Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 05 (13 page)

 
          
And
all of a sudden they stopped and quick ran together from the fire and fell down
on their bare knees where somebody showed in the shadows. Hard to see rightly,
but the somebody sat in a big chair, and seemed to be all wrapped in black,
with big bull horns on the head. Ruel Harpe touched the thing he wore on his
neck, said his words, and the window went all dark.

 
          
Scylla
scowled at me. “John, do you know that song, perhaps?”

 
          
“I
know it,” I replied her. “I’ve heard it sung in my time. But I don’t sing it
myself, nor air other witch thing.”

 
          
“Oh,
you who know so much,” she sniffed. “Well, if I may be excused, I’ll seek my
room.”

 
          
She
got up, and so did Alka and Tarrah. They said their good nights too and
followed Scylla past their green curtain. Harpe sat where he was, his eyes on
me.

 
          
“Your
singing and dancing impressed me all the more,” he said, so friendly I could
near about believe him, but not quite. “You’re the one who can teach the
survivors of a new earth. Teach them to rejoice along with the work they’ll
have to do.”

 
          
“You
figure to do away with the world we have and a-setting up the new one,” I said.

 
          
“I’ve
told you I did,” he said, and quoted something:

 
          
“.
. . To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire,
Would
not we shatter it to bits—and then Remold it nearer to the heart’s desire!”

           
He
grinned
me over those lines. “Omar Khayyam,” he said, like as if I’d nair heard of the
fellow. “What Omar would have done I don’t know, but I know what I’ll do, with
you to help me. What do you
say?”           
^f

           
“I say I’m a-getting too tired to
figure that out,” 1 answered. “I’ve had me a plumb hard time a-swarving up
Cry
Mountain
, and for two-three days before that I spent
most of my time on my feet. Right now, I’d admire to know where I'll lay my
head down.”

 
          
“I’m
afraid I’ve been remiss in my duties as a host,” said Harpe. “Come along and
bring your gear with you.”

 
          
I
picked up my things, guitar and all. Harpe led the way to the door with the red
curtain, the one the women hadn’t used. I followed him into a long, lean hall,
lighted from somewhere up above. The walls were cut out of rock, a sort of pale
tan color. At the end of the hall we came to a door that looked to be made of
dark iron. Harpe pushed a button on it, and it opened before us and we went in.

 
          
The
room, too, had those walls of pale tan rock, cut right out of some place inside
Cry
Mountain
. The ceiling showed glassy pale, but it was
clouded, you couldn’t see through it. A light of some kind filtered through, a
soft light, but you’d be able to read by it. That room might
could
have been fourteen feet square. There was an iron bed, single size, with
pillows and a spread on it as fluffy white as a new fall of snow on a winter’s
morning. There were a couple of chairs and a chest of drawers.
On one wall a picture, an oil painting of two men a-leading horses
amongst dark, watching trees.
I looked at it and wondered myself if
those two men were supposed to be the old Harpe brothers, Micajah and Wiley
Harpe. On another wall another picture, this time of a town with a run of water
instead of a street and men a-pushing boats along with poles. And at the far
end, across from where we’d come in, a door of iron painted red, that stood
half open. I dumped my stuff in a comer and went to that door and inside.

 
          
It
was dark in there, but I groped my hand inside the jamb and found a soft place
and pushed. Light came on overhead. It was a bathroom with the rock walls
colored gray, and all modern fixings, the sort you’d find in a good hotel. I
came out again. Harpe was a-sitting in one of the chairs, with his grin on. I
yawned, and he
grinned
me wider.

 
          
“That’s
a comforting sign, John,” he said. “You’re tired. You’re sleepy, ready to lie
down and drift off.
Which means you’re getting around to
trusting me.
You’re dismissing the idea that I might slip in here while
you’re dead to the world and perhaps kill you.”

 
          
“If
you did that,” I returned to him, “I’d just be dead, and that would be the end.
I’ve said before, I’ve looked death betwixt the eyes too often to be bad scared
of a-dying.” I looked him betwixt his own eyes. “As life is to the living, so
death is to the dead,” I quoted to him.

 
          
“Mary
Mapes Dodge wrote that,” Harpe said, “as well as
Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates
, which I remember as a more or
less silly novel. But all right for that. You’re the healthy sort that doesn’t
expect to die right away. I judge that you’re a truly strong man.”

 
          
“Yes,
sir, I’ve always been powerful for strength, all the way up from a boy. Most
times, whatair bunch I’m with, I can reckon to be the strongest one.”

 
          
“Ah,”
he said, “and you must have proved your strength.” “Why, as to that,” I said,
“three-four years back, I was up at what they call the Highland Games in the
mountains, a good way off from here. They
bantered
me,
some of them, to get into what they called a-throwing the caber.”

