Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1952

by Wild Dogs of Drowning Creek (v1. 1)

  Walking along the orchard’s edge, he held his stick poised in his hand, like a club or saber. Things were balefully still. He was aware of the swish of his feet among leafy weeds, the faint stir of wind in the branches of the sassafras trees, a sudden twittery exchange between birds. Randy wished that Jebs were with him, solid and bright-humored, to dispel the creepy sensations that seemed to trudge along beside him. He wished, too, that he had told Sam where he was going, after finding the way to Tasman’s blocked by puddles.

  “I’m acting like a little kid in a haunted house,” he scolded himself. “And I’m not a little kid, and there isn’t any house, haunted or otherwise—”

  But just then, moving clear of the orchard, he saw a house, and the house looked haunted.

  Not that it was a huge, tumbledown old ruin, such as Chimney Pot House had been when Randy first saw it, the September before. As a matter of fact, this house was small and seemed to be in fairly good repair. It was built of logs, squared into timbers and notched so that they fitted at the corners. Between the logs, rough plaster filled the spaces. The foundation was of rocks, holding the wooden walls well above the earth from which termites might otherwise have swarmed. Its pitched roof was covered with shingles, thinner-cut and far older than those Randy had helped to nail on New Chimney Pot House.

  All in all, it was not a new house, but not a ruined one, either. Perhaps, had it stood in open country, with sunlight upon it, a well-cultivated yard and garden stretching along its sides and in front, and a bustle of activity inside and out, it would have looked even cheerful. Seeing it under such conditions, Randy might have thought it old-fashioned and a trifle roughly built, yet comfortable and kindly.

  But, tucked as it was among towering trees, with a closer packing of thickets where once the nearer land had been cleared, and no sound of movement detectable in or near it, that log house seemed cloaked in mystery. Randy remembered an old North Carolina legend, about the monster called a gardinel. A gardinel, according to the tale-tellers, looked like a house but wasn’t a house. It stood silently in some out-of-the-way place, hoping to tempt a careless stranger to walk in at its mouth that was shaped like a door. And, once inside that doorlike mouth, the visitor never came out again.

  “Hello,” called Randy, and waited.

  No answer. Even the slight breeze seemed to have died away. The leaves and branches of the sassafras trees had fallen silent, motionless, as though they wanted to help Randy listen.

  “Is anybody home?” tried Randy again.

  Still no answer. No answer in the house, or the woods, or anywhere except inside Randy himself. His heart had begun to beat louder and faster than usual. That heart of his seemed to be trying to act as if he was frightened. Randy snorted in disdain of any such notion.

  “I’m going to see what this is all about,” he told himself, and walked closer to the house, his stick still held clubwise in his ready right hand.

  The rough door of cleated planks, he saw, opened inward, and was pushed almost shut. A window on either side of the door had panes of glass, all but one of them unbroken. That was because this house was so far from any path along which strollers were likely to approach, decided Randy. A deserted house—and this one surely was deserted—was always a fair mark for the thrown stones and clods of any passing idler. Randy looked at the weed-grown soil in front of the door. It looked as though the weeds were worn away in a sort of path, but he could make out no tracks. Last night’s heavy rain would have wiped away any tracks, when it came to that.

  * Randy peered to right and left, where clumps of brush lay close against the house. He turned and looked back toward the riddlesome orchard of sassafras trees. Nothing made a sound or motion, but Randy did not feel comforted by this silence. He nerved himself once again, walked up to the big flat rock that made an uneven front step, and knocked on the planks of the door with the stick in his hand.

  The blows rang in Randy’s nervous ears like so many pistol shots, and boomed and echoed inside the house. He waited. Still no sound, no hint of a sound, except for what he was making himself. He pushed the end of the stick against the door. It gave back on its hinges with a rasping slowness, as though it objected to Randy’s invasion. He peered into the house, then put his foot on the doorstep and hoisted himself inside.

