Page:Weird Tales Volume 36 Number 06 (1942-07).djvu/22

JAEGER’S talk about the influence called hypnotism came back to my mind later, when I found myself outside in the chill moonglow, the revolver in my right hand, moving with quick stealth toward a distant sound of mouthy misery.

Of me he had made a champion, in this frontier strife of angels good and bad. Reiterating his insistence that my share in that uncanny adventure after Shiloh had made me somewhat immune to evil magic, he had given me the revolver and sent me forth. Where? And to do what? My head was clearing now, as after too much drink. I began to ponder the recent events with something of disgusted wonder at my own readiness to mix into what was surely no business of mine.

After all, I was strange in this Welcome Rock country. I had had no idea of staying more than the night through. I had no practical interest in any quarrels there, even quarrels incited by demons. But from the first I had taken a hand—charging those who flogged Peter Dole, wielding a saber in the parson’s parlor, and now stepping forth, gun in hand, to seek and battle the Flying Horned One.

I told myself that I was a fool. I entertained the thought of finding the through trail and tramping away from Welcome Rock. There were silver bullets in the gun. They might have some cash value to buy me breakfast, miles away—

The cries grew louder. They rose from beyond one of the leafless thickets that banded the country. From that point also came a musty glow of the green cold light. I heard a voice:

“No! We did our best! Don’t!”

Something struck, hard and heavy. The voice broke away from the words into a scream of agony.

As at the flogging earlier that night, I quickened my pace to a run. I was fully prepared to meddle yet again.

Beyond two or three belts of trees I came in sight of a round cleared space. Away off to one side rose the dark pinnacle that once had been called Fearful Rock, in whose shadow had been done strange matters. I lurked inside the thicket, watching what happened in the open.

There were gathered my late adversaries, only four of them now. They were wailing, posturing and wriggling, as though blows fell upon them. But it was well away from them that the punishment was dealt. There stood the Flying Horned One, or perhaps he hovered—in any case his feet touched the ground, and his wings may have fluttered slightly to hold him erect. From him came the unpleasant light. He was striking again and again with a stick, at dark objects that lay limp on the ground.

“No! No!” the voices begged him. “Strike no more, master!”

He ceased the blows, and flourished the stick at them. “You have had enough?” he demanded, in that uncouth horselike voice of his.

They assured him, tearfully, that they had.

“Then obey. Go back and kill—”

“We have no powers, no powers!” cried the plump woman who had held the five-fingered candle.

Her misshapen ruler made an impatient fluttering gesture with his umbrella wings. “This, I think, is your coat,” he said, and touched with the point of his stick one of the dark objects on the ground. I saw then that these objects were garments, cloaks or coats. The woman squealed and clasped her hands.

“Don’t beat on me again!” she sobbed.

To my mind came one of the most familiar legends about witches, the one about hurting at a distance. The wax