by Otto Penzler
I shouted again, waving my arms wildly. Perhaps he could not see me because of the shadows at my back. Still he did not see me. I whirled to the kneeling man, just as a sheet of yellow flame leaped from the muzzle of his rifle. The first man was right in front of me when the bullet struck him. He stopped, dead in his tracks. I guessed that the bullet had struck him at the base of the skull. Even so, he whirled swiftly, and both his guns were out. But he could not raise them to fire. He slumped forward limply, and sprawled in the sand.
I had not heard the report of the rifle, for simultaneously with that spurt of flame the bobcats had begun their wailing once more, drowning out the sound.
I, unable to prevent it or give a warning, had seen a cold-blooded murder enacted. There before me in the sand was the proof of it. I half arose, intending to run to the fallen man to see if he still lived. But when I saw Plone arise leisurely from his knees and come forward I drew back in the shadow again. Plone was a killer, and I had seen him make his kill. If he knew that his evil deed had been witnessed he would have no compunction about another killing, and even to me, whose life was destined to be short, life was still sweet.
I drew back and waited.
Plone stopped above the fallen man and looked down. Then he opened the breech of his rifle and coolly blew the smoke from the bore. He kicked the fallen man, and I saw his lips move as though he whispered something. He took the two pistols, shrugged his shoulders and turned away, walking swiftly back the way he had come, carrying his rifle in the crook of his arm. The murdered man he left to the creatures of the night.
Well, the man was dead, no doubt about that. But the sand was deep and I could bury him. I watched until Plone reached the turn in the watercourse, where he seemed to vanish as though the earth had opened and swallowed him.
Then I dropped into the stream-bed and strode to the fallen man, stooped over him to see that he no longer breathed—and drew back with a cry of horror. For what looked up at me was not the face of a man newly slain; but the sightless eyes of a grinning, aged skull.
As I stared in unbelief, the perspiration starting from every pore, the skull seemed to fade slowly away before my eyes, and in a matter of seconds there was nothing before me but the shifting sand, upon which there was not even a depression where a body had fallen!
Add to this uncanny happening the myriad-tongued caterwauling of the bobcats on the talus—crying as of babies lost in the night—and you can faintly guess at the state of my nerves. But I could not believe my eyes. Something was wrong, said reason. So I stooped again and ran my hand hurriedly over the sand where I had seen the body. Surely I could not have been mistaken!
Frantically, unable to believe it all hallucination, I ran my fingers deep into the sand. At once they brought up against something solid which, for many minutes, I found myself without the courage to uncover. I conquered this fear, finally, and began to dig.
Soon there lay before me, in the shallow grave, a fleshless skeleton. This in itself did not bother me, for I have seen many such, and in Flanders I have slept peacefully with dead buddies all around me. But, while digging near the skull of my find, I had unearthed something else which had been fairly well preserved in the dry sand.
It was a rotting corn-cob pipe, with black, corroded bowl!
With a cry whose echoes could be heard in the coulee even through the wailing of the bobcats, I sprang to my feet and ran, staggering, down the watercourse, in the direction I had come before darkness with Reuben.
Long before I had reached it my poor body failed me and I fell to the sandy floor, coughing my lungs away, while scarlet stains wetted the sands near my mouth.
When I awoke in the sand the sun was shining. Some sixth sense told me to remain motionless, warning me that all was not well. Without moving my head I rolled my eyes until I could see ahead in the direction I had fallen. In falling my right hand had been flung out full length, fingers extended.
Imagine my fear and horror when I saw, coiled up within six inches of my hand, a huge rattlesnake! His head was poised above the coil, while just behind it, against the other arc of the vicious circle, the tip of the creature’s tail, adorned with an inch or more of rattles, hummed its fearful warning.
With all my power I sprang back and upward. At the same time the bullet head, unbelievably swift, flashed toward my hand and—thank God!—safely beneath it! Stretched helplessly now to its full length, the creature’s mouth, with its forked tongue, had stopped within a scant two inches of where my face had been.
