“We’ll need that corn, because this summer we’ll buy more stock to raise here,” finished Driscoll. “Mr. Martin sold us a couple of calves. We’ve added to Sam’s penful of pigs, and we’ve got chickens, too. We’ll go slow on cutting more timber. What I want is to work with a lumbering outfit that will leave the younger trees to come on. That way, the place will be a permanent profit, and the forest will never be ruined.”
“Amen to that idea, Driscoll,” applauded Jebs as he put away the coffee cups. “But won’t the wild dogs bother your stock?”
At that moment he started violently, almost dropping a cup. A whine sounded at the kitchen door, and something scratched at its panels.
“Take it easy, Jebs, that’s Rebel,” laughed Driscoll. “I reckon the wild ones have pulled out, and he wants to get in.”
Sam opened the door, and in trotted the white dog they had seen outside. He was a clean-limbed specimen, both lean and sinewy, and his hair was short and smooth. His muzzle looked fairly long, but square and strong. Both his ears and his tail were cropped close. He looked at Jebs and Randy with wise eyes, and thrust his nose into Driscoll’s hand.
“I got Rebel two years ago,” said Driscoll, “and last fall I sent him down here to keep Sam company.” “What kind is he?” asked Randy.
“There aren’t many of Rebel’s breed to be found these days,” said Sam. “He’s a pit bull terrier, and I don’t see why they aren’t popular any more. A smarter, braver, more loyal dog was never created than Rebel and his kind.”
“He must be worth having around, with wild dogs besieging you,” said Randy. “How about telling us about that mysterious pack?”
“Come into the front room.”
Sam led the way. When all had seated themselves, he began.
“I lived here for years with no suspicion of anything like wild dogs. But lately, after the work started on this new house, I noticed them nosing around at evening, and one or two of the farmers near our part of the woods say the dogs have bothered their stock. One lost two sheep, another a bunch of chickens. Right here, around Easter time, they grabbed one of my pigs. Rebel and I managed to chase them away.”
“Doesn’t anybody try to hunt them down?” asked Jebs.
“That’s ticklish work, hunting dogs,” said Sam. “Suppose you kill a dog, and it turns out to be somebody’s household pet, out on a peaceful moonlight stroll. You get into big trouble with the somebody. Anyway, these dogs aren’t easy to trace. They don’t seem to have any special lair, and they fade away fast if they’re followed.”
“Tame dogs ought to find them,” suggested Randy.
“Some tame dogs have found them,” replied Sam. “Dogs on various farms show up now and then, pretty badly chewed up.”
“Have any wild dogs ever chewed up Rebel?” Randy asked.
“I reckon you don’t know much about pit bull terriers,” chimed in Driscoll, somewhat scornfully.
“Rebel does the chewing if he catches a wild dog, which isn’t often.”
“That neighbor of yours, Mr. Martin, says his hired man doesn’t want any wild dogs to get close to him,” said Jebs.
“You mean Willie Dubbin, and I don’t blame him,” rejoined Sam. “One or two younger boys on the farms have been scared by the wild dogs. They’ve met them out fishing or rambling, and the boys have been glad to run away fast. The pack acts dangerous and a little bit hungry.”
It sounded baleful. Randy felt a shiver run up his back. Jebs, too, looked unnaturally serious.
“Nobody’s been hurt yet, I hope?” said Jebs.
“Not yet. But I’ve been worried about one fellow,” said Sam. “A blind man named Hobert Tasman.”
“Blind man?” repeated Jebs and Randy in chorus.
“He lives by himself in the woods, maybe a mile from here. That’s deep into the old Jordan property, but we don’t bother him because he hasn’t done anything to bother about. Somebody helped him build his cabin about the time you boys showed up here for the first time, last September. He’s not exactly helpless. He finds his way around without eyes in a fashion to surprise you. I think he has a little money of his own, and he earns more by making pottery and shipping it off.”
“Sounds interesting,” nodded Randy.
