Norris volunteered to go down and watch for Duran's possible return. I guessed his thought; that he felt that his bungling, in allowing himself to be discovered, had made him deserve this less agreeable task. The rest of us set ourselves to the business of searching out Duran's hidden storehouse. In spite of our zeal and numbers, the afternoon was nearly gone, and we no nearer the solution. We explored that cavern that Andy Hawkins had told us of; and moved forward in a passage that went upward in its windings. I marvelled at the singular freshness of the air, till—having traversed some couple of hundred yards—I discovered the reason. The cave had but the one gallery, and that ended in a chimney, just over our heads where we now stood, and through which showed the light of day. That little opening, in which a hat would have stuck, was high in the cliff-side, as we were to learn.
Ray and I hurried down the path in the dark, to Norris, to report our failure and to relieve him on watch. But he refused to budge from the place.
"I gave us all away," he said, "and now I'm going to make it up somehow. I'm going to make that skunk show us where he's got the stuff. And he'll do it, too, when I tell him a few of the things I've seen done to carcasses like him."
When he would not leave the watch to us, we decided to remain with him. He was not cheerful.
"You see," began Ray, then, "you'll have us to prove things by, when you're trying to convince that polecat. You'll say 'Isn't that so, Ray?' And I'll answer, 'Yes, that's so, Norris.' And then Wayne, here, he'll say, 'Yes, Norris, that's right, I know, because you never tell—'"
"Hist!" I interrupted him. "Listen."
Some little time back I thought I heard a thing like thunder, far back in the mountains. But it had been momentary, and I set it down as an illusion. While Ray prattled his nonsense, I seemed to hear it again. We cocked our ears, but heard not even so much as the trill of a tree-toad.
"Ah, say," began Ray, "What—" And this time he interrupted himself, to listen.
There was that quavering, rolling, rumble that we had heard weeks before. Each succeeding wave of sound seemed to join with, and accentuate, the preceding. And then came a decadency, like a wagon rolling out of ear-shot. And again—we could not tell just the moment we began to hear the sound—there came from afar that eerie rumble, swelling, slowly to die away once more.
"The voodoo drum," said Ray. "Some more voodoo doings—that's what he went for."