Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 05 (21 page)

 
          
If
air he should get those two big paws on me, he'd sure enough have him an
advantage. I forked my own hands on his both biceps and shoved him hard away
from air sort of grapple. Nair fight a man his way, says the wise old advice;
if he boxes you, wrestle him—if he wrestles you, box him. So, as I flung him
clear, I sent my left into the middle of his red-flushed face, and out of his
nose popped blood that was redder still. He stood a moment and mopped it away
with his fringed sleeve. I circled to where I could stand betwixt him and those
bushes where I’d kicked his knife.

 
          
He
looked on me with eyes strained wide open and full of murder, then he turned
and ran a few steps and was down on hands and knees, a-hunting for something. I
started toward him,
then
I stopped.
For
he was up again, and he had my open pocket knife that I’d dropped to hit him.

 
          
He
held it in his hand, point toward me,
his
forefinger
along the back like somebody about to cut him off a slice of meat.

 
          
“Maybe
this has some of your power in it,” he said, a-wasting more of his breath to
say it. “It makes up any difference between us.”

 
          
“You’ll
need another sight of more difference than that,” I wasted some of my own
breath. “You didn’t do well so far with the big knife.”

 
          
“Throw
me that amulet, and we’ll call it quits.”

 
          
He
sounded like somebody a-wanting to stop the fight, but “No,” I said, and nair a
word more. I bucked my knees again to keep them loose, and this time it was I
who moved in to get close.

 
          
He
drew himself up to face me, and made a jab with my knife. I got my left hand on
his right wrist—that wrist was as big as a mule’s ankle—and pulled him hard
into me, and my right fist went a straightaway smash at his jaw. His head
snapped back and he
stumbled
away, a-pulling his knife
hand loose from me. I hit him half a dozen times, quick as I could throw my
fists, left, right, head, body, and head again. Down he went like a sack of
grain off the tail of a wagon. He hit the ground so hard that I thought all
Cry
Mountain
pitched.

 
          
I
slammed my boot hard on his right hand and the knife fell from it and rolled
away. I gave that knife a kick, too, into the bushes to find the big one where
it had fallen and lost itself. Harpe rolled all the way over to get clear of me
and struggled up on his feet again, with dirt and bits of moss all over that
beaded hunting shirt. He wagged his head to clear it, and glared on me. He was
still full of fight.

 
          
“This
means I have the untidy job of killing you with my bare hands,” he gulped.

 
          
“That
would take a better man than you,” I said.

 
          
He
tried it on. He rushed me with both fists a-flying. 1 ducked and blocked them
off, and flung my own fists. I hit him three times to his one, but he was
powerful for strength even if he'd lost the edge of it. One solid punch of his
fist might
could
come close to a-counting for three of
mine. Gamely he came back to where the shooting was. It was like a bull in a
fight against a mountain lion. He was a-getting tireder yet. Finally he pulled
away a good dozen paces, and let his arms hang down, to get strength back into
them.

 
          
“John,”
he sort of groaned, “you're pretty good.”

 
          
“Thanks
for the compliment,” I said again. “Want to keep on with this? We've had a
patch of fun so far.”

 
          
He
gave me his bloody-mouthed grin, and it was a right weary grin.

 
          
“Maybe
I’ll just wander away,” he said. “Think about things.”

 
          
With
those words, he suddenly headed off amongst the trees, toward where the
stockade was put up.

 
          
I
watched him run for a second, but just a second. I followed on, and I came to
him as he reached the stockade. Some laurel grew there on the inside, and
outside I saw pines and locusts.

 
          
Harpe
was at a big post of the stockade. With his big strength, he dragged that post
aside to the left, and then the post next to it to the right. He made a gap
where something big could come through.

 
          
Outside,
beyond the stockade, things waited.

 
          
It
was like as if that all his sentinels had gathered to hark at him. I saw the
Bigfoot a-towering up yonder, taller than air giant man, even than Goliath;
black hairy all over, a head on high as big as a bushel basket, with glaring
eyes set in it. And near to him, across his great big toes stole the Flat,
black and fuzzy as a bearskin rug come to life. Over farther off, a-sneaking a
look from behind a
tree,
was the Behinder. Gentlemen,
you all be glad you nair saw air such a thing as that.

 
          
And other things.
The swarm of big bees was there, a-hang-
ing in the air like a blanket and a-putting out a hum that boomed, but naught
came in. It was like as if they harked at what Harpe called to them, but not
one of them did what he bade:

 
          
“Come!”
was what he yammered to them. “Come help me!”

