Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1952 (8 page)

 
          
“Maybe
I shouldn’t say that much to you, Randy,” he relented. “I’m much obliged for
your reading to me.

 
          
Jebs
got up. “If you don’t mind, Mr. Tasman, I’d like to see some of your pottery.”

 
          
“Well,
come inside,” invited Tasman, and they followed him in.

 
          
The
cabin’s interior was dim, and they moved slowly. But Tasman, sightless as he
was, moved around it with the assurance of complete familiarity.

 
          
In
one corner, a cot was neatly made up with patchwork quilts and a pillow.
Opposite stood an oil stove. Tasman stepped past his potter’s wheel and touched
with his hands a tier of shelves against the wall.

           
“Here’s a batch, almost dry enough
to glaze and bake,” he said.

 
          
There
were rows of cups and saucers, vases large and small, sugar bowls, cream
pitchers and plates.

 
          
“Do
you get your clay around here?” asked Randy.

 
          
Tasman
shook his gray head. “No, I have it shipped to me from near where I used to
live. I still have that much of mountain soil here around me.”

 
          
“You
said you baked this pottery, Mr. Tasman,” said Jebs.

 
          
“There’s
a little kiln out behind the cabin.”

 
          
“How
do you know when a batch is ready to come out?”

 
          
Tasman
smiled his tense, tight smile. From the lowest shelf he lifted a big, cheap
pocket watch and held it out. The crystal was missing.

 
          
“I
touch the hands to tell time,” he said. “And I can judge the right heat by
holding my hand close to the kiln. My sense of feeling is like my sense of
hearing—mighty sensitive, more sensitive than the feeling of sighted folks. For
instance,” he added, “I know that it’ll be raining before sundown. You two had
better get started for home.”

 
          
“We’ll
do that thing,” agreed Jebs. “It’s been nice talking to you, sir.”

           
“And I’ll bring the book and read
some more,” promised Randy.

 
          
“
Thanks,
do that. Good-bye.”

 
          
They
started for the trail. Now that Tasman had mentioned it, there was a close,
heavy feel to the air around them, and the clouds overhead shut out the sky
like a great dull sheet of gray lead.

 
          
“He’s
completely blind, all right,” Randy said to Jebs when they were out of hearing.
“I almost bumped him in the nose with this book, and he didn’t know it. Too
bad, when he loves nature like that.”

 
          
“If
he wanders out at night and those wild dogs rally round him, he may lose some
of his love of nature,” replied Jebs. “And speaking of wild dogs, here comes
one that isn’t wild. Hey, Rebel!”

 
          
As
on the previous day, Rebel had come part way to meet them. He elected himself
an escort party of one to convoy them back to New Chimney Pot House.

 
          
They
saw that Driscoll had brought the jeep back for it stood in the front yard.
Driscoll was down by the brook, helping
Sam
Cohill
to put the final touches on a small shed,
just below the newly installed water wheel. The shed had a foundation of
stones, and its peaked roof was sheathed with stout cypress shingles left over
from the work on the house. The whole structure was no larger than a big
packing case, but neatly and strongly made.

 
          
“So
that’s where the electric plant will live,” said Jebs, trotting down to look.

 
          
“We’ve
got it inside now,” replied Driscoll, “and here’s the belt, ready to run from
pulley to plant.” He twiddled heavy-duty wires protruding from a small hole in
the shed’s wall. “And here
are
what will light us up
like a Christmas tree.”

 
          
Jebs
and Randy helped string the wires to the house. Inside, Sam and Jebs secured
the ends to a wiring system that was already connected to fixtures.

 
          
“Now
all we need is water to get things running,” announced Jebs. “Let’s go outside
and holler for the rain to come down.”

 
          
“You
won’t have to holler very loud,” said Sam.

 
          
Just
as he spoke, there came the brisk patter of drops on the roof.

 
          
RANDY
HUNTS ALONE

 
          
The
rain fell heavily all evening.
Sam
Cohill
directed a relaxation of sentry duty,
saying that no dogs, wild or otherwise, would willingly hunt in such a
downpour. At night, the drumming of the storm on the roof and windows lulled
everyone into a deep sleep.

 
          
Sam’s
guess was right. Not even the vigilant Rebel sensed anything like stealthy
menace outside in the rush of rain. By morning, the torrent had slackened to a
shower. While they dressed, the shower slackened to a drizzle. As
Sam
Cohill
summoned the boys to breakfast, the last
drops fell. The drained clouds shredded apart, and sunlight came through.

           
“Give a hand with this
dish-washing,” urged Driscoll, elbow-deep in a pan of steaming hot water.
“Let’s get out and see what’s happening.”

 
          
“At
least we got our roof on in time,” said Randy, glancing up at the dry rafters
and sheathing.

