The thing in the woods
"Picked up the other dog's scent, most like," said Sliefer, watching
him. "Come on. We'll find him at the mill."
He took us by a short cut through the bushes, across a cleared space
of stumps and blackberry vines, and turning into the woods at the
left again, brought us in a few minutes on the sawmill road. The
hound was there before us, moving shadow-like about the clearing.
When we came up to him he was clearly puzzled and uneasy. He moved
warily, his forefeet stiffly braced, his ears laid back, the hair
along his spine bristling as he snuffed to and fro.
I touched Herrick's shoulder. "Do you see that? It's the same way
Leo was acting this afternoon."
"Give him time," said Sliefer. "I know Spot. He ain't made his mind
up yet."
Shifting the gun under his arm, he pulled out a can of tobacco and
began to roll a cigarette. Somehow that natural matter-of-fact
action did much to relax my tense nerves. With Herrick I watched the
hound closely. He approached the broken doorway, sniffed, peered,
circled off a couple of times and then, as though suddenly making up
his mind to it, plunged inside, only to reappear an instant after and
set off, head down, with a queer muffled whine, through the
underbrush. I made a move to follow but Sliefer checked me.
"Wait a bit. He ain't sure yet. He'll give us the holler when he's
sure started."
He was right. After a little while Spot came back, breaking cover
near the back of the mill, and returned to us, uneasiness and
perplexity in every line of his taut body. With his eyes fixed on
his master's face he waited, eager and yet strangely reluctant, and
again with a thrill I noticed that involuntary bristling of his
spine, the trembling of his lower jaw, as though at some unfamiliar
and disturbing proximity. Twice the farmer spoke to him
encouragingly, and twice the dog circled off, checked abruptly and
came back. Sliefer grew impatient.
"I don't know what's got into the dog. He ain't never acted that way
before. Hey there, Spot! Get to it! Fetch em' boy!"
For a moment the hound eyed him. Then, with the same abruptness with
which he had entered the mill he raised his head, gave a low whine,
and was off in a straight line through the underbrush. Almost
immediately we heard his first call, the warning bell-like note of a
hound on the found trail.
"He's picked it up all right," the farmer said. "Come on. I back
Spot to keep a scent once he's got it."
We started after him, keeping as steady a pace as we could in the
darkness. It was well that Sliefer was with us. He made his way
with the unerring ease of a man used to the woods from boyhood, to
whom night is almost the same as day, and all we needed to do was to
follow in his tracks. The hound seemed to be keeping an even course,
some couple of hundred yards ahead of us; his deep warning cry,
pitched always on the same two notes, rang out at intervals and
Sliefer had no difficulty in guiding his way by the sound.
Once, in the neighbourhood of the Menning house, the dog was at
fault; he hesitated and all but turned aside towards the
out-buildings, but in the end picked up the scent again and struck
out in a northerly direction through the woods.
For nearly an hour we followed him, through tracts of dense second
growth and across spaces of stony pasture, out again on a back road,
with an occasional darkened house tranquil in its grassy yard,
looping and turning here and there, but on the whole keeping a fairly
straight course. We crossed two sloping pastures, plunged into a
thicket of young trees, and presently found ourselves on a space of
rising ground, strewn with huge boulders and set with stunted juniper
and spruce.
Ahead of us the hound's voice rang out clear and mournful, as it
seemed to me with a deepening note. Sliefer paused and looked about
him. The moon was rising. It showed the sharp line of hills,
densely wooded on either side, with the dark cleft of a gorge
between. Through the gap in a ruined stone fence we could see a cart
track, all but obliterated, that wound into obscurity.
"I know this place," the farmer said. "It's near what they call
Rocky Hollow. I haven't been here in years, but I used to know it
well when I was a boy. I sort of suspicioned he was heading for
here, right along. Once in them big rocks in there you won't trap a
man easy, not if he knows his way. If we'd had time to head him off,
now."
I glanced at Herrick. He was staring straight at that narrow
closed-in gorge, his eyes keen and fixed.
"Is there any other outlet there?"
"Not easy. It's straight-up rock at the far end and the woods are
pretty thick. A man would have to make slow going, either way he
took it. If he's in there----"
We followed the cart track till it ended in a little grassy clearing
from which a few steps brought us to the spot Sliefer had called
"Rocky Hollow." It was a small, narrow valley, filled with masses of
piled boulders, some enormous, some small, the remains evidently of
some ancient moraine. They looked as if giant hands had flung them
there in sport, one upon another. Seen by daylight, with the black
wooded hillside shutting it in, the place would be desolate enough;
by the faint growing moonlight it had a look indescribably grim and
sinister. Here, one felt, among those barren stones and piled
boulders, that took fantastic shapes in the play of light and shadow,
would be a fit hiding-place for anything evil.
Higher up the ravine, near us but hidden from sight, the hound was
baying furiously, no longer the bell-like note that had guided us
through the woods, but a hoarse deep voice of warning and anger. We
made our way towards the sound, scrambling over the stones, and found
him standing before an opening between two boulders, where an
overhanging rock formed a sort of rough cavern. There was a glimpse
of something white within, and for a moment my heart turned sick with
fear. But it was only a sheet of crumpled greasy newspaper that had
evidently contained food. There were the charred remains of a small
campfire and an old tin can lay in one corner.
