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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The curse of Yig, by Zealia Brown Reed

+

+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and

+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions

+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms

+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at

+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you

+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before

+using this eBook.

+

+Title: The curse of Yig

+

+Author: Zealia Brown Reed

+

+Release Date: June 4, 2023 [eBook #70912]

+

+Language: English

+

+Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed

+             Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

+

+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CURSE OF YIG ***

+

+

+

+

+

+                           The CURSE of YIG

+

+                         By ZEALIA BROWN REED

+

+           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

+                      Weird Tales November 1929.

+         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that

+         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

+

+

+In 1925 I went into Oklahoma looking for snake lore, and I came out

+with a fear of snakes that will last me the rest of my life. I admit

+it is foolish, since there are natural explanations for everything I

+saw and heard, but it masters me none the less. If the old story had

+been all there was to it, I would not have been so badly shaken. My

+work as an American Indian ethnologist has hardened me to all kinds of

+extravagant legendry, and I know that simple white people can beat the

+redskins at their own game when it comes to fanciful inventions. But

+I can't forget what I saw with my own eyes at the insane asylum in

+Guthrie.

+

+I called at that asylum because a few of the oldest settlers told me

+I would find something important there. Neither Indians nor white men

+would discuss the snake-god legends I had come to trace. The oil-boom

+newcomers, of course, knew nothing of such matters, and the red men and

+old pioneers were plainly frightened when I spoke of them. Not more

+than six or seven people mentioned the asylum, and those who did were

+careful to talk in whispers. But the whisperers said that Dr. McNeill

+could show me a very terrible relic and tell me all I wanted to know.

+He could explain why Yig, the half-human father of serpents, is a

+shunned and feared subject in central Oklahoma, and why old settlers

+shiver at the secret Indian orgies which make the autumn days and

+nights hideous with the ceaseless beating of tom-toms in lonely places.

+

+It was with the scent of a hound on the trail that I went to Guthrie,

+for I had spent many years collecting data on the evolution of

+serpent-worship among the Indians. I had always felt, from well defined

+undertones of legend and archeology, that great Quetzalcoatl--benign

+snake-god of the Mexicans--had had an older and darker prototype;

+and during recent months I had well-nigh proved it in a series of

+researches stretching from Guatemala to the Oklahoma plains. But

+everything was tantalizing and incomplete, for above the border the

+cult of the snake was hedged about by fear and furtiveness.

+

+Now it appeared that a new and copious source of data was about to

+dawn, and I sought the head of the asylum with an eagerness I did not

+try to cloak. Dr. McNeill was a small, clean-shaven man of somewhat

+advanced years, and I saw at once from his speech and manner that he

+was a scholar of no mean attainments in many branches outside his

+profession. Grave and doubtful when I first made known my errand, his

+face grew thoughtful as he carefully scanned my credentials and the

+letter of introduction which a kindly old ex-Indian agent had given me.

+

+"So you've been studying the Yig-legend, eh?" he reflected

+sententiously. "I know that many of our Oklahoma ethnologists have

+tried to connect it with Quetzalcoatl, but I don't think any of them

+have traced the intermediate steps so well. You've done remarkable work

+for a man as young as you seem to be, and you certainly deserve all the

+data we can give.

+

+"I don't suppose old Major Moore or any of the others told you what

+it is I have here. They don't like to talk about it, and neither do

+I. It is very tragic and very horrible, but that is all. I refuse to

+consider it anything super-natural. There's a story about it that I'll

+tell you after you see it--a devilish sad story, but one that I won't

+call magic. It merely shows the potency that belief has over some

+people. I'll admit there are times when I feel a shiver that's more

+than physical, but in daylight I set all that down to nerves. I'm not a

+young fellow any more, alas!

+

+"To come to the point, the thing I have is what you might call a

+victim of Yig's curse--a physically living victim. We don't let the

+bulk of the nurses see it, although most of them know it's here. There

+are just two steady old chaps whom I let feed it and clean out its

+quarters--used to be three, but good old Stevens passed on a few years

+ago. I suppose I'll have to break in a new group pretty soon; for the

+thing doesn't seem to age or change much, and we old boys can't last

+forever. Maybe the ethics of the near future will let us give it a

+merciful release, but it's hard to tell.

+

+"Did you see that single ground-glass basement window over in the east

+wing when you came up the drive? That's where it is. I'll take you

+there myself now. You needn't make any comment. Just look through the

+movable panel in the door and thank God the light isn't any stronger.

+Then I'll tell you the story--or as much as I've been able to piece

+together."

+

+We walked downstairs very quietly, and did not talk as we threaded the

+corridors of the seemingly deserted basement. Dr. McNeill unlocked

+a gray-painted steel door, but it was only a bulkhead leading to a

+further stretch of hallway. At length he paused before a door marked

+B 116, opened a small observation panel which he could use only by

+standing on tiptoe, and pounded several times upon the painted metal,

+as if to arouse the occupant, whatever it might be.

+

+A faint stench came from the aperture as the doctor unclosed it, and I

+fancied his pounding elicited a kind of low, hissing response. Finally

+he motioned me to replace him at the peep-hole, and I did so with a

+causeless and increasing tremor. The barred, ground-glass window, close

+to the earth outside, admitted only a feeble and uncertain pallor; and

+I had to look into the malodorous den for several seconds before I

+could see what was crawling and wriggling about on the straw-covered

+floor, emitting every now and then a weak and vacuous hiss. Then

+the shadowed outlines began to take shape, and I perceived that the

+squirming entity bore some remote resemblance to a human form laid flat

+on its belly. I clutched at the door-handle for support as I tried to

+keep from fainting.

+

+The moving object was almost of human size, and entirely devoid of

+clothing. It was absolutely hairless, and its tawny-looking back seemed

+subtly squamous in the dim, ghoulish light. Around the shoulders it was

+rather speckled and brownish, and the head was very curiously flat.

+As it looked up to hiss at me I saw that the beady little black eyes

+were damnably anthropoid, but I could not bear to study them long. They

+fastened themselves on me with a horrible persistence, so that I closed

+the panel gaspingly and left the creature to wriggle about unseen in

+its matted straw and spectral twilight. I must have reeled a bit, for

+I saw that the doctor was gently holding my arm as he guided me away.

+I was stuttering over and over again: "B-but for God's sake, _what is

+it_?"

+

+[Illustration: "B-but--for God's sake what is it?"]

+

+Dr. McNeill told me the story in his private office as I sprawled

+opposite him in an easy-chair. The gold and crimson of late afternoon

+changed to the violet of early dusk, but still I sat awed and

+motionless. I resented every ring of the telephone and every whir of

+the buzzer, and I could have cursed the nurses and interns whose knocks

+now and then summoned the doctor briefly to the outer office. Night

+came, and I was glad my host switched on all the lights. Scientist

+though I was, my zeal for research was half forgotten amid such

+breathless ecstasies of fright as a small boy might feel when whispered

+witch-tales go the rounds of the chimney-corner.

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+It seems that Yig, the snake-god of the central plains

+tribes--presumably the primal source of the more southerly Quetzalcoatl

+or Kukulcan--was an odd, half-anthropomorphic devil of highly arbitrary

+and capricious nature. He was not wholly evil, and was usually

+quite well-disposed toward those who gave proper respect to him and

+his children, the serpents; but in the autumn he became abnormally

+ravenous, and had to be driven away by means of suitable rites. That

+was why the tom-toms in the Pawnee, Wichita, and Caddo country pounded

+ceaselessly week in and week out in August, September, and October;

+and why the medicine-men made strange noises with rattles and whistles

+curiously like those of the Aztecs and Mayas.

+

+Yig's chief trait was a relentless devotion to his children--a devotion

+so great that the redskins almost feared to protect themselves from the

+venomous rattlesnakes which thronged the region. Frightful clandestine

+tales hinted of his vengeance upon mortals who flouted him or wreaked

+harm upon his wriggling progeny; his chosen method being to turn his

+victim, after suitable tortures, to a spotted snake.

+

+In the old days of the Indian Territory, the doctor went on, there was

+not quite so much secrecy about Yig. The plains tribes, less cautious

+than the desert nomads and Pueblos, talked quite freely of their

+legends and autumn ceremonies with the first Indian agents, and let

+considerable of the lore spread out through the neighboring regions

+of white settlement. The great fear came in the land-rush days of

+'eighty-nine, when some extraordinary incidents had been rumored, and

+the rumors sustained, by what seemed to be hideously tangible proofs.

+Indians said that the new white men did not know how to get on with

+Yig, and afterward the settlers came to take that theory at face value.

+Now no old-timer in middle Oklahoma, white or red, could be induced to

+breathe a word about the snake-god except in vague hints. Yet after

+all, the doctor added with almost needless emphasis, the only truly

+authenticated horror had been a thing of pitiful tragedy rather than of

+bewitchment. It was all very material and cruel--even that last phase

+which had caused so much dispute.

+

+Dr. McNeill paused and cleared his throat before getting down

+to his special story, and I felt a tingling sensation as when a

+theater curtain rises. The thing had begun when Walker Davis and

+his wife Audrey left Arkansas to settle in the newly opened public

+lands in the spring of 1889, and the end had come in the country

+of the Wichitas--north of the Washita River, in what is at present

+Caddo County. There is a small village called Binger there now, and

+the railway goes through; but otherwise the place is less changed

+than other parts of Oklahoma. It is still a section of farms and

+ranches--quite productive in these days--since the great oil-fields do

+not come very close.

