Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC (18 page)

 
          
"I
reckon they're money," said Mr. Hoje, "but I never seen the
like."

 
          
None
of us had. They weren't even round. Just limpy-edged and flattened out. You
could figure how they'd been made, a lump of soft gold put between two jaws of
a die and stamped out. The smallest was bigger and thicker than a four-bit
piece. They had figures, like men with horned heads and snaky tails, and there
were what might be letters or numbers, but nothing any of us could name in any
language we'd ever heard tell of.

 
          
We
put all those coins into an old salt-bag, and sat up the rest of the night, not
talking much but pure down glad of each other's company. We had breakfast
together, cooked by Sarah Ann, who had the good sense not to question. And
after that, came up a young man who was sheriff's deputy.

           
"Gentlemen," he said to
us, "has ary one of you seen a fellow with a white face and a broad
build?"

 
          
"What's
up with such a one?" asked Mr. Hoje.

 
          
"Why,
Mr. Hoje," said the sheriff's deputy, "they want him bad at the state
prison. He was a show-fellow, doing play-magic tricks, but he took to swindling
folks and got in jail and then got out again, and the law's after him."

 
          
"We've
seen such a man," allowed Mr. Eddy, "but he's gone from here
now."

 
          
When
we were left alone again, we told each other we could see how it was. Reed
Barnitt did his false magic tricks, like setting the light on the star and
making words show on the white paper by heating it. And he'd planned it with
Aram Harnam to furnish us that black candle, to get hold of the property of Mr.
Hoje and Mr. Eddy—scaring them afterward, so bad they'd never dare look again,
and forfeit their home places.

 
          
Only:
There
was
treasure there, the way
those two swindlers never guessed. And there was something left to watch and
see it wasn't robbed away.

 
          
I
don't call to mind which of us said that all we could do was take back the gold
pieces, because such things could never do anybody good. We went back that
noon
to Black Pine Hollow, where the sun sure
enough didn't shine. We shivered without ary wind blowing.

 
          
Inside
the mine-mouth, we picked up the lantern and lighted it. Clay had the nerve to
pick up the broken skull Aram Harnam had flung, and we saw why the eyes had
shone—pieces of tin in them. We found our spade and hoe. Into the hole we flung
the gold pieces, on top of what seemed a heap more lying there. Then we put
back the dirt, tamped it down hard, and we all heaved and sweated till we put
the piece of rock in place again.

 
          
"There,
the Ancients got their treasure back," said Mr. Hoje, breathing hard.

 
          
Then,
noise up on those stepstones. I held up the lantern.

 
          
Huddled
and bent they stood up there, Reed Barnitt and Aram Harnam.

 
          
They
sort of leaned together, like tired horses in plow harness, not quite touching
shoulders. Their hands—Reed Barnitt's white ones, Aram Harnam's shaggy
ones—hung with the fingers bent and limp.

           
They looked down at us with tired
eyes and mouths drooped open, the way you'd think they had some hope about us,
but not much.

 
          
"Look,"
said Clay, just behind my neck. "We gave back the gold. They're giving
back those two that they dragged away last night."

 
          
But
they looked as if they'd been gone more than a night.

 
          
The
hair on Reed Barnitt's hatless head was as white as his face. And Aram Harnam's
beard, and the fur on his hands—black no more, but a dirty, steamy gray. Maybe
it had changed from fear, the way folks say can happen. Or maybe there'd been
time
for it to change, where they were.

 
          
"Go
fetch them, John," Mr. Hoje asked me. "And we'll get a doctor for
them when we get them to my house."

 
          
I
started up over the stones with the lantern.

 
          
Their
eyes picked up the lantern light and shone green, like the eyes of dogs. One of
them, I don't know which, made a little whimpering cry with no words in it.
They ran from me into the dark, and I saw their backs, bent more than I'd
thought possible.

 
          
I
ran up to the top stone, holding out the lantern.

