Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1952 (3 page)

 
          
“That
neighbor of yours, Mr. Martin, says his hired man doesn’t want any wild dogs to
get close to him,” said Jebs.

 
          
“You
mean Willie Dubbin, and I don’t blame him,” rejoined Sam. “One or two younger
boys on the farms have been scared by the wild dogs. They’ve met them out
fishing or rambling, and the boys have been glad to run away fast. The pack
acts dangerous and a little bit hungry.”

 
          
It
sounded baleful. Randy felt a shiver run up his back. Jebs, too, looked
unnaturally serious.

 
          
“Nobody’s
been hurt yet, I hope?” said Jebs.

 
          
“Not
yet. But I’ve been worried about one fellow,” said Sam. “A blind man named
Hobert Tasman.”

 
          
“Blind
man?” repeated Jebs and Randy in chorus.

 
          
“He
lives by himself in the woods, maybe a mile from here. That’s deep into the old
Jordan
property, but we don’t bother him because
he hasn’t done anything to bother about. Somebody helped him build his cabin
about the time you boys showed up here for the first time, last September. He’s
not exactly helpless. He finds his way around without eyes in a fashion to
surprise you. I think he has a little money of his own, and he earns more by
making pottery and shipping it off.”

 
          
“Sounds
interesting,” nodded Randy.

 
          
“He
is, but he doesn’t welcome strangers. Once or twice I tried to be neighborly,
but he acted as if he wished I’d stay away. Blind or not, he’d heard that I’m
eight feet tall, lacking an inch, and it seems to bother him. I asked some of
the Drowning Creek Indians to look in once in a while. They run errands for
him, and now and then they carry in a crate of his pottery to ship away. Those
Indians are good people. They don’t notice when you snub them, not if they’re
set on doing you a favor.”

 
          
“If
wild dogs got after a blind man—” began Randy.

 
          
“That’s
what I said to Tasman, but he said he could handle his own affairs. I can
understand that. I used to want to be left alone.” Sam paused, as though
remembering his own hermit days. “But why go on with this stuff? What about
your own news?” It was a deliberate change of subject, but both Randy and Jebs
were willing to forget wild dogs for the moment.

 
          
“We’ve
been in school, like Driscoll,” said Jebs.
“High school at
Aberdeen
.
Randy’s quarterbacking the football team.
It’s only six-man football, but that can be fast and rough.”

 
          
“It
must be, with six men doing the work of eleven,” nodded Driscoll. “We play
eleven-man football up our way, but I’m only a second-string tackle. How did
you make out last season?”

 
          
“Pretty
fair, though Southern Pines kind of knocked down our ears,” said Jebs. “Randy
made the only touchdown that day.”

 
          
“Jebs
didn’t tell you he’s on the team, too,” interposed Randy. “He’s one of the best
centers
Aberdeen
ever had.”

 
          
“Shoo,
all I have to do is pass the ball back,”
grinned
Jebs.
“Randy and the others have all the work, moving it forward again.”

 
          
The
talk went on, eager and friendly. The four recalled their earlier adventures,
and predicted exciting new ones to come. Finally Jebs yawned.

 
          
“Sorry
to act like a country boy,” he said, “but I’m going to bed early.”

 
          
Driscoll
rose and opened another door. “Bunk in here. Bring in your stuff, both of you.”

 
          
Against
one wall of the room stood a doubledecker bunk, both its levels made up with
army blankets.

           
“Which do you take, Randy?” asked
Jebs.
“Upper or lower?”

 
          
“Upper,
I guess,” said Randy. “I’m tired, too.”

 
          
“We’d
better all get in the sack,” boomed
Sam
Cohill
from the front room. “You may think you’re
guests, but tomorrow we put you both to work.”

 
          
“That’s
what we came for,” said Randy. “Well, good night, Sam. Good night, Driscoll.”

 
          
Pulling
the door shut, he sat down on a split-bottomed chair, unlacing his shoes in the
dark. “
It’s
peaceful here—” he began.

 
          
“Hark!”
interrupted Jebs.

 
          
Somewhere
in the night outside rose the long, clear howl of Bugler, the chief of the wild
dogs.

 
          
THE
LONELY BLIND MAN

 
          
The
rising sun prodded through the dense trees and in at the window when Randy opened
his eyes, stretched, and swung down from his bunk. The thud of his feet on the
floor wakened Jebs, too, and they could hear the heavy tread of
Sam
Cohill
in the front room.

 
          
Hurriedly
they washed at the stand in one corner, raced into dungarees and crew shirts,
and walked out through the front room into the kitchen. Driscoll joined them
there, where
Sam
Cohill
was already bending over the oil stove.

