Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 02 (18 page)

 
          
I
let things stand at that. I told Mr. Ben to sit down and rest, maybe have
another taste of that good soup, while Jackson Warren and I watched the
different sides of the cabin. I picked up the rifle that had been laid out for
me, though I didn't purely want to. And I made Callie to come into the front
room, too. She and Hazel Techeray got a-talking things, the sort of things
women talk, like as if they were on a visit together. Outside was the deadest
quiet. I wondered if sure enough Brooke Altic was a-waiting for his words to
sink into us.

 
          
I
think it was some spell of time before one of us spoke on the fix we were in.
It was Hazel Techeray.

 
          
"Mr.
Ben," she said, "I've come to the same thought as you and John. It
wouldn't be
no
point in a-throwing out a white cloth
to them. They'd know right well you'd not put your jewel into it."

 
          
"
I been
a-thinking that same thing," Mr. Ben agreed her.

 
          
From
outside came Brooke Altic's voice from somewhere near:

 
          
"Hazel
Techeray? Hazel Techeray?"

 
          
"Don’t
you reply him,” I whispered her, and went to where I could spy out betwixt two
logs. I saw trees and some of the open ground, sort of washed pale by the light
of the moon, but no movement in it. If I'd seen that, I’d have fired at it with
my gun.

 
          
"Hazel
Techeray,” said Brooke Altic, "
come
out to us.

           
We know you’re in there. Out here,
we know everything you say or do, as soon as you speak or move.”

 
          
I
glanced round at her. She was pushed so low down in her chair, she near about
fell out of it. She was close to a faint.

 
          
“You’ve
been a sad fool, Hazel,” Brooke Altic said to her, his voice all drawn out to
carry inside to us. "I hadn’t truly thought that of you. But come out of
there. We’re still quite willing to do all we promised for you, give you the
honor and preferment we offered you. Come out, I say.”

 
          
“No!”
she screeched out, high and
shrill
as a note on a
bugle.

 
          
She
had jumped up on her feet. She rocked back and forth, and put her hand on the
chair back to hold
herself
steady.

 
          
“I
ain’t a-going to do it, I won’t do what you tell me to!” she hollered, loud
enough to be heard all the way to the county seat. “You can’t make me!”

 
          
Silence
again, while you might
could
have counted a slow six.
I could hear myself breathe where I watched.

 
          
“Then
I’ll stop trying to talk sense to you, Hazel,” came Brooke Aide’s voice at last.
“But I still offer reasonable terms to everyone else there in that cabin. As
for you, I wash my hands of you. We all wash our hands of you. Ben Gray and
John had better wash their hands of you.”

 
          
Hazel
Techeray let go the grab she had on the chair. She started to walk toward the
door, slow as somebody in a dream. Mr. Ben jumped to her side and took hold of
her arm.

 
          
“Don’t
you nair think of a-going out to them,” he said in her ear.

 
          
“If
I did, maybe youins would be better off,” she mumbled back to him.

 
          
“Don’t
you nair believe for a second we’ll be better off,” he said back. "But if
you
was
to go out yonder to them, you'd be another
sight worse off. You done heard what Brooke Altic said about that.”

 
          
"Well,
if I can sure enough stay in here—”

 
          
"I
done already said you could,” he broke in, "and what I say is what I
mean.”

 
          
I
harked at all their talk while I watched out toward the side and front of the
house. Jackson Warren sort of kept up a tour here and yonder, and he came to my
side and peeked through the space.

 
          
"I
think I make out one of them in that little string of bushes,” he said under
his breath, and fetched up his rifle to aim. But I grabbed it and pushed it
back down.

 
          
"No,
hold your fire,” I told him. "Let's not send them a shot till we can be
certain sure it's smack in the bull's-eye.”

 
          
"I
could hit one of them from here by this light,” he argued.

 
          
"You've
got to kill with a shot,” I said. "A-killing one is what we've got to
study to do.”

 
          
Kill.
We were down to that. Kill
something, that
was the way
of mankind.

 
          
Again
I had that thought about the cruelty and selfishness in the whole history of
this world. Man had got rule of the world, or anyway he reckoned he had, not
a-being aware of how the Shonokins felt about it. And man had killed and
killed. Not only other men. There wasn't one kind of animal he'd spared without
a selfish thought about it. Folks talk and talk about kindness to animals, sure
enough. But we're kind to horses because they work for us, cattle because they
give us meat and milk, sheep because they have wool, dogs because they'll hunt
for us and bark strangers off from the door. Even cats, because they look
pretty a-sitting by the fire. Other than that—man has killed off things like
buffalo and passenger pigeons; he catches fish by the twenties and flings them
on the bank. He bums down forests, dirties the rivers and the lakes. Man
doesn't have half sense. And to settle things with other men—well, that comes
out to more killing.

 
          
"Hold
it till you have a center shot," I warned Jackson Warren again.