+

+Walker and Audrey had come from Franklin County in the Ozarks with

+a canvas-topped wagon, two mules, an ancient and useless dog called

+"Wolf," and all their household goods. They were typical hill-folk,

+youngish and perhaps a little more ambitious than most, and looked

+forward to a life of better returns for their hard work than they had

+had in Arkansas. Both were lean, rawboned specimens; the man tall,

+sandy and gray-eyed, and the woman short and rather dark, with a black

+straightness of hair suggesting a slight Indian admixture.

+

+In general, there was very little of distinction about them, and but

+for one thing their annals might not have differed from those of

+thousands of other pioneers who flocked into the new country at that

+time. That thing was Walker's almost epileptic fear of snakes, which

+some laid to prenatal causes, and some said came from a dark prophecy

+about his end with which an old Indian squaw had tried to scare him

+when he was small. Whatever the cause, the effect was marked indeed;

+for despite his strong general courage the very mention of a snake

+would cause him to grow faint and pale, while the sight of even a tiny

+specimen would produce a shock sometimes bordering on a convulsion

+seizure.

+

+The Davises started out early in the year, in the hope of being on

+their new land for the spring plowing. Travel was slow; for the roads

+were bad in Arkansas, while in the Territory there were great stretches

+of rolling hills and red, sandy barrens without any roads whatever.

+As the terrain grew flatter, the change from their native mountains

+depressed them more, perhaps, than they realized; but they found the

+people at the Indian agencies very affable, while most of the settled

+Indians seemed friendly and civil. Now and then they encountered a

+fellow-pioneer, with whom crude pleasantries and expressions of amiable

+rivalry were generally exchanged.

+

+Owing to the season, there were not many snakes in evidence, so Walker

+did not suffer from his special temperamental weakness. In the earlier

+stages of the journey, too, there were no Indian snake-legends to

+trouble him; for the transplanted tribes from the southeast do not

+share the wilder beliefs of their western neighbors. As fate would have

+it, it was a white man at Okmulgee in the Creek country who gave the

+Davises the first hint of the Yig beliefs; a hint which had a curiously

+fascinating effect on Walker, and caused him to ask questions very

+freely after that.

+

+Before long Walker's fascination had developed into a bad case of

+fright. He took the most extraordinary precautions at each of the

+nightly camps, always clearing away whatever vegetation he found, and

+avoiding stony places whenever he could. Every clump of stunted bushes

+and every cleft in the great, slab-like rocks seemed to him now to hide

+malevolent serpents, while every human figure not obviously part of a

+settlement or emigrant train seemed to him a potential snake-god till

+nearness had proved the contrary. Fortunately no troublesome encounters

+came at this stage to shake his nerves still further.

+

+As they approached the Kickapoo country they found it harder and harder

+to avoid camping near rocks. Finally it was no longer possible, and

+poor Walker was reduced to the puerile expedient of droning some of the

+rustic anti-snake charms he had learned in his boyhood. Two or three

+times a snake was really glimpsed, and these sights did not help the

+sufferer in his efforts to preserve composure.

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+On the twenty-second evening of the journey a savage wind made it

+imperative, for the sake of the mules, to camp in as sheltered a spot

+as possible; and Audrey persuaded her husband to take advantage of

+a cliff which rose uncommonly high above the dried bed of a former

+tributary of the Canadian River. He did not like the rocky cast of the

+place, but allowed himself to be overruled this once; leading the

+animals sullenly toward the protecting slope, which the nature of the

+ground would not allow the wagon to approach.

+

+Audrey, examining the rocks near the wagon, meanwhile noticed a

+singular sniffing on the part of the feeble old dog. Seizing a rifle,

+she followed his lead, and presently thanked her stars that she had

+forestalled Walker in her discovery. For there, snugly nested in the

+gap between two boulders, was a sight it would have done him no good

+to see. Visible only as one convoluted expanse, but perhaps comprising

+as many as three or four separate units, was a mass of lazy wriggling

+which could not be other than a brood of new-born rattlesnakes.

+

+Anxious to save Walker from a trying shock, Audrey did not hesitate to

+act, but took the gun firmly by the barrel and brought the butt down

+again and again upon the writhing objects. Her own sense of loathing

+was great, but it did not amount to a real fear. Finally she saw that

+her task was done, and turned to cleanse the improvised bludgeon in the

+red sand and dry, dead grass near by. She must, she reflected, cover

+the nest up before Walker got back from tethering the mules. Old Wolf,

+tottering relic of mixed shepherd and coyote ancestry that he was, had

+vanished, and she feared he had gone to fetch his master.

+

+Footsteps at that instant proved her fear well founded. A second more,

+and Walker had seen everything. Audrey made a move to catch him if

+he should faint, but he did no more than sway. Then the look of pure

+fright on his bloodless face turned slowly to something like mingled

+awe and anger, and he began to upbraid his wife in trembling tones.

+

+"Gawd's sake, Aud, but why'd ye go for to do that? Hain't ye heerd all

+the things they've ben tellin' about this snake-devil Yig? Ye'd ought

+to a told me, and we'd a moved on. Don't ye know they's a devil-god

+what gets even if ye hurts his children? What for d'ye think the Injuns

+all dances and beats their drums in the fall about? This land's under a

+curse, I tell ye--nigh every soul we've a-talked to sence we come in's

+said the same. Yig rules here, an' he comes out every fall for to git

+his victims and turn 'em into snakes. Why, Aud, they won't none of them

+Injuns acrost the Canayjin kill a snake for love nor money!

+

+"Gawd knows what ye done to yourself, gal, a-stompin' out a hull brood

+o' Yig's chillen. He'll git ye, sure, sooner er later, unlessen I kin

+buy a charm offen some o' the Injun medicine-men. He'll git ye, Aud, as

+sure's they's a Gawd in heaven--he'll come outa the night and turn ye

+into a crawlin' spotted snake!"

+

+All the rest of the journey Walker kept up the frightened reproofs

+and prophecies. They crossed the Canadian near Newcastle, and soon

+afterward met with the first of the real plains Indians they had

+seen--a party of blanketed Wichitas, whose leader talked freely

+under the spell of the whisky offered him, and taught poor Walker a

+long-winded protective charm against Yig in exchange for a quart bottle

+of the same inspiring fluid. By the end of the week the chosen site in

+the Wichita country was reached, and the Davises made haste to trace

+their boundaries and perform the spring plowing before even beginning

+the construction of a cabin.

+

+The region was flat, drearily windy, and sparse of natural vegetation,

+but promised great fertility under cultivation. Occasional outcroppings

+of granite diversified a soil of decomposed red sandstone, and here

+and there a great flat rock would stretch along the surface of the

+ground like a man-made floor. There seemed to be very few snakes, or

+possible dens for them, so Audrey at last persuaded Walker to build the

+one-room cabin over a vast, smooth slab of exposed stone. With such

+a flooring and with a good-sized fireplace the wettest weather might

+be defied--though it soon became evident that dampness was no salient

+quality of the district. Logs were hauled in the wagon from the nearest

+belt of woods, many miles toward the Wichita Mountains.

+

+Walker built his wide-chimneyed cabin and crude barn with the aid of

+some of the other settlers, though the nearest one was over a mile

+away. In turn, he helped his helpers at similar house-raisings, so that

+many ties of friendship sprang up between the new neighbors. There was

+no town worthy the name nearer than El Reno, on the railway thirty

+miles or more to the northeast; and before many weeks had passed, the

+people of the section had become very cohesive despite the wideness

+of their scattering. The Indians, a few of whom had begun to settle

+down on ranches, were for the most part harmless, though somewhat

+quarrelsome when fired by the liquid stimulation which found its way to

+them despite all government bans.

+

+Of all the neighbors the Davises found Joe and Sally Compton, who

+likewise hailed from Arkansas, the most helpful and congenial. Sally is

+still alive, known now as Grandma Compton; and her son Clyde, then an

+infant in arms, has become one of the leading men of the state. Sally

+and Audrey used to visit each other often, for their cabins were only

+two miles apart; and in the long spring and summer afternoons they

+exchanged many a tale of old Arkansas and many a rumor about the new

+country.

+

+Sally was very sympathetic about Walker's weakness regarding snakes,

+but perhaps did more to aggravate than cure the parallel nervousness

+which Audrey was acquiring through his incessant praying and

+prophesying about the curse of Yig. She was uncommonly full of gruesome

+snake stories, and produced a direfully strong impression with her

+acknowledged masterpiece--the tale of a man in Scott County who had

+been bitten by a whole horde of rattlers at once, and had swelled so

+monstrously from poison that his body had finally burst with a pop.

+Needless to say, Audrey did not repeat this anecdote to her husband,

+and she implored the Comptons to beware of starting it on the rounds

+of the countryside. It is to Joe's and Sally's credit that they heeded

+this plea with the utmost fidelity.

