“I stopped to listen to the wolves,” I told him. “They sound weird, don’t they?”
* * * *
He searched my face with strange, fearful eyes. For a long time he did not speak. Then he said briskly, “Well, Mister, what kin I do for ye?”
As I advanced toward the stove, he added, “I’m Mike Connell, the station agent.”
“My name is Clovis McLaurin,” I told him. “I want to find my father, Dr. Ford McLaurin. He lives on a ranch near here.”
“So you’re Doc McLaurin’s boy, eh?” Connell said, warming visibly. He rose, smiling and shifting his wad of tobacco to the other cheek, and took my hand.
“Yes,” I said. “Have you seen him lately? Three days ago I had a strange telegram from him. He asked me to come at once. It seems that he’s somehow in trouble. Do you know anything about it?”
Connell looked at me queerly.
“No,” he said at last. “I ain’t seen him lately. None of ’em off the ranch ain’t been in to Hebron for two or three weeks. The snow is the deepest in years, you know, and it ain’t easy to git around. I dunno how they could have sent a telegram, though, without comin’ to town. And they ain’t none of us seen ’em!”
“Have you got to know Dad?” I inquired, alarmed more deeply.
“No, not to say real well,” the agent admitted. “But I seen him and Jetton and Jetton’s gal often enough when they come into Hebron, here. Quite a bit of stuff has come for ’em to the station, here. Crates and boxes, marked like they was scientific apparatus-I dunno what. But a right purty gal, that Stella Jetton. Purty as a picture.”
“It’s three years since I’ve seen Dad,” I said, confiding in the agent in hope of winning his approval and whatever aid he might be able to give me in reaching the ranch, over the unusual fall of snow that blanketed the West Texas plains. “I’ve been in medical college in the East. Haven’t seen Dad since he came out here to Texas three years ago.”
“You’re from the East, eh?”
“New York. But I spent a couple of years out here with my uncle when I was a kid. Dad inherited the ranch from,him.”
“Yeah, old Tom McLaurin was a friend of mine,” the agent told me.
* * * *
It was three years since my father had left the chair of astrophysics at an eastern university, to come here to the lonely ranch to carry on his original experiments. The legacy from his brother Tom, besides the ranch itself, had included a small fortune in money, which had made it possible for him to give up his academic position and to devote his entire time to the abstruse problems upon which he had been working.
Being more interested in medical than in mathematical science, I had not followed Father’s work completely, though I used to help him with his experiments, when he had to perform them in a cramped flat, with pitifully limited equipment. I knew, however, that he had worked out an extension of Weyl’s non-Euclidean geometry in a direction quite different from those chosen by Eddington and Einstein—and whose implications, as regards the structure of our universe, were stupendous. His new theory of the wave-electron, which completed the wrecking of the Bohr planetary atom, had been as sensational.
The proof his theory required was the exact comparison of the velocity of beams of light at right angles. The experiment required a large, open field, with a clear atmosphere, free from dust or smoke; hence his choosing the ranch as a site upon which to complete the work.
Since I wished to remain in college, and could help him no longer, he had employed as an assistant and collaborator, Dr. Blake Jetton, who was himself well known for his remarkable papers upon the propagation of light, and the recent modifications of the quantum theory.
Dr. Jetton, like my father, was a widower. He had a single child, a daughter named Stella. She had been spending several months of each year with them on the ranch. While I had not seen her many times, I could agree with the station agent that she was pretty. As a matter of fact I had thought her singularly attractive.
* * * *
Three days before, I had received the telegram from my father. A strangely worded and alarming message, imploring me to come to him with all possible haste. It stated that his life was in danger, though no hint had been given as to what the danger might be.
Unable to understand the message, I had hastened to my rooms for a few necessary articles—among them, a little automatic pistol—and had lost no time in boarding a fast train. I had found the Texas Panhandle covered with nearly a foot of snow—the winter was the most severe in several years. And that weird and terrible howling had greeted me ominously when I swung from the train at the lonely village of Hebron.