Before the rattler could return and coil again I had stepped upon the bullet head, grinding it deep into the sand, and when the tail whipped frantically against my leg I seized it and hurled the reptile with all my might, out of the stream-bed into the shell-rock. Even as I did it I wondered where I had found the courage; and what had kept me from moving while unconscious. Had I moved I might never have awakened.
The sun was directly overhead. I had lost my sense of direction during last night’s rambles among the shale, and could not figure out which way I should go to win free of this coulee. Then I remembered the direction Plone had taken, and set out to trace his footsteps, but there was none! I could not understand it, for I had seen Plone quite plainly in the moonlight.
I passed around the bend where he had disappeared and continued on. When, ten minutes later, I came to the shallow grave, with its aged skeleton, which had so taken away my nerve last night, I did not know where I was. I had been sure that this grave was in the opposite direction. But Plone must have known the way out—I knew that he lived on the floor of Moses Coulee, into which Steamboat debouched.
I kept on moving. If, as I now believed, I had been in error in the location of the grave, then my log cabin lay ahead of me. I climbed the bank of the dry stream and continued my hike, keeping well away from the thickets for fear of snakes. With the sun high in the heavens, turning the coulee into a furnace, the snakes came out by hundreds to stretch in the shade, and as I passed, they coiled and warned me away with myriad warnings. I did not trespass upon their holdings.
After I had plodded along for fully an hour I knew that I must be quite close to the rock which gives Steamboat its name; but still I had not found the pathway leading to the log cabin. Evidently I had already passed it.
Even as I had this thought I came upon a path leading into the shadows of the willow thicket—a path that seemed familiar, even though, from the stream-bed, I could not see the cabin. With a sigh, and much surprised that I had, last night, traveled so far, I turned into this path and increased my pace.
I came shortly to pause, chilled even though the sun was shining. For at the end of the mossy trail there was no cabin; but a cleared plot of ground adorned with aged mounds and rough-hewn crosses! Rocks were scattered profusely over the mounds and, I guessed, had been placed to foil the creatures which otherwise would have despoiled the bodies resting there. There was a great overhang of the cliff wall, bulging out over the little graveyard, and from the overhang came a steady drip of moisture. Slimy water lay motionless in a pool in the center of the plot. Mossy green were the stones. Mud-puppies scurried into the deeps as I stopped and stared, turning the water to a pool of slime.
How uneasy I felt in this place! Why had such a remote location been chosen as a cemetery, hidden away here from the brightness of God’s sunshine? Nothing but shadow-filled silence, except for the dripping of the water from the overhang.
I hurried back to the stream-bed and continued on my way.
Another hour passed, during which, my body racked with continual coughing, I suffered the torments of the damned. Those red dots were dancing before my eyes again, and nothing looked natural to me. The snakes seemed to waver grotesquely—twisting, writhing, coiling. Here, on the cliff, was a row of ponderous palisades; but they seemed to be ever buckling and bending, as though shaken by an earthquake.
Then, far ahead, I saw the rock at the entrance. With a sob of joy I began to run—only to stop when I rea
ched the pile, with a cry of hopelessness and despair. For the rock, unscalable even to one who possessed the strength to climb, now filled the coulee from lip to lip, while on my side of the pile there nestled a little lake, clear and pellucid, into which I could look, straight down, for what I guessed must have been all of twenty feet!
Some great shifting of the walls, during the night, had blocked the entrance, entombing me in Steamboat Coulee with all its nameless horrors!
There was no one to see me, so I flung myself down at the edge of the pool and wept weakly.
After a time I regained control of my frayed nerves, arose to my knees, and bathed my throbbing temples. Sometime, somehow, I reasoned, Plone would find a way to reach me. There was nothing to do now but return and search again for my cabin. Plone had hinted that he would be in after a day or two with supplies for me if I did not come out for them—and I felt that he would know how to get in by some other way. He had lived in the coulee and should know his way about.
