Page:Weird Tales Volume 9 Number 4 (1927-04).djvu/40

 leaves that I was able to follow at all. Finally I came to a thick group of trees on a small hillock. I dared not approach directly, so I moved sideways around the elevation, trying to pierce the gloom of the thicket, looking carefully up and down, prepared for every attack.

Half-way around I caught the glimpse of something gray. I stopped and watched sharply. No movement. I bent down to look along the ground. And there, in the semi-darkness, I could discern something like a body in gray linens. The humming of flies and the odor of decaying flesh apprized me that something else might be close by.

I called to the others. Meantime I looked for some sign of a wild beast, but saw and heard nothing. Seeing the others approach, I pushed forward through the bushes.

There, twisted strangely, eyes protruding and glassy, blood oozing from the distorted mouth, lay Don Ramon! He was quite dead, that was evident. And a little farther, partly hidden behind the bole of a tree, lay another body, clad in white ducks.

Even before I saw the face, I knew it would be the body of Connaughton. Flesh-flies were swarming around it in masses. He must have been dead fully twenty-four hours. In those latitudes flesh decays rapidly, you know.

"My God, it's Don Ramon!" exclaimed Darrell, the first to come up. His glance flew to where I stood. "And over there?" He came over and saw the body. "Ned!" he groaned.

He turned ghastly pale, and for a moment I thought he was going to faint. But he sank to the ground and there he sobbed, the hard, broken, tearing sobs of a man. It was agonizing to hear him.

Beside Don Ramon's body stood Lassignac, pain unutterable on his frozen features. Till then I had been inclined to despise the chap as a heartless braggadocio; now his sorrow drew me to him. Amheimer and Janis had come up also and stood there silently, but with a look of iron resolve on their bleak faces.

They were all a strange, even piratical, crew. But it seems a human law that man must love something or other. So Darrell had loved Connaughton, and Lassignac had loved Don Ramon, and had gone with them into crimes and unholy adventures. Moralists will jeer at such affection. I did not then, nor do I now. There was a weak spot in the moral make-up of every one of them. They knew it of themselves and recognized it in others, and perhaps it was this community of weakness that had drawn them together. Like and like, as the old blurb puts it.

Janis who finally roused Darrell. "Come, Jim! We have work to do!"

Darrell shook himself and got up. "Yes, we've got to find—that—that thing!"

Janis was examining the bodies with professional sureness. "Ribs crushed, back broken in both," he said. "As if someone had embraced them!"

"But what?" barked Lassignac. "Surely no human! Don Ramon was strong as a gorilla. I've never seen him beaten."

Janis shook his head wonderingly. "I don't understand this. As we said the other day, there is no animal that simply embraces and crushes." His glance took in Arnheimer, who was moving away slowly, looking at the ground. "The tracks, of course! Let's look for them!"

"Damn it, yes!" Darrell cried and swung in beside Arnheimer.

It was clear that the latter had found something, for he was moving 