Grim Lands

by Robert E. Howard

  He followed a curve in the path, with a steep bluff to his right, and coming onto a level space strewn with broken boulders, saw a low-roofed house looming darkly ahead of him. Behind it and off to one side stood barns, sheds and corrals, all bulked against a background of postoak woods. No lights showed.

  He halted in front of the sagging porch – there was no yard fence – and sprang up on the porch, hammering on the door. Inside a sleepy voice demanded his business.

  “Are you by yourself?” demanded Reynolds. The voice assured him profanely that such was the case. “Then get up and open the door; it’s me – Jim Reynolds.”

  There was a stirring in the house, creak of bed springs, prodigious yawns, and a shuffling step. A light flared as a match was struck. The door opened, revealing a gaunt figure in a dingy union suit, holding an oil lamp in one hand.

  “What’s up, Jim?” demanded the figure, yawning and blinking. “Come in. Hell of a time of night to wake a man up –”

  “It ain’t ten o’clock yet,” answered Reynolds. “Joel, I’ve just come from Bisley. I killed Saul Hopkins.”

  The gaping mouth, in the middle of a yawn, clapped shut with a strangling sound. The lamp rocked wildly in Joel Jackson’s hand, and Reynolds caught it to steady it.

  “Saul Hopkins?” In the flickering light Jackson’s face was the hue of ashes. “My God, they’ll hang you! Are they after you? What –”

  “They won’t hang me,” answered Reynolds grimly. “Only reason I run was there’s some things I want to do before they catch me. Joel, you’ve got reasons for befriendin’ me. I can’t hide out in the hills all the time, because there’s nothin’ to eat. You live here alone, and don’t have many visitors. I’m goin’ to stay here a few days till the search moves into another part of the country, then I’m goin’ back into Bisley and do the rest of my job. If I can kill that lawyer of Hopkins’ and Judge Blaine and Billy Leary, the chief of police, I’ll die happy.”

  “But they’ll comb these hills!” exclaimed Jackson wildly. “They can’t keep from findin’ you –”

  “Hang on to your nerve,” grunted Reynolds. “We’ll run my car into that ravine back of this hill and cover it up with brush. Take a regular bloodhound to find it. I’ll stay in the house here, or in the barn, and when we see anybody comin’, I’ll duck out into the brush. Only way they can get here in a car is to climb that foot path like I did. Besides, they won’t waste much time huntin’ this close to Bisley. They’ll take a sweep through the country, and if they don’t find me right easy, they’ll figger I’ve made for Lost Knob. They’ll question you, of course, but if you’ll keep your backbone stiff and look ’em in the eye when you lie about it, I don’t think they’ll bother to search your farm.”

  “Alright,” shivered Jackson, “but it’ll go hard with me if they find out.” He was numbed by the thought of Reynolds’ deed. It had never occurred to him that a man as “big” as Saul Hopkins could be shot down like an ordinary human.

  Little was said between the men as they drove the car down the rocky hillside and into the ravine; wedged into the dense shinnery, they skilfully masked its presence.

  “A blind man could tell a car’s been driv down that hill,” complained Jackson.

  “Not after tonight,” answered Reynolds, with a glance at the sky. “I believe it’s goin’ to rain like hell in a few hours.”

  “It is mighty hot and still,” agreed Jackson. “I hope it does rain. We’re needin’ it. We didn’t get no winter seasonin’ –”

  “What the hell do you care for your crops?” growled Reynolds. “You don’t own ’em; nobody in these hills owns anything. Everything you all got is mortgaged to the hilt – some of it more’n once. You, personally, been lucky to keep up the interest; you sag once, and see what happens to you. You’ll be just like my brother-in-law John, and a lot of others. You all are a pack of fools, just like I told him. To hell with strugglin’ along and slavin’ just to put fine clothes on somebody else’s backs, and good grub into their bellies. You ain’t workin’ for yourselves; you’re workin’ for them you owe money to.”

  “Well, what can we do?” protested Jackson. Reynolds grinned wolfishly.