 
          
The
dishes done, all three boys hurried into the soggy yard. Jebs, first in the
open, stopped suddenly just beyond the doorway and flung up his hand in a
signal for quiet.

 
          
“Hark
at that!” he said.

 
          
Randy
and Driscoll listened. “Something’s roaring,” commented Randy. “It sounds like
a big wind.”

 
          
“Or
like
Niagara
Falls
,”
suggested
Sam
Cohill
, lounging to the doorway like a mighty
statue that had stepped down from its pedestal.

 
          
“
Falls—
that’s it!” cried Jebs. “Come
on,
let’s take a look at our dam!”

 
          
And
he was off, like a sprinter at the starting gun. Swift Randy barely overhauled
him at the very stream’s edge.

 
          
The
night’s heavy rain had filled the stream and brought it to the very top of the
dam. Water gushed over the spillway and down the flume, and the water wheel
turned nimbly and smoothly in its solidly wedged hubs. Over and over turned the
wheel, the buckets in its outer rim scooping
themselves
full from the descending rush of water and emptying as they trundled around and
down, then rising for more.

 
          
“How
do you stop that thing to moor on the belt to the generator?” asked Randy.

 
          
“Easily
enough,” said Sam, stalking up from behind.

 
          
He
bent down like a living derrick and fitted a gate of planks, rather like a big
lid for a chest, into the rear of the flume. The spouting rush of water ceased,
the wheel’s turning subsided, and Sam
braked
it to a
halt with a quick snatch of his strong hand.

 
          
“All
right, get the belt adjusted,” he said, and Jebs and Driscoll hurried to do so.
Rapidly they tested it for smoothness of progress over the pulleys, for
tightness and for strength.

 
          
“Let’s
try it now,” called Driscoll.

 
          
Sam
hoisted the water gate from the flume. The returning gush of water smote the
buckets of the wheel, forcing them down and turning both wheel and pulley.
Inside the snug little shed
rose
the hum of machinery.

 
          
Now
Sam and Jebs lifted a traplike section of the roof, gazed calculatingly inside,
and gingerly made adjustments here and there. Randy and Driscoll walked back to
the house. The two amateur electricians joined them as they reached the door.

 
          
“Snap
that switch,” said Sam, pointing, and Randy did so. A light dangling on its
cord from the rafters glowed obediently.

 
          
“We’ve
got it!” cried Jebs happily. “Sam, you and I ought to get honorary degrees as
electrical engineers. Now you can flip on your refrigerator.” “And maybe we can
borrow young Lee Martin’s electric railroad for Jebs to play with,” said
Driscoll. “To be right honest with you, Jebs, I didn’t think you and Sam would get
away with it.”

 
          
“Neither
did
I
,” confessed Randy.

 
          
“Go
ahead, lay it on us,” urged Jebs, bowing to left and right as though to gales
of applause. “That sounds good, that wrong-guess stuff. You’re like the folks
in
Spain
, just after
Columbus
stopped the show with his famous egg trick. It was Sam and I who had to
show the world
what’s what
, and which side up it ought
to lie.” He stood on tiptoe to clap
Sam
Cohill
’s great shelf of shoulder. “Hark at the
hurrahs, Sam. We’ll go down in history with Edison and Steinmetz.” “Who was
Steinmetz?” asked Driscoll. “It sounds like the name of a big-time football
player.”

 
          
“No,
it’s the name of a big-time electrical genius,” Jebs informed him. “Edison and
Steinmetz, Cohill and Markum—we all belong in the hall of fame.”

           
“I’ll get Hobert Tasman to model
busts of you to set up there,” suggested Randy. “And speaking of Mr. Tasman, I
wonder how the trail is, leading to his cabin. I halfway promised him to come
back today and read him some more of
Lives
of the Hunted”

 
          
“I’m
afraid you’ll find the walking pretty sloppy after this big rain,” said Sam.
“The swamps come in pretty closely about the Chimney Pot estate, you know, and
there’s a low stretch between here and Tasman’s. Every rain fills it up for a
few hours, and then the soil soaks it up and drains it off.”

 
          
“Come
with me to Martin’s,” Driscoll invited Randy. “I want to tell him how our own
private electrification program worked out.”

 
          
“Thanks,
I’ll stay here,” demurred Randy. “I’ve got a few things I want to think about.”

 
          
“Don’t
mess with Randy when he’s thinking,” Jebs advised Driscoll. “That’s a full-time
job with him. Sometimes, when he’s thinking away full blast, he just about
thinks his head clear off. Look, I’ll ride with you to Martin’s. Maybe I’ll
just have a gander at that electric railroad Mr. Martin’s boy has.”