“He is, but he doesn’t welcome strangers. Once or twice I tried to be neighborly, but he acted as if he wished I’d stay away. Blind or not, he’d heard that I’m eight feet tall, lacking an inch, and it seems to bother him. I asked some of the Drowning Creek Indians to look in once in a while. They run errands for him, and now and then they carry in a crate of his pottery to ship away. Those Indians are good people. They don’t notice when you snub them, not if they’re set on doing you a favor.”
“If wild dogs got after a blind man—” began Randy.
“That’s what I said to Tasman, but he said he could handle his own affairs. I can understand that. I used to want to be left alone.” Sam paused, as though remembering his own hermit days. “But why go on with this stuff? What about your own news?” It was a deliberate change of subject, but both Randy and Jebs were willing to forget wild dogs for the moment.
“We’ve been in school, like Driscoll,” said Jebs. “High school at Aberdeen. Randy’s quarterbacking the football team. It’s only six-man football, but that can be fast and rough.”
“It must be, with six men doing the work of eleven,” nodded Driscoll. “We play eleven-man football up our way, but I’m only a second-string tackle. How did you make out last season?”
“Pretty fair, though Southern Pines kind of knocked down our ears,” said Jebs. “Randy made the only touchdown that day.”
“Jebs didn’t tell you he’s on the team, too,” interposed Randy. “He’s one of the best centers Aberdeen ever had.”
“Shoo, all I have to do is pass the ball back,” grinned Jebs. “Randy and the others have all the work, moving it forward again.”
The talk went on, eager and friendly. The four recalled their earlier adventures, and predicted exciting new ones to come. Finally Jebs yawned.
“Sorry to act like a country boy,” he said, “but I’m going to bed early.”
Driscoll rose and opened another door. “Bunk in here. Bring in your stuff, both of you.”
Against one wall of the room stood a doubledecker bunk, both its levels made up with army blankets.
“Which do you take, Randy?” asked Jebs. “Upper or lower?”
“Upper, I guess,” said Randy. “I’m tired, too.”
“We’d better all get in the sack,” boomed Sam Cohill from the front room. “You may think you’re guests, but tomorrow we put you both to work.”
“That’s what we came for,” said Randy. “Well, good night, Sam. Good night, Driscoll.”
Pulling the door shut, he sat down on a split-bottomed chair, unlacing his shoes in the dark. “It’s peaceful here—” he began.
“Hark!” interrupted Jebs.
Somewhere in the night outside rose the long, clear howl of Bugler, the chief of the wild dogs.
CHAPTER THREE
THE LONELY BLIND MAN
The rising sun prodded through the dense trees and in at the window when Randy opened his eyes, stretched, and swung down from his bunk. The thud of his feet on the floor wakened Jebs, too, and they could hear the heavy tread of Sam Cohill in the front room.
Hurriedly they washed at the stand in one corner, raced into dungarees and crew shirts, and walked out through the front room into the kitchen. Driscoll joined them there, where Sam Cohill was already bending over the oil stove.
“Breakfast,” he greeted the boys. “Oatmeal and milk, scrambled eggs, bacon—”
“You’re giving us a working man’s breakfast,” said Jebs. “I hope we don’t have to earn it the hard way.”
“You’ll see,” smiled Driscoll.
They disposed of the meal, quickly washed the dishes, and all four went out of the kitchen door to look at New Chimney Pot House by the light of the climbing
sun.
Randy and Jebs saw that the new house stood closer to the stream than had the old one. That ancient ruin had been razed, and its discarded remains flung into the hole of its cellar. The present dwelling was a sizable square structure among the surrounding trees. Its outer walls were of perpendicular planks with the junctures covered by smaller strips, and oiled to give a rustic brown effect. A big chimney rose from the center of the roof, which, with its shallow pitch and widely jutting eaves, showed a black expanse of heavy tar paper.
“This is a good time to get that roof shingled,” announced Sam. “One of you climb up there with Driscoll—I weigh more than four hundred pounds, and I’d better not strain any rafters or sheathing boards.”
Randy paused as Jebs walked farther on, toward a lean-to shed behind the house. “Where are the shingles?” asked Randy.
“We make our own out here,” Driscoll told him.
