Rider By Night

by David H. Keller

I asked one of the small boys playing around the schoolhouse.

"Does Miss Belle Flowers teach here?"

She did, and two minutes later I was in her class room, our conversation being listened to with much interest by the twenty-odd little boys and girls in the room. It seemed that she was expecting me, and that I could make the examination in twenty minutes after school was closed. So I decided to wait outside.

It was a modern eight room consolidated country school, which seemed to be built miles from everywhere. On one side, an old Ford car, three buggies, and at least fifteen saddle-horses were parked. A few shabby shrubs shivered silently in the sallow sunshine of spring. Here and there remnants of building material told the story of the building's recent construction.

Walking along, I turned the corner of the building and looked toward the west. What I saw made me walk away from the schoolhouse to a white-haired darkey sitting on the ground propped against a wire fence. He seemed asleep, but when I came near him, he turned to me a weasened face with two eyes circled with the arcus senilis of the aged.

I asked him to have a cigarette, and lit it for him; then sat down by his side.

"Queer place for a schoolhouse, Uncle," I said.

"Worsen queer. Poor and hard on us."

"How come?"

"Quality folks put it heayr, whar land was cheap. Peers like they didn't know about Massa."

"Your Master?"

"None but."

I looked over at the tombstone. Just one stone, and at the back of it a cypress tree. Four fence posts around the tree and the stone, and then were connected by a wire fence. The posts were newly placed, the wire made up of odds and ends tied together and nailed in place with every kind of nail imaginable.

I handed the old man another cigarette and a silver dollar.

"Tell me about it," I asked.

It was a short story. The Colonel had gone to war in '61 and his servant had gone with him. In '62 the negro had brought his Master back blind. Years later he had died, and was buried on the knoll, and a cypress was planted at the head of the grave. Now he was forgotten by all except the whitened slave. The land had been sold and a school house built on it. Today was the first day of school. The old man, afraid that the grave would be desecrated by the cheap white trash, had dug four holes, put in four posts, wired them and was now sitting guard till school was out and the children gone.

"The Colonel shure wouldn't like it. Gwine to bother him riding."

"Does he ride?" I asked.

"Bound to. That air man was almost borned in saddle. He rid to the war and he rid back, blind tho he war, and he rides ever since. He done told me, 'Sam, I am bound to ride till Miss Belle Flowers marries me.' Corse, he done gone to Heaven years ago, but every night he rides on his white mare, and I done kiver me head with the blanket when Ise hear her hoofs go pounding up and down the road."

"He was going to marry Miss Belle Flowers?" I asked.

It appeared so. They were engaged when he rode away and when he came back blind, she was married to another. Every night he had the white mare saddled and would gallop up and down the road in front of her house. He and the mare died the same day, and according to his will, the Colonel and the Colonel's horse were buried in the same grave.

School was dismissed. The children piled into the old Ford, into the old buggies, on top of the saddle-horses, one, two and even three to the horse. The school teachers, young and old, seven of them, left the building. It was time for my examination of Miss Belle Flowers.

I threw the rest of my cigarettes to the old negro.

"You have fixed the Colonel," I laughed. "With that fence around the grave, he cannot get the mare out for his ride tonight."

He looked at me with puzzled eyes.

"Massa's gwine ter ride. Just bound to ride till he marries Miss Belle. Come sundown, Ise gwine to open the fence to let him and the mare out. Warm tonight, and I'll sleep heyr. Massa may need me."

After talking to Miss Flowers, I told her that I was rather doubtful of her obtaining the life insurance; after I listened to her lungs, I was sure that she was a bad risk. A history of two yeaas in bed fighting tuberculosis made me hesitate. She looked strong and as pretty as a rose, but today, at the end of school, she had fever.

We talked it over outside the schoolhouse. We said goodbye twice. Somehow it was difficult to say goodbye and leave her. To gain time, I asked her about Sam. It seemed that Sam went insane when the Colonel died. There was a long story about it. Eventually I said goodbye again at her front gate and promised to call that night and hear the story.

There was a full moon that night.

She was waiting for me on the gallery, dressed in a riding habit of the sixties, when ladies rode a side saddle.

