“What are we looking for?” he asked.
“The goat’s head,” replied the farmer. He had ruffled through the papers on Westcott’s table.
“Do you know what that means?” exclaimed Dreeme.
Walden Slater nodded.
“Be patient,” he said. “It’s the signal for the Esbat.”
He continued to rummage about the room.
Suddenly he snorted in triumph, and started for the door. Dreeme followed close at his heels. The farmer, still holding his lantern, turned a corner and they began to climb a narrow flight of stairs. Behind them in the deserted library the oil-lamp perched precariously on the corner of the table and quivered at each gust of rainy air that swept through the window.
They wandered through two bedrooms, the feeble flare of the lantern illuminating neatly-made beds, and came to a closed door that apparently opened into a room on the rear of the house. Walden Slater, employing his usual tactics, kicked it open and they entered into a small chamber that was entirely unfurnished except for a raised stone slab on three perpendicular pillars of granite in the corner. The farmer made his way immediately toward this strange bit of furniture and held his lantern over it, inspecting the corrugated surface of the stone. Dreeme, standing beside him, saw dark stains on the slab and a small keen-bladed knife that appeared more like a lancet than anything else. The knife glittered in the ray of the lantern and the young doctor was overwhelmed by a sudden fear. He stared wide-eyed at the farmer, and Walden Slater’s long upper lip quivered in the dim light. Dreeme struggled between an absorbed excitement in their discoveries and his intense concern for Deborah’s safety. She was somewhere not far from them, her mind a riot of fear, waiting frantically for him. He was sure of that. But what had happened to her in the meantime, during those hours (and he was not sure how many they had been, for the taciturn farmer had vouchsafed no specific information on this point) she had passed since Burroughs enticed or kidnapped her from the Slater house, he could not even guess. If any harm had come to her (and his heart nearly ceased beating at the thought) he would not leave the valley until he had killed Jeffrey Westcott and George Burroughs. A cold determination seemed to freeze the emotions in him as he came to this decision. His thin lips tightened and his eyes became like blue steel.
“I shall go mad in a minute,” he said calmly to the farmer.
Walden Slater opened his mouth to speak and then, with a grunt that expressed both surprise and relief, he pointed to the corner in back of the stone slab. The dejected carcass of a chicken lay there in its dishevelled feathers, its crop slit open and its blood dabbled upon the floor.
“He’s been divining,” he said. Then he looked closely at the young doctor.
“You perk up, Doctor Dreeme,” he added. “I know what I’m doing. There’s no harm done to anybody … yet.”
He bent over and fumbled about the limp carcass of the chicken and then straightened his body with a grunt of satisfaction. In his hand he held a small blood-smeared square of paper. Silently he turned and strode downstairs, Dreeme close at his heels. He did not speak until they had regained the comparative light of the library and then he sank into Jeffrey Westcott’s chair by the table. The curtain from the window fluttered inward, narrowly missing the chimney of the sputtering lamp. Dreeme stood before the farmer, his eyes staring and his hands trembling.
“I reckon I’ll have to explain a few things,” he remarked slowly, “or you’ll be fainting on me, Doctor.”
“I’m not going to faint, Walden,” replied the young doctor, “but I am mad to get on. I know Deborah’s in grave danger and I should be with her.”
Walden Slater nodded gravely.
“Westcott is playing his last card to dominate the valley,” he said. “He’s called an Esbat, a meeting, and he intends a sacrifice. I knew it was coming ever since I saw that goat-head in Wagner’s fist. The goat-head is used as an announcement for a coming event. Wagner was on his way to somebody with the sign when he was smashed in the head and killed. That’s when I started thinking. There hasn’t been an Esbat in this valley since old Captain Uriah Carrier died, and my dad told me all about him.”
He cleared his throat after this unexpectedly long speech. Then he renewed his distasteful task of narration.
“We don’t want none of this stuff, Doctor,” he declared. “The farmers want to forget what their granddads were. Westcott won’t let us forget. He’s got Uriah’s black book and we’re all in it. He’s got some of us fooled by stirring up feelings in us that we thought had died out of us. It has died out of me. I don’t take any stock in this stuff though my dad was befuddled by old Uriah and went to his Esbat.”
He cleared his throat again and held up the bit of paper. In the lamp-glow Dreeme saw the tiny goat’s head carefully drawn in blue ink and when Walden Slater slowly turned the paper he saw “Dagon—two—nigger” written in small letters. He recalled now that he had never