 
          
I
walked in behind him, but not in reach of him.

 
          
“What's
the matter, Mr. Harpe?” I asked, a-making it sound cheerful. “Won't your
friends jump to your word when you need them?”

 
          
He
paid me no mind. Again he yelled, “Come get him!”

 
          
And no move from those things amongst the trees outside the
stockade.
They stayed right where they were, all of them.

 
          
Somehow,
I found out that I could laugh. “You're in a right poor way for stumps,” I
said. “Whatair gets done to
me,
it's you who's got to
do it, all by yourself without your amulet to give orders for help.”

 
          
He
spun round to me, so fast that the fringes of his sleeves whipped in the air.
Then he bent himself down quick and came up with a big, jagged rock in each
hand. He flung them at me, one rock and then the other. Both of them missed, by
the grace of the good Lord Almighty, or he might could have had me right there.
I backed away quick and then 1 ran, and I’m not ashamed to tell it, for he was
a-stooping for more rocks.

 
          
He
got two and flung them both at me while he ran after me, and that’s always a
mistake. Stand still to fling something or you’ll miss, the way he did then. He
came after me with slapping feet, and I stopped to face him, almost beside the
fresh dirt of Scylla’s grave, a few steps from the big cleft from which
Cry
Mountain
wailed. He closed in.

 
          
“So
you dare make a stand,” he spit out, and came a-reach- ing for me with his two
big hands. He wanted to get hold of me.

 
          
I
let him have my left, speared it into his face as he bored in, then I laid my
right on him, just at the side of his jaw. He shammocked a couple of steps
away, but he didn’t go down. He was right hard to hurt, and that was a natural
fact. Back he came, arms out to hug me, and this time he got them round my body
and dragged me to him. As he did that, I dug my right fist into his belly and
felt the air go out of it. I put my left there and my right again, and that
knocked him clear of his hold on me. I went to work then, the hardest and
fastest I could, to his head, his body, his head and body again and again, ten
times or more.

 
          
It
hurt him bad to get hit like that, and he couldn’t hit me back but one time. He
landed that one high on my head and I shook it off as I worked my own hands
into him, all over. I’d nair punched thataway in all my days on this earth, and
well I knew I had to, for I was a-fighting for my life.

 
          
Harpe’s
knees buckled under that storm of blows. His feet stumbled under him to keep
him from a-falling. He went on the whirl away, and then he was at the rocky lip
of the cleft.

 
          
I
saw his feet move fast, like as if he did a dance. Next second, he lost air
balance he had, and down he tumbled into
Cry
Mountain
’s open mouth.

           
He screamed as he fell, long and
wavery I went to the edge of the thing, close as I dared, and looked down past
the blackness to the red glow of the fire down there, so far it looked like the
burning heart of the earth itself

 
          
His
cry drifted up to me, up, I couldn’t say you how long it came. It grew fainter
and fainter as he fell that everlasting deep way, until all of a sudden it
stopped.

 
          
Ruel
Harpe had struck bottom, struck it for good.

 
          
I
was dizzy and I drew' back away so that I wouldn’t fall after him, I sweated
and breathed hard. I swabbed my face with my sleeve. My knuckles were cut open
with the blow's I'd struck, and my right hand was gashed on the back with that
knife.

 
          
At
last I took a look all round me.

 
          
That’s
when I saw the three women, Myrrh and Alka and
Tarrah,
saw them where they’d come out in the open to watch the fight. After a moment,
they started to walk slowly toward where I was.

 
          
I
had the time at last to realize how tired out I was, from a-fighting Ruel Harpe
for something like fifteen-twenty minutes,

 
          
What now?

           
That was the thought in me while
those three women came a-walking, side by side, to come to where I was.
Skinny, careful Alka.
Curvy Tarrah.
Beautiful Myrrh.
They came close and looked on me, and
all their faces were pale.

 
          
“We
saw what happened,” said Alka to me, in a dull, hushed voice. “You killed him,
John.”

 
          
It
wasn’t quite an accusation, but it was near about one.

 
          
“I
did no such a thing,” I told her back. “I whipped him, and I can say I whipped
him good. But he got there to the edge of that place, and he fell down into it
without me a-touching him.”

 
          
We
all looked there, to that rocky gash where he’d fallen.
Nair
sound came from it.
The air was quiet all round us. I made myself go
back over and look down, and it made me feel dizzy to look. Blackness, deep
blackness like to the center of the world, all down to the red glow like fire.

 
          
“What
now?” said Myrrh, the very words I’d thought to
myself.