  “You know what I done tonight. Saul Hopkins won’t never throw no other man out of his house and home to starve. But there’s plenty like him. If you farmers would listen to me, you’d throw down your rakes and pick up your guns. Up here in these hills we’d make a war out of it that’d make the Bloody Lincoln County War look plumb tame.”

  Jackson’s teeth chattered as with an ague. “We couldn’t do it, Jim. Times is changed, can’t you understand? You talk just like them old-time outlaws my dad used to tell me about. We can’t fight with guns like our fathers used to do. The governor’d send soldiers to hunt us down. Keepin’ a man from biddin’ at a auction is one thing; fightin’ state soldiers is another. We’re just licked and got to know it.”

  “You’re talkin’ just like John and all the others,” sneered Reynolds. “Well, John’s in jail and they say he’s goin’ to the pen; but I’m free and Saul Hopkins is in hell. What you say to that?”

  “I’m afeared it’ll be the ruin of us all,” moaned Jackson.

  “You and your fears,” snarled Reynolds. “Men ain’t got the guts of lice no more. I thought, when the farmers took over that auction, they was gettin’ their bristles up. But they ain’t. Your old man wouldn’t have knuckled down like you’re doin’. Well, I know what I’m goin’ to do, if I have to go it alone. I’ll get plenty of them before they get me, damn ’em. Come on in the house and fix me up somethin’ to eat.”

  Much had been crowded into a short time. It was only eleven o’clock. Stillness held the land in its grip. The stars had been blotted out by a grey haze-like veil which, rising in the north west, had spread over the sky with surprizing speed. Far away on the horizon lightning flickered redly. There was a breathless tenseness in the air. Breezes sprang up, blew fitfully from the south east, and as quickly died down. Somewhere off in the wooded hills a night bird called uneasily. A cow bawled anxiously in the corral. The beasts sensed an impending something in the atmosphere, and the men, raised in the hills, were no less responsive to the portents of the night.

  “Been a kind of haze in the sky all day,” muttered Jackson, glancing out the window as he fumbled about, setting cold fried bacon, corn bread, and a pot of red beans on the rough hewn table before his guest. “Been lightnin’ in the north west since sundown. Wouldn’t be surprized if we had a regular storm. ’Bout that time of the year.”

  “Likely,” grunted Reynolds, his mouth full of pork and corn bread. “Joel, dern you, ain’t you got nothin’ to drink better’n buttermilk?”

  Jackson reached up into the tin-doored cupboard and brought down a jug. He pulled out the corn-cob stopper and tilted the mouth into a tin cup. The reek of white corn juice filled the room, and Reynolds smacked his lips appreciatively.

  “Hell, Joel, you ought not to be scared of hidin’ me, long as you’ve kept that still of your’n hid.”

  “That’s different,” muttered Jackson uneasily. “You know, though, I’ll do all I can to help you out.”

  He watched his friend in morbid fascination as Reynolds wolfed down the food and gulped the fiery liquor with keen relish.

  “I don’t see how you can set there and eat like that. Don’t it make you kind of sick – thinkin’ about Hopkins?”

  “Why should it?” Reynolds’ eyes became grim as he set down the cup and stared at his host. “Throwed John out of his home, and him with a wife and kids, and then was goin’ to send him to the pen – how much you think a man ought to take off a skunk like that?”

  Jackson avoided his gaze and looked out the window. Away off in the distance came the first low grumble of thunder. The lightning played constantly along the north western horizon, splaying out to east and west.

  “Comin’ up sure,” mumbled Jackson. “Reckon they’ll get some water in Bisley Lake. Engineers said it’d tak
e three years to fill it, at the rate of rainfall in this country. I say one big rain like some I’ve seen, would do the job. An awful lot of water can come down Locust and Mesquital.”

  He opened the door and went out. Reynolds followed. The breathlessness of the atmosphere was even more intense. The haze-like veil had thickened; not a star was visible. The crowding hills with their black thickets rendered the darkness even more dense; but it was cut by the incessant glare of the lightning – distant, but growing more vivid. In the flashes a long low-lying bank of inky blackness could be seen hugging the north western horizon.

  “Funny the laws ain’t been up the road,” muttered Jackson. “I been listenin’ for cars.”

