Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC (5 page)

           
"But he didn't," said Mr.
Yandro. "My grandfather died up north."

 
          
"He
sent his grandson, who favors him," said Miss Tully. "The song you
heard brought you back at the right tune." She thumbed tobacco into her
pipe. "All the Yandro kin moved away, pure down scared of Polly Wiltse's
singing."

 
          
"In
her desrick, where the wild beasts can't reach her," quoted Mr. Yandro,
and chuckled. "John says they have bears and wildcats up here." He
expected her to say I was stretching it.

 
          
"Oh,
there's other creatures, too. Scarce animals, like the Toller."

 
          
"The
Toller?" he said.

 
          
"It's
the hugest flying thing there is, I guess," said Miss Tully. "Its
voice tolls like a bell, to tell other creatures their feed's near. And there's
the Flat. It lies level with the ground, and not much higher. It can wrap you
like a blanket." She lighted the pipe. "And the Bammat. Big, the
Bammat is."

 
          
"The
Behemoth, you mean," he suggested.

 
          
"No,
the Behemoth's in the Bible. The Bammat's something hairy-like, with big ears
and a long wiggly nose and twisty white teeth sticking out of its mouth—"

 
          
"Oh!"
And Mr. Yandro trumpeted his laughter. "You've got some story about the
Mammoth. Why, they've been extinct—dead and forgotten—for thousands of
years."

 
          
"Not
for so long, I've heard tell," she said, puffing.

 
          
"Anyway,"
he went on arguing, "the Mammoth—the Bammat, as you call it—is of the
elephant family. How would anything like that get up in the mountains?"

 
          
"Maybe
folks hunted it there," said Miss Tully, "and maybe it stays there so
folks will think it's dead and gone a thousand years. And there's the Behinder."

 
          
"And
what," said Mr. Yandro, "might the Behinder look like?"

 
          
"Can't
rightly say, Mr. Yandro. For it's always behind the man or woman it wants to
grab. And there's the Skim—it kites through the air—and the Culverin, that can
shoot pebbles with its mouth."

 
          
"And
you believe all that?" sneered Mr. Yandro, the way he always sneered at
everything, everywhere.

 
          
"Why
else should I tell it?" she replied. "Well, sir, you're back where
your kin used to live, in the valley where they named the mountain for them. I
can let you two sleep on my front stoop tonight."

 
          
"I
came to climb the mountain and see the desrick," said Mr. Yandro with that
anxious hurry to him that I kept wondering about.

 
          
"You
can't climb up there until it's light," she told him, and she made us two
quilt pallets on the split-slab stoop.

 
          
I
was tired and glad to stretch out, but Mr. Yandro grumbled, as if we were
wasting time. At sunup next morning, Miss Tully fried us some side meat and
slices of hominy grit porridge, and she fixed us a snack to carry, and a gourd
to put water in. Mr. Yandro held out a ten dollar bill.

 
          
"No,
I thank you," said Miss Tully. "I bade you stay, and I won't take
money for that."

 
          
"Oh,
everybody takes money from me," he snickered, and threw it on the door-sill
at her feet. "Go on, it's yours."

 
          
Quick
as a weasel, Miss Tully's hand grabbed a stick of stove wood.

 
          
"Lean
down and take back that money-bill, Mister," she said.

 
          
He
did as she told him. With the stick she pointed out across the stream that ran
through the thickets below us, and up the height beyond. She acted as if there
wasn't any trouble a second before.

 
          
"That's
the
Yandro
Mountain
," she said. "There, on the
highest point, where it looks like the crown of a hat, thick with trees all the
way up, stands the desrick built by Polly Wiltse. You look close, with the sun
rising, and you can maybe make it out."

 
          
I
looked hard. There for sure it was, far off and high up, and tiny, but I could
see it. It looked a lean sort of a building.

 
          
"How
about trails going up?" I asked her.

 
          
"There's
trails up there, John, but nobody walks them."

 
          
"Now,
now," said Mr. Yandro, "if there's a trail, somebody must walk
it."

 
          
"May
be a lot in what you say, but I know nobody in this valley would set foot to
such a trail. Not with what they say's up there."

 
          
He
laughed at her, as I wouldn't have dared. "You mean the Bammat," he
said. "And the Flat, and the Skim, and the Culverin."

 
          
"And
the Toller," she added for him. "And the Behinder. Only a gone gump
would go up there."

 
          
We
headed away down to the waterside, and crossed on logs laid on top of rocks. On
the far side a trail led along, and when the sun was an hour higher we were at
the foot of Yandro's high hill, and a trail went up there, too.

 
          
We
rested. Mr. Yandro needed rest worse than I did. Moving most of the night
before, unused to walking and climbing, he had a gaunted look to his heavy
face, and his clothes were sweated, and dust dulled out his shoes. But he
grinned at me.

