




                             Black Canaan

                          By ROBERT E. HOWARD

              _A tale of the Southern swamps, and voodoo
            brought from blackest Africa--a spine-freezing,
                  blood-chilling story of a beautiful
               quadroon girl who wielded bitter magic._

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                        Weird Tales June 1936. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] _1. Call From Canaan_


"Trouble on Tularoosa Creek!" A warning to send cold fear along the
spine of any man who was raised in that isolated back-country, called
Canaan, that lies between Tularoosa and Black River--to send him racing
back to that swamp-bordered region, wherever the word might reach him. It was only a whisper from the withered lips of a shuffling black
crone, who vanished among the throng before I could seize her; but
it was enough. No need to seek confirmation; no need to inquire by
what mysterious, black-folk way the word had come to her. No need to
inquire what obscure forces worked to unseal those wrinkled lips to a
Black River man. It was enough that the warning had been given--and
understood. Understood? How could any Black River man fail to understand that
warning? It could have but one meaning--old hates seething again in
the jungle-deeps of the swamplands, dark shadows slipping through the
cypress, and massacre stalking out of the black, mysterious village
that broods on the moss-festooned shore of sullen Tularoosa. Within an hour New Orleans was falling further behind me with every
turn of the churning wheel. To every man born in Canaan, there is
always an invisible tie that draws him back whenever his homeland is
imperiled by the murky shadow that has lurked in its jungled recesses
for more than half a century. The fastest boats I could get seemed maddeningly slow for that race up
the big river, and up the smaller, more turbulent stream. I was burning
with impatience when I stepped off on the Sharpsville landing, with the
last fifteen miles of my journey yet to make. It was past midnight, but
I hurried to the livery stable where, by tradition half a century old,
there is always a Buckner horse, day or night. As a sleepy black boy fastened the cinches, I turned to the owner of
the stable, Joe Lafely, yawning and gaping in the light of the lantern
he upheld. "There are rumors of trouble on Tularoosa?" He paled in the lantern-light. "I don't know. I've heard talk. But you people in Canaan are a
shut-mouthed clan. No one _outside_ knows what goes on in there----"

The night swallowed his lantern and his stammering voice as I headed
west along the pike. *       *       *       *       *

The moon set red through the black pines. Owls hooted away off in the
woods, and somewhere a hound howled his ancient wistfulness to the
night. In the darkness that foreruns dawn I crossed Nigger Head Creek,
a streak of shining black fringed by walls of solid shadows. My horse's
hoofs splashed through the shallow water and clinked on the wet stones,
startlingly loud in the stillness. Beyond Nigger Head Creek began the
country men called Canaan. Heading in the same swamp, miles to the north, that gives birth to
Tularoosa, Nigger Head flows due south to join Black River a few miles
west of Sharpsville, while the Tularoosa runs westward to meet the same
river at a higher point. The trend of Black River is from northwest to
southeast; so these three streams form the great irregular triangle
known as Canaan. In Canaan lived the sons and daughters of the white frontiersmen who
first settled the country, and the sons and daughters of their slaves. Joe Lafely was right; we were an isolated, shut-mouthed breed,
self-sufficient, jealous of our seclusion and independence. Beyond Nigger Head the woods thickened, the road narrowed, winding
through unfenced pinelands, broken by live-oaks and cypresses. There
was no sound except the soft clop-clop of hoofs in the thin dust, the
creak of the saddle. Then someone laughed throatily in the shadows. I drew up and peered into the trees. The moon had set and dawn was not
yet come, but a faint glow quivered among the trees, and by it I made
out a dim figure under the moss-hung branches. My hand instinctively
sought the butt of one of the dueling-pistols I wore, and the action
brought another low, musical laugh, mocking yet seductive. I glimpsed
a brown face, a pair of scintillant eyes, white teeth displayed in an
insolent smile. "Who the devil are you?" I demanded. "Why do you ride so late, Kirby Buckner?" Taunting laughter bubbled in
the voice. The accent was foreign and unfamiliar; a faintly negroid
twang was there, but it was rich and sensuous as the rounded body of
its owner. In the lustrous pile of dusky hair a great white blossom
glimmered palely in the darkness. "What are you doing here?" I demanded. "You're a long way from any
darky cabin. And you're a stranger to me." "I came to Canaan since you went away," she answered. "My cabin is on
the Tularoosa. But now I've lost my way. And my poor brother has hurt
his leg and cannot walk." "Where is your brother?" I asked, uneasily. Her perfect English was
disquieting to me, accustomed as I was to the dialect of the black-folk. "Back in the woods, there--far back!" She indicated the black depths
with a swaying motion of her supple body rather than a gesture of her
hand, smiling audaciously as she did so. I knew there was no injured brother, and she knew I knew it, and
laughed at me. But a strange turmoil of conflicting emotions stirred
in me. I had never before paid any attention to a black or brown
woman. But this quadroon girl was different from any I had ever seen. Her features were regular as a white woman's, and her speech was not
that of a common wench. Yet she was barbaric, in the open lure of her
smile, in the gleam of her eyes, in the shameless posturing of her
voluptuous body. Every gesture, every motion she made set her apart
from the ordinary run of women; her beauty was untamed and lawless,
meant to madden rather than to soothe, to make a man blind and dizzy,
to rouse in him all the unreined passions that are his heritage from
his ape ancestors. I hardly remember dismounting and tying my horse. My blood pounded
suffocatingly through the veins in my temples as I scowled down at her,
suspicious yet fascinated. "How do you know my name? Who _are_ you?" With a provocative laugh, she seized my hand and drew me deeper into
the shadows. Fascinated by the lights gleaming in her dark eyes, I was
hardly aware of her action. "Who does not know Kirby Buckner?" she laughed. "All the people of
Canaan speak of you, white or black. Come! My poor brother longs to
look upon you!" And she laughed with malicious triumph. It was this brazen effrontery that brought me to my senses. Its cynical
mockery broke the almost hypnotic spell in which I had fallen.