 
          
And
there I was, a-doing the same thing, a-fixing to kill Shonokins. And how about
the Shonokins, who wanted to rule instead of man? Did they have enough of man
nature in them to settle it all by kill, kill, kill?

 
          
The
night outside seemed to get just a tad darker as I kept my watch, my own gun in
my hand.

 
          
It
was some time along later, maybe past
nine o'clock
as Jackson Warren said by his watch. We'd
taken our turns on guard a couple of times. Now it was Hazel Techeray in one of
the back rooms, and Ben Gray a-squinting out at the front. Callie and Warren
and I sat at the table, a-having the first cups from a fresh pot of coffee. I'd
dipped out a little more soup, and I relished that.

 
          
Then,
thunk! Something hit hard on the front wall. Thunk! Something else hit close to
the first. I jumped up quick to find out what.

 
          
Ben
Gray was at a space in the logs.

 
          
"They're
a-trying those devilish fire arrows again," he said.

 
          
I
opened the door a couple of inches and looked to see.

 
          
Both
their arrows had driven into the logs under the porch roof, and they burned
bright all along the lengths of their shafts. But they didn’t set air blaze to
the logs. I watched, and they died down.
The
Long Lost Friend
still shielded us.

 
          
"I'm
afraid we must burn you out of there," called the voice of Brooke Altic
from a dark place.

           
''Don't hold your breath till it
happens/' I called hack. "We've got your fire stopped."

 
          
"Might
I be allowed to come and talk to you?" he asked.

 
          
"If
you come into sight with your hands up, all right," I said. "Just you
by yourself, none of that trouble gang you've got with you. But I'll guarantee
your talking won't get you much."

 
          
"On
second thought,” he said, "I don't think I'll come in sight of you, John.
Somehow I don't feel as if you're to be trusted."

 
          
"That
makes it unanimous," I replied him. "I wouldn't trust you air farther
than a toad can spit."

 
          
By
then, I reckoned, I was a-talking as mean to him as Ben Gray his own self. I
waited for him to reply me. Again he took him several seconds before he did.

 
          
"John,"
he said my name, "I do hope you enjoyed the beautiful sunrise this
morning. Because it's the last one you'll ever see."

 
          
"I'll
be a-seeing tomorrow's sunrise," I made the promise.
"And
day after tomorrow's sunrise, and more to come, if the good Lord spares
me."

 
          
"Don't
call on the Lord to spare you, John," said Brooke Altic, hard as a frozen
rock. "Don't call on me to spare you, either. We bide our time here, but
we'll husk you and your friends out of that cabin like nuts out of their
shells."

 
          
"And
here we sit and wait for you to try it on," I said. "We banter you to
try it on. We're ready for you to try it on."

 
          
"Wait
and find out."

 
          
As
his voice trailed off on that, it sounded sort of tired.

 
          
I
shoved the door all the way back shut. The others looked at me, looked at one
another. They'd been a-harking, and all but Hazel Techeray had harked with a
gun at the ready.

           
"Again you spoke him your piece
right,” said Mr. Ben to me.

 
          
"By
now,” I hoped, "we may have spoken all the pieces we've got to speak. I'm
tired of a-talking. It'll maybe be some kind of action from this on out.”

 
          
"What
will they do?” asked Callie from one of the rear doors.

 
          
"Whatever
they do, we'll contrive to counterpunch them,”
Warren
said, like as if he'd figured out how.

 
          
"I
tell you again, if they come into the open, hold your fire till they get in
close enough to stop a plumb-center shot,” I warned them. "It won't help
us to just wound one. They've got to have a corpse on their hands to be sure
enough scared out.”

 
          
Outside
somewhere at the front, rose the note of a whippoorwill.
Whi-ah-whoo,
it said,
whi-ah-whoo.

 
          
"Sounds
to me like some devilish old Shonokin a-signal- ing,” whispered Mr. Ben.

 
          
"Sounds
to me like just only a whippoorwill,” I said.

 
          
Whi-ah-whoo
,
whi-ah-whoo,
came from out yonder in
front.
I went to look through a space thataway.

 
          
Something
little and dark seemed like as if it crept along in the road, where the
moonlight filtered down.

 
          
"I
see it,” said
Warren
’s voice beside me.

 
          
Next
second, before I could raise a hand to stop him, he shoved his rifle through
the space in the logs and fired.

 
          
"I
done told you not to do that,” I scolded at him.

 
          
That
little dark thing had spun over and over and lay still as a stone. He’d hit it
where it lived. Then we heard a laugh.

 
          
"Really
and truly,” came a-mocking the voice of Brooke Altic, "that was cruel of
you, John, or whoever fired.
Snuffing out the life of a poor,
pitiful little whippoorwill, when it was only trying to find a bug for its poor,
pitiful little supper.
The humane society would have something
unpleasant to say to you.”