Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 05 (6 page)

 
          
I
kept on my way, with my wits about me and the tail of my eye a-looking past my
shoulder. If that was a Behinder, a-mak- ing air so slightly a soundless stir
in the leaves, I'd do what I could. I reckoned what to do, if it got close,
would be all a sudden to whip round and look it betwixt its eyes (if a Behinder
truly has what we understand eyes to be) and say, “All right, what the hell do
you figure to do?"

 
          
But no great much of a comfort in that, not all alone a-picking my
way along the ledge where the water ran and the trees grew.
I stooped
quick
, and grabbed me up a rock, one that likely weighed
four pounds and was a pinky-gray flint kind of a rock. That would smash a skull
if I had to do that. If the Behinder sure enough has a skull, has a sure enough
head.

 
          
But
I'm glad to say that naught tried onto me as I went along the ledge beside the
stream to where
came
another fall of water from above.
The rock was straight up and down there, but into the face of it had been dug
or chipped some pits, big enough to grab with the hand or shove into with a
toe. Who or what had dug them? But they made a ladder up, and I dropped that
rock I'd had and swarved my way up. I reckon it may have been twelve or
fourteen feet to the ledge above, but it seemed like as if it was as tall up
there as the top of a church steeple. I knew that if I looked down below me,
the face of
Cry
Mountain
would look as straight up and down as the
wall of a room, with me like a fly a-walking up it. Well I knew that thing, and
you all can just bet your necks I didn’t look down. I kept a-climbing on those
pits till I got to the flat face of a ledge above, and I sat for a second and
looked at what was up there with me.

           
Some black walnuts grew there, and
beneath them some scrub of different kinds. Where the dark soil had been flung
up by the flow of the water, there were some smaller plants, about a foot and a
half high, a whole bed of them. I studied them.

 
          
They
made quite a bunch, each one a-putting up two or three sets of five leaves;
five leaves, like the green fingers of a hand spread out for a grab. I right
off knew what they were. Ginseng, the scholar crowd will call it, that’s a word
from the Chinese language, I reckon, but here in these mountains we just call
it sang and let it go at that.

 
          
You
find you a nice patch of sang and you’re in the money. The
roots,
dried and cured out the proper way, will fetch sixty dollars a pound, more or
less, at the merchant’s. And he sells it for away more than that, over yonder
in China, where they say it will cure all sorts of ills, will make you live a
hundred years, will make an old gray-haired grandsire get to chasing young women
through the woods on a night when it’s pouring the rain. There it grew, and in
rich soil. All except in one place, under the leaves, the soil looked pale. 1
wondered myself if maybe rocks lay there. I put down my hand and pulled aside
some five-fingered leaves to see what kind of rocks.

 
          
But
not rocks, after all.
Bones.

 
          
They
were pale bones, as smooth as if they’d lain there a hundred years. And they
were human bones. By their size, I reckoned they’d once been a fairly
well-grown man.

 
          
I
dragged the sang plants as far apart as I could to see those last remains of
who had lived and now lived no more. The bones lay more or less together, not
scattered out, the ribs there with arm bones to right and left and leg bones at
the bottom. Like as if whoair it had been was down on his back to die. Only there
was no skull to them, no skull at all. Who had these dry bones been?

           
I made out a dark band that wound
round the spine, and moved off quick, for it
might could
be a snake again. Then I had a second look, and it was just an old, old leather
belt, near about rotted away. A big square brass buckle looked up at me. And it
had two letters on it, two block letters.

 
          
ZP.

 
          
All
right, I said to myself, ZP stands for a name, and I reckoned I’d heard the
name, at Preacher Larrowby’s house.
ZP—Zeb Plattenburg.
It had to be Zeb Plattenburg who lay there, what bones were left of him, where
he’d been a-climbing Cry Mountain, the way he’d bragged he’d do, and had got
that far and no farther.

 
          
I
want you all to know I felt a chill in my own bones, a sort of stir in my hair.
Tombs McDonald had said that Zeb Plattenburg had been a bold, daring young
fellow, who’d more or less dared himself to try this climb, and had made it up
as far as where the sang grew so thick and so rich. I took me a look all round
and up and down, and was glad that no leaf stirred just then, no shadow moved.
I got down on one knee and prayed a prayer for rest to the soul of Zeb
Plattenburg, who’d climbed to there and died there because there was no rest in
his bold, careless heart.

 
          
But
what had gone with Zeb Plattenburg’s head? I could find no trace of it. It
couldn’t have rolled away through that tangly bed of sang.
Somebody—something—must have toted it off somewhere.

 
          
I
got up from where I’d prayed and kept on up
Cry
Mountain
, up beyond where Zeb Plattenburg hadn’t
lived to get to. For
I
, too, had sworn and vowed I’d
make that climb to the top.

