Beyond the Black River by Robert E. Howard Read Free Book Online Page A

crouched frozen, white eyes bulging, jaws hanging slack. Then before any could move, the ape, blood gushing from his head, wheeled, seized the chain in both hands and snapped it with a wrench that twisted the heavy links apart as if they had been paper.
    John De Albor stood directly before the mad brute, paralyzed in his tracks. Zemba roared and leaped, and the African went down under him, disemboweled by the razor-like talons, his head crushed to a crimson pulp by a sweep of the great paw.
    Ravening, the monster charged among the votaries, clawing and ripping and smiting, screaming intolerably. Zambebwei spoke, and death was in his bellowing. Screaming, howling, fighting, the black people scrambled over one another in their mad flight. Men and women went down under those shearing talons, were dismembered by those gnashing fangs. It was a red drama of the primitive — destruction amuck and ariot, the primordial embodied in fangs and talons, gone mad and plunging in slaughter. Blood and brains deluged the earth, black bodies and limbs and fragments of bodies littered the moonlighted glade in ghastly heaps before the last of the howling wretches found refuge among the trees. The sounds of their blundering, panic-stricken flight drifted back.
    McGrath had leaped from his covert almost as soon as he had fired. Unnoticed by the terrified Negroes, and himself scarcely cognizant of the slaughter raging him, he raced across the glade toward the pitiful figure that lay limply beside the iron-bound stake.
    “Constance!” he cried, gathering her to his breast.
    Languidly she opened her cloudy eyes. He held her close, heedless of the screams and devastation surging about them. Slowly recognition grew in those lovely eyes.
    “Bristol!” she murmured, incoherently. Then she screamed, clung to him, sobbing hysterically. “Bristol! They told me you were dead! The blacks! The horrible blacks! They’re going to kill me! They were going to kill De Albor too, but he promised to sacrifice —”
    “Don’t, girl, don’t!” He subdued her frantic tremblings. “It’s all right, now —” Abruptly he looked up into the grinning bloodstained face of nightmare and death. The great ape had ceased to rend his dead victims and was slinking toward the living pair in the center of the glade. Blood oozed from the wound in its sloping skull that had maddened it.
    McGrath sprang toward it, shielding the prostrate girl; his pistol spurted flame, pouring a stream of lead into the mighty breast as the beast charged.
    On it came, and his confidence waned. Bullet after bullet he sent crashing into its vitals, but it did not halt. Now he dashed the empty gun full into the gargoyle face without effect, and with a lurch and a roll it had him in its grasp. As the giant arms closed crushingly about him, he abandoned all hope, but following his fighting instinct to the last, he drove his dagger hilt-deep in the shaggy belly.
    But even as he struck, he felt a shudder run through the gigantic frame. The great arms fell away — and then he was hurled to the ground in the last death throe of the monster, and the thing was swaying, its face a death mask. Dead on its feet, it crumpled, toppled to the ground, quivered and lay still. Not even a man-eating ape of Zambebwei could survive that close-range volley of mushrooming lead.
    As the man staggered up, Constance rose and reeled into his arms, crying hysterically.
    “It’s all right now, Constance,” he panted, crushing her to him. “The Zemba’s dead; De Albor’s dead; Ballville’s dead; the Negroes have run away. There’s nothing to prevent us leaving now. The Moon of Zambebwei was the end for them. But it’s the beginning of life for us.”

JEWELS OF GWAHLUR
     
    Weird Tales, March 1935
     
    1. Paths of Intrigue
    The cliffs rose sheer from the jungle, towering ramparts of stone that glinted jade-blue and dull crimson in the rising sun, and curved away and away to east and west above the waving