 
          
As
I watched they sort of fell forward and ran on hands and feet. Like animals.
Not quite sure of how to run that way on all fours; but something told me,
mighty positive, that they'd learn better as time went by. I backed down again,
without watching any more.

 
          
"They
won't come out," I said.

 
          
Mr.
Hoje spit on the pebbles. "From what I saw, maybe it's just as well. They
can live in there with the Ancients."

 
          
"Live?"
repeated Clay. "The Ancients are dead. Way I figure, what's in there isn't
Ancients—just something Ancients left behind. I don't want any part of
it."

 
          
From
Black Pine Hollow we went to Aram Harnam's empty shanty and there we found the
papers he'd tricked Mr. Hoje and Mr. Eddy into signing, and we burned them up.
On the way back, the two old men made it up between themselves to spare Clay
and Sarah Ann a few acres from both places. As to the cabin, neighbors would be
proud to help build it.

 
          
"One
thing wonders me," said Clay. "John, you didn't have any notion night
before last of singing about the girl with golden slippers?"

 
          
"Not
till I struck the strings and piped up," I told him.

 
          
"Then
how did Reed Barnitt just happen to take them from under his coat for Sarah
Ann?" Clay asked us. "Stage-show magician or not, how did he just
happen to do that?"

 
          
None
of us could guess.

 
          
But
Sarah Ann kept the golden slippers, and nobody could see any reason why not. She
wore them to marry up with Clay, and danced in them while I played song after
song—"Pretty Fair Maid," and "Willie From the Western
States," and "I Dreamed Last Night of My True Love, All In My Arms I
Had Her." Preacher Miller said the service, what God hath joined together
let no man put asunder. I kissed the pretty-cheeked bride, and so did many a
kind friend, but the only man of us she kissed back was long tall Clay Herron.

 
          
Once
at Sky Notch, I never grudged the trouble getting there. It was so purely
pretty, I was glad outlanders weren't apt to crowd in and spoil all.

 
          
The
Notch cut through a tall peak that stood against a higher cliff. Steep brushy
faces each side, and a falls at the back that made a trickly branch, with five
pole cabins along the waterside. Corn patches, a few pigs in pens, chickens
running round, a cow tied up one place. It wondered me how they ever got a cow
up there. Laurels grew, and viney climbers, and mountain flowers in bunches
and sprawls. The water made a happy noise. Nobody moved in the yards or at the
doors, so I stopped by a tree and hollered the first house.

 
          
"Hello
the house!" I called. "Hello to the man of the house and all
inside!"

 
          
A
plank door opened about an inch. "Hello to yourself," a gritty voice
replied me. "Who's that out there with the guitar?"

 
          
I
moved from under the tree. "My name's John. Does Mr. Lane Jarrett live up
here? Got word for him, from his old place on Drowning Creek."

 
          
The
door opened wider, and there stood a skimpy little man with gray whiskers.
"That's funny," he said.

 
          
The
funnyness I didn't see. I'd known Mr. Lane Jarrett years back, before he and
his daughter Page moved to Sky Notch. When his uncle Jeb died and heired him
some money, I'd agreed to carry it to Sky Notch, and, gentlemen, it was a long,
weary way getting there.

 
          
First
a bus, up and down and through mountains, stop at every pig trough for
passengers. I got off at Charlie's Jump—who Charlie was, nor why or when he
jumped, nobody there can rightly say. Climbed a high ridge, got down the far
side, then a twenty-devil way along a deep valley river. Up another height,
another beyond that. Then it was night, and nobody would want to climb the
steep face above, because it was grown up with the kind of trees that the dark
melts in around you. I made a fire and took my supper rations from my pocket.
Woke at dawn and climbed up and up and up, and here I was.

 
          
"Funny,
about Lane Jarrett," gritted the little man out. "Sure you ain't come
about that business?"