Sliefer caught the dog by his collar as we peered inside. He picked
up the crumpled sheet.
"A week old," he said. "Here's where he hung out, all right. No
tramp ever comes here; it's too far off the main road."
Stooping forward, I had rested my hand on the rock at one side. It
was warm to the touch, and I turned quickly to the blackened embers
near.
"He's not far off, either. That fire----"
"Is cold," returned Herrick quickly, touching the ashes.
The stone was warm, I could have sworn it. Somebody, only a moment
ago, had lain there. There was a sudden oath from Sliefer, and I
turned to see, a hundred feet down the gorge, something that twisted
and moved, a stealthy misshapen shadow, between the gray boulders.
It was a bare glimpse, seen in a flash and blotted out immediately
against the grayish rocky background, but in that second I thought of
Lennox and I too felt cold down my spine.
The farmer's face had gone a curious sickly white. He stood holding
his gun stupidly, with fingers that shook.
"That ... that weren't no man ... that...."
"Did you see?" cried Herrick.
There was a sharp note of excitement in his voice. I nodded. "It
... went off down there."
Sliefer had pulled himself together. He swung round, his face
suddenly savage.
"Man or beast, by God, we'll get him now! _That_ shan't run the
woods another night, not if I drop in my tracks!"
He shouted to the dog, but the hound, with the rare stupidity of his
race, was still snuffing round the cave. Dragged away, he tried one
scent and another in and out the boulders, but the tracks had been
crossed and confused a dozen times and we lost precious minutes
before he picked up his right trail at last, halfway down the gorge,
and was off again on his slow loping gait.
He ran silently, this time, and in deadly earnest. Only occasionally
his voice came back to us, low-pitched and warning. Downhill, over
the shoulder of that same sloping pasture we had crossed before, then
a wide detour to the right, skirting a swamp where our feet sunk deep
between the tussocks--more open fields and then again back to the
woods. On we kept doggedly, through hours it seemed to me--more
slowly now, for the steady pace was beginning to tell on us--in
silence only broken by Sliefer's heavy breathing as he forged ahead,
his ear bent always for the sound of the dog's voice. By his old
hunter's instinct he knew which way the hound was running, and was
able to save many a turn by short cuts which we followed
unquestionably, relying on that seventh sense of his which never
seemed to fail us.
It was getting on towards dawn when Sliefer paused finally at a
cross-road which seemed to me familiar.
"See that?" he said. "There's the right-hand fork that turns back to
the Bend, past the old Sullivan house. He's circling back on his old
tracks. A while back I thought he was trying to make that tract of
woods the other side of the State road, but the dog's headed him out
of that. It's getting on for daylight now, and the way I figure it
he'll try and make for some place he knows. He daren't show up round
the village and I reckon he'll keep clear of the old house, for he
knows that's been watched. By the way he's headed now, it's either
the saw-mill or some other place near it. He knows he can't give
Spot the slip again in the woods and he's hard pushed--ain't got much
chance now to pick an' choose. I say we won't waste time but jest
chance it and cut in right here towards the mill. There's an old
wood-road just a little ways further up that'll be easier going than
if we took the long way round."
"Right," said Herrick. He loosened the revolver in his belt. "Are
we agreed? Whatever we see, close in on it, but don't fire unless
you have to."
Sliefer gave him a quick, grim look.
"I reckon nothin'll get by me again. That don't happen twice. We
ain't any bunch of girls that he can fool with his damn play-acting."
Again that queer look flitted across Herrick's face, but he said
nothing, only fell in silently beside me as we followed Sliefer into
the path.
It was darker here. The trees shut in close about us. Sliefer was a
few paces ahead. Presently I felt Herrick's hand on my arm.
"Less than half an hour to daybreak! God, Austin, if we can only
beat him to it!"
He quickened pace as he spoke.
"What do you mean? We'll get him anyhow."
"We'll get Menning, yes ... but we mayn't get the thing that attacked
Dick. Yes, they're the same, but--Austin, I can't explain to you
now, but I tell you we've got to make every effort in these last few
minutes. If Sliefer's right, and he's doubled back, we're all right.
Otherwise...."
"But he must know----"
"He _knows_. He isn't playing for safety; he knows that's over. He
wasn't playing for safety when he made that big detour, he's playing
for time. It's time that matters, and it's there we've got to beat
him. Austin, Sliefer talks of play-acting, but is it play-acting
that can keep a man ahead of a dog for the best part of the night?
Was it play-acting that half-killed Lessing? No, if we're ever to
know the truth we've got to know it now, within these next twenty
minutes. Ah!"
It was the hound again, sudden, sharp, and near at hand. Sliefer had
been right after all. We were within a few steps of the saw-mill
clearing, but the dog was there before us. He was circling the
ground, barking furiously as he had done in the gorge, his attention
divided between the mill itself and the group of trees, with an old
dead chestnut among them, that stood within a dozen feet of the