But when I meet Slowly face to face,
I stand there a-feeling scared."
God damn it, that was true. But Slowly was all that scared him. Not Struve. Not whatever it was that went slinking around Sky Notch. Gander Eye entered his house and made a promise to himself. He'd go up yonder again, the fourth time in these last few days. He'd try to find out more, right in the heart of the Kimber territory.
He made himself wake up long before the sun rose. Quickly he gobbled cold corn bread and drank coffee, then put on his leaf-patterned clothes and his cleated boots. Into his pocket he shoved his pistol, but again he did not take a rifle. Instead he picked up a favorite stick from where it leaned in a comer. It was a length of hickory, tough and springy, whittled to a point at one end and furnished with a leather loop for his wrist at the other. He also took a bottle of soda with a twist-off cap.
Out he went into the darkness. The moon was down. He told himself it was lucky that the houses on either side of him stood empty and that no more houses were below him on the street toward Bull Creek. He was all that moved on Main Street. He wondered if Struve was stirring, somewhere or other. Well, Gander Eye wouldn't go up the Kimber road this time. If anybody was up there today, looking for him, they'd be disappointed.
He came to the corner at the end of Main Street between Longcohr's store and Duffy's station and turned to walk along the road on the Dogged Mountain side. He passed a house, set back in a scooped-out niche in the rock. A dog barked, but did not run out to threaten him. He tramped along to a place where the mountain rose steeply above the way out for the road. The dawn was coming up by then, enough to let him see to climb.
Vigorously he assaulted the upward way. He had to climb on all fours, searching for rough holds for hands and feet, but he made it up to where things weren't quite so perpendicular. On he swarmed, higher and higher. He found brushy trees to take hold of and help him. Finally he rose erect and climbed upward at a crouch.
These mountains weren't as tall as the Rockies, he'd heard over and over, but they were plenty for anybody to dare, even somebody who was used to climbing them. He remembered Doc Hannum saying that once these Appalachians had been as high as the Rockies, but they were worn down because they were so old. Gander Eye wondered if once they had been roamed by monsters now extinct, giant lizards or big, shaggy bears and lions.
He took an hour to reach a place where the going was something near to a level. The climb had made him breathe hard. He pulled out his bottle of drink, twisted the cap off, and took a mouthful of the sweetly tangy liquid. He did not swallow it, but swished it all around the inside of his mouth until it seeped away inside him. He recapped the bottle and fared onward toward where Dogged Mountain would come to one of its various tops.
That particular top was a bald, with tufts of grass among the slabs of rock that lay on it like a sort of pavement. A crow flew overhead, cawing about Gander Eye being there. It hadn't cawed as he approached; it could hardly have seen anything else to caw about. Gander Eye did not come out from among the trees to go over the bald, but skirted it all the way around to the far side. A gentler slope went down there. He thought he could make out where the Kimber road ran in the distance. He ventured in that direction.
He listened and looked about him at every step, though it was hard, even for Gander Eye Gentry, to listen and look everywhere at once. So quietly he moved that when he slid under a tall pine with a squirrel in its top branches, the squirrel was not excited into scolding at him. Pretty good for me, he thought; if I can fool a squirrel, I can fool Struve.
He moved downward upon another, gentler slope. It was nearly ten o'clock by his watch when he came upon a disquieting and familiar splotch of brown on low-growing leaves. That was the scorch mark he had come to know, the trace left here and there where he had rambled. Beyond the shrivelled leaves appeared another brownness on the trunk of a pine, as though a heated something had leaned there. Gander Eye stooped low and darted glances all around. But he seemed to be alone in the woods.
This was more or less Kimber hunting grounds, he told himself. Maybe the Kimbers knew what else roamed there. Gander Eye would almost welcome a challenge from a Kimber, one of the reasonable sort who might listen to questions and give helpful answers.
With even more gingerly care than ever, he advanced down the wooded mountain side. He felt that he knew what he would find, and after some minutes he found it. He peered through trees into the open space with that great cluttered mass of jagged boulders, set to dominate the road below. He surveyed it for the space of half a dozen breaths. That was an ugly arrangement, and no mistake. Yet again he gazed all around him before he moved to the right among the trees, clear of the upper line of those rocks. He gained a point well beyond them, opposite the place where the road dipped downward toward the Kimber settlement, and he stopped to drink more of his soda and make new plans.