"My Grandmother's," she explained laughingly. "Yes, you have guessed it, especially if Sam talked to you. In 1860 Belle Flowers, pride of western Kentucky was engaged to the Colonel. They rode together, each on a white horse. She wore the dress I have on. I thought it would make the story more real to you if I wore her dress tonight. The Colonel went to war and Sam went with him. My Grandmother was fickle and married her cousin, another Flowers, and when the Colonel came back stone blind, it was too late. He swore that he would night-ride past her house till she married him. Grandmother used to tell me what a sight it was to see him go galloping by on his white mare, and no one able to tell by the way he rode that he couldn't see. She died years before he did, but he kept riding on, just as though he didn't know she was dead. Then one night he and the white mare died, and that was the end of the Colonel. Of course, Sam says he still rides."

"He does indeed, but of course that is just his insanity."

"Yes, just his insanity," Miss Flowers agreed. "I talked to him today about the patchwork fence he built around the grave, but he explained that he would take a piece down to let his Master out on the horse. In summer, he sleeps up there; says he never can tell when the Colenel will want him. It all seems so real to him."

She laughed, as though tense with suppressed excitement.

"It is good to have you call on me tonight," she whispered. "I hardly ever see anyone except Father, and he is moody. Don't want me to leave the house at night. Made me promise not to leave the gallery unless you went too."

"He knows about me?"

"Oh, yes, everyone knows about the new doctor. Let's walk down to the gate. In full moonlight, you can see the white of the Colonel's tombstone."

Picking up the trail of her riding habit, she went before me, down to the gate and opened it. She showed me a spot of white through the trees. I took her hand. It was cold.

"Night-riders," she said suddenly. "Two of them! Hear them come galloping down the road."

I heard nothing but a hoot owl in the bottoms.

Then something lashed me across the face, striking me to the ground. When I stood up, I was alone. Running into the house, I found Mr. Flowers.

"You are hurt!" he cried. "Slashed across the face with a riding whip. But you should have stayed on the gallery. Belle ought to have known better than to wear that dress. I told her not to, but you know how headstrong those girls are."

"That is not getting her back. Get a lantern. We have got to find her."

"We will go through the fields. There is a short cut. You light the lantern while I get a shawl for her. God, but it's cold and there's a black cloud over the moon."

I carried the shawl and almost had to run behind him as he carried the lantern over the hill. We came to the corner of the schoolhouse at last. Halfway to the tombstone, we stumbled over a body. It was Sam, still alive but gasping for breath.

"They done come back. Colonel and his lady. I'se gwine home now, case the Colonel won't call fer me no more."

Hand on wrist, I look at the white face of the man holding the lantern.

"He is dead!" I whispered.

"We have to find Belle," he cried, and went toward the grave.

There we found her sleeping, one hand on the stone, at rest.

Sitting on the ground he held her in his arms, crying.

I took the lantern and examined the clay earth outside the fence. Hoofprints of two shod horses, side by side.

"She ran up here to tease you, Doctor. It was too much for her heart. She slashed you across the face in play, and then ran here, thinking you would follow her. That explains everything, doesn't it, Doctor?"

"It should," I said gently, trying to unlock his arms from the lovely thing he held. "It should, but the Colonel will ride no more."

CELEBRITIES I'VE MET
by Mortimer Weisinger

Donald Wandrei, who frankly considers his stories "just so much junk" from an artistic viewpoint.

Nathan Schachner, who admits that he is a slow writer at best, one thousand words each night being his maximum output.

David Lasser, who profoundly apologized to the old Scienceers one night for concealing the fact that Gawain Edwards was only a pen name.

A perfunctory search through that register of eminent Americans, "Who's Who," reveals the following science fiction celebrities as listed: Edgar Rice Burroughs, J. U. Guiesy, Stanton A. Coblentz, George Allan England, Dr. T. O'Conor Sloane, Hugo Gernsback, Edwin Balmer, William MacHarg, T. S. Stribling, J. S. Haldane, A. Hyatt Verrill, Fred MacIsaac, Ellis Parker Butler, Eric Temple Bell.

What other fiction field can boast as many distinguished contributors?

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