“The wire was urgent—most urgent,” I told Connell. “I must get out to the ranch to-night, if it’s at all possible. You know of any way I could go?”
For some time he was silent, watching me, with dread in his eyes.
“No, I don’t,” he said presently. “Ten mile to the ranch. And they ain’t a soul lives on the road. The snow is nigh a foot deep. I doubt a car would make it. Ye might git Sam Judson to haul you over tomorrow in his wagon.”
“I wonder if he would take me out to-night?” I inquired.
The agent shook his head uneasily, peered nervously out at the glistening, moonlit desert of snow beyond the windows, and seemed to be listening anxiously. I remembered the weird, distant howling I had heard as I walked across the platform, and could hardly restrain a shiver of my own.
“Naw, I think not!” Connell said abruptly. “It ain’t healthy to git out at night around here, lately.”
* * * *
He paused a moment, and then asked suddenly, darting a quick, uneasy glance at my face, “I reckon you heard the howlin’?”
“Yes. Wolves?”
“Yeah—anyhow, I reckon so. Queer. Damn queer! They ain’t been any loafers around these parts for ten years, till we heard ’em jest after the last blizzard.” (“Loafer” appeared to be a local corruption of the Spanish word lobo applied to the gray prairie wolf, which is much larger than the coyote, and was a dreaded enemy of the rancher in the Southwest until its practical extermination.)
“Seems to be a reg’lar pack of the critters rovin’ the range,” Connell went on. “They’ve killed quite a few cattle in the last few weeks, and—” he paused, lowering his voice, “and five people!”
“The wolves have killed people!” I exclaimed.
“Yeah,” he said slowly. “Josh Wells and his hand were took two weeks ago, come Friday, while they was out ridin’ the range. And the Simms’ are gone. The old man and his woman and little Dolly. Took right out of the cow-pen, I reckon, while they was milkin’. It ain’t two mile out of town to their place. Rufe Smith was out that way to see ’em Sunday. Cattle dead in the pen, and the smashed milk buckets lying in a drift of snow under the shed. And not a sign of Simms and his family!”
“I never heard of wolves taking people that way!” I was incredulous.
Connell shifted his wad of tobacco again, and whispered, “I didn’t neither. But, Mister, these here ain’t ordinary wolves!”
“What do you mean?” I demanded.
“Wall, after the Simms’ was took, we got up a sort of posse, and went out to hunt the critters. We didn’t find no wolves. But we did find tracks in the snow. The wolves is plumb gone in the daytime!
“Tracks in the snow,” he repeated slowly, as if his mind were dwelling dazedly upon some remembered horror. “Mister, them wolf tracks was too tarnation far apart to be made by any ordinary beast. The critters must ’a’ been jumpin’ thirty feet!
“And they warn’t all wolf tracks, neither. Mister, part was wolf tracks. And part was tracks of bare human feet!”
* * * *
With that, Connell fell silent, staring at me strangely, with a queer look of utter terror in his eyes.
I was staggered. There was, of course, some element of incredulity in my feelings. But the agent did not look at all like the man who has just perpetrated a success
ful wild story, for there was genuine horror in his eyes. And I recalled that I had fancied human tones in the strange, distant howling I had heard.
There was no good reason to believe that I had merely encountered a local superstition. Widespread as the legends of lycanthropy may be, I have yet to hear a whispered tale of werewolves related by a West Texan. And the agent’s story had been too definite and concrete for me to imagine it an idle fabrication or an ungrounded fear.
“The message from my father was very urgent,” I told Connell presently. “I must get out to the ranch to-night. If the man you mentioned won’t take me, I’ll hire a horse and ride.”
“Judson is a damn fool if he’ll git out to-night where them wolves is!” the agent said with conviction. “But there’s nothing to keep ye from askin’ him to go. I reckon he ain’t gone to bed yet. He lives in the white house, jest around the corner behind Brice’s store.”
He stepped out upon the platform behind me to point the way. And as soon as the door was opened, we heard again that rhythmic, deep, far-off ululation, that weirdly mournful howling, from far across the moonlit plain of snow. I could not repress a shudder. And Connell, after pointing out to me Sam Judson’s house, among the straggling few that constituted the village of Hebron, got very hastily back inside the depot, and shut the door behind him.
