Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 02 (3 page)

 
          
“This
may well be worth a fortune,” he said.

 
          
“And
now, my friends,” Altic boomed over the system, “you may have heard that this
event has been staged to raise money for a good cause, the advancement of
freedom and justice and progress. It is possible that some of you would care to
help that cause further along. I'm going to ask the Four Seekers to play for us
while we pass the hat.”

 
          
The
Four Seekers hurried on stage and went into another wild, drum-roily piece of
music that seemed to flicker round them in the lantern light While they did
that, I saw the black-coated fellows out in the aisles with little baskets,
a-passing them back and forth like for a collection in church. People along the
rows put things in the baskets and handed them back. One of the fellows walked
to where we three stood beside the steps to the stage and held out his basket

 
          
“Thank
you, but I don't reckon I will,” I said, a-looking into his basket. It was
three quarters full of money bills and what looked like jewels—ladies' rings
and bracelets and so on. That was a rich harvest without anything from me, and
no I reckon about it. He looked at me, with deep eyes and a nose pooched out
like the beak of a bird. Then he went on past me.

 
          
“So
you didn't contribute, John,” said Jackson Warren, close to my ear.

 
          
“No.
I didn't feel like it.”

 
          
"Neither
did
I
.” He barely whispered that. "Maybe you
suspect this crowd.”

 
          
"Maybe."

 
          
"Well,"
he said, "they're Shonokins."

 
          
"Shonokins?"
I didn't recollect air a-hearing that
name before. "What's that mean?"

 
          
"Keep
your voice down.” His eyes watched mine. "Since you're here, it's high
time you found out. You and I would do well to work together, perhaps. Where
are you staying tonight?"

 
          
"Why,"
I said, "I hadn't much thought about that. Likely I'll find a place to
make a fire and roll up in my blanket."

 
          
Callie
came up beside
Warren
. "Come with us, John," she invited me. "My father knows
who you are. He'll be glad to have you at our house."

 
          
"And
you and I can talk," Warren added on, and it sounded to me like as if I'd
be a-hearing something right strange, maybe right unchancy.

           
Jackson Warren's car was old and dim
and rusty, with two-three dents that told you it had been bumped in its time;
but when he got it out of the parking area with Callie a-sit- ting at his side
and me with my gear in the back seat, it ran all right, strong and smooth. It
had
to,
on the bumpy, wiggly dirt road we followed,
with the rows of big, dark trees to either side.

 
          
"This
is more or less my father's road nowadays,'' said Callie
.
"
Nobody much lives along this stretch. It hooks on to another track
outside our place, the old
Immer Road
.''

 
          
"Immer,"
I repeated her. "That's what the old settlement was called."

 
          
"In
German, that means something like always or forever," said
Warren
.

 
          
"Likely
it was just somebody's name once," said Callie. "But, John, we
wondered why you didn't contribute there at the singing."

 
          
"Something
told me not to,” I said.

 
          
"And
something told you right,” said
Warren
. "Apparently you have a good sense of
what to do and what not to do."

 
          
"You
were a-going to tell me about the Shonokins," I reminded him.

 
          
And,
as he drove, he told me about the Shonokins.

 
          
Not
many folks knew any more about them than I'd known when he'd first said the
name to me. They were an old, old people, he allowed, who'd been a-making
themselves hard to find or even to notice over nobody could say how many years.
Warren
knew about them because he'd worked up
North with somebody named John Thunstone— “The same good name you have,
John”—and Thunstone had managed to do things against them, even in
New York City
. But lately, they'd started to show up
here, in these mountains.

 
          
It
wasn't
easy,
Warren
went on to tell, to make out a Shonokin as
different from ordinary folks. One way was by their eyes, which in the daytime
had a pupil that ran up and down like a cat's instead of a round circle. And on
their hands, the third fingers were longer than the middle fingers.

 
          
“Always
you see males,'' said
Warren
, “
if
you see any Shonokins at all. I've heard
Thunstone say that he wonders if there are any female Shonokins.''

 
          
I
thought that over to myself for a second or two.
“If they
don't have females, how does science explain where Shonokins come from?''
I asked finally.

 
          
“Science
doesn't recognize that there are any such things as Shonokins.”

 
          
He'd
told all that in a few words, and he brightened up when Callie allowed that he
talked like a scientist himself.

 
          
“No,
Callie,” he said, a-rolling her name on his tongue. “I'm just an obscure seeker
for the truth, old enough to be your father.”

 
          
“You're
no such thing.” She smiled back. “My father's Ben
Gray,
and he's near about old enough to be your father.”

 
          
“You’re
very kind,” he sort of chuckled, “but my hair's popping out in pale patches
while I study the way the Shonokins are coming out of their hiding in these
parts. I wonder if John believes any of
this?
”

 
          
“Why
shouldn't I believe it?" I came back at him from where I sat behind. “You
sound honest enough to tell it."

 
          
About
then he brought us into a hollow, with wooded hills just barely to be seen all
round about. There, among some pines, stood a cabin. It was made of logs and
easy to see just then, because the chinking had been picked out to let in
summer air and light, and now it let out light at us from inside. It shone sort
of like a jack-o'-lantern, rosy streaks betwixt the dark logs. As
Warren
stopped the car in the yard, the front door
opened and a man stepped out on the puncheon porch.

 
          
“Oh,"
he said, “
it's
youins, back from that singing. Come on
in the house."

 
          
He
blinked down at me from the porch. We got out and walked toward the cabin.
“John," said Callie, “this is my daddy, Mr. Ben Gray."

 
          
He
was a ready-looking, middling built man in work pants and shirt, with lots of
curly hair as gray as his name. He had a good face, shaped like a wedge, and there
was a plenty of room at the top of it for sense. His eyes were deep-set and his
nose was long and straight, with under it
a moustache like
a frosty strip of fur. “John," he said at me. “John."

