‘Her place adjoins the Spellman farm. Spellman’s glad enough to collect from us for the shootin’-rights, and I’d flushed a covey his side of the line. Must have been a dozen birds in it. I knocked down four of ’em and saw ’em take covert in the next field. That would be her briar-patch.
‘Maybe I had no business trespassin’, for after all we’ve no agreement with her, but she’d not posted signs, either. So Xerxes—that’s my wire-haired setter—and I just kept on goin’. We’d walked two-three hundred yards across her mangy patch o’ crab-grass when Xerxes started actin’ queerly. First he’d run around in circles, as if he had the scent o’ something; then he’d come lopin’ back to me with his tail down, and look up in my face with that peculiar questionin’ way dogs have, and when I’d tell him to go smell ’em out he’d run off for a little distance, then start circlin’ back again.
‘Then he did a thing no well-trained bird dog ever does, gave tongue and rushed at something. Sir, you could have knocked me over with a stalk o’ rye-straw. There he was, the best bird dog in seven counties, actin’ like a damned coon dog. I followed him and found him belly-down before a patch o’ briar bushes, barkin’ and whinin’ and growlin’, as if he didn’t quite know whether he was more frightened or angry.
‘I poked my gun into the bushes, for I thought perhaps he’d run a skunk to cover, though usually a polecat won’t give ground for man or devil. Well, sir, what d’ye think I saw?’ He paused rhetorically and drew a deep draught from the bubbling amber liquid in his glass; then, as Harrigan raised politely questioning brows:
‘A cat, sir. A dam’ old mangy green-eyed tabby cat crouchin’ in the heart o’ those blackberry vines and lookin’ poisoned darts and daggers at my dog. I hate cats like the Devil hates the Scriptures—thievin’, slinkin’, skulkin’ bird-killers! So I pushed the vines away still farther and bent down to get a better aim at it. I was goin’ to let the beast have both barrels, but—believe it or doubt me, sir, it faded out o’ sight!’
‘Cats are wonderfully agile,’ Harrigan agreed as Judge Crumpacker looked at him, obviously awaiting comment.
‘This one wasn’t,’ Crumpacker exploded. ‘This beast didn’t slink away. It vanished. One second it was there, lookin’ at us like a basilisk, and next moment there was nothin’ there, but——’
Again he paused to take refreshment from his now half-empty glass, and: ‘But just as that dam’ feline disappeared we heard a rustlin’ in the patch o’ briars to our left, and there, lookin’ twice as poisonous as any cat, was old Lucinda Lafferty.’
‘Lucinda Lafferty?’ echoed Harrigan. ‘You mean——’
‘Precisely, sir. She’s the old hag who owns that patch o’ worthless land. I don’t believe that she has half a dozen teeth in both her jaws, but she was fairly grindin’ those she had when we turned round and saw her, and if her eyes weren’t flashin’ fire I never saw the light o’ hell in human optics. And I’ve been on the bench for thirty years, passin’ sentence on the most desperate criminals ever brought to justice.’
‘So she threatened you with suit for trespass?’
‘Not she. She knew she’d never have a chance before a court or jury in this county. The country folk don’t bear with her kind round here. She cursed me.’
‘She swore at you?’
Judge Crumpacker was stout, gray-haired, and ruddy-faced. In his red-suede waistcoat and tan flannel shirt, with corduroy trousers thrust into high-topped boots, he looked the perfect picture of a Georgian innkeeper from a Jeffery Farnol novel, or, perhaps, a Regency three-bottle man. Harrigan had a momentary, slightly comic mental picture of a slattern farm-shrew pouring billingsgate upon him. But the other’s answer swept the vision away.
‘I said exactly what I meant. She cursed me. Aimed a skinny finger at me and called down maledictions on my head. It may be that her lack of teeth prevented her articulatin’ clearly, but it seemed as if she interjected words in heathen gibberish between the English as she cursed me.
‘Xerxes was absolutely terrified. I’ve had that dog for five years, raised and trained him from a pup, and I never saw him lower his tail for anything before, not even when he ran across a rattlesnake or bobcat, but today his spirit seemed to fail him utterly, and he whined and put his tail between his legs and shrank against me like a mongrel cur. I tell you, sir, it almost made me believe what they say about that devilish old hadrian—the way she looked at us, the threats she made, the uncouth jargon that she spewed at us—Jake!’ He crooked his finger to the attendant. ‘Another of the same, and see you put some whisky in it this time. What say? What do they say about her?’ he turned back to Harrigan. ‘Why, damme, sir, they say that she’s a witch!’
