Skulls in the Stars | Page 4

haggard and
claw-marked, and he was bandaged of arm and leg. Somewhat behind
this man stood a number of villagers.

"You are Ezra of the swamp road?"
"Aye, and what want ye of me?"
"Where is your cousin Gideon, the maniac youth who abode with you?"
"Gideon?"
'Aye." He wandered away into the swamp and never came back. No
doubt he lost his way and was set upon by wolves or died in a quagmire
or was struck by an adder."
"How long ago?"
"Over a year."
"Aye. Hark ye, Ezra the miser. Soon after your cousin's disappearance,
a countryman, coming home across the moors, was set upon by some
unknown fiend and torn to pieces, and thereafter it became death to
cross those moors. First men of the countryside, then strangers who
wandered over the fen, fell to the clutches of the thing. Many men have
died, since the first one.
"Last night I crossed the moors, and heard the flight and pursuing of
another victim, a stranger who knew not the evil of the moors. Ezra the
miser, it was a fearful thing, for the wretch twice broke from the fiend,
terribly wounded, and each time the demon caught and dragged him
down again. And at last he fell dead at my very, feet, done to death in a
manner that would freeze the statue of a saint."
The villagers moved restlessly and murmured fearfully to each other,
and old Ezra's eyes shifted furtively. Yet the sombre expression of
Solomon Kane never altered, and his condor-like stare seemed to
transfix the miser.
"Aye, aye!" muttered old Ezra hurriedly; "a bad thing, a bad thing! Yet
why do you tell this thing to me?" "Aye, a sad thing. Harken further,
Ezra. The fiend came out of the shadows and I fought with it over the

body of its victim. Aye, how I overcame it, I know not, for the battle
was hard and long but the powers of good and light were on my side,
which are mightier than the powers of Hell.
"At the last I was stronger, and it broke from me and fled, and I
followed to no avail. Yet before it fled it whispered to me a monstrous
truth."
Old Ezra started, stared wildly, seemed to shrink into himself.
"Nay, why tell me this?" he muttered.
"I returned to the village and told my tale, said Kane, "for I knew that
now I had the power to rid the moors of its curse forever'. Ezra, come
with us!"
"Where?" gasped the miser.
"To the rotting oak on the moors." Ezra reeled as though struck; he
screamed incoherently and turned to flee.
On the instant, at Kane's sharp order, two brawny villagers sprang
forward and seized the miser. They twisted the dagger from his
withered hand, and pinioned his arms, shuddering as their fingers
encountered his clammy flesh.
Kane motioned them to follow, and turning strode up the trail, followed
by the villagers, who found their strength taxed to the utmost in their
task of bearing their prisoner along. Through the swamp they went and
out, taking a little-used trail which led up over the low hills and out on
the moors.
The sun was sliding down the horizon and old Ezra stared at it with
bulging eyes--stared as if he could not gaze enough. Far out on the
moors geared up the great oak tree, like a gibbet, now only a decaying
shell. There Solomon Kane halted.
Old Ezra writhed in his captor's grasp and made inarticulate noises.

"Over a year ago," said Solomon Kane, "you, fearing that your insane
cousin Gideon would tell men of your cruelties to him, brought him
away from the swamp by the very trail by which we came, and
murdered him here in the night."
Ezra cringed and snarled.
"You can not prove this lie!"
Kane spoke a few words to an agile villager. The youth clambered up
the rotting bole of the tree and from a crevice, high up, dragged
something that fell with a clatter at the feet of the miser. Ezra went
limp with a terrible shriek.
The object was a man's skeleton, the skull cleft.
"You--how knew you this? You are Satan!" gibbered old Ezra.
Kane folded his arms.
"The thing I, fought last night told me this thing as we reeled in battle,
and I followed it to this tree. For the fiend is Gideon's ghost."
Ezra shrieked again and fought savagely.
"You knew," said Kane sombrely, "you knew what things did these
deeds. You feared the ghost the maniac, and that is why you chose to
leave his body on the fen instead of concealing it in the swamp. For
you knew the ghost would haunt the place of his death. He was insane
in life,