 
          
I
looked up the walls of the Notch. Their tops were toothy rocks, the way you'd
think those walls were two jaws, near about to close on what they'd caught
inside them. Right then the Notch didn't look so pretty.

 
          
"Can't
say, sir," I told him, "till I know what business you mean."

 
          
"Rafe
Enoch!" he boomed out the name, like firing two barrels of a gun.
"That's what I mean!" Then he appeared to remember his manners, and
came out, puny in his jeans and no shoes on his feet. "I'm Oakman
Dillon," he named himself. "John—that's your name, huh? Why you got
that guitar?"

 
          
"I
pick it some," I replied him. "I sing." Tweaking the silver
strings, I sang a few lines:

 
          
By the
shore
of
Lonesome River Where
the waters ebb and flow, Where the wild red rose is budding And the pleasant
breezes blow,

 
          
It was there I spied the lady That forever I
adore, As she was a-lonesome walking By the Lonesome River shore. . .
.

 
          
"Rafe
Enoch!" he grit-grated out again. "Carried off Miss Page Jarrett the
way you'd think she was a banty chicken!"

 
          
Slap,
I quieted the strings with my palm. "
Mr. Lane
's little daughter Page was stolen
away?"

           
He sat down on the door-log.
"She ain't suchy little daughter. She's six foot maybe three
inches—taller'n you, even. Best-looking big woman I ever seen, brown hair like
a wagonful of home-cured tobacco, eyes green and bright as a fresh-squoze grape
pulp."

 
          
"Fact?"
I said, thinking Page must have changed a right much from the long-leggy little
girl I'd known, must have grown tall like her daddy and her dead mammy, only
taller. "Is this Rafe Enoch so big, a girl like that is right for
him?"

 
          
"She's
puny for him. He's near about eight foot tall, best I judge." Oakman
Dillon's gray whiskers stuck out like a mad cat's. "He just grabbed her
last evening, where she walked near the fall, and up them rocks he went like a
possum up a jack oak."

 
          
I
sat down on a stump. "
Mr. Lane
's a friend of mine. How can I help?"

 
          
"Nobody
can't help, John. It's right hard to think you ain't knowing all this stuff.
Don't many strangers come up here. Ain't room for many to live in the
Notch."

 
          
"Five
homes," I counted them with my eyes.

 
          
"Six.
Rafe Enoch lives up at the top." He jerked his head toward the falls.
"Been there a long spell—years, I reckon, since when he run off from
somewhere. Heard tell he broke a circus man's neck for offering him a job with
a show. He built up top the falls, and he used to get along with us. Thanked us
kindly for a mess of beans or roasting ears. Lately, he's been
mean-talking."

 
          
"Nobody
mean-talked him back? Five houses in the Notch mean five grown men—couldn't
they handle one giant?"

 
          
"Giant
size ain't all Rafe Enoch's got." Again the whiskers bristled up.
"Why! He's got powers, like he can make rain fall—"

 
          
"No,"
I put in quick. "Can't even science men do that for sure."

 
          
"I
ain't studying science men. Rafe Enoch says for rain to fall, down it comes,
ary hour day or night he speaks. Could drown us out of this Notch if he had the
mind."

 
          
"And
he carried off Page Jarrett," I went back to what he'd said.

 
          
"That's
the whole truth, John. Up he went with her in the evening, daring us to follow
him."

 
          
I
asked, "Where are the other Notch folks?"

 
          
"Up
yonder by the falls. Since dawn we've been talking Lane Jarrett back from
climbing up and getting himself neck-twisted. I came to feed my pigs, now I'm
heading back."

           
"I'll go with you," I
said, and since he didn't deny me I went.

 
          
The
falls dropped down a height as straight up as a chimney, and a many tunes
taller, and their water boiled off down the branch. Either side of the falls,
the big boulder rocks piled on top of each other like stones in an almighty big
wall. Looking up, I saw clouds boiling in the sky, dark and heavy and
wet-looking, and I remembered what Oakman Dillon had said about big Rafe
Enoch's rain-making.

