Page:Weird Tales Volume 36 Number 04 (1942-03).djvu/62

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TheRat Master

By GREYE LA SPINA

What could they mean, those soft rustlings and pattering that had nothing to
do with the leaves—nor with the rain, though rain was falling?

The night was pitchy dark; the sky indigo. Black vaporous racks flitted across the moon that could be glimpsed only occasionally through rifts in the interlacing branches of the crowding trees. The rutty roadway had become a rude cattle trail, along which I urged Carry with ever-increasing anxiety, although upon what my apprehension was based I myself did not exactly know.

Once in a while I used the electric flashlight; oddly enough, not to make surer our panting way along the hardly-used trail, but to lighten my furtive glances into the creeping shadows that lurked about us, not only galloping fast upon our heels, but pressing closer on either hand while giving way with suspicious readiness ahead.

"The horridly unveiled creature dance in ugly glee—"

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