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RETURN TO BRIMSTONE II: The Crawling Dead
Mar. 8th, 2023 07:20 amRETURN TO BRIMSTONE II -The Crawling Dead
IV.
Johnny Packard backed away, cold sweat beading his taut face. Not for a prospector's bag of gold dust would he have peered into the shuttered windows or touched that unbolted door. The Peacemaker hung heavy in his hand, usually a comfort but useless now. His legs felt unsteady as he walked over to untie Terror.
The black stallion was uncharacteristically subdued. Normally the great steed was unafraid of any man or beast or force of nature. Even wildfire didn't alarm him. Now he seemed eager to get far away. Johnny mounted and headed back toward the road, fighting a panicky urge to strike in the spurs and bolt madly down the trail.
It sank in to Johnny that he had not been taking this menace seriously enough. He had thought Santero to be another cheap trickster or maybe a minor witchman with a few lukewarm spells. He knew differently now.
The black horse snorted and shied violently to a halt. The gun was back in Johnny's hand before he knew why. Leyla was leaning against a bent tree-trunk, her hands clasped behind her sleek head, insolently posing her supple figure. As alien and nearly inhuman as she looked, she still wielded potent appeal.
"Why did you not go into the cabin, Johnny Packard?" she mocked, lowering her arms and sauntering away from the tree.
High-strapped sandals were on her feet. A short silken skirt of bright crimson molded her full hips, and was upheld by a broad beaded girdle. A loose sleeveless white blouse was open to her navel. Barbaric anklets and armlets clashed as she moved, thin ornaments of crudely hammered gold.
"Johnny Packard!" She seemed to caress the syllables with her red tongue, yet the very intonation was an obscene insult. "Why did you not enter Santero's cabin? It was not locked! Did you fear what you might see there? Did you fear you might come out with your hair white like an old man's, and the drooling lips of an imbecile?"
"What's in that hut anyway?" he demanded.
She laughed in his face, and snapped her fingers with a mocking gesture. "You have no words for it. There are spirits all around us who thirst to dwell in flesh and blood. Hungry eyes watched and hoped you would cross that threshold."
"So you say! What does Santero want anyway? There was a kind of truce between regular folk and your kind."
"Humans? Ha! they are his meant to be his slaves. If they disobey he kills them, or puts them in the ground. We have come from a realm farther away than miles can measure, seeking suitable land to expand our numbers. Since we know that you people can never be driven away from land you have claimed, we must kill you all."
It was Johnny's turn to snort disdainfully. "Good luck. Others have tried."
"They did not have Santero to lead them, then," she answered calmly.
"Well, suppose you do win? You don't think that would be the end of it? This is Texas! Soldiers would charge into Brimstone and take bloody revenge."
"By then, the spell of Deep Fear will have hardened," she answered. "Men and horses will panic and refuse to cross that dark river. If forced, they will sicken and die. Santero will rule this region, as his fathers ruled their tribes in Zheka."
Johnny felt some of his usual nerve coming back to him. The more she talked, the more he learned. Maybe, just maybe, there would be a clue he could use against the threat. "Who is this devil? What are you to him?"
"He is the heir to Forbidden Knowledge from the Fall of Ulgor, knowledge that makes minds snap and rave. Santero is the greatest living master of that terrible wisdom from the Sulla Chun," she answered, laughing again. "As for me? You shall learn who I am, tonight in the forest, in the House of Draldros."
"Yes?" the Kid grunted. "What's to prevent me from hauling you into town with me? You know answers to questions everybody'd like to ask."
"You think you can drag me to the village of the Humans? Nothing in this world could keep me from the Dance of the Crawlers, tonight in the House of Draldros. You are my captive, already. Oh, Brimstone Kid, your curse is well known to us. Even Santero is cautious aboyt you, for he sent me with three men to kill you before you could reach the village. Yet you are my captive. I have but to beckon, so" andshe crooked an index finger, "and you will follow me to the fires of Draldros and the knives of the torturers."
"You haven't met the real Brimstone Kid yet," Johnny growled.
"Men are fools, all but Santero," Leyla laughed. "By the blood in your veins I have snared you. The knife of the man you killed scratched your hand...seven drops of blood on that blade have given me your soul! Oh, you are strong-willed! But you cannot fight me. Your blood makes you my slave. I have made you Spellbound."
Those were not empty words. Hypnotism, magic, call it what you will, he felt its onslaught on his brain and will.
"I have made a charm you cannot resist!" she cried. "When I call you, you will come! Into the deep swamps you will follow me. You will see the Dance of the Crawlers and you will see the doom of a poor fool who sought to betray Santero—who dreamed he could resist the Call of Draldros when it came. Into the ground he goes tonight, and he will not be the same when he emerges. You shall see before you become one of the Crawlers."
"Lady, you talk too much!" Johnny whipped out his Colt and leveled it full at her pale face. The hammer was cocked and his finger was on the trigger. At that range he could not miss. But she looked full into the black muzzle and smirked serenely.
And he sat there like an image pointing a pistol he could not fire! A frightful paralysis gripped him. He knew, with numbing certainty, that his life depended on the pull of that trigger, but he could not crook his finger no matter how he willed it.
"You cannot shoot me, Johnny Packard," Leyla said quietly. "I have enslaved your soul. It is the Bride of Draldros you kneel before. Tonight you will come to me, in the House of the Dread One."
"You're lying!" His voice was an unnatural croak bursting from dry lips. "Damnation, maybe you've hypnotized me so I can't pull this trigger. But you sure can't drag me across the swamps to you."
"It is you who lie," Leyla returned calmly. "Ride back toward the frontier or wherever you choose, Johnny Packard. But when the sun sets, you will see me beckoning you, and you will follow me. Long I have planned your doom, Johnny Packard. At midnight, the town shall go up in flames, and the heads of the townspeople will be tossed in the streets. And now, go fool! Run as far and as fast as you will. At sunset, wherever you are, you will turn your footsteps toward the House of Draldros!"
With the sudden spring of a great cat, she was gone into the thick brush, and as she vanished the strange paralysis dropped from the Kid. With a gasp, he fired blindly after her, but only a silence answered.
Then in near panic he wrenched his horse about and spurred him down the trail. It was the first time the Brimstone Kid suffered blind primitive fear. He had confronted sorcery beyond his power to resist. All he could think of at the moment was putting distance between himself and that witch.
He had not quite reached the Richardson cabin when above the drumming of his flight he heard the clop of hoofs approaching from ahead. An instant later, sweeping around a kink in the trail, he almost rode down a tall, lanky man on a chestnut horse. The stranger yelped and swerved aside as Terror sat back to its haunches. The Peacemaker whipped up quick as a rattler.
"Look out, Johnny! It's me... Tom Pinto! My God, you look like you'd seen a ghost! What's chasin' you?" The notorious outlaw was wearing the black and white vest made from the hide of a pinto pony that had belonged to an Indian wise man. In his late forties, a hard life had left him looking older. Under a thatch of greying yellow hair was a face deeply furrowed by exposure and hardship.
"You got my telegram? Thank God. I'm purely glad to see you, Tom" Johnny said, lowering his gun.
"I been lookin' for you. Folks got worried as the hour got late and you didn't come in with the refugees. I allowed I'd light out and track you down. Miz Richardson said you rode away sudden like. Where in tarnation you been?"
"To Santero's cabin."
"That's takin' a man-sized bite. What'd you find there?"
The sight of Tom Pinto was reassuring. The veteran outlaw was the fastest and most accurate shot Johnny had ever seen, even edging out Little Clay Hawk. With Pinto on hand, odds of getting through this crisis improved greatly. The Kid started to explain what had happened at the cabin, but thought better of "I din't find nothing. He wasn't there."