He had no intention of descending to the road itself. Some of the Kimbers might be there to turn him back; just possibly Struve might be afoot on that rough travelway, or even one of those beings he couldn't guess about. His sense of direction set him toward another high comb of the mountain, and when he had climbed that, he planted his staff on the rocks and looked along a plunging declivity where trees grew in thick belts. Above their tops he made out a distant clearing, green with grass and centered by an oval pond, bright in the morning sun.
That was it, the place where the Kimbers baptized. From where he stood to estimate the situation, he could not see the cavern where the blue light had blinked, but he could judge where it was, driven into the next rise of Dogged Mountain just beyond that pool. And to that cavern was where he had been bound, ever since he woke up in the darkness before daybreak. It was high time he made himself go there.
He moved to his right through more trees, steadying himself on steeper stretches with his staff firmly set in his right hand, his left usually on a convenient trunk. Now and then he was out of sight of his objective, but he guided himself by the sun overhead. Always he was tinglingly aware of any sound—a bird, an insect, a sigh of breeze among the pine needles. His pace was not swift, but it was steady. At last he completed his prudent approach to where he could enter the hollow. He dropped down to hands and knees to avoid shaking the thick growth of evergreens. Crawling, he reached a point from where he could look into the open.
The pond lay there, bright and quiet and clean-looking, not black as Crispin was painting it. He also saw the mouth of the cavern. It was a spacious one, its upper lip set higher than a man could reach with upraised hand, and its width like that of a broad porch. Within it pulsed and blinked the blue light, softly radiant. It might have been a pane of blue glass slightly clouded, with moving radiances on the inside. He had never seen anything like it in all his life.
Sidelong he moved within that mask of trees. He kept himself behind the outer rank of them, stealing along from trunk to trunk as a hunting cat takes advantage of cover. Once he stopped and turned around, staring into the bosky depths of the woods, but whatever might have moved there gave no hint as he watched. He kept himself from wishing he had never come here. In watchful fashion he gained a point from where it would be only half a dozen swift, leaping strides to the threshold.
Yet once more he gazed across the cleared hollow, looked right and left and behind. He lifted his hickory staff, clutching it below the leather band that looped it around his wrist. Catching his breath, he darted into the open, tore across the grass, and stood before the cavern, almost under the upper lip.
Just inside, within reach of him, was that blue-ness. It filled the irregular opening all the way across and up and down. Seen at close quarters, it looked solid. It pulsed, quivered, as though it drew itself snug there. Gander Eye scowled at it, trying to judge what it was. Very cautiously, tensely, he lifted the pointed end of his staff to prod.
That pointed end encountered nothing solid. It sank into the blue curtain-stuff as though into a sheet of water. It penetrated f
or a good half-dozen inches of its length. Drawing it back again, he examined it.
The hard hickory had turned a toasty brown where he had thrust it into the blueness. He lifted it for closer scrutiny, but something warned him not to touch it. Wood might turn color like that brown but not black, if it had been baked in a hot oven. Just how hot would it be in there, in the cavern on the other side of this shrouding curtain you could poke through with a stick? Gander Eye wasn't in any mood to hurry about finding out.
He wished that Doc Hannum hadn't laughed at him, that Doc had come along and was here to give his own thought on the subject. But Doc's old bones might never have held together on this ramble over Dogged Mountain's steeps and tumbling drops. Maybe Duffy Parr—but no, not Duffy; nobody would believe Duffy, any more than anybody would believe Gander Eye. Slowly? He wondered about Slowly. She was allowed to visit the Kimbers. She'd been right here at this baptizing place. How much did she know about this cave, and how could he ask her to tell?
He put the thought out of his mind. He lifted the hickory and thrust with it again, probing with its point well through the blue-shimmering curtain.
Something took hold of it from the other side.
