Sim Drogus licked out his tongue to wet his loose lips. That tongue looked long and pale, like a lizard's. "I was a- thinking, if you had some of that real good blockade to sell-”
"If I had air such a thing/' Mr. Ben cut him off, "and I ain't a-saying I do have, not for a second—if I did, I wouldn't be such a gone gump as to sell it to you. You drink too much the way it is, you'd be better off to take the pledge.”
That was something meant to rile Sim Drogus, but he didn't dare rile. "Maybe I'd do right to take a pledge,” he said.
"If I thought you'd offer to sell me this land of yours/' Mr. Ben said, quieter, "we might could agree us on something there.”
"No, nothing like that,” said Sim Drogus. "Somebody else wants to buy it. Wants to pay a lavish price for it. A right nice fellow.”
"Brooke Altic, maybe,” I guessed.
"You know Brooke Altic, John?” Sim Drogus grinned at me, with brown, broken teeth. "He's got money. He wants more land. He'll pay well. And he'd do the like thing for Mr. Ben here.”
"I wouldn't sell Brooke Altic enough of my land to dusty his shoes,” said Mr. Ben, and tramped back to the road without another word. I followed along with him. Sim Drogus stood and watched us go.
"Did you hark at that, John?” Mr. Ben questioned me.
“Yes, I did. The Shonokins want his land."
“His land, over here the far side of mine. And that means they've purely got to have my land in between, to run their straight track through."
“I was a-thinking that," I said.
Mr. Ben blew out his breath through his moustache. “Well," he said, “let’s us get on back home and find out what happens next, if the finding out can be found."
“Yes, sir," I agreed him, a-looking off the road amongst some junipers.
“What you see yonder, John?"
“Can’t rightly say if I saw aught," I said.
Because I hadn’t truly made it out, plain to my eye. A movement there in the thick of the green branches, a flash of blue color there. Not Sim Drogus, he didn’t wear blue. Not a Shonokin, either, as I reckoned, unless maybe Brooke Altic in another suit of his sharp clothes. Anyway, I didn’t think it would be Altic; no, nor yet Jackson Warren, come out to meet us halfway, the way he’d met me on the track to Immer Settlement.
“All right, then," said Mr. Ben, “let’s head on home."
And on we went. He kept a-looking straight ahead, but I kept a-spying over my shoulder into the woods behind, a-spying into the woods, to make out if I could see whatever or whoever was there, one more time.
7
We didn't make a great much of talk on our way back to Mr. Ben's place. Once he did growl out, “Forty-five hundred steps,'' and once again, “That low-flung Sim Drogus.” I replied him not a word, but I kept on a-looking over my shoulder.
Sure enough, whoever or whatever had been back there in the hemlock was still a-staying with us, and not far behind either. Once it popped out a shadowy lump of a head from behind a bunch of laurel, and showed for just a scrap 6f a second, at the left side of the road. A moment later, closer in, I saw a sort of bright-bluish flick of cloth. So it wasn't Sim Drogus at least; his clothes didn't shine like that. In any case it didn't come all the way up on us, and I didn't make a mention of it
Mr. Ben reached his porch and walked up the steps and in. Callie and Warren were a-sitting together at the table, a-snapping a crockful of early green beans. They acted plumb glad to see us back, and harked at what Mr. Ben had to say about the talk with Sim Drogus.
“That's informative enough, I'd say,” said Warren. “For the Shonokins to run their straight line of power, they'd need not only this front yard but some of his land beyond, too. Maybe they want to extend it for miles, to pick up additional power for whatever they want to do.”
“They talked money to him, and that's what he flaps them big long ears to hear talk about,” growled Mr. Ben.
"I’ll vow and be honest to tell you, this here would be a better part of the country if Sim Drogus just hung his old coat over his arm and took off for some other place.”
"I feel sorry for him,” said Callie, like the good-hearted soul she was.
"And so do I,” said Warren, "particularly if he's getting involved with the Shonokins. But look at these beans we've made ready for noon dinner.”
"It will be a little late if I cook them with a bit of bacon,” said Callie.
"Then maybe there'll be time enough for me to take a walk in the woods,” I said, and headed for the door.
"What you figure to find out there?” Mr. Ben inquired me.
"As to that, I can't rightly say,” I replied him truthfully.
"Here, John,” he said, a-reaching out his pistol to me. "Carry this here along with you.”
