Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 02 (10 page)

           
I had me some time to recollect some
stuff I'd heard tell about other straight tracks in America—most of them up
North, in places like Rhode Island, New Hampshire. Up where, from what I'd
gathered from
Warren
's talk, the Shonokins had mostly been a-showing themselves.
Power in tracks like them?
It might
could
be that it was a late thing for the Shonokins to find it out. Maybe if they'd
had such power all the way back yonder, they might
could
have used it to fight off the Indians in those long-ago wars.
Maybe.
Who knew? Who could know?

 
          
The
trees looked all right on both sides of our way, not how they'd appeared on the
way to Immer Settlement, when you'd swear they were a-lying in wait "How
far off is this man's place?" I inquired Mr. Ben.

 
          
"Oh,
not as much as a quarter mile," he said back. "He's the only neighbor
could have heard me shoot." He made a nasty noise in his throat, and spit
on the ground as he walked. "John, if that Shonokin I hit is dead the way
you say—well, I've allowed maybe I
should ought
to
feel bad, but I don't. Brooke Altic told you the Shonokins ain't true men. To
shoot him was more like to shoot a bear that raids a hog lot, or a fox that
robs a henhouse."

 
          
"There
may be a lot in what you say," I told him. I studied a thicket of balsam
by the side of the twisty, rutted road. "This Sim Drogus man, does he live
by himself? Is he single?"

 
          
"He
sure enough is. I ain't nair heard tell of the woman who'd take up with such a
sorry somebody, even if he does make money by a-lending it out at big interest.
Well, maybe one woman that lives by the side of his place, that mean old maid
Hazel Techeray. That'd be a double dose of meanness if they
was
to marry."

 
          
We
made it round a curve of the road. "Yonder's where he roosts," Mr.
Ben said.

 
          
A
place was cleared off amongst the trees, with grass and red wild flowers on it.
Back beyond, there rose a big face of rock, and in the rock was a fold hollowed
out, just big enough for a cabin to be set into it. And that was no way as good
or honest-looking a cabin as Mr. Ben had. It appeared like to be all patched
together from gnarly old logs, with a warped plank roof to it. That roof had
mossy green a-grow- ing on it, and the cabin itself was crooked; it sure enough
hadn't known the use of a plumb bob when it was built. The glass of the windows
was broken and stuffed with rags.

 
          
A
scrawny dog was in the yard and showed its teeth to us, but didn’t bar us out
as Mr. Ben led the way to the door.

 
          
Somebody
opened that door and stuck half of
himself
out to
blink at us.

 
          
“Yes,”
Mr. Ben grated his voice. “There you are, Sim Drogus.”

 
          
Sim
Drogus came out on his wom-down door log. He was just a scrawny little fellow,
big only in the ears and the feet. You could have put your thumb and finger
round his little cornstalk of a neck. On his face he had a week’s growing of
muddy-brown whiskers, and his nose hung down like a broken twig over his slobby
mouth. His watery eyes were set so close together that he could near about have
looked through a keyhole with both of them at one and the same time. He had on
patched shoes and about two and a half dollars worth of old clothes that would
have been better off in the washtub.

 
          
“Mr.
Ben,” he said in a whining voice, and made a shaky smile. “How you come on? Me,
I ain’t been so good of late.
Kind of ailing.”

 
          
“Which
I’m sorry to hear that, Sim Drogus,” said Mr. Ben, and he didn’t sound sorry a
bit. “Though you might just
could
wind up worse off
air minute now.”

 
          
“I
do hope and pray not.” Sim Drogus blinked his weepy eyes at me. “I ain’t got in
mind I know this here gentleman.”

 
          
“My
name’s John,” I said.

 
          
“John,”
Sim Drogus repeated my name. “John.
Seems like to me I’ve
heard tell of you in these parts, you and your silver-strung guitar.”

 
          
“Sure
enough,” put in Mr. Ben, the grate still in his voice. “Likely you heard tell
of him from somebody like that sorry Shonokin, Brooke Altic.”

 
          
Sim
Drogus swallowed. I saw his Adam’s apple make a shiver up and down again. But
he didn't say a mumbling word to that.

 
          
“All
right, the howdies is over and done with,” said Mr. Ben. “Let's us get down to
business, and I'll be plain about it.”

 
          
“You're
always plain and to the point, Mr. Ben,” said Sim Drogus. “How come you come
visiting today?”

 
          
“I'll
tell you for how come,” said Mr. Ben, very soft. “Are you the one that went
a-running to them deputy sheriffs and told them there'd been shooting on my
place?” “Shooting?” said Sim Drogus, like an echo, and once again his Adam's
apple went a-quivering up and down. “Deputy
sheriffs
,
you say? Why, I ain't had no talk with
no
deputies,
not this livelong day.”