  The house seemed to contain only one room, and that room was quite empty. Stout boards were fastened to each wall by rusty old iron brackets, as though to serve for shelves. There was a stovepipe hole, with traces of ancient soot around it, but the stove had been taken away long ago. Randy poked into a corner where lay an old tin plate and a coffee pot with its rusty bottom punched in. Then he walked to where a door was set at the rear, a big hook holding it shut. He looked up at the roof. It had horizontal rafters at about seven feet from the rough but solid floor, rafters made of lengths of pine trunk with the bark still on them. Above these rose the shadowy triangular vault of the roof’s inside. He could see only one or two chinks in the old shingles. Plainly this house had been well built, and plainly it had resisted wind and rain for a number of years, all by itself.

  Randy lounged with an arm flung upon one of the shelves.

  ‘Til have to bring the rest of the bunch here to have a look,” he thought to himself. “Sam and Jebs and Driscoll—

  “Hey!” he suddenly yelped aloud, and jumped from near the wall to the center of the floor.

  For his hand, idly drumming on the surface of the shelf, had brushed against something.

  Something shaggy.

  Randy had made half a dozen swift steps toward the door before he regained control of himself. He turned to stare back at the shelf, his heart racing, his teeth clenched and bared. He lifted the stout stick, ready to attack or to defend himself.

  The shelf was half in shadow from another shelf above it. He could see that something lay upon it, flat and long, like a crouching weasel or cat. The thing did not move, but there was a stealthy, drawn- in look about it. Narrowing his eyes to see better, Randy made out that it was pale in color, with dark blotches. He took a plucky step toward it again, the stick lifted.

  “Hey, you!” he addressed it. It did not stir.

  Randy took two more steps, extended the end of his staff, and prodded. The hairiness yielded softly, the thing seemed to draw away. Randy poked again, more strongly this time, with a stirring pressure. Then he jumped back, for the spotted mass suddenly poured itself over the edge of the shelf and tumbled with a strange clink of sound upon the floor.

  Randy stood his ground, studied the mystery, then grinned in relief that had something of shame in it.

  “Just an empty skin,” he announced, to comfort himself with the sound of his own voice. He walked toward it, turned it over with the stick, and finally stooped and took it in his hand.

  It was a coat or jacket that had been flung on the shelf. Randy examined the material—cowskin, tanned with the shaggy hair on. It was white, with mottlings of dark brown. He turned the jacket this way and that. It was an old one, but well repaired. A rip in one sleeve had been sewn up with stout thread—a recent mending, Randy judged. And the leather of the jacket was supple and pliable. That meant it was no discarded garment; had it lain long on the shelf, it would be stiff and dry. No, it must have been worn recently, and frequently.

  As he studied the thing more closely, he discovered the reason for the clink on the floor. At one side in front was sewn a pocket, like a patch of the mottled cowskin. Into this was thrust a rod of bright silvery metal. Randy drew it forth to examine.

  The object was cylindrical, perhaps six inches long and half an inch in diameter. One end of the cylinder was closed, the other open, and an inch or so from the open end a notch appeared in the side. Randy fingered the open end and the notch.

  “It looks like a whistle,” he decided in his mind, and put it to his lips.

  He blew hard, but no sound came. He studied it again, then he blew a second time, once more without success. Apparently it wasn’t a whis
tle, after all.

  Then what was it? A fountain pen? If so, he could not see how it worked. Might it be a telescope? He put the open end to his eye, but he was unable to see anything but darkness. Giving up, he thrust the object back into the pocket of the cowskin coat. He returned the thing to the shelf where he had found it, trying to arrange it in the same position as before. Then he made a final pacing tour of the house’s interior, making what observations he could. His mind assessed tags of evidence.

  A hairy jacket, white with dark spots—that registered in his memory. Bugler, the dog, was a dark-spotted white. So had been the creature that had freed a dog from one of Sam’s traps two nights before. And as for the jacket, it was never made to be worn by an animal. A man—two-legged, as Randy had insisted though his friends scoffed—had worn it, had been there at the raid on the pigpen!

  He would go and fetch his friends. When they saw that jacket, they would believe him. They would insist no longer that his imagination had played him tricks. And they would help him find the two-legged jacket-wearer, who ran at night with wild dogs.