+

+Walker did his corn-planting early, and in midsummer improved his time

+by harvesting a fair crop of the native grass of the region. With the

+help of Joe Compton he dug a well which gave a moderate supply of very

+good water, though he planned to sink an artesian later on. He did not

+run into many serious snake scares, and made his land as inhospitable

+as possible for wriggling visitors. Every now and then he rode over to

+the cluster of thatched conical huts which formed the main village of

+the Wichitas, and talked long with the old men and shamans about the

+snake-god and how to nullify his wrath. Charms were always ready in

+exchange for whisky, but much of the information he got was far from

+reassuring.

+

+Yig was a great god. He was bad medicine. He did not forget things.

+In the autumn his children were hungry and wild, and Yig was hungry

+and wild, too. All the tribes made medicine against Yig when the corn

+harvest came. They gave him some corn, and danced in proper regalia to

+the sound of whistle, rattle, and drum. They kept the drums pounding to

+drive Yig away, and called down the aid of Tiráwa, whose children men

+are, even as the snakes are Yig's children. It was bad that the squaw

+of Davis killed the children of Yig. Let Davis say the charms many

+times when the corn harvest comes. Yig is Yig. Yig is a great god.

+

+By the time the corn harvest did come, Walker had succeeded in getting

+his wife into a deplorably jumpy state. His prayers and borrowed

+incantations came to be a nuisance; and when the autumn rites of the

+Indians began, there was always a distant wind-borne pounding of

+tom-toms to lend an added background of the sinister. It was maddening

+to have the muffled clatter always stealing over the wide red plains.

+Why would it never stop? Day and night, week on week, it was always

+going in exhaustless relays, as persistently as the red dusty winds

+that carried it. Audrey loathed it more than her husband did, for he

+saw in it a compensating element of protection. It was with this sense

+of a mighty, intangible bulwark against evil that he got in his corn

+crop and prepared cabin and stable for the coming winter.

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+The autumn was abnormally warm, and except for their primitive cookery

+the Davises found scant use for the stone fireplace Walker had built

+with such care. Something in the unnaturalness of the hot dust-clouds

+preyed on the nerves of all the settlers, but most of all on Audrey's

+and Walker's. The notions of a hovering snake-curse and the weird,

+endless rhythm of the distant Indian drums formed a bad combination

+which any added element of the bizarre went far to render utterly

+unendurable.

+

+Notwithstanding this strain, several festive gatherings were held at

+one or another of the cabins after the crops were reaped: keeping

+naively alive in modernity those curious rites of the harvest-home

+which are as old as human agriculture itself. Lafayette Smith, who

+came from southern Missouri and had a cabin about three miles east

+of Walker's, was a very passable fiddler; and his tunes did much to

+make the celebrants forget the monotonous beating of the distant

+tom-toms. Then Hallowe'en drew near, and the settlers planned another

+frolic--this time, had they but known it, of a lineage older than even

+agriculture: the dread Witch-Sabbath of the primal pre-Aryans, kept

+alive through ages in the midnight blackness of secret woods, and

+still hinting at vague terrors under its latter-day mask of comedy and

+lightness. Hallowe'en was to fall on a Thursday, and the neighbors

+agreed to gather for their first revel at the Davis cabin.

+

+It was on that thirty-first of October that the warm spell broke.

+The morning was gray and leaden, and by noon the incessant winds had

+changed from searingness to rawness. People shivered all the more

+because they were not prepared for the chill, and Walker Davis's old

+dog Wolf dragged himself wearily indoors to a place beside the hearth.

+But the distant drums still thumped on, nor were the white citizenry

+less inclined to pursue their chosen rites. As early as four in the

+afternoon the wagons began to arrive at Walker's cabin; and in the

+evening, after a memorable barbecue, Lafayette Smith's fiddle inspired

+a very fair-sized company to great feats of saltatory grotesqueness in

+the one good-sized but crowded room. The younger folk indulged in the

+amiable inanities proper to the season, and now and then old Wolf would

+howl with doleful and spine-tickling ominousness at some especially

+spectral strain from Lafayette's squeaky violin--a device he had never

+heard before. Mostly, though, this battered veteran slept through

+the merriment; for he was past the age of active interests and lived

+largely in his dreams. Tom and Jennie Rigby had brought their collie

+Zeke along, but the canines did not fraternize. Zeke seemed strangely

+uneasy over something, and nosed around curiously all the evening.

+

+Audrey and Walker made a fine couple on the floor, and Grandma Compton

+still likes to recall her impression of their dancing that night.

+Their worries seemed forgotten for the nonce, and Walker was shaved

+and trimmed into a surprizing degree of spruceness. By ten o'clock

+all hands were healthily tired, and the guests began to depart family

+by family with many handshakings and bluff assurances of what a fine

+time everybody had had. Tom and Jennie thought Zeke's eery howls as he

+followed them to their wagon were marks of regret at having to go home;

+though Audrey said it must be the far-away tom-toms which annoyed him,

+for the distant thumping was surely ghastly enough after the merriment

+within.

+

+The night was bitterly cold, and for the first time Walker put a great

+log in the fireplace and banked it with ashes to keep it smoldering

+till morning. Old Wolf dragged himself within the ruddy glow and

+lapsed into his customary coma. Audrey and Walker, too tired to think

+of charms or curses, tumbled into the rough pine bed and were asleep

+before the cheap alarm-clock on the mantle had ticked out three

+minutes. And from far away, the rhythmic pounding of those hellish

+tom-toms still pulsed on the chill night-wind.

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+Dr. McNeill paused here and removed his glasses, as if a blurring of

+the objective world might make the reminiscent vision clearer. "You'll

+soon appreciate," he said, "that I had a great deal of difficulty in

+piecing out all that happened after the guests left. There were times,

+though--at first--when I was able to make a try at it." After a moment

+of silence he went on with the tale.

+

+Audrey had terrible dreams of Yig, who appeared to her in the guise of

+Satan as depicted in cheap engravings she had seen. It was, indeed,

+from an absolute ecstasy of nightmare that she started suddenly awake

+to find Walker already conscious and sitting up in bed. He seemed to be

+listening intently to something, and silenced her with a whisper when

+she began to ask what had roused him.

+

+"Hark, Aud!" he breathed. "Don't ye hear somethin' a-singin' and

+buzzin' and rustlin'? D'ye reckon it's the fall crickets?"

+

+Certainly, there was distinctly audible within the cabin such a sound

+as he had described. Audrey tried to analyze it, and was impressed with

+some element at once horrible and familiar, which hovered just outside

+the rim of her memory. And beyond it all, waking a hideous thought, the

+monotonous beating of the distant tom-toms came incessantly across the

+black plains on which a cloudy half-moon had set.

+

+"Walker--s'pose it's--the--the--curse o' Yig?"

+

+She could feel him tremble.

+

+"No, gal, I don't reckon he comes thataway. He's shapen like a man,

+except ye look at him clost. That's what Chief Gray Eagle says. This

+here's some varmints come in outen the cold--not crickets, I calc'late,

+but summat like 'em. I'd orter git up and' stomp 'em out afore they

+make much headway or git at the cupboard."

+

+He rose, felt for the lantern that hung within easy reach, and rattled

+the tin match-box nailed to the wall beside it. Audrey sat up in bed

+and watched the flare of the match grow into the steady glow of the

+lantern. Then, as their eyes began to take in the whole of the room,

+the crude rafters shook with the frenzy of their simultaneous shriek.

+For the flat, rocky floor, revealed in the new-born illumination, was

+one seething brown-speckled mass of wriggling rattlesnakes, slithering

+toward the fire, and even now turning their loathsome heads to menace

+the fright-blasted lantern-bearer.

+

+It was only for an instant that Audrey saw the things. The reptiles

+were of every size, of uncountable numbers, and apparently of several

+varieties; and even as she looked, two or three of them reared their

+heads as if to strike at Walker. She did not faint--it was Walker's

+crash to the floor that extinguished the lantern and plunged her into

+blackness. He had not screamed a second time--fright had paralyzed

+him, and he fell as if shot by a silent arrow from no mortal's bow. To

+Audrey the entire world seemed to whirl about fantastically, mingling

+with the nightmare from which she had started.

+

+Voluntary motion of any sort was impossible, for will and the sense of

+reality had left her. She fell back inertly on her pillow, hoping that

+she would wake soon. No actual sense of what had happened penetrated

+her mind for some time. Then, little by little, the suspicion that she

+was really awake began to dawn on her; and she was convulsed with a

+mounting blend of panic and grief which made her long to shriek out

+despite the inhibiting spell which kept her mute.

+

+Walker was gone, and she had not been able to help him. He had died of

+snakes, just as the old witch-woman had predicted when he was a little

+boy. Poor Wolf had not been able to help, either--probably he had not

+even awaked from his senile stupor. And now the crawling things must be

+coming for her, writhing closer and closer every moment in the dark,

+perhaps even now twining slipperily about the bed-posts and oozing up

+over the coarse woolen blankets. Unconsciously she crept under the

+clothes and trembled.

+

+It must be the curse of Yig. He had sent his monstrous children

+on All-Hallows' Night, and they had taken Walker first. Why was

+that--wasn't he innocent enough? Why not come straight for her--hadn't

+she killed those little rattlers alone? Then she thought of the curse's

+form as told by the Indians. She wouldn't be killed--just turned to a

+spotted snake. Ugh! So she would be like those things she had glimpsed

+on the floor--those things which Yig had sent to get her and enroll her

+among their number! She tried to mumble a charm that Walker had taught

+her, but found she could not utter a single sound.