"Thought I heard a gun crack, a while ago," he remarked, glancing sharply at Johnny sidewise.
"I shot at a copperhead," the Kid answered, and shuddered. This reticence regarding Leyla was compulsory. He was Spellbound and could no more speak of her than he could have pulled the trigger of the pistol aimed at her. Johnny was deeply shaken at the realization he had lost his freedom. There were devils in human form who were able to enslave men's will and thoughts.
Pinto was eyeing his old comrade strangely. "We're lucky the woods ain't full of two-legged copperheads," he said. "Felix's pulled out."
"What do you mean?" By an effort the Kid pulled himself together.
"Just that. Breck was in the cabin with him. Felix hadn't said a word since you talked to him. Just laid on that bunk and shivered. Then a kind of holler begun way out in the woods, and Tom went to the door with his rifle-gun, but couldn't see nothin'. Well, while he was standin' there he got a lick on the head from behind, and as he fell he seen that crazy Felix jump over him and light out for the woods. Breck said he'd taken a shot at him, but missed. Now what do you make of that?"
"The Call of Draldros! That poor devil!"
"Huh? What's are you going on about?" demanded Pinto.
"For God's sake let's not stand here mouthing! The sun will soon be down!" In a frenzy of impatience Johnny urged his mount down the trail. Tom Pinto followed, obviously puzzled. With a terrific effort, Johnny got a grip on himself. How unexpected it was that the Brimstone Kid should be shaking in the grip of unreasoning terror! It was so foreign to his whole nature that it was no wonder Tom Pinto was unable to comprehend what ailed him.
"Felix didn't go of his own free will," the Kid blurted. "That call was a summons he couldn't resist. Hypnotism, voodoo, whatever you want to call it, Santero has some damnable power that enslaves men's willpower. All them Llanghoir varmints are gathered somewhere in the deep woods for some kind of a devilish voodoo ceremony."
Pinto was pale in the dimming light. "You and me, we've seen some things that'd make a man doubt his sanity, Johnny. But I reckon this is the worst."
"If'n it were a straight up fight with bullets and fists, why, I'm sure the people of Brimstone could slaughter them weird Llanghoir. We're Texans after all! But all this black magic makes me unsure."
The Brimstone Kid's green eyes were fixed on the sinking sun. Any other time, he would be counting on transforming into his demonic self at nightfall. Then these white-haired monsters would get a surprise they wouldn't like. But he could not place his hat on his head, no matter how often he tried. His agitation increased. He was Spellbound.
"Johnny, what the hayll ails you?" came Pinto's anxious voice. "You're sweatin' and shakin' like you had the fever. Hey, what you stoppin' for?"
He had not consciously pulled on the rein, but Terror halted, and stood stomping and snorting, before the mouth of a narrow trail which meandered away at right angles from the road they were following, a trail that led north.
"Listen!" the Kid hissed tensely.
"What is it?" Pinto drew his big iron. He toted a Colt Single Action Army revolver with a barrel that reached seven and a half inches. The brief twilight of the forest was deepening into dusk.
"Don't you hear it?" the Kid muttered. "Drums! Drums beating from the direction of Jubal!"
"I don't hear nothin'," the outlaw mumbled uneasily. "If they was beatin' drums in Jubal you couldn't hear 'em this far away."
"Look there!" Johnny's sharp sudden cry made Pinto start. The Kid was pointing down the dim trail, at the figure which stood there in the dusk less than a hundred yards away. There in the dusk he saw her clearly. "Santero's woman Leyla. Man, are you blind? Don't you see her?"
"I don't see nobody!" he whispered. "Are you feeling awright? What are you talkin' about, Johnny?"
With eyes glaring the Kid fired his Colt down the trail, and fired again This time no paralysis held him back. But the smiling face still mocked him from the shadows. Then she was gone and Johnny was spurring his horse down the narrow trail with terrible urgency.
Dimly he heard Pinto's urgent yells, as the outlaw drew up beside him with a clatter of hoofs, and grabbed Terror's reins, setting the black horse back on its haunches.
"Johnny, are you crazy? This trail leads to Jubal!"
The Kid shook his head dazedly. A roar as of rushing waters swept through his mind. "Go back! Ride for Brimstone! I'm going to Jubal."
"Johnny, you're loco! You've plain lost yer senses."
"Mad or sane, I'm going to Jubal this night," the Kid answered dully. He knew what he was saying, and what he was doing. Some shred of sanity impelled him to try to conceal the grisly truth from his companion, to offer a rational reason for thus madness. "Santero is in Jubal. He's the one who's responsible for all this trouble. I'm going to kill him. That will stop the uprising before it starts."
"Then I'm goin' with you. No one had ever said Tom Pinto was a coward."
"You must go on to Brimstone and help protect the people," the Kid insisted, holding to sanity, but feeling a strong urge begin to seize him to be riding in the direction toward which he was so horribly drawn.
"They won't need one more gun but you sure do. I'm goin' with you. I don't know what's got in you, but I ain't goin' to let you die alone among these black woods."
Johnny couldn't resist the summons any longer. He took off, galloping down the trail, with the drum of Tom Pinto's horse's hoofs behind him.
Night fell and the moon shone through the trees, blood-red behind the black branches. The horses were growing hard to manage.
"They got more sense'n us, Johnny," muttered Pinto.
"It's not like Terror. He usually heads right for anything dangerous."
"He's still a hoss. Closer we get to Jubal, the worse they git. And every time we swing nigh to a creek they shy and snort."
But Johnny hardly noticed, wrestling with his anguish. He realized that he was riding to torture and death, and leading a faithful friend to the same end. But on he went. His strongest efforts to break the spell almost unseated his reason, but on he went.
They were not far from Jubal when Pinto's horse nearly unseated its rider, and even Terror began snorting and plunging.
"They won't go no closer!" gasped Pinto, fighting at the reins.
The Brimstone Kid swung off to the ground, throwing the reins over the saddle-horn.
"Go back, for God's sake, Tom! I'm going on afoot."
the Kid heard Pinto mutter an oath, then his horse was backing away after Terror, and the two men continued on foot.
Johnny wasted no more bullets on that mocking shape he frequently glimpsed ahead. Pinto could not see it, and Johnny knew it was part of the Spellbinding, no real woman of flesh and blood, but a hell-born will-o'-the-wisp, mocking him and leading him through the night to a hideous death.
Pinto peered nervously at the black forest walls about us, his flesh crawling with the mundane fear of sawed-off shotguns blasting them suddenly from the shadows. But it was no ambush of lead or steel the Kid feared as they emerged into the moonlit clearing that housed the settlement of the Llanghoir. It was not a true village, only a dozen cabins and the pale folk had not given it a name. The townspeople called it Jubal.
The double line of log cabins faced each other across the dusty street. One line backed against the bank of Deadman's River. The black stoops almost overhung the turgid waters. Nothing moved in the moonlight. No lights showed, no smoke oozed up from the stick-and-mud chimneys. It might have been a dead town, deserted and forgotten.
"It's a trap!" hissed Pinto, his eyes blazing slits. He bent forward, big iron in his hand. "They're layin' for us in them huts!" He cursed, but followed as the Brimstone Kid strode down the dirt street. Jubal was deserted.
"They're gone," muttered Pinto, nervously. "You reckon they've gone to raid Perdition itself?"
"No," Johnny muttered. "They're in the House of Draldros, whatever that might be."
Tom Pinto shot a quick glance at the Kid. "That's a neck of land along the river about three miles west of here. I've heard campfire tales. The LLanghoir held their secret palavers there back in older times. Johnny, what do you know?"
"Listen!"
Through the dense woodlands the faint throb of a drum whispered on the wind that glided up the shadowy reaches of the Tularoosa.