CHAPTER II
THE PACK THAT RAN BY MOONLIGHT
Sam Judson owned and cultivated a farm nearly a mile from Hebron, but had moved his house into the village so that his wife could keep the post-office. I hurried toward his house, through the icy streets, very glad that Hebron was able to afford the luxury of electric lights. The distant howling of the wolf-pack filled me with a vague and inexplicable dread. But it did not diminish my determination to reach my father’s ranch as soon as possible, to solve the riddle of the strange and alarming telegram he had sent me.
Judson came to the door when I knocked. He was a heavy man, clad in faded, patched blue overalls, and brown flannel shirt. His head was almost completely bald, and his naked scalp was tanned until it resembled brown leather. His wide face was covered with a several weeks’ growth of black beard. Nervously, fearfully, he scanned my face.
He led me to the kitchen, in the rear of the house—a small, dingy room, the walls covered with an untidy array of pots and pans. The cook stove was hot; he had, from appearances, been sitting with his feet in the oven, reading a newspaper, which now lay on the floor.
He had me sit down, and, when I took the creaking chair, I told him my name. He said that he knew my father, Dr. McLaurin, who got his mail at the post-office which was in the front room. But it had been three weeks, he said, since anyone had been to town from the ranch. Perhaps because the snow made traveling difficult, he said. There were five persons now staying out there, he told me. My father and Dr. Jetton, his daughter, Stella, and two hired mechanics from Amarillo.
I told him about the telegram, which I had received three days before. And he suggested that my father, if he had sent it, might have come to town at night, and mailed it to the telegraph office with the money necessary to send it. But he thought it strange that he had not spoken to anyone, or been seen.
Then I told Judson that I wanted him to drive me out to the ranch, at once. At the request his manner changed; he seemed frightened!
“No hurry about starting to-night, is there, Mr. McLaurin?” he asked. “We can put you up in the spare room, and I’ll take ye over in the wagon to-morrow. It’s a long drive to make at night.”
* * * *
I’m very anxious to get there,” I said. “I’m worried about my father. Something was wrong when he telegraphed. Very much wrong. I’ll pay you enough to make it worth while.”
“It ain’t the money,” he told me. “I’d be glad to do it for a son of Doc McLaurin’s. But I reckon you heard—the wolves?”
“Yes, I heard them. And Connell, at the station, told me something about them. They’ve been hunting men?”
“Yes.” For a little time Judson was silent, staring at me with strange eyes from his hairy face. Then he said, “And that ain’t all. Some of us seen the tracks. And they’s men runnin’ with ’em!”
“But I must get out to see my father,” I insisted. “We should be safe enough in a wagon. And I suppose you have a gun?”
“I have a gun, all right,” Judson admitted. “But I ain’t anxious to face them wolves!”
I insisted, quite ignorant of the peril into which I was dragging him. Finally, when I offered him fifty dollars for the trip, he capitulated. But he was going, he said—and I believed him—more to oblige a friend than for the money.
He went into the bedroom, where his wife was already asleep, roused her, and told her he was going to make the trip. She was rather startled, as I judged from the sound of her voice, but mollified when she learned that there was to be a profit of fifty dollars.
She got up, a tall and most singular figure in a purple flannel nightgown, with nightcap to match, and busied herself making us a pot of coffee on the hot stove, and finding blankets for us to wrap about us in the farm wagon, for the night was very cold. Judson, meanwhile, lit a kerosene lantern, which was hardly necessary in the brilliant moonlight, and went to the barn behind the house to get ready the vehicle.
* * * *
Half an hour later we were driving out of the little village, in a light wagon, behind two gray horses. Their hoofs broke through the crust of the snow at every step, and the wagon wheels cut into it steadily, with a curious crunching sound. Our progress was slow, and I anticipated a tedious trip of several hours.
