But until the unknown Beast first made its mysterious presence felt, no harm for the people of Bayou le Tor ever had come out of those swamps, except the deadly malaria, which clutched its victims in shaking agues and burning fevers that consumed life as a woods fire might consume a strip of dried sedge grass.
Before this strange death that had come to haunt the night swamps, they shrank in helpless terror. Cows were driven in from their pastures while the sun was yet high. Mothers called in their sallow-faced children from play as soon as the shadows began to lengthen.
The first victim had been Swan Davis, an old fisherman who lived by himself on the edge of the bayou above the settlement. He had been found in the swamp, dead. At first it was thought that he had been beaten to death, he was so broken about the body.
Finally, however, it was decided he had been crushed by some mysterious, unknown force. Something had caught him and squeezed him until his bones had cracked like dry reeds.
Then the three Buntly boys, driving in a bunch of steers from the marshes, were overtaken by night on the swamp road. The cattle had been going peacefully enough, when suddenly they had become frightened and lumbered off ahead, bellowing madly. Themselves frightened at the queer behavior of the animals, the boys followed, as fast as they could on foot.
That is, two of them did; for when Jard and Peter Buntly emerged from the shadows of the swamp road, they found that their brother, Sims, was not with them.
Terror-stricken though they were, they had returned into the swamp, calling his name. When they saw nothing of him, and he did not answer their calls, they went quickly home and reported what had happened. All night long, bearing flaming torches, the men of the settlement beat up and down the swamp. Toward morning, they found the young man’s body, bruised and broken, but no trace of what had killed him.
When the people of Bayou le Tor gathered to discuss the circumstances surrounding these two mysterious deaths, the negroes, and some others, declared that an evil spirit haunted the gloomy fastness to the north of the settlement, while the more conservative agreed that some creature strange to those parts, some unknown beast, was ranging the night swamps, a creature that killed for the love of killing.
Armed with shotgun and rifle, they hunted him. They set bear-traps, baited with an entire quarter of beef hung above. But no one ventured into the swamps after dark, until, one night, ten of the best men in the settlement formed a party and rode out on horseback through the swamp road.
Armed with pistol and sheath-knife, they rode, two by two, knee to knee, their horses following each other nose to tail, so that if any one of the party were attacked they all could turn and fight in a body.