+

+The noisy ticking of the alarm-clock sounded above the maddening beat

+of the distant tom-toms. The snakes were taking a long time--did they

+mean to delay on purpose to play on her nerves? Every now and then she

+thought she felt a stealthy, insidious pressure on the bedclothes, but

+each time it turned out to be only the automatic twitchings of her

+overwrought nerves. The clock ticked on in the dark, and a change came

+slowly over her thoughts.

+

+Those snakes _couldn't_ have taken so long! They couldn't be Yig's

+messengers after all, but just natural rattlers that were nested below

+the rock and had been drawn there by the fire. They weren't coming

+for her, perhaps--perhaps they had sated themselves on poor Walker.

+Where were they now? Gone? Coiled by the fire? Still crawling over the

+prone corpse of their victim? The clock ticked, and the distant drums

+throbbed on.

+

+At the thought of her husband's body lying there in the pitch blackness

+a thrill of purely physical horror passed over Audrey. That story of

+Sally Compton's about the man back in Scott County! He, too, had been

+bitten by a whole bunch of rattlesnakes, and what had happened to him?

+The poison had rotted the flesh and swelled the whole corpse, and in

+the end the bloated thing had _burst_ horribly--burst horribly with a

+detestable _popping_ noise. Was that what was happening to Walker down

+there on the rock floor? Instinctively she felt that she had begun to

+_listen_ for something too terrible even to name to herself.

+

+The clock ticked on, keeping a kind of mocking, sardonic time with

+the far-off drumming that the night-wind brought. She wished it were

+a striking clock, so that she could know how long this eldritch vigil

+must last. She cursed the toughness of fiber that kept her from

+fainting, and wondered what sort of relief the dawn could bring, after

+all. Probably neighbors would pass--no doubt somebody would call--would

+they find her still sane? Was she still sane now?

+

+Morbidly listening, Audrey all at once became aware of something

+which she had to verify with every effort of her will before she

+could believe it; and which, once verified, she did not know whether

+to welcome or dread. _The distant beating of the Indian tom-toms had

+ceased._ They had always maddened her--but had not Walker regarded them

+as a bulwark against nameless evil from outside the universe? What were

+some of those things he had repeated to her in whispers after talking

+with Gray Eagle and the Wichita medicine-men?

+

+She did not relish this new and sudden silence, after all! There was

+something sinister about it. The loud-ticking clock seemed abnormal in

+its new loneliness. Capable at last of conscious motion, she shook the

+covers from her face and looked into the darkness toward the window. It

+must have cleared after the moon set, for she saw the square aperture

+distinctly against the background of stars.

+

+Then without warning came that shocking, unutterable sound--ugh!--that

+dull, putrid _pop_ of cleft skin and escaping poison in the dark.

+God!--Sally's story--that obscene stench, and this gnawing, clawing

+silence! It was too much. The bonds of muteness snapped, and the black

+night waxed reverberant with Audrey's screams of stark unbridled frenzy.

+

+Consciousness did not pass away with the shock. How merciful if only

+it had! Amidst the echoes of her shrieking Audrey still saw the

+star-sprinkled square of window ahead, and heard the doom-boding

+ticking of that frightful clock. Did she hear another sound? Was

+that square window still a perfect square? She was in no condition

+to weigh the evidence of her senses or distinguish between fact and

+hallucination.

+

+No--that window was _not_ a perfect square. _Something had encroached

+on the lower edge._ Nor was the ticking of the clock the only sound in

+the room. There was, beyond dispute, a heavy breathing neither her own

+nor poor Wolf's. Wolf slept very silently, and his wakeful wheezing was

+unmistakable. Then Audrey saw against the stars the black, demoniac

+silhouette of something anthropoid--the undulant bulk of a gigantic

+head and shoulders fumbling slowly toward her.

+

+"Y'aaaah! Y'aaaah! Go away! Go away! Go away, snake-devil! Go 'way,

+Yig! I didn't want to kill 'em--I was feared he'd be scairt of 'em.

+Don't, Yig, don't! I didn't go for to hurt yore chillen--don't come

+nigh me--don't change me into no spotted snake!"

+

+But the half-formless head and shoulders only lurched onward toward the

+bed, very silently.

+

+Everything snapped at once inside Audrey's head, and in a second she

+had turned from a cowering child to a raging madwoman. She knew where

+the ax was--hung against the wall on those pegs near the lantern. It

+was within easy reach, and she could find it in the dark. Before she

+was conscious of anything further it was in her hands, and she was

+creeping toward the foot of the bed--toward the monstrous head and

+shoulders that every moment groped their way nearer. Had there been any

+light, the look on her face would not have been pleasant to see.

+

+"Take _that_, you! And _that_, and _that_, and _that_!"

+

+She was laughing shrilly now, and her cackles mounted higher as she saw

+that the starlight beyond the window was yielding to the dim prophetic

+pallor of coming dawn.

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+Dr. McNeill wiped the perspiration from his forehead and put on his

+glasses again. I waited for him to resume, and as he kept silent I

+spoke softly.

+

+"She lived? She was found? Was it ever explained?"

+

+The doctor cleared his throat.

+

+"Yes--she lived, in a way. And it was explained. I told you there was

+no bewitchment--only cruel, pitiful, material horror."

+

+It was Sally Compton who had made the discovery. She had ridden over to

+the Davis cabin the next afternoon to talk over the party with Audrey,

+and had seen no smoke from the chimney. That was queer. It had turned

+very warm again, yet Audrey was usually cooking something at that hour.

+The mules were making hungry-sounding noises in the barn, and there was

+no sign of old Wolf sunning himself in the accustomed spot by the door.

+

+Altogether, Sally did not like the look of the place, so was very timid

+and hesitant as she dismounted and knocked. She got no answer, but

+waited some time before trying the crude door of split logs. The lock,

+it appeared, was unfastened; and she slowly pushed her way in. Then,

+perceiving what was there, she reeled back, gasped, and clung to the

+jamb to preserve her balance.

+

+A terrible odor had welled out as she opened the door, but that was

+not what had stunned her. It was what she had seen. For within that

+shadowy cabin monstrous things had happened and three shocking objects

+remained on the floor to awe and baffle the beholder.

+

+Near the burned-out fireplace was the great dog--purple decay on the

+skin left bare by mange and old age, and the whole carcass burst by the

+puffing effect of rattlesnake poison. It must have been bitten by a

+veritable legion of the reptiles.

+

+To the right of the door was the ax-hacked remnant of what had

+been a man--clad in a nightshirt, and with the shattered bulk of a

+lantern clenched in one hand. _He was totally free from any sign of

+snake-bite._ Near him lay the ensanguined ax, carelessly discarded.

+

+And wriggling flat on the floor was a loathsome, vacant-eyed thing that

+had been a woman, but was now only a mute, mad caricature. All that

+this thing could do was to hiss, and hiss, and hiss.

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+Both the doctor and I were brushing cold drops from our foreheads by

+this time. He poured something from a flask on his desk, took a nip,

+and handed another glass to me. I could only suggest tremulously and

+stupidly:

+

+"So Walker had only fainted that first time--the screams roused him,

+and the ax did the rest?"

+

+"Yes." Dr. McNeill's voice was low. "But he met his death from snakes

+just the same. It was his fear working in two ways--it made him faint,

+and it made him fill his wife with the wild stories that caused her to

+strike out when she thought she saw the snake-devil."

+

+I thought for a moment.

+

+"And Audrey--wasn't it queer how the curse of Yig seemed to work itself

+out on her? I suppose the impression of hissing snakes had been fairly

+ground into her."

+

+"Yes. There were lucid spells at first, but they got to be fewer and

+fewer. Her hair came white at the roots as it grew, and later began to

+fall out. The skin grew blotchy, and when she died----"

+

+I interrupted with a start.

+

+"_Died?_ Then what was that--that thing downstairs?"

+

+McNeill spoke gravely.

+

+"_That_ is what was born to her three-quarters of a year afterward.

+There were three more of them--two were even worse--but this is the

+only, one that lived."

+

+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CURSE OF YIG ***

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+<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The curse of Yig, by Zealia Brown Reed</p>

+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>

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+<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The curse of Yig</p>

+<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Zealia Brown Reed</p>

+<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: June 4, 2023 [eBook #70912]</p>

+<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p>

+  <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net</p>

+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CURSE OF YIG ***</div>

+

+<div class="titlepage">

+

+<h1>The CURSE of YIG</h1>

+

+<p class="ph1">By ZEALIA BROWN REED</p>

+

+<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br>

+Weird Tales November 1929.<br>

+Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br>

+the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p>

+

+</div>

+

+<hr class="chap">

+

+<p>In 1925 I went into Oklahoma looking for snake lore, and I came out

+with a fear of snakes that will last me the rest of my life. I admit

+it is foolish, since there are natural explanations for everything I

+saw and heard, but it masters me none the less. If the old story had

+been all there was to it, I would not have been so badly shaken. My

+work as an American Indian ethnologist has hardened me to all kinds of

+extravagant legendry, and I know that simple white people can beat the

+redskins at their own game when it comes to fanciful inventions. But

+I can't forget what I saw with my own eyes at the insane asylum in

+Guthrie.</p>

+

+<p>I called at that asylum because a few of the oldest settlers told me

+I would find something important there. Neither Indians nor white men

+would discuss the snake-god legends I had come to trace. The oil-boom

+newcomers, of course, knew nothing of such matters, and the red men and

+old pioneers were plainly frightened when I spoke of them. Not more

+than six or seven people mentioned the asylum, and those who did were

+careful to talk in whispers. But the whisperers said that Dr. McNeill

+could show me a very terrible relic and tell me all I wanted to know.