“Look there,” and Sam waved a scooplike hand to where, supported on a loose row of short lengths of wood, lay bundle after bundle of thick, sturdy wooden slips. “When we decided to build last fall, I chopped down a fair-sized cypress tree, down there toward Drowning Creek. The workmen sawed it into the right lengths and stacked them up to season all winter. A few days ago I borrowed a wedge and a maul from James Martin, and split those cypress chunks up into shingles. Shakes, they were called in the old days. They’re double thick and double tough, and if they’re put on right they’ll last for years.”
“Here comes Willie Dubbin,” said Driscoll, and across the bridge rolled a light wagon drawn by a mule. It was driven by an overalled man of spidery thinness. He reined in close to the group and got out, rumpling an old wool hat, while Driscoll introduced him to Randy.
Willie Dubbin might have been as young as twenty-five or as old as forty. Everything about him was long and thin—his neck, his arms and legs, his nose, his chin, his rumpled dark hair. He had bright, close-set eyes and a mouth that fell open when he smiled.
“Mr. Jimmy thought I’d better spare the time to cut up that ground between the com rows,” he drawled. “Everything all right hereabout?”
“All right, except a few wild dogs nosing around last night,” said Sam Cohill, towering above the skinny figure.
Willie Dubbin looked up, and blinked his bright eyes. “Gentlemen, hush!” he said. “Them dogs was around here, was they? If’n I was you-all, I’d bid good-bye to this here place and get myself plumb away. I don’t relish even hearing about them dogs— I wouldn’t stay out here nights, not for no pay whatsoever.”
“Why do dogs bother you?” Randy ventured to ask, and Willie Dubbin looked at him plaintively.
“If’n they wasn’t nothing but ordinary natural dogs, I wouldn’t pay them no mind,” he said, “but you can’t tell me they ain’t sort of ha’nted, like. ’Specially hanging ’round out here, where they used to be ha’nts—”
“We proved that old story was just talk,” put in Sam, but Willie waved the words away.
“Them dogs is smarter and meaner than anything with ordinary dog ways,” he pronounced. “They got more’n a dog smartness to guide and direct ’em. I don’t want to even talk about ’em, I tell you. Reckon I’ll get out at that corn.”
He mounted the wagon again. Inside, Randy could see, was a light plough. Willie clicked his tongue at the mule, and drove past the house toward where the cleared land was located.
“Willie wouldn’t be happy if he didn’t have some superstition to worry over,” said Driscoll, bringing a ladder and propping it against the eaves. “You coming up with me, Randy?”
“Right,” said Randy, “but what’s Jebs poking after in the shed yonder?”
“That’s our tool shed,” replied Driscoll, “and Jebs seems to be interested in the home electric power plant Mr. Martin sold us. We’ll have to get a gasoline engine and a belt to make it run.”
“Don’t waste your money on any engines,” said Jebs, strolling back from the shed door. “Look yonder, there’s your power.”
He pointed past the house, toward the stream.
“That’s not much more than a trickle,” objected Sam Cohill, his hay-fork fingers smoothing his pointed beard.
“But the trickle’s a fast one,” argued Jebs, “and if we dam it up there where the banks rise high, we can make a regular little waterfall. Then a water wheel can power the electric plant.”
“You’ve got something there, Jebs,” said Sam. “It was such a simple idea we never thought of it. Let’s go down and see if we can plan out a dam project.” “I’m your man,” said Jebs, and they walked away together, striding giant and sturdy youth. Rebel trotted along with them.
Randy and Driscoll lugged bundles of shingles up the ladder, and with hammers and nails began to lay a course of them along the eaves.
It was slow work at first, but as they worked they gained skill, speed and assurance. The first line of shingles was double, the top layer overlapping the bottom so as to cover all cracks. They laid the second course, with the thick butt of each new shingle overlapping the thinner ends of the course below.
