Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1952 (13 page)

 
          
“I
asked him to come along,” said Mr. Martin, “but he out-and-out refused to have
anything to do with hunting wild dogs. He’s a good worker, but he’s not what
you’d call eager for danger. But what I said just now isn’t a riddle or a fairy
story; it’s just a matter of orchard-growing science. What’s the word I want?”

 
          
“Horticulture,”
suggested Randy.

 
          
“Yes.
Now, when you set out an orchard of young peach shoots, sometimes you do some
grafting. Know what grafting is?
The orchard kind, not the
racketeer kind.”

 
          
“You
mean when a shoot of one tree is set to grow in the root of another,” said
Driscoll.

 
          
“That’s
it. Well, to make sure of a good strong growth for peach trees, sometimes slips
of peach are grafted into extra strong-growing roots of another tree. That
gives the peach a good start right off. I’m no peach farmer myself, but I’ve
seen it done here and there, sometimes by grafting to persimmon and sometimes
to sassafras. Both of those trees put down roots that die about as hard as any
living thing.”

           
“I can guarantee that,” said Jebs.
“I’ve helped grub up sassafras roots, and
it’s
rugged
work.”

 
          
“Now,”
resumed Mr. Martin, “what happened to that orchard Randy found was, the farmer
walked off and left it and never cared for it again. The peach trees that grew
up from those root-grafts just purely died away. But the sassfras roots sent
their own new stems busting up out of the ground, into trees of their own kind.
And there you are.”

 
          
“You
spoiled what might have been a good spooky mystery,” Jebs half complained.

 
          
“Who
might have put in that peach orchard?” Sam asked Mr. Martin.

 
          
“I
can’t rightly say. I know there was some farming done in that part of the
woods, maybe twenty years back, but nobody worked the place for very long.”

 
          
“Because
of that old lawsuit we’ve heard about,” agreed the giant.

 
          
Randy
pointed up ahead with the machete. “Look, are we going to have some more rain?
I see a sort of cloud.”

 
          
“And
it’s rolling and heaving,” chimed in Jebs from his rear position. “I hope it
isn’t a whirlwind.”

           
“No, it’s smoke,” said Mr. Martin.
“It’s a fire in the woods.”

 
          
They
quickened their pace.

 
          
“It
looks as if it’s right where that house is,” said Randy.

 
          
“Right,
Randy,” said
Sam
Cohill
from his greater height. “I see something.
Some kind of clearing.”
“Then the deserted house is afire!”
cried Randy. “Who started it?”

 
          
THE
EVIDENCE BURNS

 
          
Randy
froze in his tracks, gazing. Mr. Martin and Driscoll, also stopping, looked
over his shoulders. Behind them waited Jebs and
Sam.
So, for a breath’s space, the whole quintet paused in motionless perplexity.
But only for a second.

 
          
Then
Randy dug in his toes and threw himself forward. He galloped toward the burning
house as instantly and swiftly as, two hours
before,
he had fled away from it.

 
          
“Hold
it, Randy!” cried Mr. Martin from behind. “Don’t break up the formation like
that!”

 
          
But
Randy did not wait. He did not even falter. His feet only flew the faster.
His shirt tail, loose from his waistband, streamed behind him like
a banner in the wind of his own making.

 
          
“Wait,
Randy! Wait!”

 
          
That
was
Sam
Cohill
. Still Randy gave no indication that he
would slow his furious pace. He outdistanced the hastening feet of his
companions, drawing far ahead of them. He burst through the final belt of
trees, and paused only on the edge of the old clearing. He looked at the
burning house.

 
          
Through
gaps in the dry old shingles of the roof licked and quivered tongues of bright
flame. Smoke billowed from broken windows, from the remains of the stovepipe.
Randy broke into a run again, heading for the door.

 
          
As
he came near, skirting the edge of the sassafras orchard, he could see that the
door had been pulled shut. He remembered that the wild dogs had clawed it wide
open to come in after him—who had closed it again?
Surely not
the dogs.
Fairly leaping the last few paces, Randy caught at the door
and wrenched it open.