 
          
“I’ll
go see what now,” I said to her, and headed off to where the nearest stretch of
the stockade was.

 
          
But
I’d better
say,
where the stockade had been.

 
          
As
I came to it amongst the trees, it was down, like as if it had been rotted
away. Those poles that had been strong and high, they sagged, they drooped,
they tumbled air whichaway.

           
They looked like pieces of old
rotten wood, abandoned and let go to ruin. You could see how they yielded down
from where they’d stood so high and strong. But now, a hog could have come
through, if there’d been a hog there.

 
          
Ruel
Harpe had conjured up that stockade But he was gone, and his conjure tricks
were gone, and so was his stockade.

 
          
I
studied the trees beyond, where they’d been fenced off. The sun was higher up
and the mist was a-fading out. Naught was there, not a motion, none of the
things Harpe had fetched there to be his sentinels, his guards. I looked and
listened. All of a sudden, I heard a crow overhead somewhere,
caw caw.
A crow?
How long since I’d harked at a crow? A mountain boomer squirrel answered it,
answered it grumpy-voiced,
chit-
tery-chattery.

 
          
Things
were changed a right much round there since Harpe had taken his long fall. With
him had vanished all that slew of unchancey things beyond the stockade that had
crumpled on
itself
.

 
          
I
turned and went back to where I’d left the women. And they were a-gabbling
about something. They stood all round Scylla’s grave. I came there, and what I
saw was that the grave was busted open and something wrapped in a gray blanket
sat up in it.

 
          
“She’s
risen from the dead!” screamed Tarrah at me.

 
          
The
gray, grubby blanket stirred and fell open to both sides. Scylla’s wrinkled
face and Scylla’s glittery eyes showed themselves to us.

 
          
“No,”
she grated. “I wasn’t dead, but I might as well have been—deader than hell.
Somebody give me a hand, I want to get up from here.”

 
          
I
put down my own hand. Her clawlike fingers grabbed tight to it, and I heaved
her to her feet. She stepped out clear of the blanket, clear of the grave.

 
          
“Thank
you, John,” she said, the first kind word she'd air said to me. She looked
round at all the others. “No, I wasn’t dead,” she repeated. “I just lay there
and thought, or maybe I dreamed.”

 
          
“Scylla,
who’d have thought?” stammered Alka, and put her hand on Scylla’s shoulder.
“How did you breathe?”

 
          
“I
don’t think I breathed,” said Scylla. “But I wasn’t dead.”

 
          
All
of us stood together and puzzled in silence. Then I said, “I get it. The poison
you took was Harpe’s magic-mixed poison. Harpe’s finished—gone down there.” I
pointed at the cleft. “He’s gone, down there. And so’s all his magic gone, and
I reckon that means your poison went.”

 
          
“John
fought him,” said Myrrh in a hushed voice, “and he fell down into that hole.”

 
          
Scylla
squinted at Myrrh. “Who’s this pretty girl? Where’s she from, anyway?”

 
          
“Harpe
fetched her here,” I said, “for something that didn’t work out.”

 
          
“You
can tell me all about it at breakfast,” allowed Scylla. “I can use some
breakfast.”

 
          
“Breakfast’s
on the table,” said Alka. “We got it there, and came out to call Ruel and John.
Maybe things are a trifle cold by now, but—”

 
          
“Let’s
go see.” Scylla led the way to the passage. She moved sort of stiff at first,
but then better. I reckoned her joints loosened up. She came to the entry and
craned her neck to peer.

 
          
“No
lights in there,” she said. “Dark as where I lay underground.”

 
          
Alka
came and took her own look. “Those were Ruel’s lights, remember,” she said. “He
had an enchantment to make them shine. Now he’s gone, and they’re gone, too.”

 
          
“I
have candles in my room,” Scylla said. “I can get in there and find them. I’ve
often moved around in the dark, I know how.”

           
She headed in. Tarrah and Myrrh
stood where they were. I followed Scylla, with a hand on the rock wall to guide
me. It seemed a mile-long way in yonder.

 
          
When
we got to the main room, it was so
dark,
charcoal
would have left a white mark on it. I got out my box of matches and lit one. I
saw the table, with dishes of breakfast laid out on it, and at one end Harpe’s
pile of papers and the crumbly old Judas book he’d translated. Scylla headed
for the curtained hallway, a-moving like as if she knew her way. My match went
out. I stood in the dark, a long wait of time, till I heard her come back. Then
I struck another match. I saw her, and she had two great big candles, one in
each hand. She came close and held one out.

