Black Hounds of Death by Robert E. Howard Page A

tore my knife hand free and stabbed him in the belly. Blood spurted and he dragged me down with him. I jerked loose and rose, just as he pulled himself up on his elbow and hurled his knife. It sang past my ear, and I stamped on his breast. His ribs caved in under my heel. In a red killing-haze I knelt, jerked back his head and cut his throat from ear to ear.
    There was a pouch of dry powder in his belt. Before I moved further I reloaded my pistols. Then I went into the hut with a torch. And there I understood the doom the brown witch had meant for me. Tope Sorley lay moaning on a bunk. The transmutation that was to make him a mindless, soulless semi-human dweller in the water was not complete, but his mind was gone. Some of the physical changes had been made — by what godless sorcery out of Africa’s black abyss I have no wish to know. His body was rounded and elongated, his legs dwarfed; his feet were flattened and broadened, his fingers horribly long, and webbed. His neck was inches longer than it should be. His features were not altered, but the expression was no more human than that of a great fish. And there, but for the loyalty of Jim Braxton, lay Kirby Buckner. I placed my pistol muzzle against Tope’s head in grim mercy and pulled the trigger.
    And so the nightmare closed, and I would not drag out the grisly narration. The white people of Canaan never found anything on the island except the bodies of Saul Stark and the brown woman. They think to this day that a swamp Negro killed Jim Braxton, after he had killed the brown woman, and that I broke up the threatening uprising by killing Saul Stark. I let them think it. They will never know the shapes the black water of Tularoosa hides. That is a secret I share with the cowed and terror-haunted black people of Goshen and of it neither they not I have ever spoken.

ALWAYS COMES EVENING
     
    The Phantagraph, August 1936
     
Riding down the road at evening with the stars for steed and shoon
I have heard an old man singing underneath a copper moon;
“God, who gemmed with topaz twilights, opal portals of the day,
“On your amaranthine mountains, why make human souls of clay?
“For I rode the moon-mare’s horses in the glory of my youth,
“Wrestled with the hills at sunset—till I met brass-tinctured Truth.
“Till I saw the temples topple, till I saw the idols reel,
“Till my brain had turned to iron, and my heart had turned to steel.
“Satan, Satan, brother Satan, fill my soul with frozen fire;
“Feed with hearts of rose-white women ashes of my dead desire.
“For my road runs out in thistles and my dreams have turned to dust.
“And my pinions fade and falter to the raven-wings of rust.
“Truth has smitten me with arrows and her hand is in my hair—
“Youth, she hides in yonder mountains—go and seek her, if you dare!
“Work your magic, brother Satan, fill my brain with fiery spells.
“Satan, Satan, brother Satan, I have known your fiercest Hells.”
Riding down the road at evening when the wind was on the sea,
I have heard an old man singing, and he sang most drearily.
Strange to hear, when dark lakes shimmer to the wailing of the loon,
Amethystine Homer singing under evening’s copper moon.

RED NAILS
     
    Weird Tales, July–Oct. 1936
     
    1. The Skull on the Crag
    The woman on the horse reined in her weary steed. It stood with its legs wide-braced, its head drooping, as if it found even the weight of the gold-tassled, red-leather bridle too heavy. The woman drew a booted foot out of the silver stirrup and swung down from the gilt-worked saddle. She made the reins fast to the fork of a sapling, and turned about, hands on her hips, to survey her surroundings.
    They were not inviting. Giant trees hemmed in the small pool where her horse had just drunk. Clumps of undergrowth limited the vision that quested under the somber twilight of the lofty archs formed by intertwining branches. The woman shivered with a twitch of her magnificent shoulders, and then