           
“Well, somebody did,” Mr. Ben said
back. “And you're the only one
lives
close enough in
to hear to my place.” Sim Drogus blinked and swallowed, pure down scared to
death. “Hazel Techeray was over here this morning from yonder where she lives.”
He pointed west, with a hand like a dried-out root. “Come to norrate to me
about somebody other is a-having his place sold up by his creditors, and might
could I be interested to go there, bid on a couple things. Could be I mentioned
the sound of shots to her.”
“To old Hazel Techeray.”
Mr. Ben spit out the name. “She
should ought
to be
named Witch Hazel. She'd cross hell on a rotten foot log to make trouble for
me, or air other honest man.”

           
“Well, I nair told no deputy
nothing, no way,” said Sim Drogus.

 
          
“I
see.” Mr. Ben turned on his heel to go off. “If that's the whole thing you got
to tell
me,” he said, “I won't use up no more of your
valuable time, Sim Drogus.
Only I'll tell you, I'll be right obliged to
you if you wouldn't make
no
talk about my doings to
old clatter-jaws like Hazel Techeray.”

 
          
"Hold
up a second,” spoke up Sim Drogus.
"
Might could
be I can put a little business in your way."

 
          
Mr.
Ben swung back to face him. "What business you wish to do with me?”

 
          
Sim
Drogus licked out his tongue to wet his loose lips. That tongue looked long and
pale, like a lizard's. "I was a- thinking, if you had some of that real
good blockade to sell-”

 
          
"If
I had air such a thing/' Mr. Ben cut him off, "and I ain't a-saying I do
have, not for a second—if I did, I wouldn't be such a gone gump as to sell it
to you. You drink too much the way it is, you'd be better off to take the
pledge.”

 
          
That
was something meant to rile Sim Drogus, but he didn't dare rile. "Maybe
I'd do right to take a pledge,” he said.

 
          
"If
I thought you'd offer to sell me this land of yours/' Mr. Ben said, quieter,
"we might could agree us on something there.”

 
          
"No,
nothing like that,” said Sim Drogus. "Somebody else wants to buy it.
Wants to pay a lavish price for it.
A
right nice fellow.”

 
          
"Brooke
Altic, maybe,” I guessed.

 
          
"You
know Brooke Altic, John?” Sim Drogus grinned at me, with brown, broken teeth.
"He's got money. He wants more land. He'll pay well. And he'd do the like
thing for Mr. Ben here.”

 
          
"I
wouldn't sell Brooke Altic enough of my land to dusty his shoes,” said Mr. Ben,
and tramped back to the road without another word. I followed along with him.
Sim Drogus stood and watched us go.

 
          
"Did
you hark at that, John?” Mr. Ben questioned me.

           
“Yes,
I did. The Shonokins want his land."

 
          
“His land, over here the far side of mine.
And that means
they've purely got to have my land in between, to run their straight track
through."

 
          
“I
was a-thinking that," I said.

 
          
Mr.
Ben blew out his breath through his moustache. “Well," he said, “let’s us
get on back home and find out what happens next, if the finding out can be
found."

 
          
“Yes,
sir," I agreed him, a-looking off the road amongst some junipers.

 
          
“What
you see yonder, John?"

 
          
“Can’t
rightly say if I saw aught," I said.

 
          
Because I hadn’t truly made it out, plain to my eye.
A movement there in the thick of the green branches, a flash of
blue color there.
Not Sim Drogus, he didn’t wear blue. Not a Shonokin,
either, as I reckoned, unless maybe Brooke Altic in another suit of his sharp
clothes. Anyway, I didn’t think it would be Altic; no, nor yet Jackson Warren,
come out to meet us halfway, the way he’d met me on the track to Immer
Settlement.

 
          
“All
right, then," said Mr. Ben, “let’s head on home."

 
          
And
on we went. He kept a-looking straight ahead, but I kept a-spying over my
shoulder into the woods behind, a-spying into the woods, to make out if I could
see whatever or whoever was there, one more time.

 
          
We
didn't make a great much of talk on our way back to Mr. Ben's place. Once he
did growl out, “Forty-five hundred steps,'' and once again, “That low-flung Sim
Drogus.” I replied him not a word, but I kept on a-looking over my shoulder.

 
          
Sure
enough, whoever or whatever had been back there in the hemlock was still
a-staying with us, and not far behind either. Once it popped out a shadowy lump
of a head from behind a bunch of laurel, and showed for just a scrap 6f a
second, at the left side of the road. A moment later, closer in, I saw a sort
of bright-bluish flick of cloth. So it wasn't Sim Drogus at least; his clothes
didn't shine like that. In any case it didn't come all the way up on us, and I
didn't make a mention of it

 
          
Mr.
Ben reached his porch and walked up the steps and in. Callie and Warren were
a-sitting together at the table, a-snapping a crockful of early green beans.
They acted plumb glad to see us back, and harked at what Mr. Ben had to say
about the talk with Sim Drogus.

