Chapter 14: On The Trail Of The Monster

Stern’s cry of horror as he scrambled from the ravaged, desecrated cave, and the ghastly horror of his face, seen by the firelight, brought Zangamon and Bremilu to him, in terror.

“Master! Master! What--”

“My God! The girl--she’s gone!” he stammered, leaning against the cliff in mortal anguish.

“Gone, master? Where?”

“Gone! Dead, perhaps! Find her for me! Find her! You can see--in the dark! I--I am as though blind! Quick, on the trail!”

“But tell us--”

“Something has taken her! Some savage thing! Some wild man! Even now he may be killing her! Quick--after them!“

Bremilu stood staring for a moment, unable to grasp this catastrophe on the very moment of arrival. But Zangamon, of swifter wit, had already fallen on his knees, there by the mouth of the cave, and now--seeing clearly by the dim light which more than sufficed for him--was studying the traces of the struggle.

Stern, meanwhile, clutching his head between both hands, dumb-mad with agony, was choking with dry sobs.

“Master! See!”

Zangamon held up a piece of splintered wood, with the bark deeply scarred by teeth.

Stern snatched it.

“Part of the pole I gave her to brace the rock with,” he realized. “Even that was of no avail.”

“Master--this way they went!”

Zangamon pointed up along the rock-terrace. Stern’s eyes could distinguish no slightest trace on the stone, but the Merucaan spoke with certainty. He added:

“There was fighting, all the way along here, master. And then, here, the girl was dragged.”

Stern stumbled blindly after him as he led the way.

“There was fighting here? She struggled?”

“Yes, master.”

“Thank God! She was alive here, anyhow! She wasn’t killed in the cave. Maybe, in the open, she might--”

“Now there is no more fighting, master. The wild thing carried her here.”

He pointed at the rock. Stern, trembling and very sick, flashed his electric-lamp upon it. With eyes of dread and horror he looked for blood-stains.

What? A drop! With a dull, shuddering groan, he pressed forward again.

Out he jerked his pistol and fired, straight up, their prearranged signal: One shot, then a pause, then two. Some bare possibility existed and that she still might live and hear and know that rescue came--if it could come before it were eternally too late!

“On, on!” cried Allan. “Go on, Zangamon! Quick! Lead me on the trail!”

The Merucaan, now aided by Bremilu, who had recovered his wits, scouted ahead like a blood-hound on the spoor of a fugitive. One gripped his stone ax, the other a javelin.

Bent half double, scrutinizing in the dark the stony path which Allan followed behind them only by the aid of his flash, they proceeded cautiously up toward the brow of the cliff again.

But ere they reached the top they branched off onto another lateral path, still rougher and more tortuous, that led along the breast of the canyon.

“This way, master. It was here, most surely, the thing carried her.”

“What kind of marks? Do you see signs of claws?”

“Claws? What are claws?”

“Sharp, long nails, like our nails, only much larger and longer. Do you see any such marks?”

Zangamon paused a second to peer.

“I seem to see marks as of hands, master, but--”

“No matter! On! We must find her! Quick--lead the way!”

Five minutes of agonizing suspense for Allan brought him, still following the guides, without whom all would have been utterly lost, to a kind of thickly wooded dell that descended sharply to the edge of the canyon. Into this the trail led.

Even he himself could now here and there make out, by the aid of his light, a broken twig, trampled ferns and down-crushed grass. Once he distinguished a blood-stain on a limb--fresh blood, not coagulated. A groan burst from between his chattering teeth.

He turned his light on the grass beneath. All at once a blade moved.

“Oh, thank God!” he wheezed. “They passed here only a few minutes ago. They can’t be far now!”

Something drew his attention. He snatched at a sapling.

“Hair!”

Caught in a roughness of the bark a few short, stiff, wiry hairs, reddish-brown, were twisted.

“One of the Horde?“ he stammered.

A lightning-flash of memory carried him back to Madison Forest, more than a year ago. He seemed to see again the obeah, as that monster advanced upon the girl, clutching, supremely hideous.

“The hair! The same kind of hair! In the power of the Horde!” he gasped.

A mental picture of extermination flashed before his mind’s eye. Whether the girl lived or died, he knew now that his life work was to include a total slaughter of the Anthropoids. The destruction he had already wrought among them was but child’s play to what would be.