Robert Ervin Howard

Black Canaan Robert Ervin Howard

While in New Orleans, Kirby Buckner is confronted by an elderly creole woman who whispers a bizarre warning: "Trouble on Tularoosa Creek!". Soon, the woman disappears into a nearby crowd. Buckner immediately realizes that his backwoods homeland is in peril and instantly departs for the Canaan region of his birth. He arrives after midnight and sets out on horseback through the bayous to the town of Grimesville. En route he encounters a mysterious "quadroon girl" who mocks him. Buckner is disturbed to find himself aroused by her provocative beauty. The woman calls forth several large black men from hiding to kill Buckner, but he shoots one and kills another with a bowie knife. As a third flees, he notices that the girl has vanished.