           
The jeep left, with Driscoll cocking
his gray cap above the steering wheel and Jebs beside him. Sam Cohill moved
ponderously through the wet front yard, down to the waterside to observe again
the workings of wheel and light plant, then back to where a great mass of flat
rocks were stacked. With spade and grubbing hoe, the giant scraped a shallow
hole before the very doorstep, carefully fitted a rock into it, then a second
rock in front of that, then another. He was making a stone walk, rough but
workmanlike.

 
          
Meanwhile,
Randy visited the animals beyond the back yard. The two calves gazed at him
with the mild curiosity of their kind. The chickens in their run made a sort of
excited squawking fuss. The pigs, with white-banded black bodies, were
friendly, too. Randy tested the strength of the stockade slab that Sam had
nailed back after the wild dog adventure two nights before. He studied the
places where the traps had been set and sprung.

 
          
Jebs,
Sam and Driscoll had been so jubilant over the coming of electricity to New
Chimney Pot House that they had forgotten, almost, the mystery and menace of
the wild dog pack. But with Randy, as Jebs had said, thinking was a full-time
job.

           
Nobody had believed his story of a
two-legged monster among the dogs. Indeed, he was almost ready to admit that it
had been a trick of his excited imagination. Hobert Tasman’s mention of the
werewolf superstition had made Randy ashamed of momentarily believing a fantasy,
of being like Willie Dubbin in belief of something besides just dog-nature in
the pack. Yes, he had almost rejected the notion.

 
          
Almost—but not quite.

 
          
At
the well behind the house, Randy drew a bucket of fresh water and carried it
into the kitchen. Then he went to join
Sam
Cohill
. The giant had already set half a dozen
broad flat stones as the beginning of the paved walkway, and was prying big
morsels of green moss from around nearby tree roots to set around and between
these stones. Randy helped him for a while.

 
          
“Sam,”
he said at length, “just how much ground does the old Chimney Pot estate
cover?”

 
          
“We’ve
had a preliminary survey made, and a few corner stakes driven,” said Sam.
“Later on, we’ll have to clear some sort of line through the trees to mark the
property limits. You came in from the county road about three miles on your
first night here, and for fully two miles of the way you were on Driscoll’s land.
Drowning Creek itself is the border-line one way, and the other runs approximately
to a point out there.”

 
          
Sam
pointed with his spade, lifting it like a pancake turner.

 
          
“On
beyond, it’s a good two miles. I can’t tell you until the final
survey’s
finished, but there must be six or seven square
miles of land, mostly timber.”

 
          
“You’re
pointing almost
to
where Mr. Tasman lives,” remarked
Randy, but Sam shook his head.

 
          
“No,
you don’t realize how the trail winds from here to Tasman’s. There’s a branch
off from that trail to the property line, marked by blazes on the trees, and
the property line’s blazed, too. Tasman’s shack is a mile behind here, and he’s
almost a mile from the property line.”

 
          
“And
what’s on the other side of the property line?” pursued Randy. “How close do
other farms come to us?”

 
          
Another shake of Sam’s great head.
“Not close. The woods are
pretty swampy, you know. And about twenty years back there bobbed up a dispute
over ownership that hasn’t been settled by law as yet. Things like that have
kept Chimney Pot sort of unvisited for three generations or so. But when we blazed
the trees along the line, just about opposite Tasman’s place, a couple of the
workmen said they spotted an old abandoned place of some sort on the other
property. No signs of anybody living there, though. Probably it’s been deserted
for a good twenty years.”

 
          
“Twenty
years!” echoed Randy eagerly. “In other words, it was a lot more recent
settlement than the old Chimney Pot House—that stood empty since the end of the
War Between the States. I’d like to look at the abandoned place, and see if
it’s really abandoned.”

 
          
“Maybe
we can all go, later on,” said Sam.

 
          
“Well,
I’m going to try to see Mr. Tasman and read him some more of Ernest Thompson
Seton.”

 
          
Randy
returned to the house, took
Lives of the
Hunted
from the shelf, and headed away for Tasman’s. At the wood pile he
possessed himself of a stout stick, as long as his leg and as thick as his
wrist. Rebel, strolling around the yard, came and sniffed at the stick as
though to approve Randy’s decision to carry it. But when Randy tried to call
him to come along on the walk, Rebel sat down and gave Randy a gaze of
courteous refusal. Plainly the bull terrier knew his duty as a guardian of the
house and yard.

           
Away strode Randy among the trees,
but he had not walked for more than five minutes before he found the trail to
Tasman’s clearing blocked by a wide, dank puddle of rain water, that filled a
low place for some yards and lay among the tree roots to both sides. There
would be no visit to Tasman’s for some hours, at least. He turned to go, and
then paused and examined a tree beside the path.