Black Hounds of Death Read Online Free PDF Page B

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