“They are calling. The drums are calling,” he muttered. “I must go. If it’s the right one I’ll pay forty gourdes—and be glad enough to make the bargain.”
* * * * * * * *
Curlie followed the sound of the drum. Not always did he find the right trail. At times as he skulked along beneath overhanging bushes the sound grew fainter. Then he must turn, retrace his steps to begin the search anew. In the main, however, his keen senses served him well.
Moment by moment, yard by yard, mile by mile the sound grew louder until at last the throbbing, pulsating air seemed full of it.
Curlie marveled at the boldness of the drummers. “They know that all the men of Terre Plaisance are gone,” he told himself. “It is well for them, else their drums would be split from end to end and they’d not get thirty gourdes for them, either.”
It was just at this juncture that a curious thing happened. As he moved stealthily forward, his keen ear caught a sound not made by a drummer.
“A belated dancer,” he thought. The fact that someone was so near him in the dark disturbed him.
For all this he continued gliding silently forward over the same trail. Eerie business this, following another in the dark. Snap! went a twig up there in the trail. Rustle, rustle sounded the swinging bushes. Now he fancied he heard a whispered conversation.
“Might drop off at the side of the trail and waylay me.” His blood ran cold as he seemed to feel the two-foot blade of a machete come down upon his back.
“Beat ’em to it,” he whispered to himself, drawing forth his flashlight. “One glimmer of light full in the face, then I do the vanishing act.”