Page:Weird Tales Volume 9 Number 1 (1927-01).djvu/32

It started in the most prosaic manner. The two of them came up to my cabin, built in the edge of the foothills to give me privacy for my work, and told me I was going-on a fishing trip with them back in the mountains. They didn't ask me to accompany them, just told me I was going and wouldn't take no for an answer. I didn't demur too much. I'd been applying myself pretty steadily and was rather glad of an opportunity to lay off work and rest. So I said sure, I'd go. We didn't take any guns. I suggested it and Remington laughed at me.

"What do we want of guns, Crickett?" he asked. "None of us cares much about hunting, and there aren't any dangerous animals back in these mountains. Nothing bigger than a few lone deer. Besides, the guns would be too much trouble to pack. We're off for a rest. Let's get going."

Strange, perhaps. But even then, in broad daylight, as I followed them out of my cabin with a pack of grub rolled up in a blanket and strung over my shoulder, I felt an uncanny sense of premonition. I didn't speak of it. Remington would have laughed. Overhead the pine-trees gibbered in the wind. A few feet away the creek chattered insolently at the white moon wheeling across the sky behind the sun. All around us rose the casual everyday sounds that continually kept me company as I worked in my cabin. Yet I felt the prescience of that unnamable thing of mystery which is always just around the corner in the most ordinary surroundings. I shrugged it off and swung into step with Bleeker and Remington as they struck off for the mountains beyond.

We lazed along, casting our flies in the creeks, taking our time for four or five days, before we at last found our ideal camping place. We had got into a distant, very isolated region, but we had come upon a made-to-order spot. It was a good-sized bench on the side of a mountain, well up toward the summit, on the bank of a fine cold creek. We pitched our tent, built a fire and got a hearty meal, congratulating ourselves on such a bully find, settling down to have a high old time fishing and doing nothing.

Along about midnight I was awakened by something yowling and screeching hideously up the mountain above us. I sat erect on my blanket and listened.

"What in thunder is that?" Bleeker asked from across the tent.

"Aw, it's a cougar strayed down from somewhere. When he sees our fire he'll give us a wide berth. Maybe you'd better get up and pile another log on the coals." Remington's voice was sleepy and half-scoffing, and Bleeker answered him with the sharpness of suddenly rasped nerves.

"Cougar! No such thing! You know better—and so do I. That ghastly howl was human."

Neither of us answered him. We knew he was right. Remington lay still, rolled up in his blanket, and I knew he was listening, even as I. The yowl came again once or twice. Like the scream of a man in torment. Then it choked off with a queer gurgle and we didn't hear it any more.

We didn't any of us sleep well that night, and in the morning the first thing after breakfast Remington suggested that we take a stroll up the mountain and see if we couldn't locate that cougar. Bleeker and I assented without hesitation—as a mater of fact he'd only beaten us to it by a breath with his idea. We were curious as the very devil over the awful racket we'd heard the night before. So we all set off to investigate it.

Noon came before we reached the summit, and a funny-looking summit