"What do you want, at this time of night?" he demanded, with his usual bruqueness.
I replied shortly, for I did not like the man; courtesy in our part of the country is an obligation no gentleman thinks of shirking.
"I came to tell you that it's very likely that a dangerous Negro is prowling in your vicinity. Tope Braxton killed Constable Joe Sorley and a Negro trusty, and broke out of jail this morning. I think he took refuge in Egypt. I thought you ought to be warned."
"Well, you've warned me," he snapped, in his short-clipped Eastern accent. "Why don't you be off?"
"Because I have no intention of going back through those woods tonight," I answered angrily. "I came in here to warn you, not because of any love of you, but simply because you're a white man. The least you can do is to let me put up in your cabin until morning. All I ask is a pallet on the floor; you don't even have to feed me."
That last was an insult I could not withhold, in my resentment; at least in the piney woods it is considered an insult. But Richard Brent ignored my thrust at his penuriousness and discourtesy. He scowled at me. I could not see his hands.
"Did you see Ashley anywhere along the trail?" he asked finally. Ashley was his servant, a saturnine figure as taciturn as his master, who drove into the distant river village once a month for supplies.
"No; he might have been in town, and left after I did."
"I guess I'll have to let you in," he muttered, grudgingly.
"Well, hurry up," I requested. "I've got a gash in my shoulder I want to wash and dress. Tope Braxton isn't the only killer abroad tonight."
At that he halted in his fumbling at the lower door, and his expression changed.
"What do you mean?"
"There's a dead nigger a mile or so up the trail. The man who killed him tried to kill me. He may be after you, for all I know. The nigger he killed was guiding him here."
Richard Brent started violently, and his face went livid.
"Who--what do you mean?" His voice cracked, unexpectedly falsetto. "What man?"
"I don't know. A fellow who manages to rip his victims like a hound--"
"A hound!" The words burst out in a scream. The change in Brent was hideous. His eyes seemed starting from his head; his hair stood up stiffly on his scalp, and his skin was the hue of ashes. His lips drew back from his teeth in a grin of sheer terror.
He gagged and then found voice.
"Get out!" he choked. "I see it, now! I know why you wanted to get into my house! You bloody devil! He sent you! You're his spy! Go!" The last was a scream and his hands rose above the lower half of the door at last. I stared into the gaping muzzles of a sawed-off shotgun. "Go, before I kill you!"
I stepped back off the stoop, my skin crawling at the thought of a close- range blast from that murderous implement of destruction. The black muzzles and the livid, convulsed face behind them promised sudden demolition.
"You cursed fool!" I growled, courting disaster in my anger. "Be careful with that thing. I'm going. I'd rather take a chance with a murderer than a madman."
Brent made no reply; panting and shivering like a man smitten with ague, he crouched over his shotgun and watched me as I turned and strode across the clearing. Where the trees began I could have wheeled and shot him down without much danger, for my .45 would out-range his shortened scatter-gun. But I had come there to warn the fool, not to kill him.
The upper door slammed as I strode in under the trees, and the stream of light was cut abruptly off. I drew my gun and plunged into the shadowy trail, my ears whetted again for sounds under the black branches.
My thoughts reverted to Richard Brent. It was surely no friend who had sought guidance to his cabin! The man's frantic fear had bordered on insanity. I wondered if it had been to escape this man that Brent had exiled himself in this lonely stretch of pinelands and river. Surely it had been to escape something that he had come; for he never concealed his hatred of the country nor his contempt for the native people, white and black. But I had never believed that he was a criminal, hiding from the law.
The light fell away behind me, vanished among the black trees. A curious, chill, sinking feeling obsessed me, as if the disappearance of that light, hostile as was its source, had severed the only link that connected this nightmarish adventure with the world of sanity and humanity. Grimly taking hold of my nerves, I strode on up the trail. But I had not gone far when again I halted.
This time it was the unmistakable sound of horses running; the rumble of wheels mingled with the pounding of hoofs. Who would be coming along that nighted trail in a rig but Ashley? But instantly I realized that the team was headed in the other direction. The sound receded rapidly, and soon became only a distant blur of noise.
