We all looked at one another.
"You can give me a gun, Daddy,” said Callie. "You taught me how to shoot.”
"Yes, I done that thing,” he allowed, a-smiling at last. "And you’re a good shot too, honey girl.”
"I can handle a gun,” I said.
"So can I,” added on Warren, "though I don’t particularly relish them. But, since we’re taking stock of things here, let me say how I felt out there on the way to Immer.” He told us that he’d felt a jangle inside himself when he walked that track. He thought it was just only a slight churning in his blood, maybe the sort of thing he’d feel if he was getting a little electric shock, or either the jiggle you have on one of those electric beds in hotels here and there.
"We both felt it as soon as we got on the trail just outside the yard here,” he finished up. "It was gone when we went into the woods at the place you’d marked for us to find the honey. When we came back on the trail, the sensation came back, too.”
"It’s sort of woogey, I think,” said Callie.
Mr. Ben hadn’t once ceased from his watch out at the door, like as if he expected a Shonokin to show up air second. "It’s their doing,” he said. "They’re a-playing a game with us, and they’ve got it in mind they hold a good hand in it. But Fd say we’ve got a few cards our own selves.”
Mr. Ben went into his room at the back and fetched out guns. He gave Warren a deer rifle, and Warren took hold of it like a man who knew how to handle it. For Callie, Ben Gray had fetched out an old army carbine, the kind that’s light and easy to use and mighty true to the mark inside two hundred yards. He had a rifle for me, one that looked German, as I thought; but I set it in a corner.
“I’ve been a-studying,” I said to them. “That track outside yonder, that stretches so straightaway from here, with the hummy jingle it gives the blood—I’ve got it in mind to go out and follow it to where it goes.”
Mr. Ben’s jaw dropped about a foot. “You want to go to where all those Shonokins hang out?”
“That’s exactly where I want to go,” I replied him. “John, that would amount to supererogation,” Warren argued at me. “If you know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean; I’ve heard the word used. It means a-doing more than you’re called on to do. I’m a- calling on myself to do it.”
I started for the open door. Ben Gray got in front of it. “Hark at me, John, and it’ll be water on your wheel to pay me attention. I done heard that Brooke Altic a-talking to you. The way you talked back, he’s more than likely figured you’d be better out of his way, same as he figures on me.”
I shook my head. “Just now, they count on me a-being here. They’ll look for me here, not there. And anyway, somebody’s got to find out what they’re a-fixing to try.”
I moved at the door again, and this time he cleared the way. As I walked out on the porch, I thought I heard Callie sort of gasp, but I didn’t look back. Down the steps I went, and along the flagstone path where the three Slio- nokins had tried to make Mr. Ben fling down his alexandrite.
I came to a place with a show of blood. It was a scatter of dried red specks in the grass, more or less like any blood. That was where Mr. Ben's bullet had ripped into one of the Shonokins. I stepped across it, paced along to the edge of the yard, and just beyond I saw the track where, they all said, it would lead you to the old Immer settlement.
I stopped before I set my foot into that track, and looked off along it. It led northwest, more or less, and again I noted how straight it ran. Like a string drawn tight, like a foot ruler many, many feet long; like, well, like the way those bees had flown earlier in that morning, zip, a line drawn through the air, a beeline. It looked hard- pressed down, like as if a many feet had walked it, and it went to where the trees hid it yonder.
I stepped onto it, and right that same second I felt the hum in me, the little quiver in my blood. It was like a warning signal to go back. I didn't go back. I took off on the way, toward wherever it would lead me.
Trees, there were trees a-growing to each side, thick as a snake fence. I knew those trees, I saw oak, hickory, short- leaf pine, locust, beech, all kinds. Thick they grew there in their green summer leaves. They were so thick there might could have been an army a-hiding behind them either side, all ready to jump out at whoever walked that path. Underfoot, the ground was as hard as stone, like as if it had been tromped flat. Here and there showed a little tag of moss, but mostly just the ground. Dark ground, with the droppings and rottings of long years of leaves and twigs. It would be rich, that ground, rich to grow a garden. But the hardness of it would blunt the share of a plow, it seemed like to me.
