Page:Weird Tales Volume 36 Number 06 (1942-07).djvu/12

the knees, I threw him heavily. Then I fell with all my weight upon him, clutching at his throat.

Overhead the whickering rose shrill and shaky, and grew faint. The man I fought thrust my hands from his windpipe. I now saw that the blackness of his face, and the horns to either side, were a mask. He was wheezing, “If I get away quick, will that suit you?”

I tried to gouge his eye through a slit in the mask, but with a sudden effort he tore clear from me. Rising, he seized and dragged away the man my rock had struck down.

My strength and fury were ebbing, and I waited on one knee, watching the two flee among the brush. I glanced up. The flier was also gone.

The man who hung in bonds began to babble brokenly:

"You’re free from cursing ... free from cursing....”

The knife dropped by one of the masked pair still lay on the frozen ground. I picked it up and went to the man. Cords were noosed over his thumbs, drawing him up to the branch so that his toes barely touched ground. The shirt was torn from his back, which showed a shocking mass of gore.

I cut him down, and he collapsed in my arms like a wet coat.

Then spoke a challenging voice I remembered from long ago, “What are you doing to him?”

I had breath left only to say: “Help!”

“I heard the noise of fighting, and came at once.” A thick body approached in the half-light. “Bring him to my cabin.”

I glanced upward, and the newcomer did likewise. “Oh, then you saw the Flying Horned One? He must have fled when I came.”

“He fled before that,” I said, for I had recovered a little wind. My words seemed to make the thick man start and stare, but he made no rejoinder. We got the poor flogged wretch between us and dragged him across a field to the nearest lighted house. The moon showed me a dwelling, small but well built of adzed logs, with the chinks plastered and whitewashed. On the threshold the man we helped was able to speak again:

“This is the preacher’s place. I want baptism.”

“I baptized you once before,” growled the burly man from the other side of him. “Once is enough, even when you backslide.”

“What he wants is doctoring, not baptizing,” I put in. “His back’s all cut to hash.”

It was all of that. But the answer was still: “Baptize me.”

We helped him in. “I don’t think it will hurt you,” said the burly one, and as we came into the light of a kerosene lamp I saw whose voice I remembered.

THIS was the Yankee Sergeant Jaeger, whom I had last seen nearly fifteen years before, spading dirt over a woman who had seemingly died twice. He wore rough country boots and pants, but a white shirt and a string tie. He set the poor fellow in a splint-bottomed chair, where I steadied him, then went to the kitchen and returned with his hand wet. He laid the wet hand on the rumpled hair.

“Peter, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, the Son—”

At his touch the tortured form relaxed, the eyes seemed to close softly in slumber. Jaeger looked across at me.

“You’re a stranger to the Welcome Rock country. Or are you?”

“A stranger here, but not to you,” I replied. “I’m Cole Wickett, formerly with General Forrest—at your service, Sergeant.”

His eyes fixed me. He tugged his beard,