Wearily I began the return march. It never occurred to me to note that the sun went ahead of me on its journey into the west. I can only blame my physical condition for not noting this. Had I done so I would have realized at once that I had gone in the wrong direction in the first place, and that straight ahead of me lay freedom. I had gone to the head of the coulee, straight in from Steamboat Rock, and when I found the coulee blocked at the end had thought the entrance closed against me.
But I did not note the sun.
I strode wearily on, and found the cabin with ridiculous ease. Inside, calmly awaiting my coming, sat Hildreth, the wife of Plone! She said nothing when I opened the door, just sat on the only chair in the house and looked at me. I spoke to her, thanking her for the sack of provisions which I saw on the rickety shelf on the wall beyond the door. Still she said nothing. Just stared at me, unblinking.
I asked her about leaving this place and she shook her head, as though she did not understand.
“For God’s sake, Hildreth!” I cried. “Can’t you speak?”
For it had come to me that I had never heard her speak. When I had first entered the farmhouse she had placed a meal for me, and had bidden me eat. But I remembered now that she had done so by gestures.
In answer now to my question she opened her mouth and pointed into it with her forefinger. Hildreth, the wife of Plone, had no tongue!
Did you ever hear a tongueless person try to speak? It is terrible. For after this all-meaning gesture there came a raucous croak from the mouth of Hildreth—wordless, gurgling, altogether meaningless.
I understood no word; but the eyes of the woman, strangely glowing now, were eloquent. She was trying to warn me of something, and stamped her foot impatiently when I did not understand. I saw her foot move as she stamped it—but failed to notice at the time that the contact of her foot with the board floor made no noise! Later I remembered it.
When I shook my head she arose from her chair and strode to the door, flinging it wide. Then she pointed up the coulee in the direction I had just come. Again that raucous croak, still meaningless. Once more I shook my head.
What was there, up that coulee, that menaced me?
I was filled with dread of the unknown, wished with all my soul that I could understand what this woman was trying to say. What was there up the coulee, about which she strove to tell me?
All I could think of was a hidden graveyard, dotted with rotting crosses and, in the center of the plot, a pool in which slimy mud-puppies played, hidden forever from the light of the sun.
I shivered as the picture came back to me.
Then I stepped back, to search about the place for paper, so that, with the aid of a pencil which I possessed, she might write what she had to tell me. I found it and turned back to the woman, who had watched me gravely while I searched. Noting the paper she shook her head, telling me mutely that she could not write.
Then Plone, his face as dark as a thundercloud, stood in the doorway! To me he paid no attention. His eyes, glowering below heavy brows, burned as he stared at the woman. In her eyes I could read fright unutterable. She gave one frightened croak and turned to flee. But she could not go far, for she fled toward the bare wall opposite the open door. Plone leaped after her, while I jumped forward to fling him aside.
Imagine my horror when Hildreth touched the wall—and vanished through it as though there had been no wall! I caught a glimpse of the wall, not a breach on it, before Plone, too, plunged through and was gone!
To me now came an inkling of what it all meant. Now I understood, or thought I did, the mystery of the disappearing farmhouse. Was this land into which I stumbled a land of wraiths and shadows? A land of restless dead people? Why?
Trembling in every fiber of my being I strode to the wall where Plone and his wife had gone through, and ran my hand over the rough walls. They were as solid, almost, as the day the cabin had been built. To me this was a great relief. I should not have been surprised had the wall also proved to be things of shadow-substance, letting me through to stand amazed upon the shell-rock behind the cabin.
Here was one place in the coulee of shadows that was real.
I went to the door, locked and barred it. Then I returned and lighted the stove to disperse the unnatural chill that hovered in the room. After this I searched out my food and wolfed some of it ravenously. Another thought came to me: if Reuben, Plone, and Hildreth were nothing but shadows, where had I procured this food, which was real enough and well cooked? Somewhere in my adventures since being kicked off the train at Palisades there was a great gap, bridged only by fantasies and hallucinations. What had happened, really, in that blank space?