  Randy glanced at his watch. It was past twelve o’clock. Sam and Jebs and Driscoll would be wondering why he did not come back to dinner. He’d better return at once to New Chimney Pot House, to tell his adventure.

  Stick in hand, he walked toward the open door.

  Then, as he set foot on the sill, a snarling chorus rose outside.

  Dogs were dashing through the sassafras orchard, straight for the door and for Randy.

  CHAPTER TEN

  BESIEGED

  For one stunned, paralyzed moment, Randy froze where he stood, gazing at that oncoming flood of dogs.

  There were lots of them at that first glimpse, and they were of all sizes and colors. But, one and all, they headed full at him, as fast as they could come. In the very forefront of the headlong horde raced a big, shaggy brute, its long, coarse hair grubby white with dark spots. That was Bugler, Randy thought, somewhere in his startled, terrified mind. And none of them barked as they came. They only rushed, with a concerted snarl, deadly and soft.

  All these impressions smote Randy in perhaps half a second of time. In the next half second, he hurled the club he carried full at the spotted leader of the charge. Nimbly the beast dodged, but his speed faltered with the sideward hop, and Randy had time to drop back, catch at the edge of the door, and swing it around.

  Too late—they were already at the door. The leader’s baleful spotted head thrust in, and Randy shoved the door against his neck. Wedged there, the head tossed and strained, sharp teeth snapping at Randy. Other shapes were buffeting the walls and the door planks. Randy let go and ran back through the house, toward the rear door.

  But, as his hand reached for the hook that closed that rear door, he heard the impact of a flying body against it. One of the pack had run around to cut off his chance for escape by that route. Meanwhile, he heard the front door creak and quiver as the spotted leader thrust it open with a fierce wriggle of his body. Claws slapped the boards of the floor. They were coming in.

  Overhead were the rough pine cross timbers. Leaping high, Randy caught one. With a burst of strength increased by his sense of danger he drew himself up as though he were chinning himself on a bar. Below him he heard a harsh snap of teeth, and almost lost his hold as something tugged at the slack of his trouser leg. He kicked out furiously with his other foot. It encountered yielding flesh, and a yelp rang out. As the dog opened its mouth to emit that angry yelp, Randy heaved his body up on the rafter, flung a leg across to help bear and balance his weight. Lying full length on the rafter, he looked down.

  The front door had been pawed and heaved open, and the space beneath him seemed full of dogs. They leaped and snarled below his timber refuge, a many- colored knot of them. But they did not bark.

  Alert, watchful, fierce, they gathered and milled and looked up at him. Their eyes were dark and shiny. Their mouths grinned, showing rows of strong, sharp teeth.

  “You’re a fine mob of brutes,” he addressed them. “I thought you didn’t run except in the night time.”

  Crooning growls replied to him, as though they understood his angry taunt. Several of the dogs sat down. Others paced back and forth. Balancing himself on high, Randy counted them. Eight—nine— ten.

  The spotted dog Bugler held the point directly below Randy’s perch. Near Bugler shoved a red-brown, rangy fellow with dangling ears and a long, round- tipped muzzle like a hound, a dog taller than Bugler but not as strongly made. Another had short, coarse fur of a swarthy gray, that made Randy think of wolves. Wolflike, too, were its sharp snout and large erect ears, and the bushy tail that curved upward and forward over its back. Into the blood mixture of that dog, Randy guessed, had gone German shepherd, chow, and one or two other strains. These three were the largest. One or two of the smaller specimens looked fluffy and nimble, but not even the smallest looked friendly. All of them watched Randy. They seemed eager to get closer to him— almost droolingly eager.

  “Get on out of here!” he scolded them. “Who invited you, anyway?”

  As before, they showed fierce response to the sound of his voice. Stiff-legged, Bugler danced below him and showed his teeth in a grinning threat. The wolfish dog uttered a low “wuff!” that was neither growl nor bark, but a baleful combination of the two.