Pinto shivered. "It's them, all right. But for, God's sake, Johnny, look out!"
He ran toward the houses on the bank of the creek. The Kid was after him just in time to glimpse a low dark object scrambling into the undergrowth. Pinto threw up his long pistol, then lowered it, with a baffled curse.
"What was it?" the Kid demanded.
"A man on his all-fours!" swore Pinto. His face was deathly pallid in the moonlight. "He was crouched between them cabins there, watchin' us!"
"It must have been an animal of some kind."
"Naw, I got a look at him," maintained Pinto. "Some kind of deformed freak, I believe. Now he'll go warn Santero."
"Never mind! For the last time, go back!"
"No! It's for my own self-respect, I'm goin' with you!"
The pulse of the drum was fitful, growing more distinct as we advanced. We struggled through jungle-thick growth; tangled vines tripped us; our boots sank in scummy mire. We were entering the fringe of the wetlands which grew deeper and denser until it culminated in the uninhabitable morass where the Deepman's River flowed, miles farther to the west.
The moon had not yet set, but the shadows were black under the interlacing branches of the thickly set trees. They plunged into the first creek to cross, one of the many muddy streams flowing into the Tularoosa. The water was only thigh-deep, the moss-clogged bottom fairly firm. Johnny's foot felt the edge of a sheer drop, and he warned Pinto: "Look out for a deep hole; keep right behind me."
His answer was unintelligible. Pinto was breathing rapidly, crowding close behind the Kid. Just as they reached the end cabin, Pinto cried out incoherently, and hurled himself to one side. Johnny Packard whirled, gun in hand, but saw only the silent row of cabins and the seemingly undisturbed forest.
"What the devil, Tom?"
"Somethin' grabbed me!" he panted. "Somethin' seized my ankle. I tore loose but it was like gettin' outta a bear trap. Busted up the bank. I tell you, Johnny, something's follerin' us!"
"I strongly suggest we both keep our irons in our hands and don't take nothing for granted. This is a night where Hell can break through up from the ground at any minute."
Pinto followed without comment. Scummy puddles rose about their ankles, and they stumbled over moss-grown cypress knees. Ahead there loomed another, wider creek, and Pinto caught his arm. "Johnny, let's go back."
"Go back?" the Brimstone Kid muttered in bitter agony. "I wish to God I could! There ain't no choice for me, Tom. Either Santero dies before dawn or I do."
The outlaw licked dry lips and whispered. "Go on, then. I'm with you, come heaven or hell." With his free hand, he drew a long keen knife from his boot. "Go ahead!"
Everything happened at once, then. Johnny saw Pinto halt short, staring at something between the cabins behind them. He cried out and snapped off a shot, just as the Kid spun around. In the flash of the gun he glimpsed a supple form reeling backward, a milk-white face fiendishly contorted. Then in the momentary blindness that followed the flash, he heard Tom Pinto scream.
VI.
What most resembled a tall skinny man had seized the outlaw from behind and pulled him down. Horribly, the creature had clamped his jaws around Pinto's neck as if trying to bite his throat open. They were too close together to risk a shot. Johnny Packard smashed his gun barrel down on the monster's head as if trying to crack it apart and the thing howled in pain. With a bound, it was gone between the cabins again.
Glaring about wildly, his second revolver in his left hand in case, Johnny Packard could hardly catch his breath. Still keeping a lookout, he found that Pinto was sorely wounded but not dead. Blood covered the man's neck and chest, but there were no high spurts so no artery had been severed. Pinto was still conscious, still clutching both the big iron and the knife tightly.
Neither man said anything. Johnny pressed a clean bandana over the wound and pressed down hard. "You're gonna be all right, I'll get you to a doctor back in town. If we see a hoss anywhere, I'll steal it even if it means getting hanged..."
"No, no, you got to end this business tonight," Pinto said. "I'll hide myself in this doorway till the bleedin' stops. With my back covered, I'll drill holes in anything that gets near."
"I cain't leave you, Tom..."
"You got to. These filthy monsters crawling around biting people, them Llanghoirs up to deviltry, Sanrero ready to start a massacre. Johnny, this is what you was meant to fight."
The drums were louder than ever. It must be getting close to midnight by then. "It's a hard choice and no mistake. I'm coming back for you as soon as I can." He helped Tom get hidden in the shadows of an open door and saw that the blood was indeed slowing to a trickle.
Back where the attack had taken place, Johnny found blood on the bushes. The implication was clear. He remembered the figure he had seen staggering in the flash of Pinto's gun. Leyla had been there, waiting for me on the bank, then—not a spectral illusion, but the woman herself, in flesh and blood! Pinto seldom missed and certainly not at close range. But the wound could not have been mortal, for no corpse lay among the bushes, and the grim hypnosis that dragged him onward was unweakened. Uneasily he wondered if a witch could be killed by mortal weapons.
The moon rode high. Crisp starlight penetrated down the interwoven branches. No more creeks barred my way, only shallow streams, through which he splashed with sweating haste. Yet he did not expect to be attacked. Twice the dweller in the depths had passed him by to attack his companion. In cold despair, Johnny knew he was being saved for a grimmer fate. He was to be sacrificed to the demonic Draldros.
And as the Kid strode down the row of cabins, he heard the drum rumbling ahead, louder and louder, a demoniacal mockery. Then a human voice mingled with its mutter, in a long-drawn cry of horror and agony that set every fiber quivering with sympathy. Sweat coursed down his clammy flesh; soon his own voice might be lifted like that, under unnamable torture. But on he went, feet moving like automatons, apart from his body, motivated by a will not his own.
The drum grew loud, and a fire glowed among the black trees. Presently, crouching among the bushes, he stared across the stretch of black water that separated him from a nightmare scene. Halting there was as compulsory as the rest of my actions had been. Vaguely he knew the stage for horror had been set, but the time for entry upon it was not yet. When the time had come, he would receive the summons.
A low, wooded island split the swollen creek, connected with the shore opposite by a narrow neck of land. At its lower end the creek split into a network of channels threading their way among hummocks and rotting logs and moss-grown, vine-tangled clumps of trees. Directly across from the refuge the shore of the island was deeply indented by an arm of deep water. Twisted oak trees walled a small clearing and partly hid a hut. Between the hut and the shore burned a fire that sent up twisting tongues of flames. Scores of the pale Llanghoir squatted under the shadows of the overhanging branches. When the fire lit their faces it lent them the appearance of drowned corpses.
In the midst of the glade stood a giant who stood a head taller than a tall man. The cult leader was built like a blacksmith, with a broad chest and mighty arms. He was clad in a long white robe that reached the ground, but on his head was a band of beaten gold set with a huge red jewel, and on his feet were barbaric sandals. His features reflected titanic vitality no less than his huge body. But he was one of the Llandhoir with their pale slick skin, white hair and colorless eyes. Johnny knew he finally looked upon Santero, the Spellbinder.
The sorcerer was regarding something that lay in the sand before him, something dark and bulky that moaned feebly. Presently, lifting his head, he rolled out a sonorous invocation in a language thirty thousand years old. From the pale Llanghoir huddled under the trees there came a shuddering response.
Again he called out, this time his voice rising to a high-pitched wail. A shuddering sigh swept the Llanghoir. All eyes were fixed on the edge of the woods. From between the trees, four long dark shapes scuttled into the light, misshapen forms that not long earlier had been human.
Then Santero lifted his hands, and the five heads silently sank out of sight. Like a ghostly whisper I seemed to hear the voice of the witch, "He puts them in the ground to rise again!"
Santero's deep voice rolled out across the narrow water: "And now the Dance of the Crawlers, to make the Spellbinding sure!"