Up ahead, where the close-grown trees had blotted out the track, they opened up as I walked toward them. Beyond I could see more of the way Fd chosen to walk. Always drawn as straight as a line made with a straight-edge. And always, the tingle in my blood, the hum there. I stepped off to the side once, to see what would happen. The tingle left off; stepping back, I got it with me again.
This was something special, I told myself as I felt it, this was a thing Fd never felt before, never dreamed before. Maybe it was a Shonokin thing, put on here to keep ordinary folks off this trackway. But how did it work?
Not a-knowing how, I quit the study of it the best way I could, and looked on ahead.
Always up ahead, the straight, hard track, straight, straight. I kept a-walking it, the way Fd vowed I would. The jangle stayed in me, made my ears ring like silver bells. It got stronger, stronger. I wondered why. I could stand it, though, and I kept on my way till I came to where I saw rocks piled up in a clear space by the track side.
They were a great big rock on a little one, and, gentlemen, I mean that great big rock was great big. The bottom one was maybe the size of a dishpan turned upside down, and on it was set a round boulder that must have been six feet through. I reckoned it would weigh tons. It would have taken a derrick to set it thataway. I stopped there to look, while my blood and belly and ears jangled.
That boulder had a ribbed, green look that reminded me of some sort of a melon. I couldn't rightly say what kind of rock it was, though I mostly know the rocks I see as I wander the mountains. The one it stood on, or balanced on, was a dark, slaty kind, such as sometimes a man will break off into chunks to make a foundation for his house or barn. Whatever did they mean, I wondered myself, and who’d set them up there, and when? I put out my hand to touch the big top rock.
And quick I took my hand away again, the way you’d pull back from a-touching a hot stove. That boulder had sent a stabbing shock through me like electricity. As I stepped away, I saw that it bobbed, swayed back and forth, so much, I wondered if it would come off the little underneath rock and maybe roll on me.
If it had, I couldn’t have got myself out of its way. I stood where I was, like as if roots had come out of my boot soles and grown down into the ground. I hate as much as the next man to admit a-being scared, but right then I was. Somebody who says he’s nair been scared likely nair came up against something to scare him.
I watched that big old darnick of a boulder sway itself at me, back away from me, at me again for maybe six seconds before I jumped back on the hard-pounded trail and sort of ran crookedly there to get clear. I took up my journey once more. The stir in me fell off a little bit, and I looked behind me as I walked. The boulder was still a-rocking from my touch on it. I didn’t look back again as I went on ahead.
After all, the way I told myself, there were other balanced rocks in this world. I’d heard tell of them in England, quite a good few there. And there was one in the Chimney Rock part of these very mountains where I was, and a right big one somewhere in the Colorado mountains. You could come on such things. The only point was, such balanced rocks were usually one and the same with the chunks they balanced themselves on. And this one was another sight different from the piece underneath.
Which, I figured as I kept on a-going, meant it must have been put there by somebody, by the hands of som
ebody. Put there for a purpose. What purpose?
I couldn’t reply myself on that. I felt right glad that I’d left the thing behind just now, and that the jangle in me had gone quieter. Felt glad, till I reminded myself that Fd meet up with it again on the way back. But all right, Fd decide on that when I came back. Just now I’d do what Fd said Fd do, go on to the settlement they'd once called Immer, the settlement where the Shonokins were supposed to be. I came to a stream, narrow but fast-flowing, right across the track. I jumped it.
After dark, the Shonokins, that's what Brooke Altic had said to me. I was glad that the sun kept a-climbing and a- climbing, with now and then a patch of it amongst the trees. That was a comfort to me, and right about then I sort of needed comfort.