+He could explain why Yig, the half-human father of serpents, is a

+shunned and feared subject in central Oklahoma, and why old settlers

+shiver at the secret Indian orgies which make the autumn days and

+nights hideous with the ceaseless beating of tom-toms in lonely places.</p>

+

+<p>It was with the scent of a hound on the trail that I went to Guthrie,

+for I had spent many years collecting data on the evolution of

+serpent-worship among the Indians. I had always felt, from well defined

+undertones of legend and archeology, that great Quetzalcoatl—benign

+snake-god of the Mexicans—had had an older and darker prototype;

+and during recent months I had well-nigh proved it in a series of

+researches stretching from Guatemala to the Oklahoma plains. But

+everything was tantalizing and incomplete, for above the border the

+cult of the snake was hedged about by fear and furtiveness.</p>

+

+<p>Now it appeared that a new and copious source of data was about to

+dawn, and I sought the head of the asylum with an eagerness I did not

+try to cloak. Dr. McNeill was a small, clean-shaven man of somewhat

+advanced years, and I saw at once from his speech and manner that he

+was a scholar of no mean attainments in many branches outside his

+profession. Grave and doubtful when I first made known my errand, his

+face grew thoughtful as he carefully scanned my credentials and the

+letter of introduction which a kindly old ex-Indian agent had given me.</p>

+

+<p>"So you've been studying the Yig-legend, eh?" he reflected

+sententiously. "I know that many of our Oklahoma ethnologists have

+tried to connect it with Quetzalcoatl, but I don't think any of them

+have traced the intermediate steps so well. You've done remarkable work

+for a man as young as you seem to be, and you certainly deserve all the

+data we can give.</p>

+

+<p>"I don't suppose old Major Moore or any of the others told you what

+it is I have here. They don't like to talk about it, and neither do

+I. It is very tragic and very horrible, but that is all. I refuse to

+consider it anything super-natural. There's a story about it that I'll

+tell you after you see it—a devilish sad story, but one that I won't

+call magic. It merely shows the potency that belief has over some

+people. I'll admit there are times when I feel a shiver that's more

+than physical, but in daylight I set all that down to nerves. I'm not a

+young fellow any more, alas!</p>

+

+<p>"To come to the point, the thing I have is what you might call a

+victim of Yig's curse—a physically living victim. We don't let the

+bulk of the nurses see it, although most of them know it's here. There

+are just two steady old chaps whom I let feed it and clean out its

+quarters—used to be three, but good old Stevens passed on a few years

+ago. I suppose I'll have to break in a new group pretty soon; for the

+thing doesn't seem to age or change much, and we old boys can't last

+forever. Maybe the ethics of the near future will let us give it a

+merciful release, but it's hard to tell.</p>

+

+<p>"Did you see that single ground-glass basement window over in the east

+wing when you came up the drive? That's where it is. I'll take you

+there myself now. You needn't make any comment. Just look through the

+movable panel in the door and thank God the light isn't any stronger.

+Then I'll tell you the story—or as much as I've been able to piece

+together."</p>

+

+<p>We walked downstairs very quietly, and did not talk as we threaded the

+corridors of the seemingly deserted basement. Dr. McNeill unlocked

+a gray-painted steel door, but it was only a bulkhead leading to a

+further stretch of hallway. At length he paused before a door marked

+B 116, opened a small observation panel which he could use only by

+standing on tiptoe, and pounded several times upon the painted metal,

+as if to arouse the occupant, whatever it might be.</p>

+

+<p>A faint stench came from the aperture as the doctor unclosed it, and I

+fancied his pounding elicited a kind of low, hissing response. Finally

+he motioned me to replace him at the peep-hole, and I did so with a

+causeless and increasing tremor. The barred, ground-glass window, close

+to the earth outside, admitted only a feeble and uncertain pallor; and

+I had to look into the malodorous den for several seconds before I

+could see what was crawling and wriggling about on the straw-covered

+floor, emitting every now and then a weak and vacuous hiss. Then

+the shadowed outlines began to take shape, and I perceived that the

+squirming entity bore some remote resemblance to a human form laid flat

+on its belly. I clutched at the door-handle for support as I tried to

+keep from fainting.</p>

+

+<p>The moving object was almost of human size, and entirely devoid of

+clothing. It was absolutely hairless, and its tawny-looking back seemed

+subtly squamous in the dim, ghoulish light. Around the shoulders it was

+rather speckled and brownish, and the head was very curiously flat.

+As it looked up to hiss at me I saw that the beady little black eyes

+were damnably anthropoid, but I could not bear to study them long. They

+fastened themselves on me with a horrible persistence, so that I closed

+the panel gaspingly and left the creature to wriggle about unseen in

+its matted straw and spectral twilight. I must have reeled a bit, for

+I saw that the doctor was gently holding my arm as he guided me away.

+I was stuttering over and over again: "B-but for God's sake, <i>what is

+it</i>?"</p>

+

+<hr class="chap">

+

+<div class="figcenter">

+  <img src="images/illus.jpg" alt="">

+  <div class="caption">

+    <p>"B-but—for God's sake what is it?"</p>

+  </div>

+</div>

+

+<p>Dr. McNeill told me the story in his private office as I sprawled

+opposite him in an easy-chair. The gold and crimson of late afternoon

+changed to the violet of early dusk, but still I sat awed and

+motionless. I resented every ring of the telephone and every whir of

+the buzzer, and I could have cursed the nurses and interns whose knocks

+now and then summoned the doctor briefly to the outer office. Night

+came, and I was glad my host switched on all the lights. Scientist

+though I was, my zeal for research was half forgotten amid such

+breathless ecstasies of fright as a small boy might feel when whispered

+witch-tales go the rounds of the chimney-corner.</p>

+

+<hr class="tb">

+

+<p>It seems that Yig, the snake-god of the central plains

+tribes—presumably the primal source of the more southerly Quetzalcoatl

+or Kukulcan—was an odd, half-anthropomorphic devil of highly arbitrary

+and capricious nature. He was not wholly evil, and was usually

+quite well-disposed toward those who gave proper respect to him and

+his children, the serpents; but in the autumn he became abnormally

+ravenous, and had to be driven away by means of suitable rites. That

+was why the tom-toms in the Pawnee, Wichita, and Caddo country pounded

+ceaselessly week in and week out in August, September, and October;

+and why the medicine-men made strange noises with rattles and whistles

+curiously like those of the Aztecs and Mayas.</p>

+

+<p>Yig's chief trait was a relentless devotion to his children—a devotion

+so great that the redskins almost feared to protect themselves from the

+venomous rattlesnakes which thronged the region. Frightful clandestine

+tales hinted of his vengeance upon mortals who flouted him or wreaked

+harm upon his wriggling progeny; his chosen method being to turn his

+victim, after suitable tortures, to a spotted snake.</p>

+

+<p>In the old days of the Indian Territory, the doctor went on, there was

+not quite so much secrecy about Yig. The plains tribes, less cautious

+than the desert nomads and Pueblos, talked quite freely of their

+legends and autumn ceremonies with the first Indian agents, and let

+considerable of the lore spread out through the neighboring regions

+of white settlement. The great fear came in the land-rush days of

+'eighty-nine, when some extraordinary incidents had been rumored, and

+the rumors sustained, by what seemed to be hideously tangible proofs.

+Indians said that the new white men did not know how to get on with

+Yig, and afterward the settlers came to take that theory at face value.