What had the witch said? "Hidden among the trees, you shall watch the dance of the Crawlers!"
The drum struck up again, growling and rumbling. The Llanghoir swayed on their haunches, lifting a wordless chant. Santero paced measuredly about the figure on the sand, his arms weaving cryptic patterns. Then he wheeled and faced toward the other end of the glade. By some sleight of hand he now grasped a grinning human skull, and this he cast upon the wet sand beyond the body. "Bride of Draldros!" he thundered. "The sacrifice awaits!"
There was an expectant pause; the chanting sank. All eyes were glued on the farther end of the glade. Santero stood waiting, and the Kid saw him scowl as if puzzled. Then as he opened his mouth to repeat the call, a shimmering figure moved out of the shadows.
At the sight of her a chill shook him. For a moment she stood motionless, the firelight glinting on her gold ornaments, her head hanging on her breast. A tense silence reigned and he saw Santero staring at her sharply. She seemed to be detached, somehow, standing aloof and withdrawn, head bent strangely.
Then, as if rousing herself, she began to sway with a jerky rhythm, and presently whirled into the mazes of a dance that was ancient when the ocean drowned the doomed isle of Ulgor. It was bestial and ethereal at the same time set to motion. But there was something amiss with her. Her arms hung limp, her drooping head swayed. Her legs bent and faltered, making her lurch drunkenly and out of time. A murmur rose from the pallid people, and bewilderment etched Santero's frowning countenance. For the domination of a Spellbinder is a thing hinged on a hair-trigger. Any minor faltering of formula or ritual may disrupt the whole web of his enchantment.
As for Johnny Packard, he watched the grisly dance breathlessly. The unseen shackles that bound him to that gyrating she-dvil were strangling him. He knew she was approaching a climax when she would summon him from that hiding-place to buried alive in the cold cold ground which she called the House of Draldros.
Now she whirled to a halt, poised on her toes. She faced the spot where Johnny lay hidden, and he knew that she could see me as plainly as if he stood in the open; She raised her head and I saw the triumph in that colorless face. She opened her mouth...
But from that open mouth sounded only a choking gurgle, and suddenly her lips were wet with her own blood, her knees gave way and she pitched headlong to the ground.
Unseen by anyone else, where he was crouching among the trees, the Brimstone Kid felt the great oppressive weight lift. The black spell that gripped him was broken. He felt as if he could breathe freely after being suffocated.
At the fall of the girl a wild cry rose from the Llanghoir, and they sprang up, trembling on the verge of panic. The albinos were breathing heavily, clawing at the air with bony fingers. Santero had worked their nonhuman natures up to a pitch of madness, meaning to turn this frenzy, at the proper time, into a fury of battle. It could as easily turn into an hysteria of terror. Santero shouted sharply at them.
But just then the girl in a last convulsion, rolled over on the wet sand, and the firelight shone on a round hole between her breasts, which still oozed crimson. Tom Pinto's bullet had found its mark.
From the first Johnny had known that Leyla was not wholly human, no more than her fellow Llanghoir were. She had sworn that death itself could not keep her from the Dance of the Crawlers. Shot through the heart, she had still trudged through the woods to the House of Draldros.
Dazed with unexpected hope like a condemned man granted a reprieve, at first he hardly grasped the meaning of the scene that now unfolded.
The Llanghoir broke into a frenzy. In the sudden inexplicable death of the sorceress they saw a fearsome portent. They had no way of knowing that she was already dying when she entered the glade. To them, their prophetess and priestess had been struck down under their very eyes, by an invisible death. This was magic blacker than Santero's wizardry and obviously hostile to them.
Like fear-maddened cattle they stampeded. Screaming, trampling one another they blundered through the trees, heading for the neck of land and the shore beyond. Santero stood transfixed, heedless of them as he stared down at Leyla, unexpectedly dead.
Suddenly free to act, Johnny drew up the black Stetson which had hung down his back and fixed it firmly on his head. Within the beaded band, the unspeakably ancient Darthan token blazed up with blistering heat. In a rush, demonic vitality energized his body and filled Johnny with the killing fury he had expected. He had become the Brimstone Kid in reality as well as name. At last.
He drew both Peacemakers, their barrels shimmering red as if they had been lying in a fire. The hammers clicked back.
Hearing that noise, Santero lifted his head and froze where he stood. The sounds of flight faded in the distance, and he stood alone in the glade. His eyes swept over the black woods around him. He bent, grasped the man-like object that lay on the sand, and dragged it into the hut. The instant he vanished, the Kid ran after him. Filled with ferocious vitality, Johnny had almost reached the Spellbinder when he was tackled from the side and brought down.
Cold, lifeless fingers gripped Johnny's throat, but the Kid was beyond all fear now. He raised the Crawling Dead off the ground and broke the zombie's back over one knee, tossing it aside. Deep hollow laughter boomed out from the Brimstone Kid, laughter that echoed as if rising from a pit.
Santero had emerged from his hut, an Army calvary saber in his hand. He was staring wildly about, alarmed by the infernal laughter he had heard, but Johnny could not be seen from that angle. Santero's clammy skin glistened with cold perspiration. He who had ruled by fear was now ruled by fear. He feared the unknown hand that had slain his mistress; feared the Spellbound slaves who had fled him. Santero sensed that a power even darker and more merciless than his own had broken free.
Four hideous forms crept rapidly along the ground toward the man in black who stood there. He cut then down one after another, his shining Colts booming loud as thunder and they made no effort to avoid the bullets. He had fired six shots before the last of the Crawling Dead sagged to the ground. The shots drowned the sounds of Santero's approach, so the Spellbinder was close behind him when he turned at last.
Recognition flooded Santero's colorless face with the knowledge that he faced a being beyond his power to control. "You! The Darthan demon!", he shouted as he lashed the saber in a horizontal arc meant to disembowel his enemy.
The Brimstone Kid dropped his pistols and lunged in close, catching Santero's wrists with a grip that snapped bones beneath its pressure. The Llanghoir could not keep hold of his weapon. Johnny wrested the saber free, vaulted back a step and lopped the Spellbinder's head cleanly over his shoulders. Head and body fell in different directions. Throwing back his head, the Kid roared deep as any lion in triumph and flung the reddened sword down to the ground.
There was a pouch of dry powder in Santero's belt. Before anything else, the Kid retrieved his pistols and holstered them. Taking a fallen torch, he strode into the hut for the final horror. Old Felix lay moaning on a bunk. The transmutation that was to make him a mindless enslaved zombie was not complete, but his mind was gone. His body was elongated, his legs dwarfed so they were no longer than his arms. His neck was inches longer than it should be. His features had not been altered beyond recognition but their expression held no awareness. And there, but for the loyalty and courage of Tom Pinto, would Johnny Packard have lain in the same dismal state. The Kid placed his pistol muzzle against Felix's head in grim mercy and pulled the trigger.
Moving about with the torch, he lit the cabin. As it went up in red flames against the darkness, the Brimstone Kid ran from the ceremonial site to find Tim Pinto had maintained consciousness but was weak and dazed. Skeletal and frightful to see in his own transformation, Terror galloped out of the shadows. Once the power of the Darthan token had manifested, it had reached the black horse even miles away. Johnny positioned his only friend as gently as he could over the great horse's shoulders and turned toward Brimstone to see if the doctor could be found.
And so the half-century of terror ended at last. Johnny would never speak of it again. The people of Brimstone never admitted finding anything on the island except the bodies of Santero and Leyla. They concluded or said they concluded that Tom Pinto had killed Leyla in self-defense, and that Johnny broke up the threatened uprising by killing Santero. Everyone let it go at that. The horrors of the Crawling Dead were eventually forgotten. Only a few days after that night, Johnny Packard made his farewells and rode away from his hometown again, heading West. His story was far from over.
