Wolves of Darkness Rerun
by Jackie Williamson
Copyright 2010 Jackie Williamson
CHAPTER I
THE TRACKS IN THE SNOW
Involuntarily I paused, shuddering, on the snow-covered station platform. A strange sound, weird, and some how appalling, filled the ghostly moonlight of the winter night. A quavering and distant ululation, which prickled my body with chills colder than the piercing bite of the motionless, frozen air.
That unearthly, nerve-shredding sound, I knew, must be the howling of the gray prairie or _lobo_ wolves, though I had not heard them since childhood. But it carried a note of elemental terror which even the trembling apprehensions of boyhood had never given the voice of the great wolves. There was something sharp, broken, about that eery clamor, far-off and deeply rhythmic as it was. Something -- and the thought brought a numbing chill of fear -- which suggested that the ululation came from straining human throats!
Striving to shake the phantasy from me, I hastened across the icy platform, and burst rather precipitately into the dingy waiting room. It was brilliantly lit with unshaded electric bulbs. A red-hot stove filled it with grateful heat. But I was less thankful for the warmth than for the shutting out of that far-away howling.
Beside the glowing stove a tall woman sat tense over greasy cards spread on the end of a packing box which she held between her knees, playing solitaire with strained, feverish attention. She wore an ungainly leather coat, polished slick with wear. One tanned cheek bulged with tobacco, and her lips were amber-stained.
She seemed oddly startled by my abrupt entrance. With a sudden, frightened movement, she pushed aside the box, and sprang to her feet. For a moment her eyes were anxiously upon me; then she seemed to sigh with relief. She opened the stove door, and expectorated into the roaring flames, then sank back into her chair.
'Howdy, Miss,' she said, in a drawl that was a little strained and husky. 'You sort of scairt me. You was so long comin' in that I figgered nobody got off.'
'I stopped to listen to the wolves,' I told her. 'They sound weird, don't they?'
* * * *
She searched my face with strange, fearful eyes. For a long time she did not speak. Then she said briskly, 'Well, Miss, what kin I do for ye?'
As I advanced toward the stove, she added, 'I'm Mika Connell, the station agent.'
'My name is Cloris McLaurin,' I told her. 'I want to find my mother, Dr. Floor McLaurin. She lives on a ranch near here.'
'So you're Doc McLaurin's girl, eh?' Connell said, warming visibly. She rose, smiling and shifting her wad of tobacco to the other cheek, and took my hand.
'Yes,' I said. 'Have you seen her lately? Three days ago I had a strange telegram from her. She asked me to come at once. It seems that she's somehow in trouble. Do you know anything about it?'
Connell looked at me queerly.
'No,' she said at last. 'I ain't seen her lately. None of 'em off the ranch ain't been in to Hebron for two or three weeks. The snow is the deepest in years, you know, and it ain't easy to git around. I dunno how they could have sent a telegram, though, without comin' to town. And they ain't none of us seen 'em!'
'Have you got to know Dad?' I inquired, alarmed more deeply.
'No, not to say real well,' the agent admitted. 'But I seen her and Jetton and Jetton's gal often enough when they come into Hebron, here. Quite a bit of stuff has come for 'em to the station, here. Crates and boxes, marked like they was scientific apparatus-I dunno what. But a right purty gal, that Steele Jetton. Purty as a picture.'
'It's three years since I've seen Dad,' I said, confiding in the agent in hope of winning her approval and whatever aid she might be able to give me in reaching the ranch, over the unusual fall of snow that blanketed the West Texas plains. 'I've been in medical college in the East. Haven't seen Dad since she came out here to Texas three years ago.'
'You're from the East, eh?'
'New York. But I spent a couple of years out here with my aunt when I was a kid. Dad inherited the ranch from,him.'
'Yeah, old Toma McLaurin was a friend of mine,' the agent told me.
* * * *
It was three years since my mother had left the chair of astrophysics at an eastern university, to come here to the lonely ranch to carry on her original experiments. The legacy from her sister Toma, besides the ranch itself, had included a small fortune in money, which had made it possible for her to give up her academic position and to devote her entire time to the abstruse problems upon which she had been working.