From the roof, Randy could see more of the changes at Chimney Pot. Where once brushy thickets had matted the ground down to the very edge of the stream, all was cleared except the larger trees. Around the house rose a group of tall longleaf pines, like living masts, and many feet above ground their shaggy crowns of dense needles came together to make pleasant but not dense shade. Behind the house, a clear stretch was cultivated for a garden, and more distant still could be seen one corner of the cornfield where Willie Dubbin had begun work. Along the garden’s edge were ranged smaller structures—a henhouse with high wire fence, a slant- roofed shed, and a stockade-like rectangle of high upright planks.
“That fort you’re looking at is our pigpen,” explained Driscoll, “and we built up the chicken fence, too. We want to baffle any wild dogs that come to fetch pigs or chickens away.”
Randy drove another nail. “Look down toward the water,” he said. “Sam and Jebs are up to something.”
Jebs knelt by the stream, pointing to its bed and talking swiftly. Sam Cohill straddled his long legs from bank to bank, like the Colossus of Rhodes come to life. He listened to Jebs, and nodded in agreement. He went tramping toward a great stack of felled trees and saplings, the mass that had been cleared away months before to make a space for New Chimney Pot House. In one hand he carried an axe.
Choosing a jack-oak stem, nearly a foot thick at the large end, Sam severed its branchy top with three mighty single-handed strokes. Still using the axe like a hatchet, he sliced off the remaining boughs and lightly bore the log back to where Jebs waited. He put it crosswise above the water, then returned to chop out another log. Meanwhile, Jebs poked along the water course, picking up good-sized chunks of rock and lugging them back to the log.
“Where did Jebs learn about dams?” inquired Driscoll. “From some engineer?”
“From a mighty good one—a beaver. You know, the government put a few beaver colonies into the Moore County streams about a dozen years back, and Jebs is a beaver-watcher, the way some folks are bird-watchers. He’s spent hours and days sneaking around to see them build their dams and underwater dens.”
The morning passed, with progress made both on the roof and down at the stream. Shortly before noon, Sam came and stood under the newly shingled eaves.
“Dinner time,” he called. “Between hauls at the dam, I put on a kettle to boil chicken and dumplings. One of you go hail Willie Dubbin.”
Driscoll trotted away to do this, and Randy went to join Jebs and look at the dam. The two long oak logs lay parallel, with a yard’s interval between them.
Against each of them Jebs and Sam had driven a line of upright stakes, about an inch apart. The water boiled a little as it found its way through these.
“We’ll put smaller sticks crosswise, and fill in between with stones and earth,” said Jebs. “Then we’ll fix a sluiceway at the right point, and some kind of spout to carr
y the water out to strike the wheel. What was that Sam said about chicken and dumplings?” At dinner, Jebs brought pencil and paper to the kitchen table and made sketches to show his theories of dam, wheel, and power principle. Willie Dubbin ate heartily, but his close-set eyes gazed raptly at the diagrams as though he were trying to understand them, without much success. When they had finished, Jebs headed for Sam’s bookshelves, poring over titles.
“I see you’ve bought a few home mechanical and repair texts,” he said to the giant. “Do you reckon there’s anything in them about water wheels?” “Afraid not, Jebs,” said Sam, shaking his big head. “As I said this morning, I hadn’t even thought about water power. Anyway, I run mostly to books about nature study, and standard fiction.”
“I see that,” said Jebs, eyeing a row of books. “You’ve got some of Ernest Thompson Seton’s ' works, I always liked them. Maybe what we’d better do is talk to somebody who understands about the principles of water-power mechanics.”
“I know just the man,” said Driscoll, joining them. “Sam knows him, too—Mr. Lyman Hager in Wagram. He’s a welder and metal worker. Randy, Jebs, do you want to go over there this afternoon?”
“Let’s stay here, Jebs,” said Randy. “We’ve been spending too much time in civilization lately.”
“Then Sam and I will drive over in the new jeep,” decided Driscoll. “Sam understands enough about the wheel rig to explain it to Mr. Hager.”
“I’m with you, Driscoll,” said Sam. “Jebs, let me have those sketches you made. Now don’t you and Randy murder yourselves working. Why not wander around and explore your old stamping grounds?” They all went outdoors. Willie Dubbin slouched away to resume his ploughing. Sam and Driscoll headed for the jeep.
Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1952 Page 2