3/8/223
IV.
Johnny Packard backed away, cold sweat beading his taut face. Not for a prospector's bag of gold dust would he have peered into the shuttered windows or touched that unbolted door. The Peacemaker hung heavy in his hand, usually a comfort but useless now. His legs felt unsteady as he walked over to untie Terror.
The black stallion was uncharacteristically subdued. Normally the great steed was unafraid of any man or beast or force of nature. Even wildfire didn't alarm him. Now he seemed eager to get far away. Johnny mounted and headed back toward the road, fighting a panicky urge to strike in the spurs and bolt madly down the trail.
It sank in to Johnny that he had not been taking this menace seriously enough. He had thought Santero to be another cheap trickster or maybe a minor witchman with a few lukewarm spells. He knew differently now.
The black horse snorted and shied violently to a halt. The gun was back in Johnny's hand before he knew why. Leyla was leaning against a bent tree-trunk, her hands clasped behind her sleek head, insolently posing her supple figure. As alien and nearly inhuman as she looked, she still wielded potent appeal.
"Why did you not go into the cabin, Johnny Packard?" she mocked, lowering her arms and sauntering away from the tree.
High-strapped sandals were on her feet. A short silken skirt of bright crimson molded her full hips, and was upheld by a broad beaded girdle. A loose sleeveless white blouse was open to her navel. Barbaric anklets and armlets clashed as she moved, thin ornaments of crudely hammered gold.
"Johnny Packard!" She seemed to caress the syllables with her red tongue, yet the very intonation was an obscene insult. "Why did you not enter Santero's cabin? It was not locked! Did you fear what you might see there? Did you fear you might come out with your hair white like an old man's, and the drooling lips of an imbecile?"
"What's in that hut anyway?" he demanded.
She laughed in his face, and snapped her fingers with a mocking gesture. "You have no words for it. There are spirits all around us who thirst to dwell in flesh and blood. Hungry eyes watched and hoped you would cross that threshold."
"So you say! What does Santero want anyway? There was a kind of truce between regular folk and your kind."
"Humans? Ha! they are his meant to be his slaves. If they disobey he kills them, or puts them in the ground. We have come from a realm farther away than miles can measure, seeking suitable land to expand our numbers. Since we know that you people can never be driven away from land you have claimed, we must kill you all."
It was Johnny's turn to snort disdainfully. "Good luck. Others have tried."
"They did not have Santero to lead them, then," she answered calmly.
"Well, suppose you do win? You don't think that would be the end of it? This is Texas! Soldiers would charge into Brimstone and take bloody revenge."
"By then, the spell of Deep Fear will have hardened," she answered. "Men and horses will panic and refuse to cross that dark river. If forced, they will sicken and die. Santero will rule this region, as his fathers ruled their tribes in Zheka."
Johnny felt some of his usual nerve coming back to him. The more she talked, the more he learned. Maybe, just maybe, there would be a clue he could use against the threat. "Who is this devil? What are you to him?"
"He is the heir to Forbidden Knowledge from the Fall of Ulgor, knowledge that makes minds snap and rave. Santero is the greatest living master of that terrible wisdom from the Sulla Chun," she answered, laughing again. "As for me? You shall learn who I am, tonight in the forest, in the House of Draldros."
"Yes?" the Kid grunted. "What's to prevent me from hauling you into town with me? You know answers to questions everybody'd like to ask."
"You think you can drag me to the village of the Humans? Nothing in this world could keep me from the Dance of the Crawlers, tonight in the House of Draldros. You are my captive, already. Oh, Brimstone Kid, your curse is well known to us. Even Santero is cautious aboyt you, for he sent me with three men to kill you before you could reach the village. Yet you are my captive. I have but to beckon, so" andshe crooked an index finger, "and you will follow me to the fires of Draldros and the knives of the torturers."
"You haven't met the real Brimstone Kid yet," Johnny growled.
"Men are fools, all but Santero," Leyla laughed. "By the blood in your veins I have snared you. The knife of the man you killed scratched your hand...seven drops of blood on that blade have given me your soul! Oh, you are strong-willed! But you cannot fight me. Your blood makes you my slave. I have made you Spellbound."
Those were not empty words. Hypnotism, magic, call it what you will, he felt its onslaught on his brain and will.
"I have made a charm you cannot resist!" she cried. "When I call you, you will come! Into the deep swamps you will follow me. You will see the Dance of the Crawlers and you will see the doom of a poor fool who sought to betray Santero—who dreamed he could resist the Call of Draldros when it came. Into the ground he goes tonight, and he will not be the same when he emerges. You shall see before you become one of the Crawlers."
"Lady, you talk too much!" Johnny whipped out his Colt and leveled it full at her pale face. The hammer was cocked and his finger was on the trigger. At that range he could not miss. But she looked full into the black muzzle and smirked serenely.
And he sat there like an image pointing a pistol he could not fire! A frightful paralysis gripped him. He knew, with numbing certainty, that his life depended on the pull of that trigger, but he could not crook his finger no matter how he willed it.
"You cannot shoot me, Johnny Packard," Leyla said quietly. "I have enslaved your soul. It is the Bride of Draldros you kneel before. Tonight you will come to me, in the House of the Dread One."
"You're lying!" His voice was an unnatural croak bursting from dry lips. "Damnation, maybe you've hypnotized me so I can't pull this trigger. But you sure can't drag me across the swamps to you."
"It is you who lie," Leyla returned calmly. "Ride back toward the frontier or wherever you choose, Johnny Packard. But when the sun sets, you will see me beckoning you, and you will follow me. Long I have planned your doom, Johnny Packard. At midnight, the town shall go up in flames, and the heads of the townspeople will be tossed in the streets. And now, go fool! Run as far and as fast as you will. At sunset, wherever you are, you will turn your footsteps toward the House of Draldros!"
With the sudden spring of a great cat, she was gone into the thick brush, and as she vanished the strange paralysis dropped from the Kid. With a gasp, he fired blindly after her, but only a silence answered.
Then in near panic he wrenched his horse about and spurred him down the trail. It was the first time the Brimstone Kid suffered blind primitive fear. He had confronted sorcery beyond his power to resist. All he could think of at the moment was putting distance between himself and that witch.
He had not quite reached the Richardson cabin when above the drumming of his flight he heard the clop of hoofs approaching from ahead. An instant later, sweeping around a kink in the trail, he almost rode down a tall, lanky man on a chestnut horse. The stranger yelped and swerved aside as Terror sat back to its haunches. The Peacemaker whipped up quick as a rattler.
"Look out, Johnny! It's me... Tom Pinto! My God, you look like you'd seen a ghost! What's chasin' you?" The notorious outlaw was wearing the black and white vest made from the hide of a pinto pony that had belonged to an Indian wise man. In his late forties, a hard life had left him looking older. Under a thatch of greying yellow hair was a face deeply furrowed by exposure and hardship.
"You got my telegram? Thank God. I'm purely glad to see you, Tom" Johnny said, lowering his gun.
"I been lookin' for you. Folks got worried as the hour got late and you didn't come in with the refugees. I allowed I'd light out and track you down. Miz Richardson said you rode away sudden like. Where in tarnation you been?"
"To Santero's cabin."
"That's takin' a man-sized bite. What'd you find there?"
The sight of Tom Pinto was reassuring. The veteran outlaw was the fastest and most accurate shot Johnny had ever seen, even edging out Little Clay Hawk. With Pinto on hand, odds of getting through this crisis improved greatly. The Kid started to explain what had happened at the cabin, but thought better of "I din't find nothing. He wasn't there."
"Thought I heard a gun crack, a while ago," he remarked, glancing sharply at Johnny sidewise.