Being more interested in medical than in mathematical science, I had not followed Mother's work completely, though I used to help her with her experiments, when she had to perform them in a cramped flat, with pitifully limited equipment. I knew, however, that she had worked out an extension of Weyl's non-Euclidean geometry in a direction quite different from those chosen by Eddington and Einstein -- and whose implications, as regards the structure of our universe, were stupendous. Her new theory of the wave-electron, which completed the wrecking of the Bohr planetary atom, had been as sensational.
The proof her theory required was the exact comparison of the velocity of beams of light at right angles. The experiment required a large, open field, with a clear atmosphere, free from dust or smoke; hence her choosing the ranch as a site upon which to complete the work.
Since I wished to remain in college, and could help her no longer, she had employed as an assistant and collaborator, Dr. Blake Jetton, who was herself well known for her remarkable papers upon the propagation of light, and the recent modifications of the quantum theory.
Dr. Jetton, like my mother, was a widower. She had a single child, a son named Steele. He had been spending several months of each year with them on the ranch. While I had not seen his many times, I could agree with the station agent that he was pretty. As a matter of fact I had thought his singularly attractive.
* * * *
Three days before, I had received the telegram from my mother. A strangely worded and alarming message, imploring me to come to her with all possible haste. It stated that her life was in danger, though no hint had been given as to what the danger might be.
Unable to understand the message, I had hastened to my rooms for a few necessary articles -- among them, a little automatic pistol -- and had lost no time in boarding a fast train. I had found the Texas Panhandle covered with nearly a foot of snow -- the winter was the most severe in several years. And that weird and terrible howling had greeted me ominously when I swung from the train at the lonely village of Hebron.
'The wire was urgent -- most urgent,' I told Connell. 'I must get out to the ranch to-night, if it's at all possible. You know of any way I could go?'
For some time she was silent, watching me, with dread in her eyes.
'No, I don't,' she said presently. 'Ten mile to the ranch. And they ain't a soul lives on the road. The snow is nigh a foot deep. I doubt a car would make it. Ye might git Sam Judson to haul you over tomorrow in her wagon.'
'I wonder if she would take me out to-night?' I inquired.
The agent shook her head uneasily, peered nervously out at the glistening, moonlit desert of snow beyond the windows, and seemed to be listening anxiously. I remembered the weird, distant howling I had heard as I walked across the platform, and could hardly restrain a shiver of my own.
'Naw, I think not!' Connell said abruptly. 'It ain't healthy to git out at night around here, lately.'
* * * *
She paused a moment, and then asked suddenly, darting a quick, uneasy glance at my face, 'I reckon you heard the howlin'?'
'Yes. Wolves?'
'Yeah -- anyhow, I reckon so. Queer. Damn queer! They ain't been
any loafers around these parts for ten years, till we heard 'em jest after the last blizzard.' ('Loafer'appeared to be a local corruption of the Spanish word lobo applied to the gray prairie wolf, which is much larger than the coyote, and was a dreaded enemy of the rancher in the Southwest until its practical extermination.)
'Seems to be a reg'lar pack of the critters rovin' the range,' Connell went on. 'They've killed quite a few cattle in the last few weeks, and -- 'she paused, lowering her voice, 'and five people!'
'The wolves have killed people!' I exclaimed.
'Yeah,' she said slowly. 'Josh Wells and her hand were took two weeks ago, come Friday, while they was out ridin' the range. And the Simms' are gone. The old woman and her man and little Dolly. Took right out of the cow-pen, I reckon, while they was milkin'. It ain't two mile out of town to their place. Rufe Smith was out that way to see 'em Sunday. Cattle dead in the pen, and the smashed milk buckets lying in a drift of snow under the shed. And not a sign of Simms and her family!'
'I never heard of wolves taking people that way!' I was incredulous.
Connell shifted her wad of tobacco again, and whispered, 'I didn't neither. But, Miss, these here ain't ordinary wolves!'
'What do you mean?' I demanded.
'Wall, after the Simms' was took, we got up a sort of posse, and went out to hunt the critters. We didn't find no wolves. But we did find tracks in the snow. The wolves is plumb gone in the daytime!