+Now no old-timer in middle Oklahoma, white or red, could be induced to

+breathe a word about the snake-god except in vague hints. Yet after

+all, the doctor added with almost needless emphasis, the only truly

+authenticated horror had been a thing of pitiful tragedy rather than of

+bewitchment. It was all very material and cruel—even that last phase

+which had caused so much dispute.</p>

+

+<p>Dr. McNeill paused and cleared his throat before getting down

+to his special story, and I felt a tingling sensation as when a

+theater curtain rises. The thing had begun when Walker Davis and

+his wife Audrey left Arkansas to settle in the newly opened public

+lands in the spring of 1889, and the end had come in the country

+of the Wichitas—north of the Washita River, in what is at present

+Caddo County. There is a small village called Binger there now, and

+the railway goes through; but otherwise the place is less changed

+than other parts of Oklahoma. It is still a section of farms and

+ranches—quite productive in these days—since the great oil-fields do

+not come very close.</p>

+

+<p>Walker and Audrey had come from Franklin County in the Ozarks with

+a canvas-topped wagon, two mules, an ancient and useless dog called

+"Wolf," and all their household goods. They were typical hill-folk,

+youngish and perhaps a little more ambitious than most, and looked

+forward to a life of better returns for their hard work than they had

+had in Arkansas. Both were lean, rawboned specimens; the man tall,

+sandy and gray-eyed, and the woman short and rather dark, with a black

+straightness of hair suggesting a slight Indian admixture.</p>

+

+<p>In general, there was very little of distinction about them, and but

+for one thing their annals might not have differed from those of

+thousands of other pioneers who flocked into the new country at that

+time. That thing was Walker's almost epileptic fear of snakes, which

+some laid to prenatal causes, and some said came from a dark prophecy

+about his end with which an old Indian squaw had tried to scare him

+when he was small. Whatever the cause, the effect was marked indeed;

+for despite his strong general courage the very mention of a snake

+would cause him to grow faint and pale, while the sight of even a tiny

+specimen would produce a shock sometimes bordering on a convulsion

+seizure.</p>

+

+<p>The Davises started out early in the year, in the hope of being on

+their new land for the spring plowing. Travel was slow; for the roads

+were bad in Arkansas, while in the Territory there were great stretches

+of rolling hills and red, sandy barrens without any roads whatever.

+As the terrain grew flatter, the change from their native mountains

+depressed them more, perhaps, than they realized; but they found the

+people at the Indian agencies very affable, while most of the settled

+Indians seemed friendly and civil. Now and then they encountered a

+fellow-pioneer, with whom crude pleasantries and expressions of amiable

+rivalry were generally exchanged.</p>

+

+<p>Owing to the season, there were not many snakes in evidence, so Walker

+did not suffer from his special temperamental weakness. In the earlier

+stages of the journey, too, there were no Indian snake-legends to

+trouble him; for the transplanted tribes from the southeast do not

+share the wilder beliefs of their western neighbors. As fate would have

+it, it was a white man at Okmulgee in the Creek country who gave the

+Davises the first hint of the Yig beliefs; a hint which had a curiously

+fascinating effect on Walker, and caused him to ask questions very

+freely after that.</p>

+

+<p>Before long Walker's fascination had developed into a bad case of

+fright. He took the most extraordinary precautions at each of the

+nightly camps, always clearing away whatever vegetation he found, and

+avoiding stony places whenever he could. Every clump of stunted bushes

+and every cleft in the great, slab-like rocks seemed to him now to hide

+malevolent serpents, while every human figure not obviously part of a

+settlement or emigrant train seemed to him a potential snake-god till

+nearness had proved the contrary. Fortunately no troublesome encounters

+came at this stage to shake his nerves still further.</p>

+

+<p>As they approached the Kickapoo country they found it harder and harder

+to avoid camping near rocks. Finally it was no longer possible, and

+poor Walker was reduced to the puerile expedient of droning some of the

+rustic anti-snake charms he had learned in his boyhood. Two or three

+times a snake was really glimpsed, and these sights did not help the

+sufferer in his efforts to preserve composure.</p>

+

+<hr class="tb">

+

+<p>On the twenty-second evening of the journey a savage wind made it

+imperative, for the sake of the mules, to camp in as sheltered a spot

+as possible; and Audrey persuaded her husband to take advantage of

+a cliff which rose uncommonly high above the dried bed of a former

+tributary of the Canadian River. He did not like the rocky cast of the

+place, but allowed himself to be overruled this once; leading the

+animals sullenly toward the protecting slope, which the nature of the

+ground would not allow the wagon to approach.</p>

+

+<p>Audrey, examining the rocks near the wagon, meanwhile noticed a

+singular sniffing on the part of the feeble old dog. Seizing a rifle,

+she followed his lead, and presently thanked her stars that she had

+forestalled Walker in her discovery. For there, snugly nested in the

+gap between two boulders, was a sight it would have done him no good

+to see. Visible only as one convoluted expanse, but perhaps comprising

+as many as three or four separate units, was a mass of lazy wriggling

+which could not be other than a brood of new-born rattlesnakes.</p>

+

+<p>Anxious to save Walker from a trying shock, Audrey did not hesitate to

+act, but took the gun firmly by the barrel and brought the butt down

+again and again upon the writhing objects. Her own sense of loathing

+was great, but it did not amount to a real fear. Finally she saw that

+her task was done, and turned to cleanse the improvised bludgeon in the

+red sand and dry, dead grass near by. She must, she reflected, cover

+the nest up before Walker got back from tethering the mules. Old Wolf,

+tottering relic of mixed shepherd and coyote ancestry that he was, had

+vanished, and she feared he had gone to fetch his master.</p>

+

+<p>Footsteps at that instant proved her fear well founded. A second more,

+and Walker had seen everything. Audrey made a move to catch him if

+he should faint, but he did no more than sway. Then the look of pure

+fright on his bloodless face turned slowly to something like mingled

+awe and anger, and he began to upbraid his wife in trembling tones.</p>

+

+<p>"Gawd's sake, Aud, but why'd ye go for to do that? Hain't ye heerd all

+the things they've ben tellin' about this snake-devil Yig? Ye'd ought

+to a told me, and we'd a moved on. Don't ye know they's a devil-god

+what gets even if ye hurts his children? What for d'ye think the Injuns

+all dances and beats their drums in the fall about? This land's under a

+curse, I tell ye—nigh every soul we've a-talked to sence we come in's

+said the same. Yig rules here, an' he comes out every fall for to git

+his victims and turn 'em into snakes. Why, Aud, they won't none of them

+Injuns acrost the Canayjin kill a snake for love nor money!</p>

+

+<p>"Gawd knows what ye done to yourself, gal, a-stompin' out a hull brood

+o' Yig's chillen. He'll git ye, sure, sooner er later, unlessen I kin

+buy a charm offen some o' the Injun medicine-men. He'll git ye, Aud, as

+sure's they's a Gawd in heaven—he'll come outa the night and turn ye

+into a crawlin' spotted snake!"</p>

+

+<p>All the rest of the journey Walker kept up the frightened reproofs

+and prophecies. They crossed the Canadian near Newcastle, and soon

+afterward met with the first of the real plains Indians they had

+seen—a party of blanketed Wichitas, whose leader talked freely

+under the spell of the whisky offered him, and taught poor Walker a

+long-winded protective charm against Yig in exchange for a quart bottle

+of the same inspiring fluid. By the end of the week the chosen site in

+the Wichita country was reached, and the Davises made haste to trace

+their boundaries and perform the spring plowing before even beginning

+the construction of a cabin.</p>

+

+<p>The region was flat, drearily windy, and sparse of natural vegetation,

+but promised great fertility under cultivation. Occasional outcroppings

+of granite diversified a soil of decomposed red sandstone, and here

+and there a great flat rock would stretch along the surface of the

+ground like a man-made floor. There seemed to be very few snakes, or

+possible dens for them, so Audrey at last persuaded Walker to build the

+one-room cabin over a vast, smooth slab of exposed stone. With such

+a flooring and with a good-sized fireplace the wettest weather might

+be defied—though it soon became evident that dampness was no salient

+quality of the district. Logs were hauled in the wagon from the nearest

+belt of woods, many miles toward the Wichita Mountains.</p>

+

+<p>Walker built his wide-chimneyed cabin and crude barn with the aid of

+some of the other settlers, though the nearest one was over a mile

+away. In turn, he helped his helpers at similar house-raisings, so that

+many ties of friendship sprang up between the new neighbors. There was

+no town worthy the name nearer than El Reno, on the railway thirty

+miles or more to the northeast; and before many weeks had passed, the

+people of the section had become very cohesive despite the wideness

+of their scattering. The Indians, a few of whom had begun to settle

+down on ranches, were for the most part harmless, though somewhat

+quarrelsome when fired by the liquid stimulation which found its way to

+them despite all government bans.</p>

+

+<p>Of all the neighbors the Davises found Joe and Sally Compton, who

+likewise hailed from Arkansas, the most helpful and congenial. Sally is

+still alive, known now as Grandma Compton; and her son Clyde, then an

+infant in arms, has become one of the leading men of the state. Sally

+and Audrey used to visit each other often, for their cabins were only

+two miles apart; and in the long spring and summer afternoons they

+exchanged many a tale of old Arkansas and many a rumor about the new

+country.</p>

+

+<p>Sally was very sympathetic about Walker's weakness regarding snakes,

+but perhaps did more to aggravate than cure the parallel nervousness

+which Audrey was acquiring through his incessant praying and

+prophesying about the curse of Yig. She was uncommonly full of gruesome

+snake stories, and produced a direfully strong impression with her

+acknowledged masterpiece—the tale of a man in Scott County who had

+been bitten by a whole horde of rattlers at once, and had swelled so

+monstrously from poison that his body had finally burst with a pop.

+Needless to say, Audrey did not repeat this anecdote to her husband,

+and she implored the Comptons to beware of starting it on the rounds

+of the countryside. It is to Joe's and Sally's credit that they heeded

+this plea with the utmost fidelity.</p>

+

+<p>Walker did his corn-planting early, and in midsummer improved his time

+by harvesting a fair crop of the native grass of the region. With the

+help of Joe Compton he dug a well which gave a moderate supply of very

+good water, though he planned to sink an artesian later on. He did not

+run into many serious snake scares, and made his land as inhospitable

+as possible for wriggling visitors. Every now and then he rode over to

+the cluster of thatched conical huts which formed the main village of

+the Wichitas, and talked long with the old men and shamans about the

+snake-god and how to nullify his wrath. Charms were always ready in

+exchange for whisky, but much of the information he got was far from

+reassuring.</p>

+

+<p>Yig was a great god. He was bad medicine. He did not forget things.

