Page:Weird Tales Volume 7 Number 2 (1926-02).djvu/108

moment. She fell upon her knees and prayed to God for help. He wiped his lips and laughed. Can you imagine that little scene, Mr. Brown? She in white, as she was———"

"She always loved white. There you are right," conceded the old man.

"And disheveled and at bay; he in his buckskins and greasy black Indian hair, his lips bloody and his teeth glistening; and all the country around promising no succor for her?"

"My imagination is dead," he said. "Yours seems much alive. Well, go on, go on.'

"Lavelle wiped his lips and laughed. 'There's no God in this region, my lady,' he mocked. 'There's only you and me.'"

"God-forsaken, God-forsaken," the old man muttered. "A land God-forsaken it is, as I have been."

"Is it?" I challenged. "Wait. She prayed, and these are her very words: 'God, lift me from this fiend's hands, or give me strength to lift myself.' Lavelle taunted: 'Why not call upon your husband? He'll be hot to know. I left him just enough word to make him curious.' And he told her of the note. She cried: 'Oh! How I hate you! Some day he shall know, and know the truth. I hope he kills you.' 'Not for you, he won't,' Lavelle answered. 'He won't want you after you've lived in my Sioux lodge for a while.'"

The old man's hands had clenched. He gazed fixedly as if witnessing the scene.

"At this." I proceeded, "she saw something in the fellow's eyes that alarmed her. When he rushed her she dodged and lunged, and snapped the knife blade close to the hilt, upon his belt buckle. Then she ran, leaving a strip of her dress in his fingers. She ran for higher ground—ran like a hunted rabbit; sprang across a fissure and gained the top of a butte—a flat butte or mesa. And he made after, jeering, for he knew that she had trapped herself. The mesa top ended abruptly. Further flight was barred. He came on slowly, enjoying her plight."

The old man rasped:

"You say all this. How do you know? Answer me that."

"Wait," I bade. "Then she again fell on her knees, panting like a nun of old Panama facing a buccaneer. But suddenly she called out, this time gladly, and flung up her two arms, to the sky. And Lavelle saw that which frightened even him. The north was strangely black and jagged; out of the black there issued a roaring, and a gigantic spectacle speeding very swiftly. It might have been the thunder bird of the Sioux, said Lavelle, or a winged canoe, or monstrous devouring demon—and it might have been an avalanching cloud of wind and rain. But to her it was as if God were riding in upon a thunderbolt chariot, and she had reached up her two arms to be taken into that driving shelter."

"And this happened, you say; did it?" smiled my old man, sarcastically. "And you happen to know!"

"It happened, and I happen to know," said I. "Lavelle was stopped short again. The Indian in him recoiled. Then his ruffian courage surged back within him. Whether god or spirit, it should not have her. So he threw his rifle to his shoulder, and just as the blackness swooped roaring and whistling to envelop her he touched trigger. Then he ran headlong, in retreat out of the way. The cloud descended, it passed, the rush of air in its wake knocked him flat, the terror and the rain and the hail and the thunder and lightning plastered him, face to the ground, at the foot of the mesa.

"In the morning the sun rose clear. But Lavelle could not get atop that mesa again. The cloudburst had sheered away the approaches, like a