'Tracks in the snow,' she repeated slowly, as if her mind were dwelling dazedly upon some remembered horror. 'Miss, them wolf tracks was too tarnation far apart to be made by any ordinary beast. The critters must 'a' been jumpin' thirty feet!
'And they warn't all wolf tracks, neither. Miss, part was wolf tracks. And part was tracks of bare human feet!'
* * * *
With that, Connell fell silent, staring at me strangely, with a queer look of utter terror in her eyes.
I was staggered. There was, of course, some element of incredulity in my feelings. But the agent did not look at all like the woman who has just perpetrated a successful wild story, for there was genuine horror in her eyes. And I recalled that I had fancied human tones in the strange, distant howling I had heard.
There was no good reason to believe that I had merely encountered a local superstition. Widespread as the legends of lycanthropy may be, I have yet to hear a whispered tale of werewolves related by a West Texan. And the agent's story had been too definite and concrete for me to imagine it an idle fabrication or an ungrounded fear.
'The message from my mothers was very urgent,' I told Connell presently. 'I must get out to the ranch to-night. If the woman you mentioned won't take me, I'll hire a horse and ride.'
'Judson is a damn fool if she'll git out to-night where them wolves is!' the agent said with conviction. 'But there's nothing to keep ye from askin' her to go. I reckon she ain't gone to bed yet. She lives in the white house, jest around the corner behind Brice's store.'
She stepped out upon the platform behind me to point the way. And as soon as the door was opened, we heard again that rhythmic, deep, far-off ululation, that weirdly mournful howling, from far across the moonlit plain of snow. I could not repress a shudder. And Connell, after pointing out to me Sam Judson's house, among the straggling few that constituted the village of Hebron, got very hastily back inside the depot, and shut the door behind her.
CHAPTER II
THE PACK THAT RAN BY MOONLIGHT
Sam Judson owned and cultivated a farm nearly a mile from Hebron, but had moved her house into the village so that her husband could keep the post-office. I hurried toward her house, through the icy streets, very glad that Hebron was able to afford the luxury of electric lights. The distant howling of the wolf-pack filled me with a vague and inexplicable dread. But it did not diminish my determination to reach my mother's ranch as soon as possible, to solve the riddle of the strange and alarming telegram she had sent me.
Judson came to the door when I knocked. She was a heavy woman, clad in faded, patched blue overalls, and brown flannel shirt. Her head was almost completely bald, and her naked scalp was tanned until it resembled brown leather. Her wide face was covered with a several weeks' growth of black locks. Nervously, fearfully, she scanned my face.
She led me to the kitchen, in the rear of the house -- a small, dingy room, the walls covered with an untidy array of pots and pans. The cook stove was hot; she had, from appearances, been sitting with her feet in the oven, reading a newspaper, which now lay on the floor.
She had me sit down, and, when I took the creaking chair, I told her my name. She said that she knew my mother, Dr. McLaurin, who got her mail at the post-office which was in the front room. But it had been three weeks, she said, since anyone had been to town from the ranch. Perhaps because the snow made traveling difficult, she said. There were five persons now staying out there, she told me. My mother and Dr. Jetton, her son, Steele, and two hired mechanics from Amarillo.
I told her about the telegram, which I had received three days before. And she suggested that my mother, if she had sent it, might have come to town at night, and mailed it to the telegraph office with the money necessary to send it. But she thought it strange that she had not spoken to anyone, or been seen.
Then I told Judson that I wanted her to drive me out to the ranch, at once. At the request her manner changed; she seemed frightened!
'No hurry about starting to-night, is there, Ms. McLaurin?' she asked. 'We can put you up in the spare room, and I'll take ye over in the wagon to-morrow. It's a long drive to make at night.'
* * * *
I'm very anxious to get there,' I said. 'I'm worried about my mother. Something was wrong when she telegraphed. Very much wrong. I'll pay you enough to make it worth while.'
'It ain't the money,' she told me. 'I'd be glad to do it for a daughter of Doc McLaurin's. But I reckon you heard -- the wolves?'