  “Reckon they’re searchin’ the other roads,” answered Reynolds. “Take some time to get up a posse after night, anyway. They’ll be burnin’ up the telephone wires. I reckon you got the only phone there is on this road, ain’t you, Joel?”

  “Yeah; folks couldn’t keep up the rent on ’em. By gosh, that cloud’s comin’ up slow, but it sure is black. I bet it’s been rainin’ pitch forks on the head of Locust for hours.”

  “I’m goin’ to walk down towards the road,” said Reynolds. “I can see a headlight a lot quicker down there than I can up here, for all these postoaks. I’ve got an idea they’ll be up here askin’ questions before mornin’. But if you lie like I’ve seen you, they won’t suspect enough to go prowlin’ around.”

  Jackson shuddered at the prospect. Reynolds walked down the winding path, and disappeared among the flanking oaks. But he did not go far. He suddenly remembered that the dishes out of which he had eaten were still on the kitchen table. That might cause suspicion if the law dropped in suddenly. He turned and headed swiftly back toward the house. And as he went, he heard a peculiar tingling noise he was at first unable to identify. Then he was electrified by sudden suspicion. It was such a sound as a telephone would make, if rung while a quilt or cloak was held over it to muzzle the sound from some one near at hand.

  Crouching like a panther, he stole up, and looking through a crack in the door, saw Jackson standing at the phone. The man shook like a leaf and great beads of sweat stood out on his grey face. His voice was strangled and unnatural.

  “Yes, yes!” he was mouthing. “I tell you, he’s here now! He’s gone down to the road, to watch for the cops. Come here as quick as you can, Leary – and come yourself. He’s bad! I’ll try to get him drunk, or asleep, or somethin’. Anyway, hurry, and for God’s sake, don’t let on I told you, even after you got him corralled.”

  Reynolds threw back the door and stepped in, his face a death-mask. Jackson wheeled, saw him, and gave a choked croak. His face turned hideous; the receiver fell from his fingers and dangled at the end of its cord.

  “My God, Reynolds!” he screamed. “Don’t – don’t –”

  Reynolds took a single step; his gun went up and smashed down; the heavy barrel crunched against Jackson’s skull. The man went down like a slaughtered ox and lay twitching, his eyes closed, and blood oozing from a deep gash in his scalp, and from his nose and ears as well.

  Reynolds stood over him an instant, snarling silently. Then he stepped to the phone and lifted the receiver. No sound came over the wire. He wondered if the man at the other end had hung up before Jackson screamed. He hung the receiver back on its hook, and strode out of the house.

  A savage resentment made thinking a confused and muddled process. Jackson, the one man south of Lost Knob he had thought he could trust, had betrayed him – not for gain, not for revenge, but simply because of his cowardice. Reynolds snarled wordlessly. He was trapped; he could not reach Lost Knob in his car, and he would not have time to drive back down the Bisley road, and find another road, before the police would be racing up it. Suddenly he laughed, and it was not a good laugh to hear.

  A fierce excitement galvanized him. By God, Fate had worked into his hands, after all! He did not wish to escape, only to slay before he died. Leary was one of the men he had marked for death. And Leary was coming to the Jackson farm house.

  He took a step toward the corral, glanced at the sky, turned, ran back into the house, found and donned a slicker. By that time the lightning was a constant glare overhead. It was astounding – incredible. A man could almost have read a book by it. The whole northern and western sky was veined with irregular cords of blinding crimson which ran back and forth, leaping to the earth, flickering back into the heavens, crisscrossing and interlacing. Thunder rumbled, growing louder. The bank in the north west had grown appallingly. From the east around to the middle of the west it loomed, black as doom. Hills, thickets, road and buildings were bathed weirdly in the red glare as Reynolds ran to the corral where the horses whimpered fearfully. Still there was no sound in the elements but the thunder. Somewhere off in the hills a wind howled shudderingly, then ceased abruptly.

  Reynolds found bridle, blanket and saddle, threw them on a restive and uneasy horse, and led it out of the corral and down behind the cliff which flanked the path that led up to the house. He tied the animal behind a thicket where it could not be seen from the path. Up in the house the oil lamp still burned. Reynolds did not bother to look to Joel Jackson. If the man ever regained consciousness at all, it would not be for many hours. Reynolds knew the effect of such a blow as he had dealt.

