Page:Weird Tales v01n01 (1923-03).djvu/57

56 Venomous his look. Deathly his intensity.

TRONG and young, fresh from the Cuban wars, Red Roane and I went north from the keys through the Everglades of Florida.

Through the fens as in God's first day. Through the reptile age, alive yet and crawling. Through strangling vegetation, which steams and rots beneath eternal suns. Through the everlasting Everglades, with their fern and frond and sorrowful, hoary cypress, Red Roane and I went north. Onward with laughter. What joy lay in our hearts! We sang many songs.

Fern and flower embracing in fecundity. Grasses thick with sap. Blossoms wilting at a touch. Mire teeming with creeping life. Above all, the gay sun. Beneath all, the coiling serpent eyes and the opened fangs. ''Hark! The rattle!''

We sailed lagoons in crazy craft; dreamt on shady shores though sultry noons; shouted to the dead logs on river banks till they took fear, and dived and splashed away. We pitched our tents by black waters. We beat brave trails through the fens.

"I'd like to stay here forever," said Red Roane.

By what way I go, with what drinks I drink, in what bed I lie down, I remember you who got your prayer, Red Roane—you who are in the swamp grass and swamp water forever.

Beating our way slow and heavily, at high noon, of the new year's first day in 1899, near Okechobee in the marshes, came we two on a hidden hut. It was fashioned of the raff of the slough—dead fronds, rotting branches, withered marsh grasses. Its sad gray-green were in the living wilderness like a monument to death. Better the naked swamp. Better the clean quickmire for bed.

An old crone, moaning within that dreary hut, drowned out the sharp, short gasps of another woman. Red Roane came up singing, slapping his deep chest, swinging his muscular arms. Sunlight on his brown face, and sunlight in his red hair. At the hut's door, facing us, lunged a man with yellow eyes. Poor white trash. A gun was in his arm's crook. He spat tobacco juice at the earth. There was loathing, murder venom in his face!

Red Roane faltered back from that stare. He stopped short, and laughter left him. His brave eyes were troubled by that madman's hate. Yellow eyes staring—eyes of a rattlesnake!

An old Indian crone peered out beneath the crooked elbow of the ruffian in the doorway, she who had been dolorously singing. With a scream, she thrust out her skinny old arm, pointing at Red Roane.

"He dies!" she screamed. "We want his soul!"

Another woman, hidden, moaning within the hut; a woman in her travail. New life from the womb—a life must die! I grasped the arm of Red Roane.

"Come away!" I said, "Come away from these mad witches!"

In three steps that gray-green hovel was hidden in the cypresses. A dream it seemed. But we could yet hear the old witch woman singing. Something dragged at our heels, and it was not suction of the muck.

Toe to heel, Red Roane paced me, and we sang a song together. A crimson flower, short-stemmed, yellow-hearted, was almost beneath my foot. I stooped—who will not stoop to pick a crimson wild flower? A rattling, like the shaking of peas. A klirring like the drumming of a man's fingertips. ''Hark! The rattle!''

A yawning head flashed beneath my hand, striking too low. Heavy as a hard-flung stone, the snake's head struck my ankle; yawning gullet, white-hooked fangs of the deathly rattlesnake. Out of the crimson flower that beast of gold and brown. Its yellow eyes flickered. Its thin lips were dry. How near I had touched to death!

"Thank God for those heavy boots, Jerry!"

With blazing eyes the snake writhed, coiling for another strike. Its sharp tail, pointed upward, vibrated continuously with dusty laughter. Its golden rippling body was thick as my arm.

Red Roane swung down his heavy marching stock. Crash! Its leaden end