The Dark Man and Others, page 27
Somebody broke the ensuing stillness: “And then-¥*
“Then I awake. Never yet have I seen the foul monster. But that is the dream that haunts me, and from which I have wakened, in my childhood screaming, in my manhood in cold sweat. At irregular intervals I dream it, and each time, lately”—he hesitated and then went on—“each time lately, the thing has been getting closer—closer—the waving of the grass marks his progress and he nears me with each dream; and when he reaches me, then—”
He stopped short, then without a word rose abruptly and entered the house. The rest of us sat silent for awhile, then followed him, for it was late.
How long I slept I do not know, but I woke suddenly with the impression that somewhere in the house someone had laughed long, loud and hideously, as a maniac laughs. Starting up, wondering if I had been dreaming, I rushed from my room, just as a truly horrible shriek echoed through the house. The place was now alive with other people who had been awakened, and all of us rushed to Faming’s room, whence the sounds had seemed to come.
Faming lay dead upon the floor, where it seemed he had fallen in some terrific struggle. There was no mark upon him, but his face was terribly distorted; as the face of a man who had been crushed by some superhuman force—such as some gigantic snake.
In the Forest of Villefère
The sun had set. The great shadows came striding over the forest. In the weird twilight of a late summer day, I saw the path ahead glide on among the might trees and disappear. And I shuddered and glanced fearfully over my shoulder. Miles behind lay the nearest village—miles ahead the next.
I looked to left and to right as I strode on, and anon I looked behind me. And anon I stopped short, grasping my rapier, as a breaking twig betokened the going of some small beast. Or was it a beast?
But the path led on and I followed, because, forsooth, I* had naught else to do.
As I went I bethought me, “My own thoughts will route me, if I be not aware. What is there in this forest, except perhaps the creatures that roam it, deer and the like? Tush, the foolish legends of those villagers!’’
And so I went and the twilight faded into dusk. Stars began to blink and the leaves of the trees murmured in the faint breeze. And then I stopped short, my sword leaping to my hand, for just ahead, around a curve of the path, someone was singing. The words I could not distinguish, but the accent was strange, almost barbaric.
I stepped behind a great tree, and the cold sweat beaded my forehead. Then the singer came in sight, a tall, thin man, vague in the twilight. I shrugged my shoulders. A man I did not fear. I sprang out, my point raised.
“Stand!”
He showed no surprise. “I prithee, handle thy blade with care, friend,” he said.
Somewhat ashamed, I lowered my sword.
“I am new to this forest,” I quoth, apologetically. “I heard talk of bandits. I crave pardon. Where lies the road to Villefère?’
“Corbleu, you’ve missed it,” he answered. “You should have branched off to the right some distance back. I am going there myself. If you may abide my company, I will direct you.”
I hesitated. Yet why should I hesitate?”
“Why, certainly. My name is de Montour, of Normandy.”
“And I am Carolus le Loup.”
“No!” I started back.
He looked at me in astonishment.
“Pardon,” said I; “the name is strange. Does not loup mean wolf?”
“My family were always great hunters,” he answered. He did not offer his hand.
“You will pardon my staring,” said I as we walked down the path, “but I can hardly see your face in the dusk.”
I sensed that he was laughing, though he made no sound.
“It is little to look upon,” he answered.
I stepped closer and then leaped away, my hair bristling.
“A mask!” I exclaimed. “Why do you wear a mask, m’sieu?”
“It is a vow,” he explained. “In fleeing a pack of hounds I vowed that if I escaped I would wear a mask for a certain time.”
“Hounds, m’sieu?”
“Wolves,” he answered quickly; “I said wolves.”
We walked in silence for a while and then my companion said, “I am surprised that you walk these woods by night. Few people come these ways even in the day.”
“I am in haste to reach the border,” I answered. “A treaty has been signed with the English, and the Duke of Burgundy should know of it. The people at the village sought to dissuade me. They spoke of a—wolf that was purported to roam these woods.”