  Minutes passed, ten – fifteen. Now he heard a sound that was not of the thunder – a distant purring that swiftly grew louder. A shaft that was not lightning stabbed the sky to the south east. It was lost, then appeared again. Reynolds knew it was an automobile topping the rises. He crouched behind a rock in a shinnery thicket close to the path, just above the point where it swung close to the rim of the low bluff.

  Now he could see the headlights glinting through the trees like a pair of angry eyes. The eyes of the Law! he thought sardonically, and hugged himself with venomous glee. The car halted, then came on, marking the entering of the gate. They had not bothered to close the gate, he knew, and felt an instinctive twinge of resentment. That was typical of those Bisley laws – leave a man’s gate open, and let all his stock get out.

  Now the automobile was mounting the hill, and he grew tense. Either Leary had not heard Jackson’s scream shudder over the wires, or else he was reckless. Reynolds nestled further down behind his rock. The lights swept over his head as the car came around the cliff-flanked turn. Lightning conspired to dazzle him, but as the headlights completed their arc and turned away from him, he made out the bulk of men in the car, and the glint of guns. Directly overhead thunder bellowed and a freak of lightning played full on the climbing automobile. In its brief flame he saw the car was crowded – five men, at least, and the chances were that it was Chief Leary at the wheel, though he could not be sure, in that illusive illumination.

  The car picked up speed, skirting the cliff – and now Jim Reynolds thrust his .45 through the stems of the shinnery, and fired by the flare of the lightning. His shot merged with a rolling clap of thunder. The car lurched wildly as its driver, shot through the head, slumped over the wheel. Yells of terror rose as it swerved toward the cliff edge. But the man on the seat with the driver dropped his shotgun and caught frantically at the wheel.

  Reynolds was standing now, firing again and again, but he could not duplicate the amazing luck of that first shot. Lead raked the car and a man yelped, but the policeman at the wheel hung on tenaciously, hindered by the corpse which slumped over it, and the car, swinging away from the bluff, roared erratically across the path, crashed through bushes and shinnery, and caromed with terrific impact against a boulder, buckling the radiator and hurling men out like tenpins.

  Reynolds yelled his savage disappointment, and sent the last bullet in his gun whining viciously among the figures stirring dazedly on the ground about the smashed car. At that, their stunned minds went to work. They rolled into the brush and behind rocks. Tongues of flame began to spit at him, as they gave back his fire. He ducked down into the shinnery again. Bullets hummed over his head, or sma
shed against the rock in front of him, and on the heels of a belching blast there came a myriad venomous whirrings through the brush as of many bees. Somebody had salvaged a shotgun.

  The wildness of the shooting told of unmanned nerves and shattered morale, but Reynolds, crouching low as he reloaded, swore at the fewness of his cartridges.

  He had failed in the great coup he had planned. The car had not gone over the bluff. Four policemen still lived, and now, hiding in the thickets, they had the advantage. They could circle back and gain the house without showing themselves to his fire; they could phone for reinforcements. But he grinned fiercely as the flickering lightning showed him the body that sagged over the broken door where the impact of the collision had tossed it like a rag doll. He had not made a mistake; it was chief of police Leary who had stopped his first bullet.

  The world was a hell of sound and flame; the cracking of pistols and shotguns was almost drowned in the terrific cannonade of the skies. The whole sky, when not lit by flame, was pitch black. Great sheets and ropes and chains of fire leaped terribly across the dusky vault, and the reverberations of the thunder made the earth tremble. Between the bellowings came sharp claps that almost split the ear drums. Yet not a drop of rain had fallen.

  The continual glare was more confusing than utter darkness. Men shot wildly and blindly. And Reynolds began backing cautiously through the shinnery. Behind it, the ground sloped quickly, breaking off into the cliff that skirted the path further down. Down the incline Reynolds slid recklessly, and ran for his horse, half frantic on its tether. The men in the brush above yelled and blazed away vainly as they got a fleeting glimpse of him.