Harrigan had difficulty keeping a straight face. Abetted by the potent Scotch, galled by the memory of his wounded amour-propre, the dignified old gentleman was working himself into a towering passion. ‘A witch?’ Harrigan repeated. ‘How’s that, sir?’
‘A witch,’ Judge Crumpacker reiterated. ‘Precisely, sir; a witch. Judge Petterson dismissed a case against her only last term of court when a neighbor sued her on a charge of malicious mischief, alleging that she’d caused his pigs to die by overlooking them. The pigs were dead, there was no doubt about that. Apparently a herd of forty fine swine were dead of poison, but the veterinary who examined them could find no trace of any known hogbane, and they couldn’t prove that old Lucinda had access to the pens. Indeed, the testimony was that she had never been upon her neighbor’s land, but merely stood out in the road before his house and called a ban down on the swine for rooting in her garden several days before. There’s no doubt about her malice, but the statutes of this state ignore the possibility of witchcraft, so she had to be discharged. There’s not a Negro in the county who will pass her place at night, and most of the white folks prefer going around the other way after dark. If she’d lived two hundred years ago she’d have been hanged long before this, or sold as a slave in Barbados or Jamaica.’
Absent-mindedly he reached for his glass, found none, and raised a querulous complaint:
‘Jake, confound you, where’s my drink?’
‘’Scuse me, Jedge y’honor, suh,’ the servitor appeared around the corner of the bar, his face a study in embarrassment and latent fear, ‘Ah didn’t mean ter be slow erbout fetchin’ yuh yo’ licker, but Joseph jest now called me to de kennels, suh, an’ tole me ter tell yuh—what Ah means, suh, is——’
‘Yes?’ The red in Judge Crumpacker’s ruddy cheeks grew almost magenta. ‘What the devil are you drivin’ at?’
‘Jedge, y’honor, suh, hit’s erbout you’ dawg, suh, please; he’s done gone an’——’
‘What’s he done? I saw him locked up in the kennel myself, and saw that he had food and water. He’s not hungry, and he never goes out foraging. Don’t tell me that he’s gotten loose and stolen something from the kitchen——’
‘Oh, no, suh. He ain’t stole nothin’, Jedge y’honor, suh. He’s daid!’
‘What?’ The question snapped as sharply as a whip. ‘How?’
‘Pizened, Jedge y’honor, suh.’ The Negro swallowed hard and nodded solemnly. His eyes appeared to be all whites. ‘Ah heerd as how yuh an’ him wuz on ole Mis’ Lucindy’s place this evenin’——’
‘Come on—out o’ my way!’ the judge burst in, and, Harrigan and Jake behind him, stamped out to the long shed behind the clubhouse where members’ dogs were quartered.
Jake had not been guilty of an overstatement. The pointer, a big, rangy dog, lay on its side, legs stiff, lips curled back and foam-flecked, eyes bulging almost from their sockets. Its sides and stomach were distended till the skin was stretched like drum-parchment about them.
‘I left him less than half an hour ago,’ Crumpacker almost sobbed. ‘He was well and healthy then, just finishing his dinner. Poor old Xerxes—poor old pal!’
‘He might have picked up something in the fields this afternoon,’ soothed Harrigan. ‘Dogs often——’
‘Not this one, sir,’ Crumpacker thundered. ‘I’ve had my eye on him all day. He’s eaten nothing but the food I gave him, and I brought that up with me—ha!’
‘What is it, sir?’ asked Harrigan, but even as he asked he knew the answer. There was a feeling of malaise about him, a sort of prickling of the short hairs on his neck, and a chilly, eerie feeling, as of horripilation, on his forearms.
‘That infernal old Lucinda Lafferty—that devilish old witch. This is her doing! She killed my poor dog just as she killed her neighbor’s swine, by witchcraft. She got away with it that time; Petterson dismissed the case against her, but this time she has me to deal with. I’ll track her down and brand her for the foul sorceress she is or die in the attempt. By Gad, I will, sir!’
It might have been a foraging crow disturbed in his foray in the clubhouse kitchen yard, or routed by their voices from the shelter he had taken in the kennel shed. Whatever it was, there came a sudden flapping of strong wings against the shadows, and a hoarse, derisive croak of laughter as something took flight from the overhanging roof into the soot-black darkness of the rain-drenched night.