  Randy gazed longingly at the open door. If he could get close to it, he might drop down, slip quickly out and slam it behind him to imprison these threateners. Cautiously he reached out for another timber, tested its solidity, took firm hold, and transferred his body to it. Beyond was another, to which he proceeded to swing. But the dogs moved with him, a watchful group, all upturned eyes and half-opened mouths full of teeth. One, the red-brown hound, slid clear of the others and paused at the very sill of the door, as though on guard against an attempt to reach it.

  “You don’t want me to leave you, eh?” said Randy, and the hound lolled out its tongue and smiled, but not with any good humor.

  Randy subsided on the new cross timber. He racked his brain for some plan of escape.

  At present he was safe. Lying full length at a point seven feet from the floor, he could not be reached by the highest leaper among his besiegers. But suppose he was kept there for hours, with hunger and thirst and weariness setting in? He might even be kept there into the night. He might grow drowsy, might go to sleep. Then his hold would loosen, and he might fall down among all those tearing fangs. He snorted at the thought.

  “I’ve got to figure a way out of this,” he lectured himself.

  Once, years ago, he had read an adventure story in which a situation like this had risen. The hero, a buckskin-clad hunter on the old frontier, had been chased up a tree by a pack of famished wolves. He had been forced to drop his empty gun, but with him into the branches he had carried his hunting knife in its belt sheath. Tying this to a long, stout pole, the hunter had used it as a spear to stab from above. He had killed several of the wolves. Then, while the rest of the creatures had ripped and torn like cannibals at the bodies of their dead comrades, he had scrambled away through other treetops and so to safety.

  Bracing himself on the cross timber with both legs and one hand, Randy used the other to explore his pockets. From one of them he produced his large and useful jackknife, with a long blade of well-whetted steel. This he opened, with his teeth and the fingers of his free hand. The metallic snick of the blade made the dogs stir into motion below him.

  “You see this?” he said, as though they could understand him, and held the knife down toward them. “I’ve got a tooth of my own, and I doubt if any of you want to be nibbled by it.”

  Plainly they were not daunted. Bugler made a leap toward the down-extended hand. He fell short with a fierce snap of his jaws.

  “Do that again!” Randy dared him. He lay flat on the rafter, twined his legs around it, then reached out at arm’s length with the knife.

  Bugler did it again, a higher leap but still short. As the spott
ed body rose toward him, Randy tried to slash with his knife. He missed the dog and almost toppled from his perch with the effort. Heart beating like a drum-roll, he tightened his grip, still keeping the knife in his fist. Just under him the dogs all snarled, growled, and leaped in eagerness to get hold of him.

  Randy’s thoughts returned to the improvised spear with which the hunter in the story had fought to save himself. He studied the timber on which he lay, then the sloping upper rafters that supported the roof above his head.

  Like the horizontal beams, they were lengths of pine, squared on one side to fit against the planks of the roof’s sheathing. He took hold of the nearest and tugged as hard as he could. But it was solidly fastened, and it was too big to make a spear shaft, even if he could drag it loose. Nor could he split off a proper length with no better or bigger tool than his knife. He tapped at the sheathing boards.

  At once the dogs burst into an angry chorus of growling protest at the knock-knock Randy’s knuckles made. Bugler turned toward the door, his eyes fierce.

  “Thought somebody else was coming here to call, did you?” said Randy. “Hush that fuss; I’m going to be busy.”

  He shoved hard against the sheathing. In one place a board creaked. Its nails were loose, and he worked it back and forth, then pried it sidewise from the roof timber. Bracing himself on his cross-beam perch, he brought all his strength to bear. A section of the board broke at a weak point where there was a knot, and came away free. Randy flung it down, and the dogs scattered to avoid its fall.

  Then Randy looked at the underside of the exposed shingles. They were old and dry, and when he struck them with his fist they flaked off. Light showed through.

  Randy grinned, and his eyes snapped. Perhaps here was the way of escape. With his hands and the knife, he worked away at the shingles until he had made a sizable opening. He thrust his right arm out, the knife in his hand, and chopped and hacked at the shingles outside and around the hole. He could feel them breaking away and sliding down the outer slope.