Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1952 (16 page)

 
          
“Is
Jebs going into his second childhood?” Driscoll said.

 
          
“Shoo!”
cried Jebs. “Maybe I’m still in my first childhood. If you’re going to stand
around making cracks, I won’t let you in on my double-jointed new mechanical
triumph. But about this time tomorrow, you’ll all be bragging on it.”

 
          
He
walked into the house with the guns and the transformer. Randy and Driscoll
followed him, smiling but wondering.

 
          
SHOWDOWN

 
          
Jebs
laid Mr. Martin’s two borrowed guns carefully on the sofa in the front room.
Then he visited Sam’s stock of tools, and helped himself to a strong pair of
wire nippers. Still quietly grinning, he went outside to the calf shed, and
from it lugged forth a roll of heavy wire netting left over from building the
chicken run.

 
          
“What’s
that?” Driscoll asked him.

 
          
“Just
don’t worry your mind about this,” said Jebs loftily. “I want the full splendor
of the thing to bust out on you later.”

 
          
He
set the roll of netting down. He walked to the stockaded pigpen, viewed it with
the eye of an expert calculator,
then
carefully paced
off its length and width. Finally he returned to the netting, unrolled several
yards of it and carefully flattened it out, weighting it here and there with
stones. He paced off a certain expanse, and finally knelt and began to cut
across the mesh with the nippers.

 
          
“Do
you think we ought to get a doctor to examine his head?” ventured Driscoll to
Randy.

 
          
“Have
your fun, have your fun,” said Jebs loftily. “Every great inventor gets laughed
at by the rabble. Afterwards, they come and want to invest their money in his
big scheme.”

 
          
He
straightened out more wire, paced off a new section, and cut this as well.
Rebel, strolling out, sniffed at the wire and the nippers.

 
          
“You
aren’t laughing at me, are you, boy?” Jebs addressed the terrier. “Dogs have
better manners than human beings. Sometimes they have better sense, too.”

 
          
“Rebel
acts as if he guesses what you’re up to,” observed Sam, walking through the
yard.

 
          
“Do
you guess?” challenged Jebs quickly.

 
          
“I
think I do, Jebs, and I’ll go along with your scheme. Keep hacking away at that
wire; it’s a real inspiration.”

           
“Let’s get clear of all these
people,” Randy said to Driscoll. “We might catch whatever ails them.”

 
          
Still
Jebs refused to reveal his plan. When he had provided himself with four big
rectangles of the wire netting, he dragged them into position around the
pigpen.

 
          
“Aren’t
you going to put them straight up and down?” asked Randy, more puzzled than
ever.

 
          
“Rebel,”
Jebs solemnly addressed the watching bull terrier, “the ignorance of these
unscientific busybodies would be refreshing if they didn’t have so much of it
in stock.”

 
          
Sam
had come out of the house again, his long arms carrying a stack of newspapers.

 
          
“You’ll
be better off with some of these under your wire,” he suggested. “The ground’s
still damp, you know.”

 
          
“That’s
the truth,” Jebs approved heartily.

 
          
Quickly
he pulled his oblongs of netting away from the sty once more. Then, helping
himself to the papers, he opened them up and laid them down in great areas next
to the stockade, several thicknesses deep. Finally he arranged the netting upon
them in its former position, and fetched rocks as before to weight them flat.

           
“That’ll do,” he decided at last.
“Now then, you folks who don’t know how to tell a genius when you
bump smack into him, do me just one favor.
Don’t stamp around on top of
this wire or get it out of position, hear?”

 
          
“We
wouldn’t dream of it,” vowed Randy solemnly.

 
          
He
and Driscoll walked away with an elaborate display of bored indifference. They
visited the various approaches from the woods to the yard.

 
          
“Shall
we set those traps again?” suggested Randy.

 
          
Driscoll
shook his gray-capped head. “I doubt if it would do much good. Remember how Mr.
X slipped ahead of his pack to spring the traps before? I’m convinced he did
it, not the dogs. And he’ll figure on doing the same job when he comes here
again.”

 
          
“If
we could only ambush them some way—” began Randy.

 
          
“But
we can’t,” said Driscoll. “They’d smell out anybody lurking around outside for
them. Whatever plan of battle we make had better wait for Mr. Martin, anyway.
He’ll want to sit in on the powwow.”

 
          
At
five o’clock, Mr. Martin strolled into the yard. Under his arm he carried a
bulging bag of heavy brown paper.

           
“Hey,” he greeted the residents of
New Chimney Pot House. “I hope you all haven’t started to cook supper yet.
Since I invited myself, I brought something along.”

 
          
“What
is it?” asked Jebs. “Stuff to eat’s always welcome.”

 
          
“I’ll
bring it in and show it to you.”

 
          
In
the kitchen, he opened the bag. From it he produced a small, plump bird, ready
plucked and dressed. He laid another on the table, another, and another.

 
          
“One
apiece,” he announced, emptying the bag, “and two for Sam here, he needs extra
cargo.”

 
          
“Quail!”
whooped Driscoll. “Where did you get quail this time of year, Mr. Martin?”