 
          
"Light
it,” she bade me, and l held the match to the twisty wick. The candle gave us a
right much more light. I saw that it was a black candle and the other was black,
too. Likely they were for use in witch doings. She dripped wax on a comer of
the table top and stuck the candle in it, and its flame rose high and bright,
like the petal of a lemony-yellow flower. She lit the other candle from the
first.

 
          
We
walked back through the outer passage. "John,” she said, "I’ve turned
you over and over in my mind as I lay so long underground, and I think that you
may have the right on your side here and there. Let’s bury the hatchet.”

 
          
"Just
so long as you don’t bury it in my back,” I said, and Scylla laughed, and it
was what you might
could
call a friendly laugh.

 
          
Outside,
we called the others to follow us in, and the candle showed us where to set our
feet. We got to the table where the one candle burnt and Scylla stuck up the
other beside it, and we sat down,
The
breakfast was
eggs and bacon and toasted muffins, and they'd gone cold, and so had the
coffee. Scylla went to the rope and tugged, and came back.

 
          
“We
can't get anything more that way,'' she reported. “Let's make out with what's
here." She drank some cold coffee. “John and I think we can be
friends," she said.

 
          
“Yes,"
I said, and had me a bite of muffin.

 
          
Scylla
questioned Myrrh about herself, and shook her tumbly gray head over what Myrrh
replied her.

 
          
“Ruel
was wrong about what he tried with you," she said. “He was wrong about
everything." She looked at the Judas book and the translation pages.
“About that, too," she said. “Now that he's gone, it's up to us to decide
things for ourselves."

 
          
“Myrrh
and I will start down the mountain, directly we're through eating," I
said.

 
          
“We'll
all have to go down," said Alka.
“Back into the
world."
She said it with a happy voice. She wanted to go back.

 
          
Scylla
turned a look on her, with the candlelight a-flickering on her wrinkly face.
“What do you propose to do, Alka?"

 
          
“I
was a librarian," Alka answered her.
“A very good one.
I begin to wonder if Ruel got me here by exaggerating the trouble I was in. I
can work in a library
again,
do some research and
writing again. After all, research and writing was what I did here. Yes, I can
do it. I can find old friends who'll help me to get a job."

 
          
Scylla
brooded. “As for me, why don't I stay a witch?" she inquired us. “Not a
black witch, though. I've had my game with that, and the best I can say for it
is
,
no black witch is ever happy. But there are white
witches who help people, cure their sicknesses,
make
their crops and their trades flourish. I've heard of such, in the Ozarks. I
could go there and live."

 
          
“And
prosper," said Tarrah. “I've been in the Ozarks. The name of Scylla could
become famous."

 
          
“I
might not go as
Scylla, that
was just my coven name.”
She smiled. “My real name in the public records is Mary Ann Dobinson.”

 
          
“Old
Mr. Vance Randolph in the Ozarks would be glad to talk to you,” said Tarrah.
“Help you know the Ozark people.”

 
          
“Vance
Randolph,” said Scylla, a-committing the name to memory. “What will you do,
Tarrah?”

 
          
“Well,
no more witchcraft,” said Tarrah, quick off. “I wish I could do what Myrrh
talks about, work in some store or shop. Meet people
there,
maybe meet some nice young man.”

 
          
“Why
not come to Larrowby?” Myrrh invited her. “I don't think I'll be long at my job
in my father’s store. I’ll be a-getting married.”

 
          
You
couldn’t rightly tell by the candlelight, but I’d swear she blushed to think on
Tombs McDonald.

 
          
“Come
with me to Larrowby,” she invited Tarrah again.

 
          
We
talked about a-getting down
Cry
Mountain
. I allowed it was a right much of a trip
down, and then another good long trudge before you came to air sort of house. I
took one of the candles, found my way back to the room where I’d stayed those
two nights, and fetched back my guitar and other stuff. The women were at the
table, a-making sandwiches.

 
          
“The
way you talk, we’ll need a lunch on the trip,” said Tarrah.

 
          
They’d
fetched out the big steak Myrrh hadn’t touched the night before, and sliced it
up thin. Somebody, Alka I think, had brought a can of sardines and another of
potted ham. They likewise had a package of big crackers, and they spread ham on
those, or put steak slices or sardines betwixt them. They made up five packages
of them, with pieces of the newspapers Harpe and I had read. I put two of the
packages, for Myrrh and me, into my sack. Then I picked up Harpe’s writing and
the crumbly pages of the Judas book.