Gander Eye cursed aloud and tugged. The something held fast and drew against him so strongly that he almost stumbled against the blueness, almost went through it himself. Frantically he wriggled his hand free of the loop. Another moment he saw his staff snatched through and away, out of sight. The curtain showed no hint of where it had vanished.
He whirled himself around at a dead run and made for the trees from which he had ventured to the threshold of the cavern. He reached them, flung himself headlong among them, ran upslope between them. He changed direction and ran without slacking pace. Nothing seemed to be coming after him, but he ran until he panted, until his feet stumbled. Then he stopped, an arm flung around a trunk for support, and trembled all over.
But he dared not rest for more than moments. He went on from there, scrambled away toward the heights from which he had descended. Once or twice he went up a steep place on all fours. Stopping again, he mopped his sweltering face with a sleeve. He groped shakily for the soda bottle in his pocket, drained it at a gulp, and threw it down between two roots. He hurried on to put distance between himself and that baptizing hollow and that cave, and whatever lurked there.
At last he took a moment to be deeply glad that Struve had not been there to see Gander Eye Gentry scared silly, to see him run like a boy caught stealing watermelons.
XI
About five o'clock that evening, Bo came out in his yard. He hailed Gander Eye on the street and, grinning conspiratorially, led him to the basement workshop. There Bo took from his bench a mechanical device, beautifully made. It consisted of an old aluminum cylinder such as might have contained a small, expensive cigar. Two insulated wires extended from it like tentacles.
"I just finished coupling this together," said Bo. "I'm a-going to slip over and hook this up to the ignition in Duffy's old car. It's got a cap in there, and when he cuts on the motor it'll go off as loud as the first gun fired on Fort Sumter."
"Why you want to do that?" inquired Gander Eye.
"Oh, just to fling a scare into old Duffy. He'll think that there car's a-blowing up. Come on with me, I'll let you hold the screwdriver."
"Don't reckon I will, Bo," demurred Gander Eye, gazing across the basement with brooding eyes. "Ain't Duffy in right much of a fix already, new married and all like that, without deviling him?
"Well, come along and stand outside," urged Bo. "You can keep a watch for him if he's coming back while I'm wiring this contraption in under the hood."
"Don't reckon I will," said Gander Eye, and he walked out. Bo crinkled his face to watch him go.
Gander Eye entered Longcohr's store. Pacing along the counters, he chose several things to buy and take home, a small can of salmon, a two-pound sack of corn meal, a carton of cigarettes. As he fetched them to the checkout counter where Mrs. Longcohr waited, Doc and Crispin came in.
"Hello, Gander Eye," Doc greeted him. "I wanted to see you."
"You see me," said Gander Eye. "Do I look all right?"
Both Doc and Crispin laughed. They drew Gander Eye between them to a place between two highstacked counters.
"I've been telling Jim that I keep thinking about dropping off the town board," said Doc. "I'm not getting any younger fast, and I'm more and more caught up in this history of Sky Notch I told you I was trying to do. Producing a written history, particularly of the informative and inspiring sort I intend to write, is apt to be a fairly demanding job. So I'm thinking of getting out of that lofty, demanding world of public offices. "
"I hope you stay in it till you grow a gray beard long enough to step on," said Gander Eye.
Doc laughed again. "No, I've shaved all my life and I'll keep on shaving. What I meant—and Jim here is inclined to applaud the notion—is that it's time you got a sense of civic duty. If I don't run in the next election, how about you to replace me?"
Gander Eye stared at Doc, at Crispin, back at Doc again. "You two act like as if you're putting me on," he charged.
"I was never so serious in my life," Doc assured him.
"Well, now, I thank you kindly, but I ain't a-going to do it," said Gander Eye. "Hell in the bushes, Doc, if I was on the town board I might up and tell some true thing and they wouldn't believe me." He looked deep into Doc's eyes to say it. "They just might could think I was funning with them when all I wanted to do was help them. No, I don't reckon I want to have that come off."
"Listen here, Gander Eye," said Doc earnestly. "If I ever happened to hurt your feelings—"
"They ain't that easy to hurt, Doc." Gander Eye gathered up his purchases. "I sure hope that history of yours is a-making out. And, Jim, whenever you want me to be there in your place again for that picture-painting, I'll do it."
