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 struck that lunging mottled head. Halted in mid-strike, that evil wisdom splattered like an egg, brain pan ripped wide.
The rattler lashed in its last agony, its tremendously muscular tail beating the ground with thumping blows, its yellow eyes still blazing with hate, but closing fast in doom.
I tried to say “Thanks, Red!”
Some mesmerism in those yellow, dying eyes! Shaking with disgust, Red Roane bent above that foul fen watcher, put down his hand to pick up that stricken skin, over whose eyes thin eye-membrane already lowered in death.
“Don’t touch it, Red! Wait till the sun goes down.”
_Hark! The rattle!_ Those opaque eyes shuttered back. Those yellow glances, though in mortal pain, were still furious and glistening. Those horny tail-bells clattered. Fangs in that shattered, insensate head yawned, closing in Red Roane’s arm above the wrist.
I see him. Sweat upon his broad brown forehead; his laughing eyes astounded; his thick strong body shivering; wind stirring up his dark red hair. Behind him the brown-green marshes, grasses rippling, a stir going through their depths. His cheeks had never been so red.
Before I could move, he unlocked those jaws and hollow fangs, gripped hard in his arm with mortal rigor. He shivered now from the knees. His face went white.
“Cut!” he whispered. “I’ll sit down.”
With hunting knife I slashed his arm, deep driving four crossed cuts. He laughed, and tried to shout. Howling would have been more pleasant. I sucked those wounds, out of which slow blood was spouting from an artery. We panted now, both of us. He leaned heavily on my shoulder--he, the strong. I bound his arm, my own fingers so numb I fumbled at the work. Sweat on Red Roane’s face was cold, and cold his wrists.
My arms clung about him. He swayed, almost toppling, clutching at grass stems with fading laughter. I picked up his marching stock and beat that golden, gory thing within the mire. Beat it till clay-white flesh, and bone and skin were one with the mucky mire of the swamp. But still its heart ebbed with deep purple pulsing. A smashing blow, and that, too, died.
“It’s over!” Grimly I flung the bloody stave into the swaying grass.
“Yes, Jerry,” whispered Red Roane, “it’s nearly over.”
I could not believe it. Red Roane, the strong man, the shouter, the singer, the gay-hearted lover! Is death then, so much stronger than life?
“A woman, Jerry,” he whispered, “in Havana--Dolores! She dances--”
“For God’s sake, Red, wake up!”
“Dances at the--”
“Red! _Red Roane!_ I’m here, boy!”
Out from the way, whence we had come, faintly I heard a cry. Who wept thus for the soul departing, sang _paean_ for the dead? Was it wind over the stagnant grasses? Frail in the solitude, rose that wail again. The whimper of new-born life! In the squatter’s hut the child had found its soul!
“Dolores!” whispered Red Roane. Beneath that brazen sky he whispered the name of love. “Dolores!”
Past a hundred miles of swamp, past a hundred miles of sea, did Dolores, the dancer, hear him calling her?
“Dolores!”
I hope she heard, for he was a lad, though wild.
With a throat strangling in sobs, I sang to Red Roane. His eyes were closed, yet he heard me. Old campaign songs, songs of the march and the bivouac. Marchers’ tunes.
Then he whispered for a lullaby, and, last of all, for a drinking song.
_V._
Bimi Tal had danced up to us--Bimi Tal, daughter of Red Roane and of Dolores, the dancer.
She laughed and tossed her dark red hair. Her broad nostrils sucked in the hot night wind.
“_I am the daughter of the morning! I shout, I dance. I laugh away. Follow, lover! Hear my warnings. I, the laugher, do not stay...._”
_Stamp! Stamp! Stamp!_ Her body rippled. She cast her eyes at me.
Tain Dirk’s head was rising. His thin, dry, red lips opened wide. His golden eyes burned with undying hate. _Tat! tat! tat!_ his fingers drummed.
“In a minute, Jerry,” whispered Bimi Tal, not pausing from her dance.
Her lovely eyes looked downward, seeing Dirk. She screamed. The music silenced. She struck her arm at him, not knowing what she did.
Mad! the Man was mad! His jaw was opened wide. _He bit her arm above the wrist._
Before the rush of frantic people had fallen over us, I struck his venomous face. With both fists, blow on blow. Blood came from his damned lips.