+In the autumn his children were hungry and wild, and Yig was hungry

+and wild, too. All the tribes made medicine against Yig when the corn

+harvest came. They gave him some corn, and danced in proper regalia to

+the sound of whistle, rattle, and drum. They kept the drums pounding to

+drive Yig away, and called down the aid of Tiráwa, whose children men

+are, even as the snakes are Yig's children. It was bad that the squaw

+of Davis killed the children of Yig. Let Davis say the charms many

+times when the corn harvest comes. Yig is Yig. Yig is a great god.</p>

+

+<p>By the time the corn harvest did come, Walker had succeeded in getting

+his wife into a deplorably jumpy state. His prayers and borrowed

+incantations came to be a nuisance; and when the autumn rites of the

+Indians began, there was always a distant wind-borne pounding of

+tom-toms to lend an added background of the sinister. It was maddening

+to have the muffled clatter always stealing over the wide red plains.

+Why would it never stop? Day and night, week on week, it was always

+going in exhaustless relays, as persistently as the red dusty winds

+that carried it. Audrey loathed it more than her husband did, for he

+saw in it a compensating element of protection. It was with this sense

+of a mighty, intangible bulwark against evil that he got in his corn

+crop and prepared cabin and stable for the coming winter.</p>

+

+<hr class="tb">

+

+<p>The autumn was abnormally warm, and except for their primitive cookery

+the Davises found scant use for the stone fireplace Walker had built

+with such care. Something in the unnaturalness of the hot dust-clouds

+preyed on the nerves of all the settlers, but most of all on Audrey's

+and Walker's. The notions of a hovering snake-curse and the weird,

+endless rhythm of the distant Indian drums formed a bad combination

+which any added element of the bizarre went far to render utterly

+unendurable.</p>

+

+<p>Notwithstanding this strain, several festive gatherings were held at

+one or another of the cabins after the crops were reaped: keeping

+naively alive in modernity those curious rites of the harvest-home

+which are as old as human agriculture itself. Lafayette Smith, who

+came from southern Missouri and had a cabin about three miles east

+of Walker's, was a very passable fiddler; and his tunes did much to

+make the celebrants forget the monotonous beating of the distant

+tom-toms. Then Hallowe'en drew near, and the settlers planned another

+frolic—this time, had they but known it, of a lineage older than even

+agriculture: the dread Witch-Sabbath of the primal pre-Aryans, kept

+alive through ages in the midnight blackness of secret woods, and

+still hinting at vague terrors under its latter-day mask of comedy and

+lightness. Hallowe'en was to fall on a Thursday, and the neighbors

+agreed to gather for their first revel at the Davis cabin.</p>

+

+<p>It was on that thirty-first of October that the warm spell broke.

+The morning was gray and leaden, and by noon the incessant winds had

+changed from searingness to rawness. People shivered all the more

+because they were not prepared for the chill, and Walker Davis's old

+dog Wolf dragged himself wearily indoors to a place beside the hearth.

+But the distant drums still thumped on, nor were the white citizenry

+less inclined to pursue their chosen rites. As early as four in the

+afternoon the wagons began to arrive at Walker's cabin; and in the

+evening, after a memorable barbecue, Lafayette Smith's fiddle inspired

+a very fair-sized company to great feats of saltatory grotesqueness in

+the one good-sized but crowded room. The younger folk indulged in the

+amiable inanities proper to the season, and now and then old Wolf would

+howl with doleful and spine-tickling ominousness at some especially

+spectral strain from Lafayette's squeaky violin—a device he had never

+heard before. Mostly, though, this battered veteran slept through

+the merriment; for he was past the age of active interests and lived

+largely in his dreams. Tom and Jennie Rigby had brought their collie

+Zeke along, but the canines did not fraternize. Zeke seemed strangely

+uneasy over something, and nosed around curiously all the evening.</p>

+

+<p>Audrey and Walker made a fine couple on the floor, and Grandma Compton

+still likes to recall her impression of their dancing that night.

+Their worries seemed forgotten for the nonce, and Walker was shaved

+and trimmed into a surprizing degree of spruceness. By ten o'clock

+all hands were healthily tired, and the guests began to depart family

+by family with many handshakings and bluff assurances of what a fine

+time everybody had had. Tom and Jennie thought Zeke's eery howls as he

+followed them to their wagon were marks of regret at having to go home;

+though Audrey said it must be the far-away tom-toms which annoyed him,

+for the distant thumping was surely ghastly enough after the merriment

+within.</p>

+

+<p>The night was bitterly cold, and for the first time Walker put a great

+log in the fireplace and banked it with ashes to keep it smoldering

+till morning. Old Wolf dragged himself within the ruddy glow and

+lapsed into his customary coma. Audrey and Walker, too tired to think

+of charms or curses, tumbled into the rough pine bed and were asleep

+before the cheap alarm-clock on the mantle had ticked out three

+minutes. And from far away, the rhythmic pounding of those hellish

+tom-toms still pulsed on the chill night-wind.</p>

+

+<hr class="tb">

+

+<p>Dr. McNeill paused here and removed his glasses, as if a blurring of

+the objective world might make the reminiscent vision clearer. "You'll

+soon appreciate," he said, "that I had a great deal of difficulty in

+piecing out all that happened after the guests left. There were times,

+though—at first—when I was able to make a try at it." After a moment

+of silence he went on with the tale.</p>

+

+<p>Audrey had terrible dreams of Yig, who appeared to her in the guise of

+Satan as depicted in cheap engravings she had seen. It was, indeed,

+from an absolute ecstasy of nightmare that she started suddenly awake

+to find Walker already conscious and sitting up in bed. He seemed to be

+listening intently to something, and silenced her with a whisper when

+she began to ask what had roused him.</p>

+

+<p>"Hark, Aud!" he breathed. "Don't ye hear somethin' a-singin' and

+buzzin' and rustlin'? D'ye reckon it's the fall crickets?"</p>

+

+<p>Certainly, there was distinctly audible within the cabin such a sound

+as he had described. Audrey tried to analyze it, and was impressed with

+some element at once horrible and familiar, which hovered just outside

+the rim of her memory. And beyond it all, waking a hideous thought, the

+monotonous beating of the distant tom-toms came incessantly across the

+black plains on which a cloudy half-moon had set.</p>

+

+<p>"Walker—s'pose it's—the—the—curse o' Yig?"</p>

+

+<p>She could feel him tremble.</p>

+

+<p>"No, gal, I don't reckon he comes thataway. He's shapen like a man,

+except ye look at him clost. That's what Chief Gray Eagle says. This

+here's some varmints come in outen the cold—not crickets, I calc'late,

+but summat like 'em. I'd orter git up and' stomp 'em out afore they

+make much headway or git at the cupboard."</p>

+

+<p>He rose, felt for the lantern that hung within easy reach, and rattled

+the tin match-box nailed to the wall beside it. Audrey sat up in bed

+and watched the flare of the match grow into the steady glow of the

+lantern. Then, as their eyes began to take in the whole of the room,

+the crude rafters shook with the frenzy of their simultaneous shriek.

+For the flat, rocky floor, revealed in the new-born illumination, was

+one seething brown-speckled mass of wriggling rattlesnakes, slithering

+toward the fire, and even now turning their loathsome heads to menace

+the fright-blasted lantern-bearer.</p>

+

+<p>It was only for an instant that Audrey saw the things. The reptiles

+were of every size, of uncountable numbers, and apparently of several

+varieties; and even as she looked, two or three of them reared their

+heads as if to strike at Walker. She did not faint—it was Walker's

+crash to the floor that extinguished the lantern and plunged her into

+blackness. He had not screamed a second time—fright had paralyzed

+him, and he fell as if shot by a silent arrow from no mortal's bow. To

+Audrey the entire world seemed to whirl about fantastically, mingling

+with the nightmare from which she had started.</p>

+

+<p>Voluntary motion of any sort was impossible, for will and the sense of

+reality had left her. She fell back inertly on her pillow, hoping that

+she would wake soon. No actual sense of what had happened penetrated

+her mind for some time. Then, little by little, the suspicion that she

+was really awake began to dawn on her; and she was convulsed with a

+mounting blend of panic and grief which made her long to shriek out

+despite the inhibiting spell which kept her mute.</p>

+

+<p>Walker was gone, and she had not been able to help him. He had died of

+snakes, just as the old witch-woman had predicted when he was a little

+boy. Poor Wolf had not been able to help, either—probably he had not

+even awaked from his senile stupor. And now the crawling things must be

+coming for her, writhing closer and closer every moment in the dark,

+perhaps even now twining slipperily about the bed-posts and oozing up

+over the coarse woolen blankets. Unconsciously she crept under the

+clothes and trembled.</p>

+

+<p>It must be the curse of Yig. He had sent his monstrous children

+on All-Hallows' Night, and they had taken Walker first. Why was

+that—wasn't he innocent enough? Why not come straight for her—hadn't

+she killed those little rattlers alone? Then she thought of the curse's

+form as told by the Indians. She wouldn't be killed—just turned to a

+spotted snake. Ugh! So she would be like those things she had glimpsed

+on the floor—those things which Yig had sent to get her and enroll her

+among their number! She tried to mumble a charm that Walker had taught

+her, but found she could not utter a single sound.</p>

+

+<p>The noisy ticking of the alarm-clock sounded above the maddening beat

+of the distant tom-toms. The snakes were taking a long time—did they

+mean to delay on purpose to play on her nerves? Every now and then she

+thought she felt a stealthy, insidious pressure on the bedclothes, but

+each time it turned out to be only the automatic twitchings of her

+overwrought nerves. The clock ticked on in the dark, and a change came

+slowly over her thoughts.</p>

+

+<p>Those snakes <i>couldn't</i> have taken so long! They couldn't be Yig's

+messengers after all, but just natural rattlers that were nested below

+the rock and had been drawn there by the fire. They weren't coming

+for her, perhaps—perhaps they had sated themselves on poor Walker.