 
          
“That's
informative enough, I'd say,” said
Warren
. “For the Shonokins to run their straight
line of power, they'd need not only this front yard but some of his land
beyond, too. Maybe they want to extend it for miles, to pick up additional
power for whatever they want to do.”

 
          
“They
talked money to him, and that's what he flaps them big long ears to hear talk
about,” growled Mr. Ben.

           
"I’ll vow and be honest to tell
you, this here would be a better part of the country if Sim Drogus just hung
his old coat over his arm and took off for some other place.”

 
          
"I
feel sorry for him,” said Callie, like the good-hearted soul she was.

 
          
"And
so do I,” said
Warren
, "particularly if he's getting involved with the Shonokins. But
look at these beans we've made ready for
noon
dinner.”

 
          
"It
will be a little late if I cook them with a bit of bacon,” said Callie.

 
          
"Then
maybe there'll be time enough for me to take a walk in the woods,” I said, and
headed for the door.

 
          
"What
you figure to find out there?” Mr. Ben inquired me.

 
          
"As
to that, I can't rightly say,” I replied him truthfully.

 
          
"Here, John,” he said, a-reaching out his pistol to me.
"Carry this here along with you.”

 
          
"I
do thank you, but I don't aim to shoot at aught,” I said. "I'll be back
in, say, maybe an hour.”

 
          
"Dinner
will be ready by then, John,” called Callie from at the stove.

 
          
"And
I'll eat my bait of it,” I promised her, and went out

 
          
At
the front of the house, I went to the right comer and looked carefully to the
back.
The other way round would have taken me spang into the
open, by the backyard and the buildings there.
Where I was this side, I
could slip into a little thicket of young pines grown up where some bigger ones
had been cut down. So in I sneaked, careful not to shake a needle on a branch.
On the far side I stooped low and made it into the shadows under a big,
low-branched oak. There I harked and harked, and heard not a thing except a
yellowhammer a-tapping somewhere to get him a worm. I spied out some more
cover, and kept a-going my way in it, back to a place opposite that road to Sim
Drogus’s. I thought of whatever it was had made it a business to follow us
along, and kept my eyes to the ground. A little movement ahead, a-taking
advantage of air bush and air bunch of weeds on my way, with my eyes fixed on
the ground. At last they spied out what I’d been a-hoping to find.

 
          
You
couldn’t rightly call it a real track. It was just a little damp scrape in some
moss at the foot of a big old buckeye. But something had made that scrape, and
not long before. Bent close to the ground, I spied here and there. Sure enough,
a pebble had been kicked out of its bed, on the way into the woods from the
road. That showed me I was on the right trail.

 
          
I
still kept myself bent down so low I could have put my hands to the earth. I
studied here and there and yonder for more signs of something a-going. I made
out a little balded- off clearing in the trees ahead, and when I got to the
edge of it I saw a real track in the dirt. It hadn’t been made by Sim Drogus’s
old patched-up shoe; it looked to be made by a rubber sole, and not an awfully
big one, either. Whoever had left it there wouldn’t be too big to handle if I
had to. But I didn’t show myself in the clearing. I moved in the shelter of the
trees all the way round, till I got to where I could see more traces the other
side of the clearing. They led off in a way that would get up behind Mr. Ben’s
cabin.

 
          
Gentlemen,
I made my moves right carefully along that line of marks. When you track
something or somebody, don’t get to thinking that because you don’t see it, it
can’t maybe see you. I didn’t move directly over the marks, but close enough at
the side so I could make them out. I still used air clump of bushes, air tree
trunk, to keep myself as much out of sight as I could. A-going along thataway,
I may have traveled a hundred steps on the trail of what I hunted. Until I came
to the edge of a little run of water, just a trickle through the woods. And on
its soft clay bank was a sure-enough footprint.

 
          
It
had been driven there by a shoe with a cleated sole, most likely what you call
a tennis shoe. And there was water a-running into it; but it wasn't full up,
nor
yet near to. Whoever had made that track had made it
right then.
Was close in to me, right that selfsame moment.

 
          
I
spied across the water. Another track showed there. To just follow flat on, I'd
have to pop into the open. What if
the somebody
was
a-watching back on his trail for me, with something in his hand beside an
all-day sucker? I looked carefully up the little stream and then down. Bushes
grew close below there, their twigs a-coming from both sides and in touch of
one another. I slipped down to where those bushes were.