"I shot at a copperhead," the Kid answered, and shuddered. This reticence regarding Leyla was compulsory. He was Spellbound and could no more speak of her than he could have pulled the trigger of the pistol aimed at her. Johnny was deeply shaken at the realization he had lost his freedom. There were devils in human form who were able to enslave men's will and thoughts.
Pinto was eyeing his old comrade strangely. "We're lucky the woods ain't full of two-legged copperheads," he said. "Felix's pulled out."
"What do you mean?" By an effort the Kid pulled himself together.
"Just that. Breck was in the cabin with him. Felix hadn't said a word since you talked to him. Just laid on that bunk and shivered. Then a kind of holler begun way out in the woods, and Tom went to the door with his rifle-gun, but couldn't see nothin'. Well, while he was standin' there he got a lick on the head from behind, and as he fell he seen that crazy Felix jump over him and light out for the woods. Breck said he'd taken a shot at him, but missed. Now what do you make of that?"
"The Call of Draldros! That poor devil!"
"Huh? What's are you going on about?" demanded Pinto.
"For God's sake let's not stand here mouthing! The sun will soon be down!" In a frenzy of impatience Johnny urged his mount down the trail. Tom Pinto followed, obviously puzzled. With a terrific effort, Johnny got a grip on himself. How unexpected it was that the Brimstone Kid should be shaking in the grip of unreasoning terror! It was so foreign to his whole nature that it was no wonder Tom Pinto was unable to comprehend what ailed him.
"Felix didn't go of his own free will," the Kid blurted. "That call was a summons he couldn't resist. Hypnotism, voodoo, whatever you want to call it, Santero has some damnable power that enslaves men's willpower. All them Llanghoir varmints are gathered somewhere in the deep woods for some kind of a devilish voodoo ceremony."
Pinto was pale in the dimming light. "You and me, we've seen some things that'd make a man doubt his sanity, Johnny. But I reckon this is the worst."
"If'n it were a straight up fight with bullets and fists, why, I'm sure the people of Brimstone could slaughter them weird Llanghoir. We're Texans after all! But all this black magic makes me unsure."
The Brimstone Kid's green eyes were fixed on the sinking sun. Any other time, he would be counting on transforming into his demonic self at nightfall. Then these white-haired monsters would get a surprise they wouldn't like. But he could not place his hat on his head, no matter how often he tried. His agitation increased. He was Spellbound.
"Johnny, what the hayll ails you?" came Pinto's anxious voice. "You're sweatin' and shakin' like you had the fever. Hey, what you stoppin' for?"
He had not consciously pulled on the rein, but Terror halted, and stood stomping and snorting, before the mouth of a narrow trail which meandered away at right angles from the road they were following, a trail that led north.
"Listen!" the Kid hissed tensely.
"What is it?" Pinto drew his big iron. He toted a Colt Single Action Army revolver with a barrel that reached seven and a half inches. The brief twilight of the forest was deepening into dusk.
"Don't you hear it?" the Kid muttered. "Drums! Drums beating from the direction of Jubal!"
"I don't hear nothin'," the outlaw mumbled uneasily. "If they was beatin' drums in Jubal you couldn't hear 'em this far away."
"Look there!" Johnny's sharp sudden cry made Pinto start. The Kid was pointing down the dim trail, at the figure which stood there in the dusk less than a hundred yards away. There in the dusk he saw her clearly. "Santero's woman Leyla. Man, are you blind? Don't you see her?"
"I don't see nobody!" he whispered. "Are you feeling awright? What are you talkin' about, Johnny?"
With eyes glaring the Kid fired his Colt down the trail, and fired again This time no paralysis held him back. But the smiling face still mocked him from the shadows. Then she was gone and Johnny was spurring his horse down the narrow trail with terrible urgency.
Dimly he heard Pinto's urgent yells, as the outlaw drew up beside him with a clatter of hoofs, and grabbed Terror's reins, setting the black horse back on its haunches.
"Johnny, are you crazy? This trail leads to Jubal!"
The Kid shook his head dazedly. A roar as of rushing waters swept through his mind. "Go back! Ride for Brimstone! I'm going to Jubal."
"Johnny, you're loco! You've plain lost yer senses."
"Mad or sane, I'm going to Jubal this night," the Kid answered dully. He knew what he was saying, and what he was doing. Some shred of sanity impelled him to try to conceal the grisly truth from his companion, to offer a rational reason for thus madness. "Santero is in Jubal. He's the one who's responsible for all this trouble. I'm going to kill him. That will stop the uprising before it starts."
"Then I'm goin' with you. No one had ever said Tom Pinto was a coward."
"You must go on to Brimstone and help protect the people," the Kid insisted, holding to sanity, but feeling a strong urge begin to seize him to be riding in the direction toward which he was so horribly drawn.
"They won't need one more gun but you sure do. I'm goin' with you. I don't know what's got in you, but I ain't goin' to let you die alone among these black woods."
Johnny couldn't resist the summons any longer. He took off, galloping down the trail, with the drum of Tom Pinto's horse's hoofs behind him.
Night fell and the moon shone through the trees, blood-red behind the black branches. The horses were growing hard to manage.
"They got more sense'n us, Johnny," muttered Pinto.
"It's not like Terror. He usually heads right for anything dangerous."
"He's still a hoss. Closer we get to Jubal, the worse they git. And every time we swing nigh to a creek they shy and snort."
But Johnny hardly noticed, wrestling with his anguish. He realized that he was riding to torture and death, and leading a faithful friend to the same end. But on he went. His strongest efforts to break the spell almost unseated his reason, but on he went.
They were not far from Jubal when Pinto's horse nearly unseated its rider, and even Terror began snorting and plunging.
"They won't go no closer!" gasped Pinto, fighting at the reins.
The Brimstone Kid swung off to the ground, throwing the reins over the saddle-horn.
"Go back, for God's sake, Tom! I'm going on afoot."
the Kid heard Pinto mutter an oath, then his horse was backing away after Terror, and the two men continued on foot.
Johnny wasted no more bullets on that mocking shape he frequently glimpsed ahead. Pinto could not see it, and Johnny knew it was part of the Spellbinding, no real woman of flesh and blood, but a hell-born will-o'-the-wisp, mocking him and leading him through the night to a hideous death.
Pinto peered nervously at the black forest walls about us, his flesh crawling with the mundane fear of sawed-off shotguns blasting them suddenly from the shadows. But it was no ambush of lead or steel the Kid feared as they emerged into the moonlit clearing that housed the settlement of the Llanghoir. It was not a true village, only a dozen cabins and the pale folk had not given it a name. The townspeople called it Jubal.
The double line of log cabins faced each other across the dusty street. One line backed against the bank of Deadman's River. The black stoops almost overhung the turgid waters. Nothing moved in the moonlight. No lights showed, no smoke oozed up from the stick-and-mud chimneys. It might have been a dead town, deserted and forgotten.
"It's a trap!" hissed Pinto, his eyes blazing slits. He bent forward, big iron in his hand. "They're layin' for us in them huts!" He cursed, but followed as the Brimstone Kid strode down the dirt street. Jubal was deserted.
"They're gone," muttered Pinto, nervously. "You reckon they've gone to raid Perdition itself?"
"No," Johnny muttered. "They're in the House of Draldros, whatever that might be."
Tom Pinto shot a quick glance at the Kid. "That's a neck of land along the river about three miles west of here. I've heard campfire tales. The LLanghoir held their secret palavers there back in older times. Johnny, what do you know?"
"Listen!"
Through the dense woodlands the faint throb of a drum whispered on the wind that glided up the shadowy reaches of the Tularoosa.