I tried to reckon how long 1'd been on the way. I hadn't brought a watch; I don't often have one. I looked up at the sun—it wasn't much up from when Fd started, probably no more than twenty minutes' worth. Usually I do a mile in better than that time, but then Fd stopped a little while to study the balanced rock. I decided to make my trip so far a mile's way.
And as I went on for what might could be the start of another mile, I kept a-watching the trees to left and right. They were the same trees as before, but there was difference in there with them. They were grown up, across from one another, with vines. And not only ivy and honeysuckle and woodbine; another kind of vine, new to me who'd always watched such things. It was a knotty-looking thing, with round leaves so dark as to look almost black, and blossoms on it with pale milky petals and out of each a red scrap like a tongue stuck out at you.
I didn't like that kind of flower, and I kept my feet on the track that seemed to keep its quiver in my blood.
Then I came to a stop again.
A sort of shallow ditch went down at the side of the track. In it lay a quiet somebody, a somebody that didn’t move, that wouldn’t move again in this world.
I bent to look. Sure enough, a Shonokin. I could tell that by the long black coat he wore, by his long, snaky black hair, and by one outflung hand that had a third finger longer than the middle one.
He was dead. I’ve seen enough dead things in this life to know death when it lies there before me. I bent closer but I didn’t touch him. His lips were dragged back and I saw his clenched teeth, small and narrow and grubby-looking. He was bloody in two places, the chest of his black coat and the side of his neck above it. Ben Gray’s two rifle shots, I told myself. Mr. Ben didn’t mess round when he aimed at you and pulled the trigger.
And the Shonokin’s two friends had got him that far along, and then just went off and left him. He must have died right there, and they’d dropped his body and let it lie. It must be the truth what Jackson Warren said—nothing threw a scare into Shonokins like their own dead. That would be why the old-timey Indians had whipped them in war; Indians, even far back then, were bound to be good killers with spears and arrows and tomahawks. I stood a-looking down at that poor dead Shonokin who’d scared his own kin so bad.
But there was nothing I could do for him now, so I went on ahead.
Along a little way farther, I thought for a second I was a- coming to the end of the straight track. Then I saw that wasn’t so—it just came to a big hike in the ground and went up over. I walked to the place and stopped to figure. Why hadn’t they run their trail to right or left, where the ground was easier? The Shonokins must know the answer, but I didn’t. I went up the trail over the hump, and it was so steep I almost had to go on my all fours. I reckon I had to go eighteen-twenty feet to get to the top, twice my height above the track if you measured straight up.
When I got there, I saw the settlement that had been Immer.
The trees thinned out round it, so I could see houses. Only they didn’t truly look any great much like the houses built by folks, by people like us, by men.
5
And that settlement once named Immer was way back beyond, at that; it was sort of closed in most of the way round by a laurel hell, grown up so thick and matted together you'd figure a man might could get up and walk on top of it. If you don't mind, you can push into a laurel hell and get so trapped you'll nair get out again. In the open space stood a couple dozen houses, if they were sure enough houses.
For one thing about it, there wasn't what you could call a straightaway street. That wondered me, when I thought how dead straight had run the track I'd traveled. The houses, such as they were, stood in little circles of ground for yards. Paths curved round the circles, onto paths round other circles for other houses. I reckoned a man had better know where he'd be a-going from one part of the settlement to the other. But the Shonokins must surely know, and men didn't belong there.
I walked down the other steep side of the rise, and stepped off the track where it came to its end. Right when I did that, the humming and jangle left out of me, and I was glad of their going.
I stood there and studied the houses. No movement amongst them, nor in the dark patches that might could do them for windows. No smoke went up from the houses. When it comes to that, I saw naught on air roof that looked like a chimney. I made out growing things in the yards, but those weren’t plants like what I’d air seen before; and I recollected that vine that had grown beside the track, the one with the unchancy flowers. Though there were flowers on some of these plants. I stood and studied.