 
          
But
I knew that if I went through them, the branches would wave to show me to air
eye that might
could
watch from the other side, and
the twigs would rustle loud enough to advertise me like a brass band. So I
snaked on below the bushes, and slid round them and stepped over the run to the
far side. On my hands and knees I crawled to where I could see the second track
on the bank. I came so close to it, with my head so far down to the ground, I
must have looked like a hunting dog a-trying to smell out what it was after. I
looked Indian along the ground, almost at ground level. I could see some last
year's fallen leaves that had been stirred up by a foot. I crawled to them, and
saw that beyond them the trees pulled apart to make a little clearing. In the
clearing I saw what I'd come out to track up on.

 
          
Right
off, I knew it was a woman. She was down on her knees but not, as I figured,
a-praying. A woman—and Jackson Warren had allowed that nobody had air seen a
female Shonokin. At that, this was a regular human woman, with a big spill of
shiny brown hair. She was dressed up in a bright blue blouse and a skirt made
like a quilt, squares of all different colors, in a pattern that looked like
what lady- folks call the Sawback Road. Where she knelt she'd pulled together a
little pile of sticks, and as I watched she struck a match to set to it.

 
          
I
straightened up and stepped into the clearing. “If I might could ask you,
ma'am,” I said, “how come you to make a fire on Mr. Ben Gray's land?''

 
          
She
almost whooped
,
she caught up her breath so hard. She
stood up, too, and goggled at me with her stretched- out, iron-colored eyes.
Her wide mouth, painted as red as fresh blood, popped open.

 
          
“Who
are you?'' she sort of breathed at me.

 
          
“My
name's John, and don't be scared, I'm not here to do you air hurt. What
might could
I call you?''

 
          
She
didn't reply me that right off. She still looked at me, and I looked back at
her. She was maybe somewhere in her forties, a-trying not to seem to be that
many years. She was plump above and below her small waist. Her hair, you might
could say, was the color of government whiskey that had been aged in the
barrel, and her eyes, as I've said, were dark as iron, with specks of brighter
green. On her feet were blue canvas shoes, and the blue of her blouse was what
I've heard called peacock blue; though peacock feathers have eyes in them, all
over them.

 
          
“You're
a foreigner,'' she
said,
her voice all shaky. “I don't
know you
none
from round here.''

 
          
“No,
ma'am, I'm just a visitor hereabouts. What name
might could
I call you?''

 
          
“Hazel
Techeray,'' she said, and she smiled an impudent-faced smile, like as if that
name should be good news to me.

 
          
I
was a mite surprised to hear it, and that's a natural fact. From what Mr. Ben
had said about her, calling her Witch Hazel Techeray,
Fd
more or less reckoned she’d be some sort of ugly old woman with a cast in her
eye, maybe a-riding on a broomstick. But Hazel Techeray had looks, though if a
man had sense he’d feel put on his guard by such a look as she gave me out of
that green-specked eye.

 
          
"And
you call yourself John,” she said, the slow way some women use when they’re
a-trying to be
specially
nice.
"John,
eh?
I think you’re the one who plays the silver- strung guitar, aren’t
you?”

 
          
"You
seem to have been a-hearing a couple things about me,” I said, and wondered
myself if she hadn’t maybe heard them from Brooke Altic.

 
          
"Yes,”
she said, and that little fire at her feet crackled as it began to rise up.
"John, did air a woman tell you that you’re a right fine-looking man?”

 
          
"Not
many,” I said, for not many women had air said such a thing to me, not unless
they reckoned they’d get something out of me for the saying of it. "But I
said, I wondered myself why you wanted to build that fire here, since it’s a
warm day and I didn’t think you were a-fixing to do some cooking or the like of
that.”

 
          
"No,
John. I just thought Fd make a wish.”

 
          
Still
she smiled on me. Her teeth were white and strong and more or less
hungry-looking in that red mouth of hers. A wish, she’d said. I thought on how
Fd
heard tell of wishes made in certain ugly names, by folks
who’d made them to do somebody harm.

 
          
"Just
a little old simple wish,” she said one time more. She reached into a pocket of
her patchwork skirt and out came her hand with a pinch of purple-looking dust
in the fingers. She flung it onto the fire, which sent up new flames that same
shade of purple, with pale, greasy smoke.

 
          
"I
made my wish before this,” she said, with the words spaced out like as if she
was a-reading them out of a book. “I make it now. There was no day when I have
not seen my wish fulfilled.”

 
          
I’d
heard those same words spoken before, long years back. They were what a witch
person says to do you harm.

 
          
The
purple fire cracked and popped as it grabbed the twigs. I had an ugly sense of
a crowd gathered close round us—a crowd, maybe not of people, maybe not
Shonokins even, but a crowd. Close
in,
close enough to
see if I looked over my shoulder. I didn't look. I knew words I'd better say my
own self, another set of words, and say them quick.