I have found that the average yellow cat is deficient in courage. The Persian was an exception. He was the biggest, most powerful, mixed-breed I ever saw, and the fiercest. He was always ravenous, and his powerful jaws crushed chicken bones in a startling manner. He ate, indeed, more like a dog than a cat. He was not indolent or fastidious. He was a lusty soldier of fortune, without morals or scruples, but possessed of an enviable vitality.
He was enamored of Barn-cat, and no woman could have acted the coquette with greater perfection. She treated him like a dog. He wooed her in his most ingratiating manner, to be rewarded by spitting abuse and scratches. A lion in dealing with members of his own sex, he was a lamb with Barn-cat.
Let him approach her in the most respectable manner, and she was transformed into a spitting, clawing fury. Then when he retired discouraged, she invariably followed him, picking at him, teasing him, and giving him no peace of mind. Yet if he took hope and attempted any advances on the ground of her actions, she instantly assumed the part of an insulted virgin and greeted him with bared teeth and claws.
Her treatment of him was in strong contrast with her attitude toward Hoot, a big black and white spotted cat whose coloring made him look as if he were wearing the nose guard of a football helmet. Hoot was too lazy to woo Barn-cat, and she tolerated him, or rather ignored him entirely. He could push her off his chosen napping-spot, step on her ear on his way to the feed pan, or even appropriate choice morsels from her personal meal, and she showed no resentment, whereas if the Persian attempted any of these things, she was ready to rend him. On the other hand, her contempt for Hoot was apparent, and she never accorded him either the teasing or the resentment she accorded the Persian.
Their romance was not so very different from some human romances, and like all romances, came to its end. The Persian was a fighter. So much of his time was spent recovering from wounds, that he was always gaunt, and there were always several partly healed scars on his head and body. Finally he limped in with fresh wounds and a broken leg. He lay around for a short time, refusing assistance, and then disappeared. I think that, following his instincts, he dragged himself away somewhere to die.
Barn-cat’s career was short. Soon after her lover met his end, she appeared one morning with her tail almost chewed off close to her body. Doubtless she had internal wounds. She was the only one of the crew worth her salt as a mouser, and while she normally avoided big grey rats, I believe they were at last responsible for her doom. And any rate, she too vanished with her wounds and did not return.
The grey cat and her kittens remain, with Hoot, who still sleeps in the sun, too lazy even to keep himself clean. He is the only cat I ever saw which allowed its fur to remain dusty. After a sandstorm he is a disreputable sight for days. Perhaps he catches mice at night, but he shows no enthusiasm for anything but loafing during the day.
The life of a cat is not numbered by nine. Usually it is short, violent and tragic. He suffers, and makes others suffer if he can. He is primitive, bestially selfish. He is, in short, a creature of awful and terrible potentialities, a crystalization of primordial self-love, a materialization of the blackness and squalor of the abyss. He is a green-eyed, steel-thewed, fur-clad block of darkness hewed from the Pits which know not light, nor sympathy, nor dreams, nor hope, nor beauty, nor anything except hunger and the satiating of hunger. But he has dwelt with man since the beginning, and when the last man lies down and dies, a cat will watch his throes, and likelier than not, will gorge its abysmal hunger on his cooling flesh.
Midnight
First published in The Junto, an amateur journal, September 1929
Red leaned his elbows upon the table and cursed. The candle guttered low. The bottle was empty, and a slow fire coiled in our brains — the fire which devours and consumes and destroys but never leaps into full wild flame.
I looked at Red with bleared eyes. He hid his face in his hands. He was thinking of a woman he knew. The cards, greasy with handling and stained with whiskey and candle tallow, lay scattered between us. The desire for gambling was gone, and there was no more whiskey.
“Cheer up, Red,” I said. “Listen — I’ll tell you: Somewhere in the world the sun is coming up like a red dragon to shine on a gilded pagoda; somewhere the bleak silver stars are gleaming on the white sands where a magic caravan is sleeping out in the ages. Somewhere the night wind is blowing through the grass of a mysterious grave. Somewhere there is a gossamer sailed ship carving a wake of silver foam across the dark blue of the Mediterranean. This isn’t all, Red.”
“Oh, Christ,” he groaned, reaching for the empty bottle, “I wish I had a drink.”
With a Set of Rattlesnake Rattles
First published in Leaves #1, Summer 1937
Here is the emblem of a lethal form of life for which I have no love, but a definite admiration. The wearer of this emblem is inflexibly individualistic. He mingles not with the herd, nor bows before the thrones of the mighty. Between him and the lords of the earth lies an everlasting feud that shall not be quenched until the last man lies dying and the Conqueror sways in shimmering coils above him.
Lapped in sombre mystery he goes his subtle way, touched by neither pity nor mercy. Realizations of ultimate certitudes are his, when the worm rises and the vulture sinks and the flesh shreds back to the earth that bore it. Other beings may make for Life, but he is consecrated to Death. Promise of ultimate dissolution shimmers in his visible being, and the cold soulless certainty of destruction is in his sibilances. The buzzards mark his path by the pregnant waving of the tall grasses, and the blind worms that gnaw in the dark are glad because of him. The foot of a king can not tread on him with impunity, nor the ignorant hand of innocence bruise him unscathed. The emperor who sits enthroned in gold and purple, with his diadem in the thunder-clouds and his sandals on the groaning backs of the nations, let him dare to walk where the rank grass quivers without a wind, and the lethal scent of decay is heavy in the air. Let him dare — and try if his pomp and glory and his lines of steel and gold will awe the coiling death or check the dart of the wedge-shaped head.
For when he sings in the dark it is the voice of Death crackling between fleshless jaw-bones. He reveres not, nor fears, nor sinks his crest for any scruple. He strikes, and the strongest man is carrion for flapping things and crawling things. He is a Lord of the Dark Places, and wise are they whose feet disturb not his meditations.
The Tribute
Robert E. Howard with his parents, Hester Howard and Dr. Isaac Howard, c. 1929
R. E. H. by R. H. BARLOW
A tribute to Robert E. Howard from Weird Tales, Volume 28, Issue 3
R. E. H.
Died June 11, 1936
Conan, the warrior king, lies stricken dead
Beneath a sky of cryptic stars; the lute
That was his laughter stilled, and sadly mute
Upon the chilling earth his youthful head.
There sounds for him no more the clamorous fray.
But dirges now, where once the trumpet loud:
About him press old memories for shroud,
And ended is the conflict of the day.
Death spilled the blood of him who loved the fight
As men love mistresses, and fought it well —
His fair young flesh is marble where he fell
With broken sword that vanquished all but Night;
And as of mythic kings our words must speak
Of Conan now, who roves where dreamers seek.
Greenleaf Cemetery, Brownwood, Texas – Howard’s final resting place
Howard’s grave
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Delphi Works of Robert E. Howard (Illustrated) (Series Four) Page 412