 
          
“Oh,
I didn’t do any hunting out of season,” smiled the farmer. “I knocked these
over around Thanksgiving last fall. I picked and cleaned ’em and they’ve been
waiting in the deep freeze ever since. When you and I got through talking this
morning, I went and dug ’em out so they could thaw.”

 
          
The
quail were fat and juicy-looking. Their legs and wings had been trussed with
bits of twine, as though they were midget turkeys.

 
          
“How
do you cook quail?” asked Randy.

           
“Just leave that to me,” said Sam in
a deep voice of authority. “Somebody get me a paper bag, smaller than the one
Mr. Martin brought them in.”

 
          
He
took a bowl and began to mix salt, pepper and sifted flour. When Driscoll found
the bag he wanted, Sam poured in the mixture, closed the mouth, and shook it
briskly. Then he put in the quail, one at a time, shaking the bag and turning
it over and over to dust each bird thoroughly.

 
          
Meanwhile,
a saucepan with butter in it stood heating on the stove. In this he browned the
quail, one by one, as they emerged from the bag dusted with salt, pepper and
flour. Finally he assembled the browned, plump birds in a large, deep frying
pan, and poured two cups of water over them. This pan he set over a slow fire.

 
          
“Slow
cooking’s the secret,” he commented. “I’ve used this recipe lots of times,
tossing up quail dinners for my Indian friends.”

 
          
“Where
did you learn to cook quail like that?” Driscoll wanted to know. “Is it an
Indian way of cooking?”

 
          
Sam
winked one big eye. “I got it out of an old newspaper,” he said.
“The household-hints section.”

 
          
The
supper, when ready, also included stewed carrots, mustard greens, spring
onions, hashed brown potatoes, and
a shortcake
topped
with sliced bananas. Everyone did full and enthusiastic justice to all these
things.

 
          
“I
never ate anything better in all my born days,” insisted Jebs, polishing a
bone. “I can’t figure Rebel not
panhandling
us for some
of it.”

 
          
“I
fed Rebel early to keep him from doing just that thing,” explained Driscoll.

 
          
When
the dishes had been washed and put away, the whole party gathered in the front
room to confer. All listened while Sam outlined a campaign, quickly and simply.

 
          
“We’ll
stay indoors, as quietly as we can, with all the lights off,” he said. “If they
come, it will probably be as soon as the darkness falls. When we know they’re
on the place, we’ll rush.”

 
          
“When
we know they’re on the place?” repeated Randy. “You think they’ll make noise
enough?”

 
          
“I
think they will,” replied Jebs mysteriously.

 
          
“We
have guns,” went on Sam. “Let’s load them. But we won’t fire a shot unless
we’re right on top of something that needs shooting pretty badly.”

 
          
Mr.
Martin opened the breech of the shotgun and fed two shells into it. “I’ll carry
this,” he said, closing it again and leaning it against the side of the
fireplace. “The rifle,” he went on, loading it in turn, “can go to Driscoll,
the same as yesterday.”

 
          
“Give
it to Randy this time,” spoke up Driscoll. “I’m going to stick to my old
machete.”

 
          
“What
about Jebs?” asked
Randy.
“What’s his weapon?”

 
          
“Oh,
just a simple secret one,” said Jebs, elaborately casual. “Just a simple little
special piece of
armament, that
will be the dawn of a
new era in warfare.”

 
          
“How
can just five of us round up ten dogs?” asked Driscoll. “Randy said there were
ten.”

 
          
“We
won’t try to round them up,” Sam said. “As a matter of fact, they’ll probably
scatter and run, the way they did before. What we want to do is get hold of Mr.
X, the two-legged member of the pack.”

 
          
“I’m
for that,” agreed Driscoll, “but how do we go about getting hold of him?”

 
          
“We
run him down. Don’t bother with the dogs unless they come at you.
Now, attention to orders.”
It was already dim inside the
front room. Sam looked around the group, like a military commander checking his
subordinates.

 
          
“We’ll
be waiting in the kitchen,” he said. “Rebel will sense the coming of the pack,
and he’ll give us our first warning. Everybody be quiet until I give the word,
and then out we go. Just outside the door, we form a line at once. Randy will
be at the right with the rifle, and Jim Martin here at the left with his
shotgun. Driscoll and I hold positions between. Rebel comes along, of course.”

 
          
“You’re
leaving Jebs out,” objected Randy.

 
          
“Don’t
worry about me, I’ll be in it,” said Jebs, and walked into the bedroom he
shared with Randy. They heard him cautiously raising the window.

 
          
“Does
everybody understand?” wound up Sam.
“Any questions?
All right, it’s set.”

 
          
They
fell quiet, sitting down and trying to relax. Time passed. The sun was setting.
Inside, the house grew dark.

 
          
“It’ll
be dark in a few minutes,” reported Driscoll, glancing out at a front window.

 
          
More
silence. Randy sat with the rifle across his knees. He tried to keep from
quivering with excitement.

 
          
Then
Rebel rose from his place by the hearth. His sharp eyes lifted, his stubby tail
cocked. He growled softly. They could barely make out his pale outline. He was
looking toward the rear of the house.