Page:Weird Tales v15n01 1930-01.djvu/104

and then from the wood the call of the siffleur de montagne.

"'Beyond the cocoa fields lies the rhommerie and beyond that the house of Jean Labat. It is all only two kilometers from here where I sit talking to you now, and the graveyard where the creoles are buried lies only half a kilometer from the house of Maman Robert.

"'I found her in the house, but she would say nothing of the business I had come on—only this: "I will take you after dark."

"'And then it happened. The moon had risen, and leading me by the shadows of the trees she crossed a cultivated field to the barren part where the wild canes and sword-grass grew.

"'Here she paused where before us lay a field preparing for cultivation of manioc, and lifting up a finger she said, "Listen!"

"'I heard nothing—nothing but the canes talking to the wind and the voice of the sea very far away.

"'Again she said, "Listen!" yet I heard nothing but the cry of a night bird, far beyond the manioc field.

"'Then the clink of iron, and they came round the bend of the cane clump, breaking the earth with their hoes, followed at a little distance by a boy with a goad, as oxen are followed by their driver.

"'Four figures in the moonlight. Three men and a girl, walking not as men walk, working as the spindles in the cotton mill, without sense of mind, followed by the boy their driver—and the girl was Finotte whom I had seen buried and the tallest of the men was Jaquin who had died six months before and I was looking at them and I went not mad.

"'For I knew. I, Baidaux, am not an ignorant man and I knew of the culte which is brother to the Culte des Morts: Look you, they give a man a drink that brings the fever; he dies; he is buried—but he is not dead; he only sleeps without breathing; his people mourn him and bury him and leave him in the grave. Then come the wicked ones and dig him up; he breathes again and lives, yet he is not truly alive like you and me, for his mind has left him, for the drug has killed his brain. He can hear and obey but he can not think, so he can hew wood and draw water and hoe the fields and cut the cane, without thought, without word, without pay—except a handful of food.

"'Ah! Jean Labat, it was an evil day for you when you took the girl of Baidaux for your slave—but it is finished.

"'Come," I said to the old woman who was holding to me and pointing; "our place is not here; lead me to the house of Maman Faly, the woman who deals in herbs and who helped to lay out your daughter who was once my girl."

"'I knew, for my mind had taken the sight of a vulture.

"'At the little house where the evil woman lived I knocked, and she opened and with my knife-point at her throat she told all.

"'"Come," I said, "the drug, the drug, I have need of the drug; prepare it or die." She had it ready prepared and she gave it to me. "If this fails I will return and kill you," I said. "It will not fail," she replied, and I knew she spoke the truth and I killed her with a thrust of the knife and was caught up in a flame that carried me to the house of Jean Labat, where he lived alone with his wickedness.

"'I beat on his door and he opened it and I drove him with my knife into a room. He was a big man but I was a legion; he was a coward because he was wicked.

"'I made him lie upon the floor. He chose the drug rather than instant death and he could not return it for my knife was at his throat. The fever came on before daybreak and I sat