+Where were they now? Gone? Coiled by the fire? Still crawling over the

+prone corpse of their victim? The clock ticked, and the distant drums

+throbbed on.</p>

+

+<p>At the thought of her husband's body lying there in the pitch blackness

+a thrill of purely physical horror passed over Audrey. That story of

+Sally Compton's about the man back in Scott County! He, too, had been

+bitten by a whole bunch of rattlesnakes, and what had happened to him?

+The poison had rotted the flesh and swelled the whole corpse, and in

+the end the bloated thing had <i>burst</i> horribly—burst horribly with a

+detestable <i>popping</i> noise. Was that what was happening to Walker down

+there on the rock floor? Instinctively she felt that she had begun to

+<i>listen</i> for something too terrible even to name to herself.</p>

+

+<p>The clock ticked on, keeping a kind of mocking, sardonic time with

+the far-off drumming that the night-wind brought. She wished it were

+a striking clock, so that she could know how long this eldritch vigil

+must last. She cursed the toughness of fiber that kept her from

+fainting, and wondered what sort of relief the dawn could bring, after

+all. Probably neighbors would pass—no doubt somebody would call—would

+they find her still sane? Was she still sane now?</p>

+

+<p>Morbidly listening, Audrey all at once became aware of something

+which she had to verify with every effort of her will before she

+could believe it; and which, once verified, she did not know whether

+to welcome or dread. <i>The distant beating of the Indian tom-toms had

+ceased.</i> They had always maddened her—but had not Walker regarded them

+as a bulwark against nameless evil from outside the universe? What were

+some of those things he had repeated to her in whispers after talking

+with Gray Eagle and the Wichita medicine-men?</p>

+

+<p>She did not relish this new and sudden silence, after all! There was

+something sinister about it. The loud-ticking clock seemed abnormal in

+its new loneliness. Capable at last of conscious motion, she shook the

+covers from her face and looked into the darkness toward the window. It

+must have cleared after the moon set, for she saw the square aperture

+distinctly against the background of stars.</p>

+

+<p>Then without warning came that shocking, unutterable sound—ugh!—that

+dull, putrid <i>pop</i> of cleft skin and escaping poison in the dark.

+God!—Sally's story—that obscene stench, and this gnawing, clawing

+silence! It was too much. The bonds of muteness snapped, and the black

+night waxed reverberant with Audrey's screams of stark unbridled frenzy.</p>

+

+<p>Consciousness did not pass away with the shock. How merciful if only

+it had! Amidst the echoes of her shrieking Audrey still saw the

+star-sprinkled square of window ahead, and heard the doom-boding

+ticking of that frightful clock. Did she hear another sound? Was

+that square window still a perfect square? She was in no condition

+to weigh the evidence of her senses or distinguish between fact and

+hallucination.</p>

+

+<p>No—that window was <i>not</i> a perfect square. <i>Something had encroached

+on the lower edge.</i> Nor was the ticking of the clock the only sound in

+the room. There was, beyond dispute, a heavy breathing neither her own

+nor poor Wolf's. Wolf slept very silently, and his wakeful wheezing was

+unmistakable. Then Audrey saw against the stars the black, demoniac

+silhouette of something anthropoid—the undulant bulk of a gigantic

+head and shoulders fumbling slowly toward her.</p>

+

+<p>"Y'aaaah! Y'aaaah! Go away! Go away! Go away, snake-devil! Go 'way,

+Yig! I didn't want to kill 'em—I was feared he'd be scairt of 'em.

+Don't, Yig, don't! I didn't go for to hurt yore chillen—don't come

+nigh me—don't change me into no spotted snake!"</p>

+

+<p>But the half-formless head and shoulders only lurched onward toward the

+bed, very silently.</p>

+

+<p>Everything snapped at once inside Audrey's head, and in a second she

+had turned from a cowering child to a raging madwoman. She knew where

+the ax was—hung against the wall on those pegs near the lantern. It

+was within easy reach, and she could find it in the dark. Before she

+was conscious of anything further it was in her hands, and she was

+creeping toward the foot of the bed—toward the monstrous head and

+shoulders that every moment groped their way nearer. Had there been any

+light, the look on her face would not have been pleasant to see.</p>

+

+<p>"Take <i>that</i>, you! And <i>that</i>, and <i>that</i>, and <i>that</i>!"</p>

+

+<p>She was laughing shrilly now, and her cackles mounted higher as she saw

+that the starlight beyond the window was yielding to the dim prophetic

+pallor of coming dawn.</p>

+

+<hr class="tb">

+

+<p>Dr. McNeill wiped the perspiration from his forehead and put on his

+glasses again. I waited for him to resume, and as he kept silent I

+spoke softly.</p>

+

+<p>"She lived? She was found? Was it ever explained?"</p>

+

+<p>The doctor cleared his throat.</p>

+

+<p>"Yes—she lived, in a way. And it was explained. I told you there was

+no bewitchment—only cruel, pitiful, material horror."</p>

+

+<p>It was Sally Compton who had made the discovery. She had ridden over to

+the Davis cabin the next afternoon to talk over the party with Audrey,

+and had seen no smoke from the chimney. That was queer. It had turned

+very warm again, yet Audrey was usually cooking something at that hour.

+The mules were making hungry-sounding noises in the barn, and there was

+no sign of old Wolf sunning himself in the accustomed spot by the door.</p>

+

+<p>Altogether, Sally did not like the look of the place, so was very timid

+and hesitant as she dismounted and knocked. She got no answer, but

+waited some time before trying the crude door of split logs. The lock,

+it appeared, was unfastened; and she slowly pushed her way in. Then,

+perceiving what was there, she reeled back, gasped, and clung to the

+jamb to preserve her balance.</p>

+

+<p>A terrible odor had welled out as she opened the door, but that was

+not what had stunned her. It was what she had seen. For within that

+shadowy cabin monstrous things had happened and three shocking objects

+remained on the floor to awe and baffle the beholder.</p>

+

+<p>Near the burned-out fireplace was the great dog—purple decay on the

+skin left bare by mange and old age, and the whole carcass burst by the

+puffing effect of rattlesnake poison. It must have been bitten by a

+veritable legion of the reptiles.</p>

+

+<p>To the right of the door was the ax-hacked remnant of what had

+been a man—clad in a nightshirt, and with the shattered bulk of a

+lantern clenched in one hand. <i>He was totally free from any sign of

+snake-bite.</i> Near him lay the ensanguined ax, carelessly discarded.</p>

+

+<p>And wriggling flat on the floor was a loathsome, vacant-eyed thing that

+had been a woman, but was now only a mute, mad caricature. All that

+this thing could do was to hiss, and hiss, and hiss.</p>

+

+<hr class="tb">

+

+<p>Both the doctor and I were brushing cold drops from our foreheads by

+this time. He poured something from a flask on his desk, took a nip,

+and handed another glass to me. I could only suggest tremulously and

+stupidly:</p>

+

+<p>"So Walker had only fainted that first time—the screams roused him,

+and the ax did the rest?"</p>

+

+<p>"Yes." Dr. McNeill's voice was low. "But he met his death from snakes

+just the same. It was his fear working in two ways—it made him faint,

+and it made him fill his wife with the wild stories that caused her to

+strike out when she thought she saw the snake-devil."</p>

+

+<p>I thought for a moment.</p>

+

+<p>"And Audrey—wasn't it queer how the curse of Yig seemed to work itself

+out on her? I suppose the impression of hissing snakes had been fairly

+ground into her."</p>

+

+<p>"Yes. There were lucid spells at first, but they got to be fewer and

+fewer. Her hair came white at the roots as it grew, and later began to

+fall out. The skin grew blotchy, and when she died——"</p>

+

+<p>I interrupted with a start.</p>

+

+<p>"<i>Died?</i> Then what was that—that thing downstairs?"</p>

+

+<p>McNeill spoke gravely.</p>

+

+<p>"<i>That</i> is what was born to her three-quarters of a year afterward.

+There were three more of them—two were even worse—but this is the

+only, one that lived."

+</p>

+<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CURSE OF YIG ***</div>

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