Pinto shivered. "It's them, all right. But for, God's sake, Johnny, look out!"
He ran toward the houses on the bank of the creek. The Kid was after him just in time to glimpse a low dark object scrambling into the undergrowth. Pinto threw up his long pistol, then lowered it, with a baffled curse.
"What was it?" the Kid demanded.
"A man on his all-fours!" swore Pinto. His face was deathly pallid in the moonlight. "He was crouched between them cabins there, watchin' us!"
"It must have been an animal of some kind."
"Naw, I got a look at him," maintained Pinto. "Some kind of deformed freak, I believe. Now he'll go warn Santero."
"Never mind! For the last time, go back!"
"No! It's for my own self-respect, I'm goin' with you!"
The pulse of the drum was fitful, growing more distinct as we advanced. We struggled through jungle-thick growth; tangled vines tripped us; our boots sank in scummy mire. We were entering the fringe of the wetlands which grew deeper and denser until it culminated in the uninhabitable morass where the Deepman's River flowed, miles farther to the west.
The moon had not yet set, but the shadows were black under the interlacing branches of the thickly set trees. They plunged into the first creek to cross, one of the many muddy streams flowing into the Tularoosa. The water was only thigh-deep, the moss-clogged bottom fairly firm. Johnny's foot felt the edge of a sheer drop, and he warned Pinto: "Look out for a deep hole; keep right behind me."
His answer was unintelligible. Pinto was breathing rapidly, crowding close behind the Kid. Just as they reached the end cabin, Pinto cried out incoherently, and hurled himself to one side. Johnny Packard whirled, gun in hand, but saw only the silent row of cabins and the seemingly undisturbed forest.
"What the devil, Tom?"
"Somethin' grabbed me!" he panted. "Somethin' seized my ankle. I tore loose but it was like gettin' outta a bear trap. Busted up the bank. I tell you, Johnny, something's follerin' us!"
"I strongly suggest we both keep our irons in our hands and don't take nothing for granted. This is a night where Hell can break through up from the ground at any minute."
Pinto followed without comment. Scummy puddles rose about their ankles, and they stumbled over moss-grown cypress knees. Ahead there loomed another, wider creek, and Pinto caught his arm. "Johnny, let's go back."
"Go back?" the Brimstone Kid muttered in bitter agony. "I wish to God I could! There ain't no choice for me, Tom. Either Santero dies before dawn or I do."
The outlaw licked dry lips and whispered. "Go on, then. I'm with you, come heaven or hell." With his free hand, he drew a long keen knife from his boot. "Go ahead!"
Everything happened at once, then. Johnny saw Pinto halt short, staring at something between the cabins behind them. He cried out and snapped off a shot, just as the Kid spun around. In the flash of the gun he glimpsed a supple form reeling backward, a milk-white face fiendishly contorted. Then in the momentary blindness that followed the flash, he heard Tom Pinto scream.
VI.
What most resembled a tall skinny man had seized the outlaw from behind and pulled him down. Horribly, the creature had clamped his jaws around Pinto's neck as if trying to bite his throat open. They were too close together to risk a shot. Johnny Packard smashed his gun barrel down on the monster's head as if trying to crack it apart and the thing howled in pain. With a bound, it was gone between the cabins again.
Glaring about wildly, his second revolver in his left hand in case, Johnny Packard could hardly catch his breath. Still keeping a lookout, he found that Pinto was sorely wounded but not dead. Blood covered the man's neck and chest, but there were no high spurts so no artery had been severed. Pinto was still conscious, still clutching both the big iron and the knife tightly.
Neither man said anything. Johnny pressed a clean bandana over the wound and pressed down hard. "You're gonna be all right, I'll get you to a doctor back in town. If we see a hoss anywhere, I'll steal it even if it means getting hanged..."
"No, no, you got to end this business tonight," Pinto said. "I'll hide myself in this doorway till the bleedin' stops. With my back covered, I'll drill holes in anything that gets near."
"I cain't leave you, Tom..."
"You got to. These filthy monsters crawling around biting people, them Llanghoirs up to deviltry, Sanrero ready to start a massacre. Johnny, this is what you was meant to fight."
The drums were louder than ever. It must be getting close to midnight by then. "It's a hard choice and no mistake. I'm coming back for you as soon as I can." He helped Tom get hidden in the shadows of an open door and saw that the blood was indeed slowing to a trickle.
Back where the attack had taken place, Johnny found blood on the bushes. The implication was clear. He remembered the figure he had seen staggering in the flash of Pinto's gun. Leyla had been there, waiting for me on the bank, then—not a spectral illusion, but the woman herself, in flesh and blood! Pinto seldom missed and certainly not at close range. But the wound could not have been mortal, for no corpse lay among the bushes, and the grim hypnosis that dragged him onward was unweakened. Uneasily he wondered if a witch could be killed by mortal weapons.
The moon rode high. Crisp starlight penetrated down the interwoven branches. No more creeks barred my way, only shallow streams, through which he splashed with sweating haste. Yet he did not expect to be attacked. Twice the dweller in the depths had passed him by to attack his companion. In cold despair, Johnny knew he was being saved for a grimmer fate. He was to be sacrificed to the demonic Draldros.
And as the Kid strode down the row of cabins, he heard the drum rumbling ahead, louder and louder, a demoniacal mockery. Then a human voice mingled with its mutter, in a long-drawn cry of horror and agony that set every fiber quivering with sympathy. Sweat coursed down his clammy flesh; soon his own voice might be lifted like that, under unnamable torture. But on he went, feet moving like automatons, apart from his body, motivated by a will not his own.
The drum grew loud, and a fire glowed among the black trees. Presently, crouching among the bushes, he stared across the stretch of black water that separated him from a nightmare scene. Halting there was as compulsory as the rest of my actions had been. Vaguely he knew the stage for horror had been set, but the time for entry upon it was not yet. When the time had come, he would receive the summons.
A low, wooded island split the swollen creek, connected with the shore opposite by a narrow neck of land. At its lower end the creek split into a network of channels threading their way among hummocks and rotting logs and moss-grown, vine-tangled clumps of trees. Directly across from the refuge the shore of the island was deeply indented by an arm of deep water. Twisted oak trees walled a small clearing and partly hid a hut. Between the hut and the shore burned a fire that sent up twisting tongues of flames. Scores of the pale Llanghoir squatted under the shadows of the overhanging branches. When the fire lit their faces it lent them the appearance of drowned corpses.
In the midst of the glade stood a giant who stood a head taller than a tall man. The cult leader was built like a blacksmith, with a broad chest and mighty arms. He was clad in a long white robe that reached the ground, but on his head was a band of beaten gold set with a huge red jewel, and on his feet were barbaric sandals. His features reflected titanic vitality no less than his huge body. But he was one of the Llandhoir with their pale slick skin, white hair and colorless eyes. Johnny knew he finally looked upon Santero, the Spellbinder.
The sorcerer was regarding something that lay in the sand before him, something dark and bulky that moaned feebly. Presently, lifting his head, he rolled out a sonorous invocation in a language thirty thousand years old. From the pale Llanghoir huddled under the trees there came a shuddering response.
Again he called out, this time his voice rising to a high-pitched wail. A shuddering sigh swept the Llanghoir. All eyes were fixed on the edge of the woods. From between the trees, four long dark shapes scuttled into the light, misshapen forms that not long earlier had been human.
Then Santero lifted his hands, and the five heads silently sank out of sight. Like a ghostly whisper I seemed to hear the voice of the witch, "He puts them in the ground to rise again!"
Santero's deep voice rolled out across the narrow water: "And now the Dance of the Crawlers, to make the Spellbinding sure!"
What had the witch said? "Hidden among the trees, you shall watch the dance of the Crawlers!"
