Page:Weird Tales Volume 36 Number 06 (1942-07).djvu/11

seam-faced. My clothes were torn, dirty, inadequate—overall pants, a frayed jumper, a hickory shirt that was little more than the traditional “button and frill,” outworn cowhide brogans, no hat. I warmed my knuckly hands under my armpits, and blew out steamy breath.

A man, hungry and weary and unsheltered, might die tonight. I wondered, without much dread, if I were at the end of my sorry trail. Other Southern veterans had died, from sheer want, after surviving the heartbreak of war and defeat. In 1865, after becoming sergeant and finally lieutenant under Bedford Forrest, the general surrender on all hands had failed to include me. I had been detached somewhere, and had gone home. There was no home—Kilpatrick’s cavalry had burned the place in ’64, and I found only the graves of my mother and sister. They had died of sickness, as my father had died of a minie ball at Chattanooga. After that, the black “Reconstruction” period. I had been gambler, Ku Klux raider, jailbird, chicken thief, swamp trapper. And now a tramp.

Up ahead were lights, two houses fairly close together. I knew that I was near the Missouri-Arkansas border. A loosely joined community hereabouts was called Welcome Rock. Would those lights welcome me?

As I faced them, I saw the moon clear. Something winged slowly across it.

What I say seems unreal to you, as the sight then seemed unreal to me. That winged shape must have been larger than any creature that flies; I made certain of that later.

At the moment, I saw only how black it was, with a body and legs half-human, and great bat-wings through which the moon shone as through umbrella cloth.

I told myself sagely that hunger showed me a vision.

The thing flopped around and across the moon again. I saw its ball-shaped head, with curved horns. Then it swooped downward. Suddenly I heard the voices of men.

One laughed, another cursed. The third cried pitifully. From somewhere beyond me came strength, fury, decision. I ran heavily forward, my broken shoes heavy and clumsy. I saw the three at a distance. One was strung up by his hands to a tree’s bare branch, the other two were flogging him with sticks.

I passed under other trees to approach. Their criss-cross of boughs shut away sight of whatever fluttered overhead. The captive’s face showed white as curd, and the floggers seemed black. Running, I stooped and grabbed up a stone the size of my fist. When I straightened, I made out horns on the black skulls, horns like those of the flying thing. Somebody jeered: "You told on us. Now you beg us. But we—”

The two floggers were aware of me, and dropped their sticks.

“Knife,” said one, and the other drew a blade from under his coat. I threw my stone, and it struck the knife-holder’s black horned brow with a sound like an axe on wood. The knife dropped, and its owner sprawled upon it. I charged in after my rock.

The other man stood absolutely still. His outline could stand for a symbol of frightened surprise. He was mumbling words in an unknown tongue:

"Mirathe saepy Satonich yetmye—but it won’t work!”

From the moonlit sky came a whickering, like a bad horse in terror. Then I was upon the mumbler.

We struggled and strove. His gabble of strange sounds had failed to do something or other. Now he saved his breath, and fought with more strength than mine. I found myself hugged and crushed in his long, hard arms, and remembered a country wrestling trick. I feigned limpness, and when he unconsciously slacked his grip, I slid down out of it. Catching him around