 
          
A
mighty blast of smoke, hot as fire and choking as water, smote him. He fell
back half a dozen steps as though he had been forcibly shoved. Squinting with
his tear-filled eyes, he looked into the house. The floor blazed in several
places. The whole interior was full of smoke.

 
          
“Don’t
go in there, Randy!” roared
Sam
Cohill
, his voice drawing closer.

 
          
“I’ve
got to,” gasped Randy.

 
          
He
dropped Driscoll’s machete and bored in through the smoke toward the door, an
arm lifted to shield his face.

 
          
Then
he felt the smashing impact of a hard, heavy body. Something clutched his knees
together like a noose of tight-drawn cable. He fell, hard and flat, upon the
ground. Somebody or something sprawled its full weight upon him, and hands
caught his shoulders.

 
          
“What
are you trying to do?” choked Jebs from among the wisps of smoke. “If I’d
missed that tackle, you’d have gone right in there to be barbecued.”

 
          
“Let
go, Jebs,” commanded Randy, struggling against his friend’s clutch. “That
cowhide coat’s in there. Sam needs it for a clue—”

 
          
“No, stay out of there.”
The giant had run up to them. His
enormous hand caught Randy, lifting him from the ground and carrying him away
from the smoke-gushing doorway as lightly as though he were a kitten. “We can
spare that coat, and whatever evidence it might give, better than we can spare
you.”

           
“And that’s the truth,” vowed Jebs,
choking and wheezing from the smoke he had swallowed.

 
          
“Stay
clear,” ordered
Sam
Cohill
, his hand still gripping Randy like a pair
of tongs. “Don’t go near that door, Randy. Understand? Do you agree, or do I
have to sit on you?”

 
          
“Whatever
you say, Sam,” conceded Randy. “I guess I lost my head when I saw the place was
burning up.”

 
          
Releasing
Randy, Sam moved closer to the door, tried to peer through the gush of black
smoke. Flames darted in and out of the murk. Stooping, the giant possessed
himself of the machete that Randy had dropped. Then he strode around the side
of the house, keeping a respectful distance from the flames that snapped from
windows and walls.

 
          
“What’s
Sam doing with my machete?” inquired Driscoll, joining Randy and Jebs.

 
          
“I
think he wants to mow away some of the brush near the house,” said Mr. Martin.
“It’d be right hard to set these woods on fire, but it’s smart to keep the fire
to the house itself.”

 
          
“I’ll
help Sam,” said Randy, following the giant.

 
          
“And
I’ll help you,” announced Jebs, quickly falling into step with Randy. “I don’t
want you to get too far away from me—I might have to tackle you again.”

 
          
At
the side and rear of the house, a sizable thicket of brushy young saplings grew
almost against the timber walls.
Here
Sam
Cohill
had set to work, with great reaping slashes
of the machete. The stems and branches fell before his mighty onslaught, and
with his other big hand he yanked smaller bushes up by their roots. Swiftly
Jebs and Randy began to gather up armfuls of the felled and uprooted brush,
dragging their burdens back away from the house.

 
          
“That’s
good,” said Sam, glancing up from his work. “Work fast, before the fire comes
through the walls.” He chopped away. “Inside job, all right,” he added.

 
          
“How
do you figure that?” said Jebs, speaking through a heaped burden of leafage.

 
          
“Tell
you later,” said Sam, hacking into a fresh clump of shrubbery.

 
          
Like
demons they worked, sweating with the heat and coughing when clouds of smoke
reached them from the house. The work was furious, but it did not take them
long. Indeed, they could not afford to spend long at clearing the brush back
from the house.
  
Even as they moved away
with the final bundles of green foliage, they saw flames burst triumphantly
through the scorched and blackened panels of the rear door.

 
          
“That’s
what I meant by an inside job,” said Sam to Jebs. “The fire must have been
started inside the house. The doors were closed, remember? And it’s had a hard
time struggling out here into the open. Unless Randy himself dropped a match in
there—” “I didn’t even have a match,” said Randy.