 
          
I
worked my way along that ledge that had itself a bed of sang, with under
the sang
what had to be Zeb Plattenburg's last resting
place. I walked under trees beside the long flow of water and amongst bushes.
Again there was the feel of a something on the follow behind me, and I looked
back and looked again, and naught to see there. You all can bet I felt creepy.
But all the while I was a-making it farther up to the top of Cry Mountain than
Zeb Plattenburg had managed before he was some way struck dead and his skull
taken away. I'd heard tell, time and again, that a pure heart will win over
evil, and I sure enough wished that my heart was a purer one.

 
          
Where
the water flowed down from above onto that woodsy ledge, I stopped and sat
down. It wasn't
noon
yet,
but I'd made myself tired and hungry with all that swarving and climbing. So I
put myself on a knob of rock where I could look all ways—up, down, forward, and
back—and got out the last chunks of corn bread and ham that Tombs had put
together for me, and bit into them. I drank from my canteen to help the last
crumbs down into me. Yet again, a long look all directions. If there was aught
there, it was a-crowding in on me unseen.

 
          
I
pulled my guitar round where I sat. I swept at the strings and worked me out a
tune. I sang, with the words a-coming to me as I sang them:

 
          
“
Cry
Mountain
, cry,

           
Why do you cry?

           
Does wind or rain

           
Put you in pain,

           
Or do you tell

           
A man will find hell

           
If he comes to
your top?

           
Me, I won't stop

           
Till I reach to where I know

           
What it is makes you cry so . .
."

 
          
I
stopped and made a whisper of the strings with my thumb. I thought to myself,
that song was no great one, the words or either the music. But if I had me some
time later, maybe I’d work it into something better. But what I did hope was
that this mountain had heard me, that it knew it was John against the mountain.
If I’d truly been a country fool to climb so high on it, I’d at least made it
farther up than poor Zeb Plattenburg. And Td
climb
higher yet. I turned my eyes upward to see how I could do it.

 
          
Right
off, I saw how I’d nearly made it. The lip of the precipice was just above
there, with trees grown close on it and a-bending down, big bushy-topped pines
and old oaks, some more black walnut, maple, gum, and mountain ash and others.
And next thing I saw, on the face of the rock ran a sort of cut- in ladder.

 
          
It
was no little bunch of shallow hand-and footholds this time, like those I’d
used below. These were deep and roomy, near about like a staircase, only the
rock was too steep for a staircase. Like a ladder, as I’ve told you all. And
there was no point in my a-waiting down there on that lump of rock. I swung my
guitar back behind me, and I set myself to those steps and went up them.

 
          
I
climbed and I climbed with both my hands and both my feet, and in time I got to
the top. I dragged myself up on a flat place, level and broad, with tufty grass
under the trees. I got hold of the stem of a sapling and hauled myself up to
where I could stand.

 
          
The
top of
Cry
Mountain
was as flat as a table, but a table grown
over with trees. I moved a little in amongst them. Through the leafy branches
ahead I saw something else. A stockade, I made it out to be. Big stout poles of
different kinds of wood, driven in so close together you could barely see
betwixt them. Somebody had made that fence of poles, had driven them in. I
walked toward them, right delicate as I moved, ready for what might
could
happen.

           
Close in, I saw there was a gate. It
was made of stout rails laid across. There was a foot log at the bottom and a
cross-log at the top, and the gate fitted in there like as if a master builder
had done it. Centermost of that log above the gate was fastened a skull, with
eyes of dark shadow and a grin of its teeth. I looked up at it, and I could
swear it looked down at me.

 
          
That
selfsame moment, something made itself heard.

 
          
Not
the voice of
Cry
Mountain
this time, not that lonesome sound. It was
a deep hum, like bees, but louder. I turned to see, and sure enough it
was
bees.

 
          
A
swarm of them drifted amongst the trees toward me. There must have been a
nation of them, bright and brown, and they were big—bigger than bees, than
bumblebees—more like a world of flying mice or sparrows for size, and all of
them a-humming as they came at me.

 
          
I
ran hard against the rails of the gate, so hard I almost bounced off. I grabbed
hold, a-fixing to climb over.

 
          
“I’ve
been waiting for you to get here,” said a deep voice the other side of the
gate. “I’ve watched you all the way up. You’d better come in, quickly.”

 
          
The
heavy gate swung inward, with a screech of wood on wood. And you all can bet I
flew through and inside it.

           
The gate swished in the air as it
swung shut behind me. I heard the heavy snap it made as some kind of catch or
lock caught itself. That swarm of great big bees came up and fluttered itself
right against the rails of the gate. The bees hung there in the air like a
lumpy brown blanket, feet tall and feet wide, and all the humming was like the
rush of falling water.

