Black Canaan | Page 2

I've lost my way. And my poor brother has
hurt his leg and cannot walk."
"Where is your brother?" I asked, uneasily. Her perfect English was
disquieting to me, accustomed as I was to the dialect of the black folk.
"Back in the woods, there-far back!" She indicated the black depths
with a swaying motion of her supple body rather than a gesture of her
hand, smiling audaciously as she did so.
I knew there was no injured brother, and she knew I knew it, and
laughed at me. But a strange turmoil of conflicting emotions stirred in
me. I had never before paid any attention to a black or brown woman.
But this quadroon girl was different from any I had ever seen. Her
features were regular as a white woman's, and her speech was not that
of a common wench. Yet she was barbaric, in the open lure of her smile,

in the gleam of her eyes, in the shameless posturing of her voluptuous
body. Every gesture, every motion she made set her apart from the
ordinary run of women; her beauty was untamed and lawless, meant to
madden rather than to soothe, to make a man blind and dizzy, to rouse
in him all the unreined passions that are his heritage from his ape
ancestors.
I hardly remember dismounting and tying my horse. My blood pounded
suffocatingly through the veins in my temples as I scowled down at her,
suspicious yet fascinated.
"How do you know my name? Who are you?"
With a provocative laugh, she seized my hand and drew me deeper into
the shadows. Fascinated by the lights gleaming in her dark eyes, I was
hardly aware of her action.
"Who does not know Kirby Buckner?" she laughed. "All the people of
Canaan speak of you, white or black. Come! My poor brother longs to
look upon you!" And she laughed with malicious triumph.
It was this brazen effrontery that brought me to my senses. Its cynical
mockery broke the almost hypnotic spell in which I had fallen.
I stopped short, throwing her hand aside, snarling: "What devil's game
are you up to, wench?"
Instantly the smiling siren was changed to a blood-mad jungle cat. Her
eyes flamed murderously, her red lips writhed in a snarl as she leaped
back, crying out shrilly. A rush of bare feet answered her call. The first
faint light of dawn struck through the branches, revealing my assailants,
three gaunt black giants. I saw the gleaming whites of their eyes, their
bare glistening teeth, the sheen of naked steel in their hands.
My first bullet crashed through the head of the tallest man, knocking
him dead in full stride. My second pistol snapped-the cap had somehow
slipped from the nipple. I dashed it into a black face, and as the man
fell, half stunned, I whipped out my bowie knife and closed with the

other. I parried his stab and my counter-stroke ripped across the
belly-muscles. He screamed like a swamp-panther and made a wild
grab for my knife wrist, but I stuck him in the mouth with my clenched
left fist, and felt his lips split and his teeth crumble under the impact as
he reeled backward, his knife waving wildly. Before he could regain his
balance I was after him, thrusting, and got home under his ribs. He
groaned and slipped to the ground in a puddle of his own blood.
I wheeled about, looking for the other. He was just rising, blood
streaming down his face and neck. As I started for him he sounded a
panicky yell and plunged into the underbrush. The crashing of his blind
flight came back to me, muffled with distance. The girl was gone.

2. The Stranger on Tularoosa
The curious glow that had first showed me the quadroon girl had
vanished. In my confusion I had forgotten it. But I did not waste time
on vain conjecture as to its source, as I groped my way back to the road.
Mystery had come to the pinelands and a ghostly light that hovered
among the trees was only part of it.
My horse snorted and pulled against his tether, frightened by the smell
of blood that hung in the heavy damp air. Hoofs clattered down the
road, forms bulked in the growing light. Voices challenged.
"Who's that? Step out and name yourself, before we shoot!"
"Hold on, Esau!" I called. "It's me--Kirby Buckner"'
"Kirby Buckner, by thunder!" ejaculated Esau McBride, lowering his
pistol. The tall rangy forms of the other riders loomed behind him.
"We heard a shot," said McBride. "We was ridin' patrol on the roads
around Grimesville like we've been ridin' every night for a week
now--ever since they killed Ridge Jackson."
"Who killed Ridge Jackson?"

"The swamp niggers. That's