Black Canaan

In New Orleans, narrator Kirby Buckner is confronted in a crowd by a withered black crone who whispers the ominous words, "Trouble on Tularoosa Creek!" 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.