           
“I know what the caber is,” nodded
Harpe.
“A big, heavy length of a tree trunk.
Something
an ordinary man couldn’t even lift. So you threw the caber.
How
well?”

 
          
“I
won,” I said. “They were all of them right much sur-

 
          
prised
. The other throwers were big beefy men, and you see
what I am, rangy more than aught else. But I watched them hike it up and fling
it, and figured I saw what knack it took, and when it was my turn, I won.”

 
          
He
studied me up and down. "No doubt you think you could beat me in a fair
fight.”

 
          
"Not
for me to say air such thing, since I'm your guest here.”

 
          
"But
could you? Could you even get hold of me? Try it, just in a friendly way.”

 
          
A-standing
across the floor from me, he reached his right hand at me, like as if to shake.
His other hand was on the amulet round his neck.

 
          
I
put out my own hand to take his, and, gentlemen, I couldn't.

 
          
It
was like as if there was a pane of glass betwixt us, such pure-made glass it
couldn’t be seen. I slid my fingers here and there, and whatair was in the way
stayed there.
Kept me from him.

 
          
His
grin stretched wide, to show his lean white teeth.

 
          
"No
good to try, is it? You must trust me, and you can. But come, let’s relax.
Let’s play a little game.”

 
          
He
reached inside his fringed shirt and fetched out a pair of dice, white with
green spots. "Do you know how to roll these?” he asked me.

 
          
"1
flung dice when I was a boy, and some in the army,” I said.
"But
I don’t have money enough with me for a game, and I won’t gamble for aught
else.”

 
          
"No,
no, I said we’ll relax. Just have fun. Here, this rug will be as good as a
blanket to roll on. Kneel down, John.”

 
          
We
both knelt. He handed me the dice. I shook them and sent them out on a roll.
Two single-spot faces came up.

 
          
“Snake
eyes/' said Harpe. “
Craps.
But I'll give you another
chance. Go ahead/’

 
          
I
rolled them again, and they came up a one and a two.

 
          
“Craps again,” he said, a-chuckling.
“The saddest story ever
told. Now let me try.” He took the dice into his hand.
“How
about a nice fresh seven?”

 
          
He
sent them a-tumbling out. They came up a three and a four.

 
          
“See
there?” he laughed. “I don’t even have to talk to them.” He had them in his
hand again. “
How about elevens this time?”

           
They rolled away and stopped, with a
five and a six up. If we’d have been a-shooting for money, I’d have been broke
by then.

           
“But let’s not be monotonous,” Harpe
was a-saying. “Give me something to be a point, and see me make it.”

 
          
The
dice came up a three and a one. Harpe winked down at them.

 
          
“Four,”
he said. “Little Joe, so called.
The hardest point of all to
make, except for Big Dick, the ten.”

 
          
He
rolled them, and they quit with both twos up.

 
          
“There
you are,” he said, “and I made it the hard way.” He shoved the dice back inside
his shirt and got up, and so did I.

 
          
“You
see,” he said, “I can make money by gambling. No need to pull that rope out
there and fetch it to me from a bank or a safe. Now and then I visit gambling
centers of the world. Some of those, like
Las Vegas
, know me and discourage me from getting
into a game, but I go to other towns—up and down the
California
coast, towns in
Texas
and
Florida
, up to
Chicago
and
New York
.” He smiled about that. “And overseas,
sometimes I play at
Monte Carlo
or in
London
or
Rome
or
Paris
. I have plenty of money in a safe place here
for when I might need it. And seldom do I need it very much.”

 
          
“You
gamble for lots,” I guessed.

 
          
“Yes,
the stakes are in the thousands, even in the millions, in those gambling
centers. I gamble for lots, as you say, and I always win.”

 
          
“You
can even control chance,” I said.

 
          
“You're
right, I can even control chance. Have a good night's rest, John, and I'll see
you in the morning.”

 
          
With
that, he went to the door and through it and shut it behind him. The room
seemed quieter, easier, with Ruel Harpe gone out of it. After a second, I went
and tried the door. It wasn't locked, he hadn't shut me in. Likely he reckoned
he didn't have to.

 
          
Because he was sure of me in his mind.
He'd shown me that I
couldn't touch him, then that business with the dice, because he wanted me to
know that he had command over a whole hobby of circumstances. Up here, inside
his fenced-in top of
Cry
Mountain
, he figured he was winner over all things
in reach, and that he could be winner over
all the
world besides. He was dead certain sure about that.

 
          
He
was like those Tories on
Kings
Mountain
I'd sung to him about, earlier on:
because they rule the mountain, they think
they rule the land
. But how dead wrong those Tories had been, and might
could Ruel Harpe be wrong, too?