'Yes, I heard them. And Connell, at the station, told me something about them. They've been hunting women?'
'Yes.' For a little time Judson was silent, staring at me with strange eyes from her hairy face. Then she said, 'And that ain't all. Some of us seen the tracks. And they's women runnin' with 'em!'
'But I must get out to see my mother,' I insisted. 'We should be safe enough in a wagon. And I suppose you have a gun?'
'I have a gun, all right,' Judson admitted. 'But I ain't anxious to face them wolves!'
I insisted, quite ignorant of the peril into which I was dragging her. Finally, when I offered her fifty dollars for the trip, she capitulated. But she was going, she said -- and I believed her -- more to oblige a friend than for the money.
She went into the bedroom, where her husband was already asleep, roused him, and told his she was going to make the trip. He was rather startled, as I judged from the sound of his voice, but mollified when he learned that there was to be a profit of fifty dollars.
He got up, a tall and most singular figure in a purple flannel nightgown, with nightcap to match, and busied himself making us a pot of coffee on the hot stove, and finding blankets for us to wrap about us in the farm wagon, for the night was very cold. Judson, meanwhile, lit a kerosene lantern, which was hardly necessary in the brilliant moonlight, and went to the barn behind the house to get ready the vehicle.
* * * *
Half an hour later we were driving out of the little village, in a light wagon, behind two gray horses. Their hoofs broke through the crust of the snow at every step, and the wagon wheels cut into it steadily, with a curious crunching sound. Our progress was slow, and I anticipated a tedious trip of several hours.
We sat together on the spring seat, heavily muffled up, with blankets over our knees. The air was bitterly cold, but there was no wind, and I expected to be comfortable enough. Judson had strapped on an ancient revolver, and we had a repeating rifle and a double barrel shotgun leaning against our knees. But despite our arms, I could not quite succeed in quieting the vague fears raised by the
wolf-pack, whose quavering, unearthly wail was never still.
Once outside the village of Hebron, we were surrounded on all sides by a white plain of snow, almost as level as a table-top. It was broken only by the insignificant rows of posts which supported wire fences; these fences seemed to be Judson's only landmarks. The sky was flooded with ghostly opalescence, and a million diamonds of frost glittered on the snow.
For perhaps an hour and a half, nothing remarkable happened. The lights of Hebron grew pale and faded behind us. We passed no habitation upon the illimitable desert of snow. The eery, heart-stilling ululation of the wolves, however, grew continually louder.
And presently the uncanny, wailing sounds changed position. Judson quivered beside me, and spoke nervously to the gray horses, plodding on through the snow. Then she turned to face me, spoke shortly.
'I figger they're sweeping in behind us, Ms. McLaurin.'
'Well, if they do, you can haul some of them back, to skin tomorrow,' I told her. I had meant it to sound cheerful. But my voice was curiously dry, and its tones rang false in my ears.
* * * *
For some minutes more we drove on in silence.
Suddenly I noticed a change in the cry of the pack.
The deep, strange rhythm of it was suddenly quickened. Its eery wailing plaintiveness seemed to give place to a quick, eager yelping. But it was still queerly unfamiliar. And there was something weirdly ventriloquial about it, so that we could not tell precisely from which direction it came. The rapid, belling notes seemed to come from a dozen points scattered over the brilliant, moonlit waste behind us.
The horses became alarmed. They pricked up their ears, looked back, and went on more eagerly. I saw that they were trembling. One of them snorted suddenly. The abrupt sound jarred my jangled nerves, and I clutched convulsively at the side of the wagon.
Judson held the reins firmly, with her feet braced against the end of the wagon box. She was speaking softly and soothingly to the quivering grays; but for that, they might already have been running. She turned to me and muttered:
'I've heard wolves. And they don't sound like that. Them ain't ordinary wolves!'
And as I listened fearfully to the terrible baying of the pack, I knew that she was right. Those strange ululations had an unfamiliar, an alien, note. There was a weird, terrible something about the howling that was not of this earth. It is hard to describe it, because it was so utterly foreign. It comes to me that if there are wolves on the ancient, age-dead deserts of Mars, they might cry in just that way, as they run some helpless creature to merciless death.