Chiefly there seemed to be sort of shrubby growth. I was close in enough to the nearest house to make plants out. They had thick, slobby leaves with red veins, like as if blood flowed in them. What at first I’d thought were blossoms had more the look of tags of pink meat, more or less hand-shaped. The breeze stirred them, I told myself; but just then there wasn’t a breeze, so they must be a-stirring of their own notion. They had spiky edges like fingers, that halfway opened and then halfway closed like sure enough fingers.
I didn’t feel a call to come too close to such things, agrowing there in clumpy beds. Because I had the notion that they might could get hold on you like real hands; drag you down, even. And then what? Eat you? Gobble you up, like as if you’d fallen into a penful of mean hogs? I couldn’t reply myself exactly, though I had ideas—scary, chilling ideas. Plants like that had the look of something able to suck the blood out of you and then the meat off your bones. Who knew, who could rightly say? Maybe them it had happened to were past all saying about it.
Here and there such things grew up, up above the rest of them, taller than a man. Almost like trees. On them, the hand-flowers hung down and looked ready set to grab hold of aught within reach.
That nearest house, amongst plants like that and others near about as strange, was more or less a plumb ruin to see. It looked bent thisaway and that by time’s heavy hand, though when it came to that the folks hadn’t left out of Immer so many years back. I put my eyes on the house. It didn’t show logs in the building of it; it was smooth, like brown plaster. What had at first look seemed to be shingles on the roof weren't like the shingles I rightly knew. More like flattened-out lumps, to remind me of the lichens you see a-growing out on dead trees and rocks. They could have been some kind of wood slabs, they could have been grass bundles, or either something else. And the whole roof, instead of squared-off lines, had a sag to it, a roundness to the edges of it, more or less like the cap of a toadstool. And, as I've said, no chimney on it. The windows weren't like windows, either. More like eyes, drooped under crossbars like eyelids. Secret eyes you can't see into.
But no movement, not a flick of it whatsoever, that I could make out round the houses or in the yards. I had a lone feeling right then, like the last man left on earth. I made myself walk on closer.
In the nearest yard I could make out other sorts of plants beside those bushes with the hand-flowers. On the ground there looked to be little blades of stuff, no bigger than the tines of dinner forks. Then, a row of stalks like com, but with clusters on it instead of ears, purplish- colored. And, twined round the stalks, vines with fruit, pure down strange-looking fruit, all shapes and sizes.
The house, I made out to see by now, didn't have a true door, just a sort of drape hung there, of what dark stuff I couldn't make out. If I walked to it, I could push it aside easy and go on in. But I wasn't about to do that.
For I recollected, right clearly, tales I'd heard about the sort of house not made with hands. You can come across it here and there in lonesome places, the thing they call a gardinel. I can't tell you where that name comes from, what language or meaning it is. It grows up somehow to house size, they say, and it's there to hope some man will think it's a house sure enough and go in and not come out again.
Because gardinels eat men, so I'd heard tell.
But Shonokins—Brooke Altic had said they weren't true men. Did Shonokins go into gardinels?
"Good morning to you again, John."
It was like as if the thought of him had called him up. Yonder came Brooke Altic, in another suit of his bright, sharp city clothes and his dark glasses; yonder he came round one of those curvy paths to meet me. In one of his gloved hands he toted a cane of polished black wood, with a silver knob at one end and a sharp silver spike to the other.
"So you did come," he said, with his teeth all there in a gleam in his smiling mouth. "I hoped you would. I more or less expected you would."
I stood and looked him up and down, from his grinning face to his polished boots and back, before I answered. "I just sort of thought I'd come along and see what your settlement was like," I said.
"We wanted you to come."
"No, it was my own idea," I told him, while I wondered myself what he'd be up to with me.
"Was it?" Still he smiled. "Very well, maybe it was partly your idea and partly ours. We know ways of using your own thoughts and fancies to get something from you."
I watched that silver-headed, silver-spiked stick of his. Its tip was sharp enough to stab, if so be a man would want to stab.
Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 02 Page 5