 
          
“Don’t
be afraid of them now,” the deep voice said to me. “A sting from one of them
would kill you like the bite of a poisonous snake. But they never come past
this fence.”

 
          
I
turned round and had my first sight of who was a-talking.

 
          
He
was big, so heavyset that you didn’t realize right off that he had a good
height, but he wasn’t porky. He looked as hard as iron. He’d weigh maybe
twenty-five pounds more than I do. He wore a good-looking old-timey hunting
shirt down to his knees, buckskin as pale as cream with long fringes at the
sleeves and cape collar. On each side at the front was worked a thunderbird in
red and blue beads. The collar lay open, and on his hairy chest hung what at
first I thought was a crucifix. A red silk sash went round his waist. His
square-jawed face looked middle-aged and smart as hell. The dark, gray-shot
hair was balded off his brow, but it was long over his ears. He had a short,
straight nose and a mustache swept out right and left, and on his lower lip and
chin point a streak of beard the size and length of a paring- knife blade. His
eyes, and they were eyes as gray and shadowy as smoke, studied me all over from
head to foot.

           
“You’re a tall man,” said his deep,
croony voice.
“Taller than I am, and I’m six feet or nearly.
And you’re strong and
active,
you’ve had to be with
all the climbing and hiking you’ve done these past few days.” He stopped again,
his eyes still a-climbing all over me. “And your name’s John.”

 
          
“How come you to know my name?”

 
          
“I
make it my business to know some interesting things, even things far off beyond
these mountains. I have methods of finding out—you may find them hard to
believe. I let you come here because I thought we might profit each other.” He
smiled on me, a tight-mouthed smile. “As for me, my name’s Ruel Harpe.
Harpe with an
e
at the
end of it.”

 
          
“Harpe,”
I repeated him. “I’ve read that name in a history book.”

 
          
“It’s
a name with an interesting significance, isn’t it?” While we talked, I was
a-having myself a look round to make out what kind of a place this was on top
of
Cry
Mountain
. Outside the gate, those big bees had
hummed off somewhere away. Where I was inside grew trees, all manner of trees.
Pines and hemlocks and cedars, rich green.
A stand of hickory.
Laurel
, thicketed here and yonder
And
maple and ash and wild cherry and so on, but no
brush—that had been cleared away. Streaks of sunlight came a-stabbing down here
and there. Somewhere amongst trunks and branches, I thought I glimpsed somebody
a-standing to watch and hark at Ruel Harpe and me, without a-coming into sight.

 
          
I
turned back to where Ruel Harpe stood, still a-making his study of me. He put
up a broad-backed hand and sort of stroked that blade of beard.

 
          
“An
interesting significance,” he repeated over again. “There were two Harpes I
read the mention of,” I said. “Brothers, in what used to be wild country in
Tennessee
and
Kentucky
, back about the seventeen and nineties.”

           
“That's
right,
"
he nodded me.
“Micajah and Wiley Harpe.
Big and Little
Harpe, they were called. They're credited with being more or less the founding
fathers of American outlawry."

 
          
“People
were purely scared of them,” I said.

 
          
“That's
true, but the Harpes have never been truly understood. Anyway, here you are.
It's my duty to show you hospitality"

 
          
You
might
could
figure that when he said the word
“hospitality," he was hospitable. But the sound of his deep voice was more
like an order to come along, like as if I was under arrest. When we started out
together, he didn't have his hand on my shoulder or aught like that. But it
felt like it.

 
          
Well,
the top of
Cry
Mountain
, that flat, tree-grown top of it, was
several acres big, as I judged. And grown up with trees but no brush under them
as I’ve said, just flat, rich-looking ground, not what you'd expect on top of a
mountain like that. Here and there grew bits of grass and patches of moss, one
or two clumps of toadstools, and some flowers. I didn't seem to know those
flowers, though I know most kinds hereabouts. The fenced-in part was maybe the
size of a great big stable yard. As Ruel Harpe and I sort of ambled along
together, it was a mite hard to recollect that I’d climbed up the steep, scary
side of
Cry
Mountain
like a fly a-going up a wall. And what he'd
said about how he knew I was a-coming, how he'd more or less let me come, why,
that was on my mind. I decided I'd ask him about it.

 
          
“You
mean, you could have stopped me," I said, and thought, and decided to say
it.
“The way you stopped Zeb Plattenburg."

 
          
“Oh,
that one," said Ruel Harpe. “He wasn't worth my trouble. You wonder what
happened to him, down
there?
You should be able to
guess.
The bees.
They settled on him, and one sting
should have been enough, but maybe a hundred of them stung him.
A thousand.”