“Here the path branches to Villefère,” said he, and I saw a narrow, crooked path that I had not seen when I passed it before. It led in amid the darkness of the trees. I shuddered.
“You wish to return to the village?”
“No!” I exclaimed. “No7 no! Lead on.”
So narrow was the path that we walked single file, he leading. I looked well at him. He was taller, much taller than I, and thin, wiry. He was dressed in a costume that smacked of Spain. A long rapier swung at his hip. He walked with long easy strides, noiselessly.
Then he began to talk of travel and adventure. He spoke of many lands and seas he had seen and many strange things. So we talked and went farther and farther into the forest
I presumed that he was French, and yet he had a very strange accent, that was neither French nor Spanish nor English, nor like any language I had ever heard. Some words he slurred strangely and some he could not pronounce at all.
“This path is often used, is it?” I asked.
“Not by many,” he answered and laughed silently. I shuddered. It was very dark and the leaves whispered together among the branches.
“A fiend haunts this forest,” I said.
“So the peasants say,” he answered, “but I have roamed it oft and have never seen his face.”
Then he began to speak of strange creatures of darkness, and the moon rose and shadows glided among the trees. He looked up at the moon.
“Haste!” said he. “We must reach our destination before the moon reaches her zenith.”
We hurried along the trail.
’They say,” said I, “that a werewolf haunts these woodlands.”
“It might be,” said he, and we argued much upon the subject
“The old women say,” said he, “that if a werewolf is slain while a wolf, then he is slain, but if he is slain as a man, then his half-soul will haunt his slayer forever. But haste thee, the moon nears her zenith.”
We came into a small moonlit glade and the stranger stopped.
“Let us pause a while,” said he.
“Nay, let us be gone,” I urged; “I like not this place.”
He laughed without sound. “Why,” said he, “This is a fair glade. As good as a banquet hall it is, and many times have I feasted here. Ha, ha, ha! Look ye, I will show you a dance.” And he began bounding here and there, anon flinging back his head and laughing silently. Thought I, the man is mad.
As he danced his weird dance I looked about me. The trad went not on but stopped in the glade.
“Come,” said I “we must on. Do you not smell the rank, hairy scent that hovers about the glade? Wolves den here. Perhaps they are about us and are gliding upon us even now.”
He dropped upon all fours, bounded higher than my head, and came toward me with a strange slinking motion.
“That dance is called the Dance of the Wolf,” said he, and my hair bristled.
“Keep off!” I stepped back, and with a screech that set the echoes shuddering he leaped for me, and though a sword hung at his belt he did not draw it. My rapier was half out when he grasped my arm and flung me headlong. I dragged him with me and we struck the ground together. Wrenching a hand free I jerked off the mask. A shriek of horror broke from my lips. Beast eyes glittered beneath that mask, white fangs flashed in the moonlight. The face was that of a wolf.
In an instant those fangs were at my throat. Taloned hands tore the sword from my grasp. I beat at that horrible face with my clenched fists, but his jaws were fastened on my shoulders, his talons tore at my throat. Then I was on my back. The world was fading. Blindly I struck out. My hand dropped, then closed automatically about the hilt of my dagger, which I had been unable to get at. I drew and stabbed. A terrible, half-bestial bellowing screech. Then I reeled to my feet, free. At my feet lay the werewolf.
I stooped, raised the dagger, then paused, looked up. The moon hovered close to her zenith. If I slew the thing as a man its frightful spirit would haunt me forever. I sat down waiting. The thing watched me with flaming wolf eyes. The long wiry limbs seemed to shrink, to crook; hair seemed to grow upon them. Fearing madness, I snatched up the things own sword and hacked it to pieces. Then I flung the sword away and fled.
Old Garfield’s Heart
I was sitting on the porch when my grandfather hobbled out and sank down on his favorite chair with the cushioned seat, and began to stuff tobacco in his com-cob pipe.
“I thought you’d be goin’ to the dance,” he said.
