9
Start of Part 2 (April, 1928 Weird Tales magazine)
9
With a face like death Cunningham flung through the door. He sped down the steps with his heart, it seemed, stopped dead. There were sounds behind him and angry voices. Gray roaring at Vladimir, perhaps. But Cunningham could think of nothing but Maria.
The darkness smote his eyes like a blow. He stumbled and fell, then started up, crying out wildly.
A figure flitted up to him and put a soft hand over his mouth.
“Hush! Hush! I am safe,” she whispered breathlessly. “He saw us about the sheriff, and fired. When he saw the sheriff fall he thought I was killed. Hush!”
Cunningham’s arms were about her and he kissed her in an ecstasy of relief.
“If he’d killed you!” he gasped. “If he’d killed you!”
Feet thundered indoors.
“I must go!” she whispered swiftly. “Please!”
She thrust him away and fled. Figures were waiting for her. She joined them, and all melted into nothingness beneath the trees. Then Gray stumbled outside with his hand in Vladimir’s collar.
“Did he get her, Cunningham?” he cried shakenly. “If he did, I swear I’ll fling him to them! Did he get her?”
“N-no,” said Cunningham unevenly. He wiped the sweat off his forehead. “They’re all gone. But——”
He knelt beside a dark bundle on the ground. A groan came to his ears, curiously muffled. He struck a match and found the sheriff securely trussed up and blinking at the match-flame with panic-stricken eyes.
“It’s the sheriff,” said Cunningham. “Maybe he’s hurt.”
But a babble of words that began before the gag was completely out of his mouth proved that the sheriff was only scared.
“Scared green, that’s all,” said Gray curtly. He shook Vladimir as a terrier might shake a rat. “You thought there were burglars?” he roared. “Try to get away with that again! You aimed for that girl!”
He tossed Vladimir to the ground, wrathfully.
“What girl?” purred Vladimir, as he scrambled to his feet. “Was there a girl? Are you in communication with my brother’s murderers? And helping them to escape, too? I think you will go to jail, my friend.”
But Gray went indoors with Cunningham, laughing.
When day came again Cunningham awoke with the conviction that something very pleasant had happened. He puzzled vaguely over it for a long time. And then he realized that it was a thing that had come to him just before he slept and had made his heart pump faster and more loudly. When he kissed Maria, she had not struggled nor been angry. On the contrary she had lifted her lips to his. And yet it had been no practised gesture, but the response of sheer instinct to one man only.
Cunningham’s heart pounded a little and he got up with a serene contentment filling him. The route to romance had led him to happiness, he was sure.
He went downstairs and went out on the porch just to look up at the hills in which he would find her presently.
Vladimir was there, talking to a newcomer whose clothing and air confirmed the guess that he was a servant. But not an ordinary servant. His face was gross and stupid where Vladimir’s was keen and cruel, but his features had no less of instinctive arrogance, though veiled by servility at the moment.
Vladimir’s lips twitched into a snarl of hatred when he saw Cunningham, and he spoke to his servant. The man looked at Cunningham and scowled.
But Cunningham went indoors and had breakfast joyously. Then he started out to find Maria. Technically, as he reflected, he was compounding a felony in going to the Strange People to advise them how to keep out of the clutches of the law. Some of them had been involved in the killing of Vladimir’s brother. But Cunningham beamed as he clambered up the steep hillside toward those mysterious thickets in which the Strange People lurked.
He had gone up perhaps half the way when he heard a faint rustling behind him. He turned and shouted, thinking it a Stranger who would lead him to Stephan and Maria. But the rustling stopped. After a little while he went on, frowning. Later the rustling began again, somewhat nearer.
And then Cunningham heard whistles far off in the thickets. He heard other rustlings, as if men were moving swiftly through the undergrowth. These last sounds came from both sides of him. And then he came suddenly upon a young Stranger, running headlong toward him with his hand on his knife-hilt. The Stranger lifted his hand, unsmilingly, and ran on.
“Stephan,” cried Cunningham; “where is he?”
The runner waved for Cunningham to continue as he was going and disappeared. The mysterious sounds continued, to right and to left. Then everything was abruptly very still.
Cunningham halted uncertainly. There was no trace of a path anywhere. The earth fell away sharply at one side but he had lost all sense of direction and did not know which way to go. Then he heard a thrashing below him as if someone were moving rapidly to cut him off.
Then there was the sound of panting near by and a small boy ran into view. He was a young Stranger, an aquiline-nosed, brown-eyed youngster with the legs of a race-horse.
“Hi, there,” shouted Cunningham. “Where’s Stephan?”
The boy gasped in relief and flew toward him. He thrust a bit of paper into Cunningham’s hand and stood panting. Cunningham unrolled the scrap. On it was written in awkward letters:
“Someone follows to kill you. What will happen if we kill him?”
Cunningham started. Vladimir! He’d sent his servant to bushwhack him.
“They’ll hang,” he said grimly. “Tell them not to do it.”
The boy nodded and started off.
“Wait!” called Cunningham. “Will they stop, since I’ve said so?”
“No,” panted the boy. “They kill him already, I think.”
He sped away, down toward the spot where the thrashing in the bushes sounded as if someone were trying to head Cunningham off. Cunningham clenched his fists and ran after him, determined to stop the foolishness.
The boy vanished suddenly. A figure started up.
“Wait! He lives yet! Wait!”
But Cunningham plunged on, not understanding. He only hoped to be in time to keep the Strangers from worse trouble than they were already in.
He burst through a thicket as warning cries sounded suddenly from all sides. And there was Vladimir’s servant, staring stupidly about him in sudden fright at the sound of many voices. He was waist-high in brushwood. He swerved in panic at the sound of Cunningham’s rush; then his face lighted with ferocity. With lightning quickness he had leveled a weapon and fired.
Cunningham’s life was due to the fact that he had just tripped upon one of the innumerable small boulders strewn all over the slopes. He was falling as the bullet left the gun. He felt a searing pain in his left shoulder and crashed to the ground. Maria’s voice shrilled in anguish.
“Dead! He is killed!”
The breath was knocked out of Cunningham, but he struggled to shout that he was all right, and was afraid to because the servant might pot at him again.
But then he heard half a dozen little metallic clangings, like the rattle of steel knife-blades on rock. The air was full of minor whirrings. And then he heard a sudden agonized bellow, like the roaring of a wounded bull. And then a man screaming in horrible terror.