The Slayer Of souls Part 28

They waited. The ominous warning grew faint, then rose again,--a long, low rattle of palm-fronds which became a steady monotone.

"We hunt," said Recklow bluntly. "Come on!"

But the girl sprang from the hammock and caught her husband's arm and drew Recklow back from the hibiscus hedge.

"Use me," she said. "You could never find the Yezidee. Let me do the hunting; and then shoot very, very fast."

"We've got to take her," said Recklow. "We dare not leave her."

"I can't let her lead the way into those black woods," muttered Cleves.

"The wind is blowing in my face," insisted Recklow. "We'd better hurry."

Tressa laid one hand on her husband's arm.

"I can find the Yezidee, I think. You never could find him before he finds you! Victor, let me use my own _knowledge_! Let me find the way.

Please let me lead! Please, Victor. Because, if you don't, I'm afraid we'll all die here in the garden where we stand."

Cleves cast a haggard glance at Recklow, then looked at his wife.

"All right," he said.

The girl opened the hedge gate. Both men followed with pistols lifted.

The moon silvered the forest. There was no mist, but a night-wind blew mournfully through palm and cypress, carrying with it the strange, disturbing pungency of the jungle--wild, unfamiliar perfumes,--the acrid aroma of swamp and rotting mould.

"What about snakes?" muttered Recklow, knee deep in wild phlox.

But there was a deadlier snake to find and destroy, somewhere in the blotched shadows of the forest.

The first sentinel trees were very near, now; and Tressa was running across a ghostly tangle, where once had been an orange grove, and where aged and dying citrus stumps rose stark amid the riot of encroaching jungle.

"She's circling to get the wind at our backs," breathed Recklow, running forward beside Cleves. "That's our only chance to kill the dirty rat--catch him with the wind at our backs!"

Once, traversing a dry hammock where streaks of moonlight alternated with velvet-black shadow a rattlesnake sprang his goblin alarm.

They could not locate the reptile. They shrank together and moved warily, chilled with fear.

Once, too, clear in the moonlight, the Grey Death reared up from bloated folds and stood swaying rhythmically in a horrible shadow dance before them. And Cleves threw one arm around his wife and crept past, giving death a wide berth there in the checkered moonlight.

Now, under foot, the dry hammock lay everywhere and the night wind blew on their backs.

Then Tressa turned and halted the two men with a gesture. And went to her husband where he stood in the palm forest, and laid her hands on his shoulders, looking him very wistfully in the eyes.

Under her searching gaze he seemed oddly to comprehend her appeal.

"You are going to use--to use your _knowledge_," he said mechanically.

"You are going to find the man in white."

"Yes."

"You are going to find him in a way we don't understand," he continued, dully.

"Yes.... You will not hold me in--in horror--will you?"

Recklow came up, making no sound on the spongy palm litter underfoot.

"Can you find this devil?" he whispered.

"I--think so."

"Does your super-instinct--finer sense--knowledge--whatever it is--give you any inkling as to his whereabouts, Mrs. Cleves?"

"I think he is here in this hammock. Only----" she turned again, with swift impulse, to her husband, "--only if you--if _you_ do not hold me in--in horror--because of what I do----"

There was a silence; then:

"What are you about to do?" he asked hoa.r.s.ely.

"Slay this man."

"We'll do that," said Cleves with a shudder. "Only show him to us and we'll shoot the dirty reptile to slivers----"

"Suppose we hit the jar of gas," said Recklow.

After a silence, Tressa said:

"I have got to give him back to Satan. There is no other way. I understood that from the first. He can not die by your pistols, though you shoot very fast and straight. No!"

After another silence, Recklow said:

"You had better find him before the wind changes. We hunt down wind or--we die here together."

She looked at her husband.

"Show him to us in your own way," he said, "and deal with him as he must be dealt with."

A gleam pa.s.sed across her pale face and she tried to smile at her husband.

Then, turning down the hammock to the east, she walked noiselessly forward over the fibrous litter, the men on either side of her, their pistols poised.

They had halted on the edge of an open glade, ringed with young pines in fullest plumage.

Tressa was standing very straight and still in a strange, supple, agonised att.i.tude, her left forearm across her eyes, her right hand clenched, her slender body slightly twisted to the left.

The men gazed pallidly at her with tense, set faces, knowing that the girl was in terrible mental conflict against another mind--a powerful, sinister mind which was seeking to grasp her thoughts and control them.

Minute after minute sped: the girl never moved, locked in her psychic duel with this other brutal mind,--beating back its terrible thought-waves which were attacking her, fighting for mental supremacy, struggling in silence with an unseen adversary whose mental dominance meant death.