LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Hop in,” Phil shouted. “The Indians have seen the smoke and they’ll be here in a little while.”

      “How’d you do it?” she panted. “The fire, I mean.”

      “Looking for some dynamite, I came upon a hidden dock for the boat and there was plenty of spare gasoline—”

      * * * *

      Not another word was spoken until we had left the House of Horror far behind. “I thought you were never coming,” Miriam admitted. “I thought we had jumped out of the frying pan into the Indians’ fire.”

      “One thing I had to do was to see to it that my sister got a decent burial. I know she’ll rest better now—”

      Far behind the sky was black with the smoke of the fast burning house, but ahead, the sun shone and the sky was blue.

      THE DOGS OF PURGATORY, by Hugh Pendexter

      Dix stared gloomily across the flat, monotonous country and its illimitable expanse of swamp and dreary areas of moss-bearded evergreens. The gray autumnal sky minimized the charm of the riotous coloring of the hard growth on the low hills behind him and prevented his appreciating the beauty of the frost-burned ferns and grasses in the lowlands ahead. He was not circumstanced to enjoy the dying glory of Indian Summer and moodily likened the painted landscape to a gaily bedecked wanton bedraggled by the storm. In fact, it was a most inhospitable country, and he cursed the chance which had led him there. It had seemed a simple matter to make the camp on Caribou Lake, but what with the loss of his compass and the clouds masking the heavens he had gone hopelessly astray three days back. For twelve hours he had been without food.

      He recalled odds and ends of campfire gossip about the dismal Purgatory country and fished out his woods map. Sure enough; there were the two lakes, Big and Little Purgatory, connected by a sluggish, winding stream. He had wandered some fifty miles from the Caribou Lake trail.

      The discovery was startling. Once the clouds let loose the “line” storm this whole region would be inundated. To retrace his way before securing food was impossible. To advance was a waste of his remaining energy. A drop of rain splashed ominously on the map.

      He must build a lean-to to shut out the storm. First, he would light a fire before the rain soaked the dead wood; and he searched his pockets for matches. Ordinarily, for the sake of a climax, one match is found and a tragedy lived while it is being nursed into feeble flame. Dix was denied this conventional thrill. He had no matches.

      The thatch of spruce boughs remained to be constructed, and unslinging his small axe he assailed a clump of evergreens and labored fiercely for several minutes. Then the absurdity of it all struck him and he threw down the axe. If a man must die of starvation what odds whether he die wet or merely moist? Without fire or food, with his strength lessening, he had been dreading the rain as a major evil. It suggested a drowning man’s fears lest he wet his feet.

      As he crouched on a blanket of moss and stared helplessly on the flat waste his range of vision gradually shortened, for lowering clouds and gathering dusk shut down about him like a collapsing canopy. Queer stories of the Purgatory country drifted through his mind and as they were accentuated by despair he found it easy to imagine strange shapes in the swamp growth. The funereal cedars in the foreground became filled with supernormalities.

      “Rot!” he angrily exclaimed, shaking his head to dislodge the unwholesome fancies. “When a chap gets to seeing things—” He chopped the sentence abruptly and leaned forward with mouth agape. His ears had joined in the conspiracy of nerves against reason; he had caught the deep baying of a dog.

      Now the Purgatory region was an abomination and no man lived there, consequently there could be no dogs. Thus spoke Reason, and again the long, deep-mouthed cry sounded, this time more distinct and much nearer. He frowned and remembered his guide’s garrulous recital of a spookish experience in this same region.

      The guide had sworn by all the woods gods that he had wandered to the edge of the swamp country and at twilight had glimpsed the gorgon shapes of fearful creatures, which moved with the lithe stealth of tigers and cried out like dogs after game. However, there could be no dogs in this deserted place, Reason persisted. Nor could they be wolves, for wolves do not bark. His ears had picked up some woods sound and had distorted it into an illusion.

      Even as he clung to this explanation, the hoarse clamor of the canine voices swept nearer and nearer, dinning on his ears like the climax of a nightmare. He was halfway down the side of a low ridge and from this coign of vantage he now saw them just below him, and counted them, seven huge, tawny forms. They were running one behind another and not in a pack, as the wolf runs. Dix rubbed his eyes but the spectacle would not vanish. Next he discovered he was alive with fear and yet had no impulse to fly. Once he thought he heard an alien sound behind him, but the sinister figures circling up the slope held his gaze. The leader spied him; instantly the chorus was changed to a sharp, triumphant key, and they were streaking up the ridge in a long, undulating line which vaguely reminded him of sea serpents.

      There were trees nearby and yet he remained motionless, the thought of avoiding their onrush never finding room in his dazed mind. Then the leader was upon him, snarling and mouthing horribly, nuzzling at his throat. There was no hallucinations in the fierce impact of the heavy body, nor in the hurt of the pounding attack of the others. He struck and kicked and cried out wildly. Above the clamor he finally caught a shrill voice and heard the swishing blows of a whip. The brutes minded this none. A man’s voice, shouting commands accompanied by resounding whacks of a club, by degrees quieted the confusion until the furious animals were beaten off and Dix to his surprise found himself alive and suffering only from bruises and scratches.

      “If they hadn’t had their muzzles on!” panted the shrill voice.

      “They’d have killed him in no time,” proudly completed the man.

      Pulling himself to a sitting posture Dix stared in amazement at the couple. The man was almost a dwarf in stature, with a broad face that was nearly covered by a beard. He was eyeing Dix with open disfavor as he waved his stout cudgel to keep the dogs at a distance. The woman—Dix gaped incredulously—was exquisitely out of place in the rough scene. He noted the texture of her brown skin, the sheen of her hair, the noble poise of her small figure and her dainty grace as she kneeled beside him. But as he met her anxious gaze he read sadness and trouble in the small, oval face, a sadness which was deep seated and in nowise hinging on the danger just averted.

      “The dogs?” he managed to exclaim as he rubbed his aching chest.

      “Keep them back, Cumber,” she cried. “Beat them back. On your life don’t slip their muzzles!”

      The last struck him as being rather a ridiculous speech, for who but a murderer would think of freeing those slavering jaws? The man grunted something unintelligible and astounded Dix by displaying a surly unwillingness in herding the brutes before him down the slope.

      “Lock them in the hovel till I get to the house,” she called after him. Grumbling and mumbling the man drove the dogs into the underbrush, but it was not till he had vanished that the girl turned to Dix.

      “Are you badly hurt?”

      “Only bruised and shaken—thanks to the muzzles. But my mind riots most confoundedly. They’re real, eh?”

      “Fearfully so,” she shuddered. “They’re a cross between the giant Danes and the bloodhound—ferocious as tigers.”

      “But why are they? And why do you have them?” he puzzled.

      The transient horror of her gaze was succeeded by somber earnestness as she ignored his query and said, “Turn back to the hills from where you came. Once you’ve covered a few miles you’ll be safe, as the dogs never wander far from the swamps.”

      “Turn back?” he blankly repeated. “But I’m famished. I’m all in. I was prepared to meet Death when you came.”

      “You were never nearer to it,” she muttered, staring intently at the swamp cedars. “When unmuzzled,

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