Morning came with bright, cool air and sunlight sparkling on wet trees and grass. Harrigan was among the first at breakfast, but early as he was he found Judge Crumpacker finishing his ham and eggs as he came in the breakfast room. Apparently the judge had not had a good night, for his face was lined and puffy and there was a sort of gray, unhealthy pallor underneath his ruddiness. The contrast reminded Harrigan of rouge smeared on a corpse. The old man’s eyes were swollen, too. If he had been a woman Harrigan would have thought he had been crying.
‘Mornin’,’ rumbled Crumpacker, nodding as he looked up from his plate. ‘Ready to go with me?’ He filled a tumbler a third full of whisky from the bottle at his elbow, and drained it at a gulp. ‘I want somebody with me when I have a showdown with that old hag.’ His hand was just a thought unsteady as he replenished his glass. Some of the whisky slopped across the rim and settled in a little puddle on the polished table.
Harrigan was on the point of refusing. He had come up here to shoot, not to listen to the maunderings of a bibulous old gaffer. Then, abruptly, ‘Yes, sir, of course,’ he returned. The choleric old judge had worked himself into a state of sustained, choking anger, he was roweled by a spur of rage and hate, and in the last three minutes he had drunk enough neat liquor to fuddle anyone. It would be inviting murder to permit him to accost a poor old woman by himself in this condition.
They walked along the surfaced road until they reached the Spellman farm, then cut across a wide brown field set with long rows of corn-shocks like the tepees of an Indian encampment, and jeweled with plump golden pumpkins.
‘Ought to be some rabbits here,’ the judge remarked. ‘Little devils like to hang around the shocks—here, Xerxes, smell ’em out boy—oh!’ The exclamation was almost a wail, the mourning of a man for his old hunting-comrade, and the look that followed it was grim and hard and merciless as a bared knife.
The rail fence separating Spellman’s farm from the next land was ruinous, overgrown with creepers, fallen almost away in some places. The field beyond was a fitting complement. Turf which had not felt a plow in twenty years gave way to bramble patches, and these in turn were choked by rank growths of ragweed, goldenrod, and burdock. Devil’s-pitchfork bushes grew waist high, and the barbed seed-stalks clung to their trousers like a swarm of parasites as they pushed through them.
Beyond the orchard lot of gnarled and dying apple trees they found the owner’s shack, a single-story, two-room structure of unpainted clapboards stained a leprous gray by long exposure to the weather. The door sagged drunkenly on rusted, broken hinges; several of the window-lights were broken and the holes were stuffed with wadded burlap sacking. The two planks of the stoop were warped until their edges curled up like old boot-soles, and water from the rain of last night gathered in their concavities. The kitchen yard was littered with tin cans, discarded, broken pots and dishes, scraps of rag, a rotting mattress, and a broken, rust-eaten bed spring. Stark as a skeleton of the dead past, two ivy-smothered, moss-grown chimneys reared their broken tops from crumbling foundations and a cellar overgrown with sumac, all that remained of the once-noble mansion whither Washington and Jefferson had come as guests and General Lee and Stonewall Jackson had been entertained. Fire, neglect, and ruthless time had laid it in the dust as low as Nineveh and Tyre. The bloodless hand of utter, abject poverty lay on everything, and yet there was a brooding, threatening quality of silence there. Almost, it seemed to Harrigan, the place was waiting. . . . What it waited for he had no idea, but that it was something violent, tragic, and abrupt he was sure.
Crumpacker strode through the rubble littering the yard and beat upon the weather-blasted door with his gun-butt. The rotting panels sagged and shivered at the impact, and a hollow, vibrant booming echoed through the empty shack. Otherwise there was no answer.
‘By Gad, I’ll stand here hammerin’ till the old crone comes, or knock her devilish door in!’ Crumpacker declared, but Harrigan broke in with a relieved laugh.
‘No use, Judge; can’t you see the door’s closed with a hasp and padlock, and the lock’s been fastened on the outside? Whoever lives here has gone out and locked the door behind—good Lord!’
Around the rusted, tangled wire of the hen-coop had come a great dog, almost large as a mastiff, but heavy-furred, like a collie or shepherd. Obviously, half a dozen breeds or more combined to make its lineage; just as obviously it combined the worst features of each. Mange had eaten at its pelt until it showed bald patches of blue hide between the matted, flea-infested hair; its tail was stubby as a terrier’s; its paws were disproportionately large and armed with long, cruel, curving claws which might almost have been a bear’s; its eyes were small and deeply pitted in its wide face, rheumy with distemper, and its mouth combined the wideness of the bulldog’s with the heavy-toothed long jaw of the Alaskan husky. It made no sound, but stood there snarling silently, black lips curled back in a ferocious grin, long, yellowed fangs exposed, and a look of absolutely devilish malevolence in its sunken eyes.