 
          
Just
then Driscoll wheeled around and stared fixedly through the trees toward the
far end of the sassafras orchard. Then he snatched the rifle from where he had
leaned it against the sycamore.

 
          
“I
hear somebody,” he said, and moved rapidly away past the burning house.

 
          
Jebs
immediately hastened after
Driscoll,
and Randy after
Jebs. Ahead of them, Driscoll broke into a run. Near the thicker woods he
stopped and brought the rifle to his shoulder.

 
          
“Come
out of there!” he called sternly. “Come out or I’ll let you have a bullet!”

 
          
“Now,
you just point that there gun somewheres else,” drawled a plaintive voice, “and
I’ll come out.” From among the trees moved Mr. Martin’s hired man, his eyes
wide and frightened as they looked at Driscoll’s weapon. One of Willie Dubbin’s
hands was fastened in the headstall of the mule he had used in ploughing at New
Chimney Pot House.

 
          
“Don’t
shoot,” he begged. “I ain’t heard of
no
open season on
folks.”

 
          
Driscoll
lowered the rifle, but kept finger on trigger. “What are you doing here?”

 
          
“Willie!”
cried Mr. Martin, who had followed the boys. “I thought you’d stayed at home. I
thought you were scared of those wild dogs.”

 
          
“Yes,
sir, that’s about it,” said Willie apologetically. “But after you took out with
Driscoll here, and carried your both guns with you, I felt so almighty worried
and jumpy I figured I’d better try to catch up with you. So I hopped on Old
Mule here and rode after you-all.”

 
          
Driscoll
smiled at the hired man’s explanation and set the butt of the rifle to the
ground. Randy, however, looked at Willie sharply.

 
          
“First
you were afraid to come,” he said, “then you headed through the woods by
yourself. How did you get the nerve to do that?”

 
          
“Oh,
I didn’t relish it none, but I didn’t have the nerve to stay, either,” said
Willie, “so I come along.

 
 
         
And then I didn’t see
no
sign of you-all at New Chimney Pot—”

 
          
“How
did you know we were here?” interrupted Sam. “How did you find us?”

 
          
“Why,
it ain’t me found you,” said Willie, scratching his lean chin with his thumb.
“It was Old Mule. Shucks, I just got back on him and left him take his own way
of finding you. Old Mule can find his way to wherever Mr. Martin’s at, good as
any hound dog.” Willie’s eyes traveled to where the house blazed. “Say, folks,
who done that? Who set fire to the house yonder?
Looks as hot
as a stove oven.”

 
          
“I
was going to ask you if you knew anything about it,” Sam told him deeply.

 
          
“Why,
I be dogged!” cried Willie, and turned toward the mule, as though to subpoena
him as a witness. “It’s all a guess to me. I never even heard of this here
place before, let alone knowed about it. Who owns it? What’s happened?”

 
          
Randy
looked at Willie and at the mule. Had that long-eared beast truly found the
trail of its master and come here unprompted and unguided? He had heard of
mules that could, and did, follow their owners along unfamiliar trails.
Certainly the present specimen looked wise and cunning—perhaps it looked wise
because Willie stood beside it looking so baffled.

 
          
“I
wonder,” muttered Jebs at Randy’s ear, “if we aren’t looking right spang at Mr.
Two-Legs, the character that wore the spotted cowskin to do his
midnight
strolling with the wild dogs. Wish we’d
saved that coat, to see if it fit Willie.”

 
          
Randy
had been thinking the same thing. “One clue can’t burn up in there,” he
whispered back. “That metal thing in the pocket of the coat. We can comb it out
of the ashes.”

 
          
“Since
you’re here, you’re here,” Mr. Martin said to Willie. “Tie the mule to that
tree beside you, and help us. We’re going to have to keep watch on this fire
until it’s burned down a right much. Then we’ll all go back to New Chimney
Pot.”

 
          
“Whatever
you say,” assented Willie. “Anyways, it
don’t
look
like as if you’ll have any long wait before that’s all burnt away.”

 
          
As
he spoke, the rooftree collapsed with a heavy crashing boom, and the fire
bounded upward through the opening.