 
          
“Yes,
sir," I said. “I'm John."

 
          
He
studied the guitar under my arm. “I reckon you must be the John that just goes
by that name. The one we hear tell all sorts of good things about. Then you're
kindly welcome to my house and aught I can do to make you comfortable."

 
          
“I
do thank you, sir," I said.

 
          
“Don't
call me sir; I wasn't nair an officer in the war.
Just a
sergeant.
Come round, John, come on in."

 
          
We
went up the porch steps and followed him inside. I already felt a right much at
home.

           
There was a great big front room,
the whole width of the house, and doors to more rooms behind and a ladder up to
a loft. A fire rippled on the hearth, for it had turned off chillish in the
night. I saw a cast-iron stove and a sink against one wall. A shelf held rows
of old books. There was a big bearskin for a rug, and a table and chairs, and a
couple of rockers up beside the fireplace. Over the door was set a pair of
six-point deer horns, and across them lay a rifle, an old army
Springfield
.

 
          
"Have
seats,” Ben Gray invited us. "What went on at that singing?”

 
          
Callie
told him all about the picking and singing and dancing, and how I’d won the
prize for guitar. I had the prize cup in my hand, and now I leaned in my chair
and reached it out to her.

 
          
"I’d
be mightily proud if you took it and kept it, Miss Callie,” I said.

 
          
Her
big blue eyes got bigger. "Oh no, I couldn't do that, John,” she said, and
I had it in mind that
Warren
watched me in a funny sort of way. "I couldn't take it from you.
You won it fair and square. You're the best guitar picker Fve heard in my whole
life.”

 
          
I
still reached the cup out. "If you won't take it as a gift, take it as a
trade. You can teach me that song about 'Come
Over
the
Bourn, Bessy.' Fd another sight rather
have
the song
than the cup.”

 
          
She
took it then, and sort of cradled it between her little hands. "You truly
want to learn that one?” she asked.

 
          
"I
aim to sing it to a girl I know, named Evadare.”

 
          
Warren
slacked off when I said that. He
twinkled
his eye at me to show how glad he was to hear tell
that I was a-thinking of some other girl than Callie. He put out his hand for
the cup and held it to weigh it.

 
          
"I
say it’s made of solid gold,” he allowed. "It weighs heavier than lead,
like gold.”

 
          
We
all stood up then and came round to look. It was a right pretty cup. It looked
to be hammered out all round.
Warren
turned it over and over.

 
          
"No
carat mark,” he said. "But it's of home manufacture, anyway. Til swear
again, it's of gold.” He gave it back to Callie.
"Worth
hundreds of dollars.”

 
          
"Then
John
shouldn't ought
to be a-giving it away so free,”
said Ben Gray.

 
          
"I've
done already given it away,” I told them, "or anyhow traded it away, for
that song I'd rather have.”

 
          
"I'm
sure Callie will be glad to teach it to you, John,” said
Warren
, his voice a-sounding happier every minute.
"But first of all, I want to talk about the Shonokins.” He looked hard at
each of us in turn. "The Shonokins were plainly in charge at that
program.”

 
          
"Sure
enough?” said Ben Gray, scowling.

 
          
"Yes,
and I want what help I can get from you, Mr. Ben.”

 
          
Ben
Gray sat back down in his chair next to the fire. By now, I'd had time to see
he was the right sort of mountain man, the sort I knew and liked. He wasn't too
much older than Warren and me, but he'd seen life, seen lots of it. He was
brown-faced from a-working outdoors; he had good teeth and hands and eyes. From
a fruit jar he poured us drinks of pale, straw-colored blockade whiskey. I
sipped mine and allowed how good I thought it was.

 
          
"I'm
proud to hear you say so, John.” He grinned. "I made it myself.”

 
          
"Then
you've got good reason to be proud,” I said back. "A man who does air
thing as good as this deserves to be given credit, same as if he's a good
blacksmith, say.”

 
          
"Or
builds a good house or grows and harvests a good crop,” added on
Warren
, and Callie beamed at him for that.

 
          
“I
do thank you one and all for what you’ve got to say about this here blockade,”
said Mr. Ben, "but it ain’t all I do, not by a long shot. I grow me
vegetables and tobacco and truck them off to sell. And likewise I’m a bee hunter.”
"Nair in all my life have I gone bee hunting,” I said. "All right
then, let’s you and me go out and hunt a couple of bees along about sunup
tomorrow,” he invited me. "But
Jackson
here said he wanted to talk some about them
Shonokins.”

           
"Yes, sir.”
Jackson
sipped at his drink. "I came here in
the first place because my friend John Thunstone said you’d sent him some
mention of them.”

 
          
"Well,
they’re hereabouts all
right,
” allowed Mr. Ben, and he
didn’t sound glad to tell of it. 'They started a-com- ing in when I wasn’t much
past being just a chap. It was after old Dr. Ollebeare died and went to his
rest, and folks started to move out of that settlement they’d named Immer.
Moved out and forgot their places here; forgot their ownership, and let the places
come up for back taxes, and the Shonokins would get hold of them.”

 
          
"Back
taxes?”
Warren
repeated him. "Did the Shonokins go to
the courthouse to get titles to the land?” Ben Gray studied that for a second.
"Can’t rightly answer that,
Jackson
.
Maybe somebody appeared to get the titles
for them some way, but they got them. Only I stayed on, and three-four others
here and there. And the Shonokins have begun to run into me, in the woods
mostly, and they try to talk to me about would I sell my place to them. But
they talk more about something else of mine they pure down want me to let them
have.”