‘Ha?’ Crumpacker turned at Harrigan’s ejaculation. ‘Hers, of course. Like mistress like dog, eh what?’ He brought his gun up slowly, cradling the barrels in the crook of his left arm as he snapped back the hammers with his right thumb. ‘Maybe she loves the lousy beast. I hope so. Let’s see how she’ll like seein’ it dead——’
The brute glared at him balefully, and showed no sign of fear as he raised the gun to take deliberate aim, but Harrigan jumped forward. ‘No, Judge, no!’ he shouted. ‘Your quarrel is with her, not with this poor brute. It hadn’t anything to do with Xerxes’ death——’
Crumpacker’s jaw set truculently. For the first time Harrigan saw all the latent, vengeful cruelty which the usually jovial ruddy countenance concealed. These were the features of a ‘hanging judge’, a man who found a grim pleasure in sentencing other men to die.
‘Her quarrel was with me, not my dog,’ he answered harshly. ‘I’m goin’ to blow that ugly beast to hell. Stand aside, sir.’
The roar of both barrels discharged in quick succession was like the bellow of a field gun, and Harrigan fell stumbling back, shocked, blinded, all but deafened by the blaze of fire and detonation of the discharge, but in the instant Judge Crumpacker fired he had thrust his hand out, driving up the shotgun muzzle and sending the charge through the overhanging branches of a sassafras tree. As the shot went whistling and crashing through the brilliant red and green leaves the big dog turned and trotted around the corner of the house, moving, for all its size, with cat-like quietness.
Crumpacker glared at Harrigan. Bitter, rageful hatred smoldered in his eyes, making the brown pupils glow like tarnished garnets. ‘Damme, sir, men have been shot for less impertinence!’ he burst out. Then, seeming to cool as suddenly as he had blazed, ‘Never mind; perhaps you’re right, lad. My quarrel’s with the old woman, not her dog. I reckon anger made me childish
for a moment.’ He shook his heavy shoulders in disgust. ‘Come on, let’s leave this filthy hole.’
They recrossed Spellman’s well-kept land and came out on the highroad just as a small roadster swung around the bend.
‘Good morning, Judge; good morning, sir,’ the driver called as he brought his car to a halt. ‘Give you a lift back to the club?’
‘Yes, thank you, we’d appreciate it, Doctor,’ Crumpacker answered as he introduced Harrigan.
Dr Clancy was a man in early middle life, somewhere between forty-five and fifty, Harrigan surmised, smooth-skinned, clean-shaven, with a youthfulness and vigor which denied the nests of little wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and the streak of white that ran with startling contrast through his smoothly brushed black hair. His eyes were blue and kind and very knowing—‘true Irish eyes’ thought Harrigan—but there was an indefinable something about him which was puzzling. Men without women—priests, explorers, sailors, some soldiers—bear the mark of their denial stamped on them. Dr Clancy seemed to have it. He would have seemed more properly attired in a Roman collar and black cassock vest, rather than the corduroys and flannel shirt he wore. The little satchel on the seat beside him seemed more like a small suitcase than a medicine kit, too, but . . .
He broke his idle speculations off, for Judge Crumpacker had been pouring out the story of his grievances to Dr Clancy, not omitting his suspicions of witchcraft, and Dr Clancy was not laughing. ‘Because the law does not admit a thing is no reason for denying its existence,’ he was saying. ‘Lee Deforest was threatened with prosecution for fraud when he introduced the ionic current detector for radio, and there are many people who remember when the Patent Office refused to consider applications for heavier than air flying-machines, just as it rejects claims for perpetual motion devices today. The Lafferty family’s history is not good. The founder of the local branch was prosecuted twice for cruelty to his Negroes, and finally deported from the colony on a charge of trafficking with Satan. An ancestress of theirs was burned as a witch in England in the reign of James I. Miss Lucinda was a noted beauty in her day, but though she had three romances none of them was ever consummated. All three engagements were broken, and all three lovers died shortly after their estrangement—each in exactly the manner she had foretold.’
Night Creatures Page 23