I’m waiting for Doc Blaine,” I answered. “I’m going over to old man Garfield’s with him.
My grandfather sucked at his pipe awhile before he spoke again.
“Old Jim purty bad off?”
“Doc says he hasn’t a chance.”
“Who’s talkin’ care of him?”
“Joe Braxton—against Garfield’s wishes. But somebody had to stay with him.”
My grandfather sucked his pipe noisily, and watched the heat lightning playing away off up in the hills; then he said: “You think old Jim’s the biggest liar in this county, don’t you?”
“He tells some pretty tall tales,” I admitted. “Some of the things he claimed he took part in, must have happened before he was born.”
“I came from Tennessee to Texas in 1870,” my grandfather said abruptly. “I saw this town of Lost Knob grow up from nothin’. There wasn’t even a log-hut store here when I came. But old Jim Garfield was here, livin’ in the same place he lives now, only then it was a log cabin. He don’t look a day older now than he did the first time I saw him.”
“You never mentioned that before,” I said in some surprise.
“I knew you’d put it down to an old man’s maunderin’s,” he answered. “Old Jim was the first white man to settle in this country. He built his cabin a good fifty miles west of the frontier. God knows how he done it, for these hills swarmed with Comanches then.
“I remember the first time I ever saw him. Even then everybody called him ’old Jim/
“I remember him tellin’ me the same tales he’s told you—how he was at the battle of San Jacinto when he was a youngster, and how he’d rode with Ewen Cameron and Jack Hayes. Only I believe him, and you don’t!’
“That was so long ago—” I protested.
“The last Indian raid through this country was in 1874,” said my grandfather, engrossed in his own reminiscences. “I was in on that fight, and so was old Jim. I saw him knock old Yellow Tail off his mustang at seven hundred yards with a buffalo rifle.
“But before that I was with him in a fight up near the head of Locust Creek. A band of Comanches came down Mesquital, lootin’ and bumin’, rode through the hills and started back up Locust Creek, and a scout of us were hot on their heels. We ran on to them just at sundown in a mesquite flat We killed seven of them, and the rest skinned out through the brush on foot. But three of our boys were killed, and Jim Garfield got a thrust in the breast with a lance.
“It was an awful wound. He lay like a dead man, and it seemed sure nobody could live after a wound like that. But an old Indian came out of the brush, and when we aimed our guns at him, he made the peace sign and spoke to us in Spanish. I don’t know why the boys didn’t shoot him in his tracks, because our blood was heated with the fightin’ and killin’, but somethin’ about him made us hold our fire. He said he wasn’t a Comanche, but was an old friend of Garfield’s, and wanted to help him. He asked us to carry Jim into a clump of mesquite, and leave him alone with him, and to this day I don’t know why we did, but we did. It was an awful time—the wounded moanin’ and callin’ for water, the starin’ corpses strewn about the camp, night cornin’ on, and no way of knowin’ that the Indians wouldn’t return when dark fell.
“We made camp right there, because the horses were fagged out, and we watched all night, but the Comanches didn’t come back. I don’t know what went on out in the mesquite where Jim Garfield’s body lay, because I never saw that strange Indian again, but durin’ the night I kept hearin’ a weird moanin’ that wasn’t made by the dyin’ men, and an owl hooted from midnight till dawn.
“And at sunrise Jim Garfield came walkin’ out of the mesquite, pale and haggard, but alive, and already the wound in his breast had closed and begun to heal. And since then he’s never mentioned that wound, nor that fight, nor the strange Indian who came and went so mysteriously. And he hasn’t aged a bit; he looks now just like he did then—a man of about fifty.”
In the silence that followed, a car began to purr down the road, and twin shafts of light cut through the dusk.
“That’s Doc Blaine,” I said. “When I come back I’ll tell you how Garfield is.”
Doc Blaine was prompt with his predictions as we drove the three miles of post-oak covered hills that lay between Lost Knob and the Garfield farm.
