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Kraal of the Walking Dead by Dan Cushman
Kraal Of The Walking Dead – Two novelettes about adventurers in Africa, stolen secrets, voodoo, and the walking dead.
Book Details
Book Details
Kraal Of The Walking Dead – Two novelettes about adventurers in Africa, stolen secrets, voodoo, and the walking dead.
The Sorcerer Of Kambara (1948) – Could a trader-tramp like Johnny Starr save a queen like Paulette Payan from the curse of the Black Sorcerer? Maybe he could—when the stakes were Sheba’s fortunes!
A six chapter novelette.
Kraal Of The Walking Dead (1948) – Why would Mengbattu, the pale girot, never dance at the fetish fire? Even the well-known scientist, Dr. Sprague, dared not try to answer that question. For the ghastly death-secrets of ancient Tovodoun might contain truths too evil to know!
A ten chapter novelette.
Dan Cushman (1909-2001) was born in Marion, Mich., and moved to Montana as a young boy. Cushman held stints as a cowboy, printer, prospector, geologist’s assistant, advertising writer and radio announcer.
The former New York Times book critic wrote dozens of books and was best known for “Stay Away, Joe,” the story of a lusty American Indian rogue. This 1953 novel was made into a movie starring Elvis Presley.
Krall of the Walking Dead contains 7 illustrations.
Files:
- Cushman-KraalOfTheWalkingDead.epub
Read Excerpt
Excerpt: The Sorcerer of Kambara
I
THE SUN WAS RED as a Kaffir orange as it sank through smoke haze which had drifted north on the dry-season wind from Angola. There was a tiny clearing, a footpath sloping sharply to a river bank. Johnny Starr issued a command to his twelve Kama porters and they came wearily to a stop. This was Bonde River, a northward-flowing tributary of the Congo, the evening goal he had set for his safari.
Johnny Starr’s feet had been troubling him since mid-morning, but there was no sign of fatigue on his thin, mahogany-tanned face as he stood, idly slapping one leg with his fly-whisk.
“Bwana m’kubwa!” intoned the ancient Nefunta, his capito. “The cloth house, Bwana!”
Johnny Starr walked to one side and then to the other, twanging the taut tent cords with his thumb. He indicated satisfaction with a crisp jerk of his head, and went inside. Only then, seated on a blanket roll beyond sight of his blacks, did his face show the suffering that his feet had caused him.
He pulled off his antelope hide veldt-schoen and examined each large toe. Chiggers had found their way beneath the nails, they had deposited their egg-sacs, and now the eggs had hatched and were itching him like the very devil.
He scraped each toe carefully, smeared with Merthiolate, and rubbed his feet with Tiger Balm. He felt better. He stretched his feet toward the tent flap, rolled a cigarette of native leaf adding a pinch of bangh as an evening luxury, and smoked slowly.
Johnny Starr was thirty or thirty-five. It’s hard to guess a man’s age after he’s been burned and dehydrated by the sun and quinine of two tropical continents. He was medium in height, slim, but with a springsteel quality that indicated strength. His teeth were strong and white, a scar was partially hidden by a close moustache.
He inhaled, keeping the smoke down a long time to get all the comforting bangh out of it. Twenty or thirty paces away he could see his Kama tribesmen squatting on their elongated heelbones around a smoky fire where a kettle of mealie-meal was bubbling. Beyond them, through an opening in the jungle, the low and greenish Bonde moved among the brace roots of underwashed trees. At some distance, perhaps a half-dozen kilometers, he could hear the wavering, irregular sound of a tree-trunk drum.
He noticed that his porters had ceased watching their mealie-meal. They were rigid and large eyed, listening. After three or four minutes the drum became silent. He crawled through the tent flap and asked,
“What were the words of the drum?”
There was a lengthy silence before Nefunta, the capito, answered, “It was the Juma tongue and we did not understand all of it, Bwana.”
“What were its words?”
A quality in Starr’s voice made Nefunta hurry to say, “A woman escaped. The king of Lilula village will pay ten arm’s lengths of copper wire for her capture.”
“A slave woman?”
“A bondele woman,” the capito answered in awed tones.
Starr twisted his lips—”The drums said that?”
“Yes, Bwana.”
Starr laughed and turned abruptly, striding back to the tent. The idea of a Lilua “king” offering a reward for a white woman was too ridiculous for consideration.
He awoke next morning before sunup with mist hanging over the river. He shaved, and wiped his face hurriedly with a damp towel when he heard the natives jabbering excitedly. He strode over in time to see someone coming up the bank from a small dugout canoe.
Starr drew up with abrupt surprise on seeing it was a white woman.
She saw Starr at the same second. She turned as though to run, a canvas-wrapped package clutched tightly to her breast, then she checked herself and stood quite still, her eyes very large and dark.
“You’re just in time for breakfast,” Starr said, pretending to notice nothing unusual about her arrival.
“You’re—from Parhana?” she asked.
“From Kamakama.”
“Oh.”
SHE walked forward then, her eyes quickly roving the camp. She was no older than twenty-one, small, extremely slim waisted. Her complexion was browned rather than the sallow hue which most white women assume in the tropics. She had tried to stuff her hair beneath a terai sunhat, but most of it had escaped and hung in wavy dark masses to her shoulders. She wore a torn and soiled brown shirt, khaki-shorts and knee-length stockings. She still clasped the small, canvas-wrapped package closely.
“You won’t let them find me!” she whispered.”
“You’re running from something?” Starr asked, and when she did not answer he raised his voice, “Who are you running from?”
She answered, sounding short of breath, “I can’t stop here. They’re too close. I don’t know how far. Maybe only a couple of kilometers. I haven’t slept for two nights.”
“Who’s chasing you?”
“The tribesmen. From Kambara. They killed my father and sister. He was missionary there—”
He seized her shoulders and shook her, trying to snap the delirium that seemed to be holding her.
“You’re trying to tell me that the natives have attacked Kambara?”
She nodded. “It was because of the fever. The spirillum. Six of them died. Three or four others went blind. Half the village was down. Father did what he could. They had a sorcerer’s dance. Funza, he was the witch doctor. He always hated us. He said I was the sorceress. He said I’d brought the spirillum, that I’d put a curse on them. They believed him. They thought they’d have to kill me. Father tried to fight them off. They killed him. I saw them kill him. . .” She commenced to sob.
Excerpt From: Dan Cushman. “Kraal of the Walking Dead.”
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