 
          
"So
she's waited seventy-five years," he said, "and so I look like the
man she's waiting for. And so there's gold up there. More gold than my
grandfather could have carried
off."

 
          
"You
believe what you've been hearing," I said, and it was a mystery.

 
          
"John,
a wise man knows when to believe the unusual, and how it will profit him. She's
up there, waiting, and so is the gold."

 
          
"What
when you find it?" I asked.

 
          
"My
grandfather was able to go
off
and
leave her. It sounds like a good example to me." He grinned wider and
toothier. "I'll give you part of the gold."

 
          
"No
thanks, Mr. Yandro."

 
          
"You
don't want your pay? Why did you come here with me?"

 
          
"Just
made up my mind on a moment's notice, like you."

 
          
He
scowled then, but he looked up at the height. "How long will it take to
climb, John?"

 
          
"Depends
on how fast we climb, how well we keep up the pace."

 
          
"Then
let's go," and he started up the trail.

 
          
It
wasn't folks' feet had worn that trail. I saw a hoofmark.

 
          
"Deer,"
grunted Mr. Yandro; and I said, "Maybe."

 
          
We
scrambled up on a rightward slant, then leftward. The trees marched in close
around us, with branches above that filtered only soft green light. Something
rustled, and we saw a brown, furry shape, big as a big cat, scuttling out of
sight.

 
          
"Woodchuck,"
wheezed Mr. Yandro; again I said, "Maybe."

 
          
After
an hour's working upward we rested, and after two hours more we rested again.
Around
11 o'clock
we reached an open space where clear light touched the middle, and there we sat
on a log and ate the corn bread and smoked meat Miss Tully had fixed. Mr.
Yandro mopped his face with a fancy handkerchief, and gobbled food for strength
to glitter his eye at me. "What are you glooming about?" he said.
"You look as
if
you'd call me a
name if you weren't afraid."

           
"I've held my tongue," I
said, "by way of manners, not fear. I'm just thinking about how and why we
came so far and sudden to this place."

 
          
"You
sang me a song, and I heard, and thought I'd come to where my people
originated. Now I have a hunch about profit. That's enough for you."

 
          
"It's
not just that gold story," I said. "You're more than rich
enough."

 
          
"I'm
going up there," said Mr. Yandro, "because, by God, that old hag down
there said everybody's afraid to do it. And you said you'd go with me."

 
          
"I'll
go right to the top with you," I said.

 
          
I
forebore to say that something had come close and looked from among the trees
behind him. It was big and broad-headed, with elephant ears to right and left,
and white tusks like bannisters on a spiral staircase. But it was woolly-shaggy,
like a buffalo bull. The Bammat. How could such a thing move so quiet-like?

 
          
He
drank from his whiskey bottle, and on we climbed. We could hear those noises in
the woods and brush, behind rocks and down little gulleys, as if the mountain
side thronged with living things as thick as fleas on a possum dog and another
sight sneakier. I didn't let on I was nervous.

 
          
"Why
are you singing under your breath?" he grunted after a while.

 
          
"I'm
not singing," I said. "I need my breath for climbing."

 
          
"I
hear you!" he charged me, like a lawyer in court.

 
          
We'd
stopped dead on the trail, and I heard it, too.

 
          
It
was soft, almost like some half-remembered song in your mind. It was the Yandro
song, all right:

 
          
Look away, look away, look away over Yandro,
Where them wild things areflyin' From bough to bough, and a-mating with their
mates, So why not me with mine?

          
"That singing comes from up
above us," I told Mr. Yandro. "Then," he said, "we must be
nearly at the top." As we started climbing again, I could hear the noises
to right and left in the woods, and then I realized they'd quieted down when we
stopped. They moved when we moved, they waited when we waited. There were lots
of them. Soft noises, but lots of them.

 
          
Which
is why I myself, and probably Mr. Yandro too, didn't pause any more on the way
up, even on a rocky stretch where we had to climb on all fours. It may have
been an hour after
noon
when we came to the top.

 
          
Right
there was a circle-shaped clearing, with the trees thronged around it all the
way except an open space toward the slope. Those trees had mist among and
between them, quiet and fluffy, like spider webbing. And at the open space, on
the lip of the way down, perched the desrick.

 
          
Old-aged
was what it looked. It stood high and looked the higher, because it was built
so narrow of unnotched logs, set four above four, hogpen fashion, as tall as a
tall tobacco barn. The spaces between the logs were clinked shut with great
masses and wads of clay. The steep-pitched roof was of shingles, cut long and
narrow, so that they looked almost like thatch. There was one big door, made of
an axe-chopped plank, and the hinges must have been inside, for I could see
none. And one window, covered with what must have been rawhide scraped thin,
with a glow of soft light coming through.

 
          
"That's
it," puffed Mr. Yandro. "The desrick."