We sat together on the spring seat, heavily muffled up, with blankets over our knees. The air was bitterly cold, but there was no wind, and I expected to be comfortable enough. Judson had strapped on an ancient revolver, and we had a repeating rifle and a double barrel shotgun leaning against our knees. But despite our arms, I could not quite succeed in quieting the vague fears raised by the wolf-pack, whose quavering, unearthly wail was never still.
Once outside the village of Hebron, we were surrounded on all sides by a white plain of snow, almost as level as a table-top. It was broken only by the insignificant rows of posts which supported wire fences; these fences seemed to be Judson’s only landmarks. The sky was flooded with ghostly opalescence, and a million diamonds of frost glittered on the snow.
For perhaps an hour and a half, nothing remarkable happened. The lights of Hebron grew pale and faded behind us. We passed no habitation upon the illimitable desert of snow. The eery, heart-stilling ululation of the wolves, however, grew continually louder.
And presently the uncanny, wailing sounds changed position. Judson quivered beside me, and spoke nervously to the gray horses, plodding on through the snow. Then he turned to face me, spoke shortly.
“I figger they’re sweeping in behind us, Mr. McLaurin.”
“Well, if they do, you can haul some of them back, to skin tomorrow,” I told him. I had meant it to sound cheerful. But my voice was curiously dry, and its tones rang false in my ears.
* * * *
For some minutes more we drove on in silence.
Suddenly I noticed a change in the cry of the pack.
The deep, strange rhythm of it was suddenly quickened. Its eery wailing plaintiveness seemed to give place to a quick, eager yelping. But it was still queerly unfamiliar. And there was something weirdly ventriloquial about it, so that we could not tell precisely from which direction it came. The rapid, belling notes seemed to come from a dozen points scattered over the brilliant, moonlit waste behind us.
The horses became alarmed. They pricked up their ears, looked back, and went on more eagerly. I saw that they were trembling. One of them snorted suddenly. The abrupt sound jarred my jangled nerves, and I clutched convulsively at the side of the wagon.
Judson held the reins firmly, with his feet braced against the end of the wagon box. He was speaking softly and soothingly to the quivering grays; but for that, they might alre
ady have been running. He turned to me and muttered:
“I’ve heard wolves. And they don’t sound like that. Them ain’t ordinary wolves!”
And as I listened fearfully to the terrible baying of the pack, I knew that he was right. Those strange ululations had an unfamiliar, an alien, note. There was a weird, terrible something about the howling that was not of this earth. It is hard to describe it, because it was so utterly foreign. It comes to me that if there are wolves on the ancient, age-dead deserts of Mars, they might cry in just that way, as they run some helpless creature to merciless death.
Malevolent were those belling notes, foul and hateful. Rioting with an infernal power of evil alien to this earth. Strong with the primal wickedness of the cosmic wastes.
“Reckon they are on the trail,” Judson said suddenly, in a low, strained voice. “Look behind us.”
* * * *
I turned in the spring seat, peered back over the limitless flat desolation of sparkling, moonlit snow. For a few minutes I strained my eyes in vain, though the terrible belling of the unseen pack grew swiftly louder.
Then I saw leaping gray specks, far behind us across the snow. By rights, a wolf should have floundered rather slowly through the thick snow, for the crust was not strong enough to hold up so heavy an animal. But the things I saw—fleet, formless gray shadows—were coming by great bounds, with astounding speed.
“I see them,” I told Judson tremulously.
“Take the lines,” he said, pushing the reins at me, and snatching up the repeating rifle.
He twisted in the seat, and began to fire.
The horses were trembling and snorting. Despite the cold, sweat was raining from their heaving bodies. Abruptly, after Judson had begun to shoot, they took the bits in their teeth and bolted, plunging and floundering through the snow, dragging the wagon. Tug and jerk at the reins as I would, I could do nothing with them.
Judson had soon emptied the rifle. I doubt that he had hit any of the howling animals that ran behind us, for accurate shooting from the swaying, jolting wagon would have been impossible. And our wildly bounding pursuers would have been difficult marks, even if the wagon had been still.
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