The drum struck up again, growling and rumbling. The Llanghoir swayed on their haunches, lifting a wordless chant. Santero paced measuredly about the figure on the sand, his arms weaving cryptic patterns. Then he wheeled and faced toward the other end of the glade. By some sleight of hand he now grasped a grinning human skull, and this he cast upon the wet sand beyond the body. "Bride of Draldros!" he thundered. "The sacrifice awaits!"
There was an expectant pause; the chanting sank. All eyes were glued on the farther end of the glade. Santero stood waiting, and the Kid saw him scowl as if puzzled. Then as he opened his mouth to repeat the call, a shimmering figure moved out of the shadows.
At the sight of her a chill shook him. For a moment she stood motionless, the firelight glinting on her gold ornaments, her head hanging on her breast. A tense silence reigned and he saw Santero staring at her sharply. She seemed to be detached, somehow, standing aloof and withdrawn, head bent strangely.
Then, as if rousing herself, she began to sway with a jerky rhythm, and presently whirled into the mazes of a dance that was ancient when the ocean drowned the doomed isle of Ulgor. It was bestial and ethereal at the same time set to motion. But there was something amiss with her. Her arms hung limp, her drooping head swayed. Her legs bent and faltered, making her lurch drunkenly and out of time. A murmur rose from the pallid people, and bewilderment etched Santero's frowning countenance. For the domination of a Spellbinder is a thing hinged on a hair-trigger. Any minor faltering of formula or ritual may disrupt the whole web of his enchantment.
As for Johnny Packard, he watched the grisly dance breathlessly. The unseen shackles that bound him to that gyrating she-dvil were strangling him. He knew she was approaching a climax when she would summon him from that hiding-place to buried alive in the cold cold ground which she called the House of Draldros.
Now she whirled to a halt, poised on her toes. She faced the spot where Johnny lay hidden, and he knew that she could see me as plainly as if he stood in the open; She raised her head and I saw the triumph in that colorless face. She opened her mouth...
But from that open mouth sounded only a choking gurgle, and suddenly her lips were wet with her own blood, her knees gave way and she pitched headlong to the ground.
Unseen by anyone else, where he was crouching among the trees, the Brimstone Kid felt the great oppressive weight lift. The black spell that gripped him was broken. He felt as if he could breathe freely after being suffocated.
At the fall of the girl a wild cry rose from the Llanghoir, and they sprang up, trembling on the verge of panic. The albinos were breathing heavily, clawing at the air with bony fingers. Santero had worked their nonhuman natures up to a pitch of madness, meaning to turn this frenzy, at the proper time, into a fury of battle. It could as easily turn into an hysteria of terror. Santero shouted sharply at them.
But just then the girl in a last convulsion, rolled over on the wet sand, and the firelight shone on a round hole between her breasts, which still oozed crimson. Tom Pinto's bullet had found its mark.
From the first Johnny had known that Leyla was not wholly human, no more than her fellow Llanghoir were. She had sworn that death itself could not keep her from the Dance of the Crawlers. Shot through the heart, she had still trudged through the woods to the House of Draldros.
Dazed with unexpected hope like a condemned man granted a reprieve, at first he hardly grasped the meaning of the scene that now unfolded.
The Llanghoir broke into a frenzy. In the sudden inexplicable death of the sorceress they saw a fearsome portent. They had no way of knowing that she was already dying when she entered the glade. To them, their prophetess and priestess had been struck down under their very eyes, by an invisible death. This was magic blacker than Santero's wizardry and obviously hostile to them.
Like fear-maddened cattle they stampeded. Screaming, trampling one another they blundered through the trees, heading for the neck of land and the shore beyond. Santero stood transfixed, heedless of them as he stared down at Leyla, unexpectedly dead.
Suddenly free to act, Johnny drew up the black Stetson which had hung down his back and fixed it firmly on his head. Within the beaded band, the unspeakably ancient Darthan token blazed up with blistering heat. In a rush, demonic vitality energized his body and filled Johnny with the killing fury he had expected. He had become the Brimstone Kid in reality as well as name. At last.
He drew both Peacemakers, their barrels shimmering red as if they had been lying in a fire. The hammers clicked back.
Hearing that noise, Santero lifted his head and froze where he stood. The sounds of flight faded in the distance, and he stood alone in the glade. His eyes swept over the black woods around him. He bent, grasped the man-like object that lay on the sand, and dragged it into the hut. The instant he vanished, the Kid ran after him. Filled with ferocious vitality, Johnny had almost reached the Spellbinder when he was tackled from the side and brought down.
Cold, lifeless fingers gripped Johnny's throat, but the Kid was beyond all fear now. He raised the Crawling Dead off the ground and broke the zombie's back over one knee, tossing it aside. Deep hollow laughter boomed out from the Brimstone Kid, laughter that echoed as if rising from a pit.
Santero had emerged from his hut, an Army calvary saber in his hand. He was staring wildly about, alarmed by the infernal laughter he had heard, but Johnny could not be seen from that angle. Santero's clammy skin glistened with cold perspiration. He who had ruled by fear was now ruled by fear. He feared the unknown hand that had slain his mistress; feared the Spellbound slaves who had fled him. Santero sensed that a power even darker and more merciless than his own had broken free.
Four hideous forms crept rapidly along the ground toward the man in black who stood there. He cut then down one after another, his shining Colts booming loud as thunder and they made no effort to avoid the bullets. He had fired six shots before the last of the Crawling Dead sagged to the ground. The shots drowned the sounds of Santero's approach, so the Spellbinder was close behind him when he turned at last.
Recognition flooded Santero's colorless face with the knowledge that he faced a being beyond his power to control. "You! The Darthan demon!", he shouted as he lashed the saber in a horizontal arc meant to disembowel his enemy.
The Brimstone Kid dropped his pistols and lunged in close, catching Santero's wrists with a grip that snapped bones beneath its pressure. The Llanghoir could not keep hold of his weapon. Johnny wrested the saber free, vaulted back a step and lopped the Spellbinder's head cleanly over his shoulders. Head and body fell in different directions. Throwing back his head, the Kid roared deep as any lion in triumph and flung the reddened sword down to the ground.
There was a pouch of dry powder in Santero's belt. Before anything else, the Kid retrieved his pistols and holstered them. Taking a fallen torch, he strode into the hut for the final horror. Old Felix lay moaning on a bunk. The transmutation that was to make him a mindless enslaved zombie was not complete, but his mind was gone. His body was elongated, his legs dwarfed so they were no longer than his arms. His neck was inches longer than it should be. His features had not been altered beyond recognition but their expression held no awareness. And there, but for the loyalty and courage of Tom Pinto, would Johnny Packard have lain in the same dismal state. The Kid placed his pistol muzzle against Felix's head in grim mercy and pulled the trigger.
Moving about with the torch, he lit the cabin. As it went up in red flames against the darkness, the Brimstone Kid ran from the ceremonial site to find Tim Pinto had maintained consciousness but was weak and dazed. Skeletal and frightful to see in his own transformation, Terror galloped out of the shadows. Once the power of the Darthan token had manifested, it had reached the black horse even miles away. Johnny positioned his only friend as gently as he could over the great horse's shoulders and turned toward Brimstone to see if the doctor could be found.
And so the half-century of terror ended at last. Johnny would never speak of it again. The people of Brimstone never admitted finding anything on the island except the bodies of Santero and Leyla. They concluded or said they concluded that Tom Pinto had killed Leyla in self-defense, and that Johnny broke up the threatened uprising by killing Santero. Everyone let it go at that. The horrors of the Crawling Dead were eventually forgotten. Only a few days after that night, Johnny Packard made his farewells and rode away from his hometown again, heading West. His story was far from over.
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