 
          
“Breakfast,”
he greeted the boys. “Oatmeal and milk, scrambled eggs, bacon—”

           
“You’re giving us a working man’s
breakfast,” said Jebs. “I hope we don’t have to earn it the hard way.”

 
          
“You’ll
see,” smiled Driscoll.

 
          
They
disposed of the meal, quickly washed the dishes, and all four went out of the
kitchen door to look at New Chimney Pot House by the light of the climbing sun.

 
          
Randy
and Jebs saw that the new house stood closer to the stream than had the old
one. That ancient ruin had been razed, and its discarded remains flung into the
hole of its cellar. The present dwelling was a sizable square structure among
the surrounding trees. Its outer walls were of perpendicular planks with the
junctures covered by smaller strips, and oiled to give a rustic brown effect. A
big chimney rose from the center of the roof, which, with its shallow pitch and
widely jutting eaves, showed a black expanse of heavy tar paper.

 
          
“This
is a good time to get that roof shingled,” announced Sam. “One of you
climb
up there with Driscoll—I weigh more than four hundred
pounds, and I’d better not strain any rafters or sheathing boards.”

 
          
Randy
paused as Jebs walked farther on, toward a lean-to shed behind the house.
“Where are the shingles?” asked Randy.

           
“We make our own out here,” Driscoll
told him.

 
          
“Look
there,”
and Sam waved a scooplike hand to where,
supported on a loose row of short lengths of wood, lay bundle after bundle of
thick, sturdy wooden slips. “When we decided to build last fall, I chopped down
a fair-sized cypress tree, down there toward Drowning Creek. The workmen sawed
it into the right lengths and stacked them up to season all winter. A few days
ago I borrowed a wedge and a maul from James Martin, and split those cypress
chunks up into shingles. Shakes, they were called in the old days. They’re
double thick and double tough, and if they’re put on right they’ll last for
years.”

 
          
“Here
comes Willie Dubbin,” said Driscoll, and across the bridge rolled a light wagon
drawn by a mule. It was driven by an overalled man of spidery thinness. He
reined in close to the group and got out, rumpling an old wool hat, while
Driscoll introduced him to Randy.

 
          
Willie
Dubbin might have been as young as twenty-five or as old as forty. Everything
about him was long and thin—his neck, his arms and legs, his nose, his chin,
his rumpled dark hair. He had bright, close-set eyes and a mouth that fell open
when he smiled.

           
“Mr. Jimmy thought I’d better spare
the time to cut up that ground between the com rows,” he drawled. “Everything
all right hereabout?”

 
          
“All
right, except a few wild dogs nosing around last night,” said
Sam
Cohill
, towering above the skinny figure.

 
          
Willie
Dubbin looked up, and blinked his bright eyes. “Gentlemen, hush!” he said. “
Them
dogs was around here, was they? If’n I was you-all, I’d
bid good-bye to this here place and get myself plumb away. I don’t relish even
hearing about them dogs— I wouldn’t stay out here nights, not for no pay
whatsoever.”

 
          
“Why
do dogs bother you?” Randy ventured to ask, and Willie Dubbin looked at him
plaintively.

 
          
“If’n
they wasn’t nothing but ordinary natural dogs, I wouldn’t pay them no mind,” he
said, “but you can’t tell me they ain’t sort of ha’nted, like. ’Specially
hanging ’round out here, where they used to be ha’nts—”

 
          
“We
proved that old story was just talk,” put in Sam, but Willie waved the words
away.

 
          
“
Them dogs is
smarter and meaner than anything with ordinary
dog ways,” he pronounced. “They got more’n a dog smartness to guide and direct
’em. I don’t want to even talk about ’em, I tell you. Reckon I’ll get out at
that corn.”

 
          
He
mounted the wagon again. Inside, Randy could see, was a light plough. Willie
clicked his tongue at the mule, and drove past the house toward where the
cleared land was located.

 
          
“Willie
wouldn’t be happy if he didn’t have some superstition to worry over,” said
Driscoll, bringing a ladder and propping it against the eaves. “
You coming
up with me, Randy?”

 
          
“Right,”
said Randy, “but what’s Jebs poking after in the shed yonder?”

 
          
“That’s
our tool shed,” replied Driscoll, “and Jebs seems to be interested in the home
electric power plant Mr. Martin sold us. We’ll have to get a gasoline engine
and a belt to make it run.”

 
          
“Don’t
waste your money on any engines,” said Jebs, strolling back from the shed door.
“Look yonder, there’s your power.”

 
          
He
pointed past the house, toward the stream.

 
          
“That’s
not much more than a trickle,” objected
Sam
Cohill
, his hay-fork fingers smoothing his pointed
beard.

 
          
“But
the trickle’s a fast one,” argued Jebs, “and if we dam it up there where the
banks rise high, we can make a regular little waterfall. Then a water wheel can
power the electric plant.”

