
Mrs. Richardson called to me anxiously from the cabin stoop.
“Well, Mr. Kirby, I’m glad to see you back in Canaan! We been hearin’ the horns all evenin’, Mr.
Kirby. What’s it mean? It–it ain’t–”
“You and Joe better get the children and light out for Grimesville,” I answered. “Nothing’s happened yet, and may not, but it’s best to be on the safe side. All the people are going.”
“We’ll go right now!” she gasped, paling, as she snatched off her apron. “Lord, Mr. Kirby, you reckon they’ll cut us off before we can git to town?”
I shook my head. “They’ll strike at night, if at all. We’re just playing safe. Probably nothing will come of it.”
“I bet you’re wrong there,” she predicted, scurrying about in desperate activity. “I been hearin’ a drum beatin’ off toward Saul Stark’s cabin, off and on, for a week now. They beat drums back in the Big Uprisin’. My pappy’s told me about it many’s the time. The nigger skinned his brother alive. The horns was blowin’ all up and down the creeks, and the drums was beatin’ louder’n the horns could blow.
You’ll be ridin’ back with us, won’t you, Mr. Kirby?”
“No; I’m going to scout down along the trail a piece.”
“Don’t go too far. You’re liable to run into old Saul Stark and his devils. Lord! Where is that man? Joe!
Joe! ”
As I rode down the trail her shrill voice followed me, thin-edged with fear.
Beyond the Richardson farm pines gave way to live-oaks. The underbrush grew ranker. A scent of rotting vegetation impregnated the fitful breeze. Occasionally I sighted a nigger hut, half hidden under the trees, but always it stood silent and deserted. Empty nigger cabins meant but one thing: the blacks were collecting at Goshen, some miles to the east on the Tularoosa; and that gathering, too, could have but one meaning.
My goal was Saul Stark’s hut. My intention had been formed when I heard Tope Sorley’s incoherent tale. There could be no doubt that Saul Stark was the dominant figure in this web of mystery. With Saul Stark I meant to deal. That I might be risking my life was a chance any man must take who assumes the responsibility of leadership.
The sun slanted through the lower branches of the cypresses when I reached it–a log cabin set against a background of gloomy tropical jungle. A few steps beyond it began the uninhabitable swamp in which Tularoosa emptied its murky current into Black River. A reek of decay hung in the air; gray moss bearded the trees, and poisonous vines twisted in rank tangles.
I called: “Stark! Saul Stark! Come out here!”
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 advanc
ed. 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 ag
ainst 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.”