           
I studied that. “These are special
bees. But ordinary bees, they die when they sting.”

 
          
“So
do these bees die when they sting, but there are always more bees to take the
places of the
dead.
Don’t get out there where they can
sting you, John. 1 might add I have other guardians on
Cry
Mountain
than bees.”

 
          
We
walked along over the earth and rock under the trees. The light through the
leaves was green, like maybe down at the bottom of the sea. I looked thisaway
and
that,
but saw no sign of other living things, and
no sign of a house or cabin. “Where do you live?” I inquired Harpe.

 
          
“We
have comfortable quarters down under the rock.”
“We?”
1 repeated him. “Then you’re not alone up here, I take it.”

           
“No, I’ll introduce you to some
companions pretty soon.
Choice companions.
I’m careful
about companions.”

 
          
“You
nair wanted Zeb Plattenburg,” I made a guess.

 
          
“The one whose bones lie down there?
No, I hadn’t any need
of him. I let him get just so close,
then
I got rid of
him.” “With your bees,” I said. “Did they take his head? I didn’t see it with
the rest of his bones.”

           
“It was brought to me by—something
else. You’ve seen it over my gate. Impressive, isn’t it? I sent a friendly
creature for it.”

 
          
I
reckoned he wanted me to ask what sort of creature, but I didn’t.

 
          
We’d
walked while we talked, and we came to a big deep ditch of a place, with trees
a-growing thick along both sides of it. It was ripped deep into the earth and
rock, a good sixty feet long and ten or twelve feet wide, and when I looked
down into it I couldn’t make out the bottom, just shadowy rock sides that looked
as black as tar. Only, far far below, there was a flash that danced and winked
like flames of fire.

           
“That,” said Harpe, “is what makes
the cry of
Cry
Mountain
.”

 
          
I
looked down again into that dark gash with fire below. It made my head swim to
look. “I reckon you mean that the wind blows in and makes the sound,” I said.

 
          
“You’re
right, John, sometimes the wind does that. But there's a way to make the wind
blow. Let me show you.”

 
          
He
stepped up to a big tree, a sort of poplar. There was a hole in its bark, and
he
dived
his hand in and fetched out a crooked
something that first off looked like bone. It was as long as from Harpe’s elbow
to his fingertips, and I saw that it was hollowed out to be a horn, with the
small end shaped into a mouthpiece.

 
          
“I’d
rather you wouldn’t handle it, John,” he said. “Just look at it.”

 
          
I
looked. Its outside was carved in crossed lines, some sort of a design. “What’s
it made of?” I inquired him.

 
          
“I
think of ivory.
Elephant ivory, carved by Indians.
It
was here when first I came, years ago. Of course, you’re going to say that
there were no elephants here in old times.”

 
          
“No,
I won’t say that.” I might
could
have mentioned the
Bammat, now and then reported in the mountains, but I didn’t. “The Indians knew
about elephants before
Columbus
, they left images and pictures.”

 
          
“Anyway,
this makes the cry.”

 
          
He
set the horn to his mouth and blew a long, trembly note.

 
          
Next
moment the voice of the mountain rose round us,
Awooooooo
, sad and drawn out, and so loud right there that the
rocks under my boots seemed to shake and dance like a ship’s deck in a storm. I
was glad for that moaning call to die out of the air. I looked on Harpe, and
likely my face was sort of blank, for he laughed. A musical laugh it was. He
put the horn back into its hollow tree.

           
“Yes,” he said, “I can do that. It’s
all right for you to know, because here you are and here you’ll stay. I was
able to watch you as you came up here I let you do it because I’ve heard about
you—what you’ve been able to do in your time, really mysterious things. And I
decided that it was high time for you to start doing them sensibly,
profitably.” He kept his eyes on me. “Doing them helpfully,” he added on.

 
          
“I
see,” I said, for I did begin to see. “You want me to join in with you on
something. What if I say no?”

 
          
“If
you said no, you’d be sorry,” he sort of drawled out. “Up here, nothing is done
or left undone except as I say the word, and never will be.”

 
          
“What
if you died?”

 
          
“I
won’t just die. I’d have to be killed, and what can kill me?”

 
          
Plain
as print, he believed what he said.

 
          
“And
with me gone,” he went ahead, “you wouldn’t last an hour inside these
stockades.” Another look
stare
up and down me. “Maybe
the bees would come in and find you.
Maybe something else.”

 
          
“What
kind of something else?”

 
          
“Are
you a praying man?” he questioned me back, right serious about it. “Then pray
that you never find out. But for your own good, John, don’t pray out loud.

 
          
“I’ve
promised you hospitality,” he said. “You can be at ease here, happy here.
But—well, I’ll put it this way. You’ve read in the Bible, I suppose.”