Page:Weird Tales Volume 3 Number 1 (1923-12).djvu/95

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By GALEN C. COLIN

IT WAS Saturday afternoon, and the men of Mooreland County were gathered, as was their custom, on the porch of the postoffice at Clayton Springs. They were watching a man, who was a stranger to most of them, making his way toward them down the trail from the hills.

"It’s Ben Tibbits," said Jem Bates. "He’s the feller that came over the divide a mouth or two ago and built a cabin about ten miles up the trail. Don’t know much about him, but what I do know is too much. He beats his wife." With that, he spat disgustedly on the porch floor.

As Ben Tibbits came nearer, a playful puppy, one of the pack that always followed Jean Parton, ran to meet him. With an oath, he gave the puppy a brutal kick that sent it sprawling ten feet away. In an instant Jean was on his feet and rushing at the stranger.

Instead of defending himself, Tibbits groveled at Jean’s feet. He fairly writhed in fright; every movement, every expression, showed terror beyond control. With disgust Jean spurned him with his foot and walked back to the group of interested watchers.

"The cowardly Snake," was his only comment.

And "Snake" was his name from that time on to the men of these Western Mountains. Swart and low-browed he was, with long and gorilla-like arms. His eyes were small and beady, black and furtive. All the cunning and lack of conscience of a swamp moccasin were shown in his shifty glance. Trapping was ostensibly his occupation—rumor had it otherwise. Hundreds of Chinese were smuggled across the border. Much of this smuggling was attributed to Snake and the immigration officers were constantly watching him. He was never caught red-handed for he was too sly and patient; he made no move until he was absolutely safe.

A fiery temper had Snake. Physical cowardice—abject terror at thought of physical injury—made him hold his temper well in hand toward men. The incident at his first visit to Clayton Springs was his only display. Toward his wife he gave it full sway. Never was her face and body free from the marks of his beatings; and his blows and insults had left her spiritless.

Dorothy Tibbits was frail and flaxen haired—always tired-looking. Still, after six years as the wife of Snake she showed more than a hint of her former beauty—loveliness that made her the belle of the home village in old York State, before she came West to be the wife of Snake. With the unaccountable heart of a woman, she loved Snake and endured his lashings of both tongue and fist.

Owning the idolatry of every man in Mooreland county, none dared say a word against Snake in her presence. They were not so reticent among themselves. Jem Bates voiced the opinion of all.

"That damned Snake!" he burst out one day. "If he ever accidentally nips his thumb when he takes a chaw of eatin’ tobacco, all the booze in the state won’t cure his pizen. He’ll swell up and bust like a mosquito."

These neighbors, had they ever learned the details of Snake’s demise, would have been the first to sense the poetic justice of it.

When building his trap-line cabin in a secluded ravine up the mountain-side, Snake built with true serpentine cunning. He labored alone. No one had seen him at work. No one knew that beneath the rough slab floor was a cellar some eight feet square and five feet deep. It was reached by a trap door, cleverly concealed beneath the bunk. The only light came through a narrow crack between the cabin wall and the ground.

"Some day," mused Snake as he dug, "I’ll get sore and kill that whimperin’ female. Then I’ll need this hideout."

He glanced at a six-foot length of one-inch rope, coiled in a corner.

It was a drizzly, damp spring night when Snake realized that his foresight would prove of immediate worth. His wife had been more than usually docile. She endured his curses without remonstrance. This inflamed Snake’s twisted brain. With maniacal fury he seized her about the throat and wrung her neck as the cook wrings the neck of a chicken. He carelessly flung her body into a corner.

Then, as realization of what he had done dawned, he made a pack of all the eatables in the house. Slinging it to his back, he started for his retreat. He did not know that the slamming door had overturned the lamp and fired the house.

The wind howled dismally through the trees. Wet branches, like dead hands, slapped Snake in the face. At