 
          
A
bunch of folks were there, and I made out Mr. Lane Jarrett, bald on top and
bigger than the rest. I touched his arm, and he turned.

 
          
"John!
Ain't seen you a way-back tune. Let me make you known to these here
folks."

 
          
He
called them their first names—Yoot, Ollie, Bill, Duff, Miss Lulie, Miss Sara
May and so on. I said I had a pocketful of money for him, but he just nodded
and wanted to know did I know what was going on.

 
          
"Looky
up against them clouds, John. That pointy rock. My girl Page is on it."

 
          
The
rock stuck out like a spur on a rooster's leg. Somebody was scrouched down on
it, with the clouds getting blacker above, and a long, long drop below.

 
          
"I
see her blue dress," allowed Mr. Oakman, squinting up. "How long she
been there, Lane?"

 
          
"I
spotted her at sunup," said
Mr. Lane
. "She must have got away from Rafe
Enoch and crope out there during the night. I'm going to climb."

 
          
He
started to shinny up a rock, up clear of the brush around us. And, Lord, the
laugh that came down on us! Like a big splash of water, it was clear and
strong, and like water it made us shiver. Mr. Oakman caught onto
Mr. Lane
's ankle and dragged him down.

 
          
"Ain't
a God's thing ary man or woman can do, with him waiting up there," Mr.
Oakman argued.

 
          
"But
he's got Page," said
Mr. Lane
busting loose again. I grabbed his elbow.

 
          
"Let
me," I said.

 
          
"You,
John? You're a stranger, you ain't got no pick in this."

 
          
"This
big Rafe Enoch would know
if
it was
you or Mr. Oakman or one of these others climbing, he might fling down a rock
or the like. But I'm strange to him. I might wonder him, and he might let me
climb all the way up."

 
          
"Then?"
Mr. Page said, frowning.

 
          
"Once
up, I might could do something."

 
          
"Leave
him try it," said Mr. Oakman to that.

 
          
"Yes,"
said one of the ladyfolks.

 
          
I
slung my guitar behind my shoulder and took to the rocks. No peep of noise from
anywhere for maybe a minute of climbing. I got on about the third or fourth
rock from the bottom, and that clear, sky-ripping laugh came from over my head.

 
          
"Name
yourself!" roared down the voice that had laughed.

 
          
I
looked up. How high was the top I can't say, but I made out a head and
shoulders looking down, and knew they were another sight bigger head and
shoulders than ever I'd seen on ary mortal man.

 
          
"Name
yourself!" he yelled again, and in the black clouds a lightning flash
wiggled, like a snake caught fire.

 
          
"John!"
I bawled back.

 
          
"What
you aiming to do, John?"

 
          
Another
crack of lightning, that for a second seemed to peel off the clouds right and
left. I looked this way and that. Nowhere to get out of the way should
lightning strike, or a rock or anything. On notion, I pulled my guitar to me
and picked and sang:

 
          
Went to the rock to hide my face, The rock
cried out, "No hiding placet".
. . .

 
          
Gentlemen,
the laugh was like thunder after the lightning.

 
          
"Better
climb quick, John!" he hollered me. "I'm a-waiting on you up
here!"

 
          
I
swarmed and swarved and scrabbled my way up, not looking down. Over my head
that rock-spur got bigger, I figured it for maybe twelve-fifteen feet long, and
on it I made out Page Jerrett in her blue dress. Mr. Oakman was right, she was
purely big and she was purely good-looking. She hung to the pointy rock with
her both long hands.

 
          
"Page,"
I said to her, with what breath I had left, and she stared with her green eyes
and gave me an inch of smile. She looked to have a right much of her daddy's
natural sand in her craw.

           
"John," boomed the
thunder-voice, close over me now. "I asked you a while back, why you
coming up?"