Having eaten, I stepped to the door and looked out. If I again went forth into the stream-bed in an attempt to get out of the coulee, I should never reach it before dark. What would it mean to my tired reason to be caught in the open, in the midst of this coulee, for another terrible night? I could not do it.
Again I secured the door. Nothing real could get in to bother me—and even now I reasoned myself out of positive belief in ghosts. The hallucinations which had so terrified me had undoubtedly been born of my sickness.
Convinced of this at last I lay down on the rough cot and went to sleep.
When I awoke suddenly in the night, the fire had burned very low and a heavy chill possessed the cabin. I had a feeling that I was not the only occupant, but striving to pierce the gloom in the cabin’s corners, I could see nothing.
What was that?
In the farthest corner I saw the pale, ghostly lineaments of a woman! Just the face, shimmering there in the gloom, oddly, but neither body nor substance. The face of Hildreth, wife of Plone! Then her hands, no arms visible, came up before her face and began to gesture. Her mouth opened and I imagined I again heard the raucous croak of the tongueless. Again her eyes were eloquent mutely giving a warning which I could not understand.
Fear seizing me in its terrible grip, I leaped from my bed and threw wood on the fire, hoping to dispel this silent shadow. When the light flared up the head shimmered swiftly and began to fade away; but not before I saw a pair of hands come from nowhere and fasten themselves below that head, about where the neck should have been. Hands that were gnarled and calloused from toil on an unproductive farm—the work-torn hands of the killer, Plone!
Then the weird picture vanished and I was alone with my fantasies.
I had scarcely returned to my seat on the bed, sitting well back against the wall so that my back was against something solid, when the wailing of lost babies broke out again on the talus slopes outside. I had expected this to happen after nightfall; but the reality left me weak and shivering, even though I knew that the animals that uttered the mournful wails were flesh and blood. The wailing of bobcats, no matter how often it is heard, always brings a chill that is hard to reason away. Nature certainly prepared weird natural protections for some of her creatures!
Then the wailing stopped suddenly. And the silence was more nerve-devas
tating than the eery wailing.
Nothing for many minutes. Then the rattle of sliding talus, as the shale glided into the underbrush.
This stopped, and a terrible silence pressed down upon me.
Then my cabin shook with the force of the wind that suddenly swooped through the coulee. It rattled through the eaves, shook the door on its hinges, while the patter-patter on the roof told me of showers of sand which the wind had scooped up from the bed of the dry stream. The wind was terrific, I thought; but ever it increased in power and violence.
The patter on the roof and the rattle in the eaves began to take on a new significance; for the patter sounded like the scamper of baby feet above my head, while the wailing about the eaves sounded like the screaming of people who are tongueless. The door bellied inward against the chair-back as though many hands were pressed against it from outside, seeking entrance. Yet I knew that there was no one outside.
Then, faint and feeble through the roaring of the wind, I caught that eery cry in the night. It was the despairing voice of a woman, and she was calling aloud, hopelessly, for help! I shivered and tried not to hear. But the cry came again, nearer now, as though the woman moved toward me on leaden feet.
No man, fear the shadows as he might, could ignore that pitiful plea and call himself a man.
I gritted my teeth and ran to the door, flinging it open. A veritable sea of flying sand swept past me; but through the increased roar came plainly that cry for help. I left the door open this time, so that the light would stream out and guide my return.
On the bank of the dry stream I stopped.
I heard the slamming of a door behind me. I turned back. The door opened a bit and a face looked out—the leering, now malevolent, face of Reuben, the son of Plone! As I saw him he jerked back, closing the door again, shutting out the light.
Even as the wailing of the bobcats had stopped, so, now, stopped the wind. And before and below me I saw Hildreth, wife of Plone, fighting for her very life with her brutal husband! She was groveling on her knees at his feet—his hands were about her throat. As she begged for mercy I could understand her words. She had a tongue, after all! Then Plone, holding Hildreth with his left hand, raised his right and crooking it like a fearful talon, poised it above the face of Hildreth.