What madness had seized him I don’t know. Likely it was memory surging back through dead life--the venom of the rattler, hate undying. But of that, who can say? A strange thing is memory.
Yet I knew for sure that to him, the mad sculptor, born in that hut in the hot savannahs, had passed the soul of the dying rattlesnake.
Hands dragged me back from him. I shouted and tore. He quivered, wounded heavily. His nervous fingers faintly clattered on the table, drumming with dreadful music. Police came in.
“Look!” I shouted to them. “Look at those marks of teeth on Bimi Tal’s wrist. Two deep fangs. _There’s the man who killed Ynecita, the dancer!_”
_A “Spooky” Tale With a Grim Background_
_The_ GHOST GUARD
_By_ BRYAN IRVINE
If every one of the sixty guards and officials at Granite River Prison had been asked for the name of the most popular guard on the force, there would have been sixty answers--“Asa Shores.” If each of the fifteen hundred convicts in the prison had been asked which guard was most disliked by the convicts, fifteen hundred answers would have been the same--“Asa Shores!”
If some curious person had asked of each convict and each guard, “Who is considered the most desperate, the hardest, the shrewdest criminal in the prison?” the answer would have been unanimous, “Malcolm Hulsey, the ‘lifer.’”
True, it does not seem reasonable that Asa Shores should be liked by every guard and official and disliked by every convict. To those not familiar with the duties of prison guards it would seem that Asa Shores’ method of handling the convicts, if disapproved of by fifteen hundred convicts, would surely be disapproved of by at least one of the sixty guards. But the explanation is simple.
Asa Shores’ great great-grandfather had followed the prisons as mariners follow the seas. Then Asa’s grandfather took up the work and followed it, with an iron hand and an inflexible will, until one day a cell-made knife in the hands of a long-time “con” entered his back at a point where his suspenders crossed, deviating enough to the left to pierce his heart. Came next Asa Shores’ father, who went down in attempting to quell the famous Stromberg break of 1895.
Asa, therefore, his prison methods impelled perhaps by heredity, looked upon every wearer of gray behind the walls as a convict, nothing more, nothing less. He neither abused or favored any convict. A one-year man was to Asa a convict and no better than the man who was serving a life sentence.
The crime for which any convict was sent up was of little moment to Asa; neither did he bother about who among the inmates were considered desperate. The fact that a man wore prison gray was sufficient, whether he be a six-months sneak-thief or a ninety-nine-year murderer.
When Asa shot and killed Richard (“Mutt”) Allison, when the latter attempted to escape, the warden had said:
“There was really no need of killing that half-witted short-termer, Asa. He was doing only a year and was perfectly harmless. A shot in the leg or foot would have been better.”
And Asa’s reply had been:
“I had no idea who the man was, though I have seen him dozens of times, and I did not know how long he was doing. But I would have made no difference if I had known. He was a convict, sir, and he was attempting to escape. If he was only half-witted, as you say, he should have been in the insane asylum, not in the penitentiary.”
So that was that.
If Asa ever gave a convict a smile it had never been recorded. It is a known fact that he was never seen to frown upon a convict. He was, in short, the smileless, unyielding personification of “duty,” and every convict hated him for what he was. When Asa shot he shot to kill--and he never missed. Four little white crosses on the bleak hillside near the prison proclaimed his flawless marksmanship.
Why was this big sandy-haired, steel-blue-eyed, middle-aged Asa Shores liked by his brother guards? There were many reasons why. It was as if Asa’s unnatural, cold, vigilant, unfeeling attitude toward the convicts was offset each day when he came off duty by a healthy, wholesome desire to drop duty as a work-horse sheds an irritating harness. He was the life of the guards’ quarters; a big good-natured, playful fellow, who thoroughly enjoyed a practical joke, whether he be the victim of the joke or the instigator. If he had a temper he had never allowed it to come to the surface. He excelled in all sports in the gymnasium, and somewhere, somehow, he found more funny stories than any other man on the force. The trite old saying that “he would give a friend the shirt off his back” fitted him like a new kid glove. He gave freely to his friends, and, in giving, seemed to find real joy.