"How about tomorrow morning, Gander Eye?" said Crispin.
"All right, I'll be there."
He went to pay Mrs. Longcohr. As he left the store, Bo Fletcher came in.
"Bo," said Doc, "is it possible that something's plaguing Gander Eye?"
"Just so happens I was a-thinking something of that sort," said Bo. "He ain't like himself today, ain't a-having fun the way he usually does. I sure enough hope he ain't taken sick. "
"Maybe I should pull him in and take his temperature," said Doc.
Gander Eye carried the things he had bought along Main Street. In Derwood Ballinger's front yard stood the mayor and someone else. Ballinger looked up, saw Gander Eye, and beckoned to him. Gander Eye walked into the yard. The other man turned to face him. It was Struve.
"Gander Eye," said Ballinger heartily, "I want you to shake hands with Mr. Struve. Mr. Struve, this is my friend Gander Eye Gentry."
Struve crinkled his slate-grained face in a smile and held out a shaggy hand. "I've already met Mr. Gentry," he said cordially. "He and I ran into each other up in the woods on that mountain. I was interested in everything he said."
"In the woods?" said Ballinger, interested. "Is your organization thinking of the lumber-cutting business, Mr. Struve?"
"Nothing of that sort at all," Struve said, smiling more broadly. "I'm impressed with how pleasant this little town is, and of how much more pleasant it can become. And I'm thinking of how Mr. Gentry can help you and me make it so, Mr. Mayor."
"Just now," said Gander Eye tonelessly, "I ain't a-being any great big help to nobody. I reckon I'm too ignorant to know what might could happen to Sky Notch." He fixed Struve with his gaze. "All I can say for certain is, I'm a-hoping the best for everybody living here in town."
"That means you'll be hoping the best for me," declared Struve. "I've been talking to Mayor Ballinger about moving in here. Somebody named Crispin did that recently, and his example strikes me as a good one to follow."
"I hope you do good in our town, Mr. Struve," said Gander Eye. "But right now I got some business to tend to."
; "One thing more, Gander Eye," said Ballinger. "I hear tell there's going to be some music at Longcohr's Grocery tonight."
"I ain't been told aught about that," said Gander Eye, "and I just come from there. Maybe I didn't hang round long enough to hear the news."
"I'll be waiting to hear you picking banjo," Ballinger smiled. "Mr. Struve wants to be at the store for that music."
"I can't rightly say if I'll be there," said Gander Eye darkly. "Like what I said, I got business to look after."
He left the yard. Ballinger and Struve watched him go.
"I declare, there's something a-chewing on Gander Eye," said the mayor. "I never yet heard tell of him not being there when there's music."
Both of them laughed. Gander Eye, hearing the laughter, fought with himself to keep from turning back, from saying something that would provoke anger in Struve, maybe even make him fight. Struve was bigger built than Gander Eye, but he didn't move or stand as if he'd be hard to hit. And if he could be hit, he could be whipped.
Slowly came walking along Main Street. He quickened his own pace, and she looked around and smiled.
"I noticed you there, a-talking to Mayor Ballinger and that new stranger in town," she said as Gander Eye caught up. "What sort of a fellow is he?"
"I can't say I'm right much caught up to like him," said Gander Eye. "I heard he's a-going to be at the singing tonight at the store."
"You'll be there, naturally."
"I don't reckon I will," Gander Eye almost growled, and Slowly looked at him sidelong, as though startled.
Struve, that fellow's name is, and he talks like as if he knows Jim Crispin." Gander Eye changed the subject. "I'm a-going to ask Jim about him tomorrow morning, when he's a-painting me into that picture of his. "
"I'll be there to pose, after you do," said Slowly, and as she spoke she drew herself up tall, as though she was proud to pose. Gander Eye felt his bones grow unhappily cold inside him. He wondered if Slowly was getting to love Crispin, if possibly Crispin knew it and was starting to do something about it. But the coldness in him was not the flaming fury he had known when he talked to Struve.
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