 
          
“You’ve
got something there, Jebs,” said Sam. “It was such a simple idea we never
thought of it. Let’s go down and see if we can plan out a dam project.” “I’m
your man,” said Jebs, and they walked away together, striding giant and sturdy
youth. Rebel trotted along with them.

 
          
Randy
and Driscoll lugged bundles of shingles up the ladder, and with hammers and
nails began to lay a course of them along the eaves.

 
          
It
was slow work at first, but as they worked they gained skill, speed and
assurance. The first line of shingles was double, the top layer overlapping the
bottom so as to cover all cracks. They laid the second course, with the thick
butt of each new shingle overlapping the thinner ends of the course below.

 
          
From
the roof, Randy could see more of the changes at Chimney Pot. Where once brushy
thickets had matted the ground down to the very edge of the stream, all was
cleared except the larger trees. Around the house rose a group of tall longleaf
pines, like living masts, and many feet above ground their shaggy crowns of
dense needles came together to make pleasant but not dense shade. Behind the house,
a clear stretch was cultivated for a garden, and more distant still could be
seen one corner of the cornfield where Willie Dubbin had begun work. Along the
garden’s edge were ranged smaller structures—a henhouse with high wire fence, a
slant- roofed shed, and a stockade-like rectangle of high upright planks.

 
          
“That
fort you’re looking at is our pigpen,” explained Driscoll, “and we built up the
chicken fence, too. We want to baffle any wild dogs that come to fetch pigs or
chickens away.”

 
          
Randy
drove another nail. “Look down toward the water,” he said. “Sam and Jebs are up
to something.”

 
          
Jebs
knelt by the stream, pointing to its bed and talking swiftly.
Sam
Cohill
straddled his long legs from bank to bank,
like the
Colossus of
Rhodes
come to
life. He listened to Jebs, and nodded in agreement. He went tramping toward a
great stack of felled trees and saplings, the mass that had been cleared away
months before to make a space for New Chimney Pot House. In one hand he carried
an axe.

 
          
Choosing
a jack-oak stem, nearly a foot thick at the large end, Sam severed its branchy
top with three mighty single-handed strokes. Still using the axe like a
hatchet, he sliced off the remaining boughs and lightly bore the log back to
where Jebs waited. He put it crosswise above the water,
then
returned to chop out another log. Meanwhile, Jebs poked along the water course,
picking up good-sized chunks of rock and lugging them back to the log.

 
          
“Where
did Jebs learn about dams?” inquired Driscoll.
“From some
engineer?”

 
          
“From a mighty good one—a beaver.
You know, the government
put a few beaver colonies into the
Moore
County
streams about a dozen years back, and Jebs
is a beaver-watcher, the way some folks are bird-watchers. He’s spent hours and
days sneaking around to see them build their dams and underwater dens.”

 
          
The
morning passed, with progress made both on the roof and down at the stream.
Shortly before
noon
, Sam
came and stood under the newly shingled eaves.

 
          
“Dinner
time,” he called. “Between hauls at the dam, I put on a kettle to boil chicken
and dumplings. One of you
go
hail Willie Dubbin.”

 
          
Driscoll
trotted away to do this, and Randy went to join Jebs and look at the dam. The
two long oak logs lay parallel, with a yard’s interval between them.

           
Against each of them Jebs and Sam
had driven a line of upright stakes, about an inch apart. The water boiled a
little as it found its way through these.

 
          
“We’ll
put smaller sticks crosswise, and fill in between with stones and earth,” said
Jebs. “Then we’ll fix a sluiceway at the right point, and some kind of spout to
carry the water out to strike the wheel. What was that Sam said about chicken
and dumplings?” At dinner, Jebs brought pencil and paper to the kitchen table
and made sketches to show his theories of dam, wheel, and power principle.
Willie Dubbin ate heartily, but his close-set eyes gazed raptly at the diagrams
as though he were trying to understand them, without much success. When they
had finished, Jebs headed for Sam’s bookshelves, poring over titles.

 
          
“I
see you’ve bought a few home mechanical and repair texts,” he said to the giant.
“Do you reckon there’s anything in them about water wheels?” “Afraid not,
Jebs,” said Sam, shaking his big head. “As I said this morning, I hadn’t even
thought about water power. Anyway, I run mostly to books about nature study,
and standard fiction.”

 
          
“I
see that,” said Jebs, eyeing a row of books. “You’ve got some of Ernest
Thompson Seton’s ' works, I always liked them. Maybe what we’d better do is
talk to somebody who understands about the principles of water-power
mechanics.”

 
          
“I
know just the man,” said Driscoll, joining them. “Sam knows him, too—Mr. Lyman
Hager in
Wagram
. He’s a welder and metal worker. Randy,
Jebs, do you want to go over there this afternoon?”