“I’ll be surprised to find him alive,” he said, “smashed up like he is. A man his age ought to have more sense than to try to break a young horse.”
“He doesn’t look so old,” I remarked.
“I’ll be fifty, my next birthday,” answered Doc Blaine. “I’ve known him all my life, and he must have been at least fifty the first time I ever saw him. His looks are deceiving.” Old Garfield’s dwelling-place was reminiscent of the past. The boards of the low squat house had never known paint. Orchard fence and corrals were built of rails.
Old Jim lay on his rude bed, tended crudely but efficiently by the man Doc Blaine had hired over the old man’s protests. As I looked at him, I was impressed anew by his evident vitality. His frame was stooped but unwithered, his limbs rounded out with springy muscles. In his corded neck and in his face, drawn though it was with suffering, was apparent an innate virility. His eyes, though partly glazed with pain, burned with the same unquenchable element “He’s been ravin’,” said Joe Braxton stolidly.
“First white man in this country,” muttered old Jim, becoming intelligible. “Hills no white man ever set foot in before. Gettin’ too old. Have to settle down. Can’t move on like I used to. Settle down here. Good country before it filled up with cowmen and squatters. With Ewen Cameron could see this country. The Mexicans shot him. Damn ’em!”
Doc Blaine shook his head. “He’s all smashed up inside. He won’t live till daylight”
Garfield unexpectedly lifted his head and looked at us with . clear eyes.
“Wrong, Doc,” he wheezed, his breath whistling with pain. “I’ll live. What’s broken bones and twisted guts? Nothin’! It’s the heart that counts. Long as the heart keeps pumpin’, a man can’t die. My heart’s sound. Listen to it! Feel of it!”
He groped painfully for Doc Blaine’s wrist, dragged his hand to his bosom and held it there, staring up into the doctor’s face with avid intensity.
“Regular dynamo, ain’t it?” he gasped. “Stronger’n a gasoline engine!”
Blaine beckoned me. “Lay your hand here,” he said, placing my hand on the old man’s bare breast. “He does have a remarkable heart action.”
I noted, in the light of the coal-oil lamp, a great livid scar as might be made by a flint-headed spear. I laid my hand directly on this scar, and an exclamation escaped my lips.
Under my hand old Jim Garfield’s heart pulsed, but its throb was like no other heart action I have ever observed. Its power was astounding; his ribs vibrated to its steady throb. It felt more like the vibrating of a dynamo than the action of a human organ. I could feel its amazing vitality radiating from his breast, stealing up into my hand and up my arm, until my own heart seemed to speed up in response.
“I can’t die,” old Jim gasped. “Not so long as my heart’s in my breast. Only a bullet through the brain can kill me. And even then I wouldn’t be rightly dead, as long as my heart beats in my breast. Yet it ain’t rightly mine, either. It belongs to Ghost Man, the Lipan chief. It was the heart of a god the Lipans worshipped before the Comanches drove ‘em out of their native hills.
“I knew Ghost Man down on the Rio Grande, when I was with Ewen Cameron. I saved his life from the Mexicans once. He tied the string of ghost wampum between him and me— the wampum no man but me and him can see or feel. He came when he knowed I needed him, in that fight up on the headwaters of Locust Creek, when I got this scar.
“I was dead as a man can be. My heart was sliced in two, like the heart of a butchered beef steer.
“All night Ghost Man did magic, callin’ my ghost back from spirit-land. I remember that flight, a little. It was dark, and gray-like, and I drifted through gray mists and heard the dead wailin’ past me in the mist But Ghost Man brought me back.
“He took out what was left of my mortal heart, and put the heart of the god in my bosom. But it’s his, and when I’m through with it, hell come for it. It’s kept me alive and strong for the lifetime of a man. Age can’t touch me. What do I care if these fools around here call me an old liar? What I know, I know. But hark’ee!”
His fingers became claws, - clamping fiercely on Doc Blaine’s wrist. His old eyes, old yet strangely young, burned fierce as those of an eagle under his bushy brows.