"I do thank you, but I don't aim to shoot at aught,” I said. "I'll be back in, say, maybe an hour.”
"Dinner will be ready by then, John,” called Callie from at the stove.
"And I'll eat my bait of it,” I promised her, and went out
At the front of the house, I went to the right comer and looked carefully to the back. The other way round would have taken me spang into the open, by the backyard and the buildings there. Where I was this side, I could slip into a little thicket of young pines grown up where some bigger ones had been cut down. So in I sneaked, careful not to shake a needle on a branch. On the far side I stooped low and made it into the shadows under a big, low-branched oak. There I harked and harked, and heard not a thing except a yellowhammer a-tapping somewhere to get him a worm. I spied out some more cover, and kept a-going my way in it, back to a place opposite that road to Sim Drogus’s. I thought of whatever it was had made it a business to follow us along, and kept my eyes to the ground. A little movement ahead, a-taking advantage of air bush and air bunch of weeds on my way, with my eyes fixed on the ground. At last they spied out what I’d been a-hoping to find.
You couldn’t rightly call it a real track. It was just a little damp scrape in some moss at the foot of a big old buckeye. But something had made that scrape, and not long before. Bent close to the ground, I spied here and there. Sure enough, a pebble had been kicked out of its bed, on the way into the woods from the road. That showed me I was on the right trail.
I still kept myself bent down so low I could have put my hands to the earth. I studied here and there and yonder for more signs of something a-going. I made out a little balded- off clearing in the trees ahead, and when I got to the edge of it I saw a real track in the dirt. It hadn’t been made by Sim Drogus’s old patched-up shoe; it looked to be made by a rubber sole, and not an awfully big one, either. Whoever had left it there wouldn’t be too big to handle if I had to. But I didn’t show myself in the clearing. I moved in the shelter of the trees all the way round, till I got to where I could see more traces the other side of the clearing. They led off in a way that would get up behind Mr. Ben’s cabin.
Gentlemen, I made my moves right carefully along that line of marks. When you track something or somebody, don’t get to thinking that because you don’t see it, it can’t maybe see you. I didn’t move directly over the marks, but close enough at the side so I could make them out. I still used air clump of bushes, air tree trunk, to keep myself as much out of sight as I could. A-going along thataway, I may have traveled a hundred steps on the trail of what I hunted. Until I came to the edge of a little run of water, just a trickle through the woods. And on its soft clay bank was a sure-enough footprint.
It had been driven there by a shoe with a cleated sole, most likely what you call a tennis shoe. And there was water a-running into it; but it wasn't full up, nor yet near to. Whoever had made that track had made it right then. Was close in to me, right that selfsame moment.
I spied across the water. Another track showed there. To just follow flat on, I'd have to pop into the open. What if the somebody was a-watching back on his trail for me, with something in his hand beside an all-day sucker? I looked carefully up the little stream a
nd then down. Bushes grew close below there, their twigs a-coming from both sides and in touch of one another. I slipped down to where those bushes were.
But I knew that if I went through them, the branches would wave to show me to air eye that might could watch from the other side, and the twigs would rustle loud enough to advertise me like a brass band. So I snaked on below the bushes, and slid round them and stepped over the run to the far side. On my hands and knees I crawled to where I could see the second track on the bank. I came so close to it, with my head so far down to the ground, I must have looked like a hunting dog a-trying to smell out what it was after. I looked Indian along the ground, almost at ground level. I could see some last year's fallen leaves that had been stirred up by a foot. I crawled to them, and saw that beyond them the trees pulled apart to make a little clearing. In the clearing I saw what I'd come out to track up on.
Right off, I knew it was a woman. She was down on her knees but not, as I figured, a-praying. A woman—and Jackson Warren had allowed that nobody had air seen a female Shonokin. At that, this was a regular human woman, with a big spill of shiny brown hair. She was dressed up in a bright blue blouse and a skirt made like a quilt, squares of all different colors, in a pattern that looked like what lady- folks call the Sawback Road. Where she knelt she'd pulled together a little pile of sticks, and as I watched she struck a match to set to it.
I straightened up and stepped into the clearing. “If I might could ask you, ma'am,” I said, “how come you to make a fire on Mr. Ben Gray's land?''
She almost whooped, she caught up her breath so hard. She stood up, too, and goggled at me with her stretched- out, iron-colored eyes. Her wide mouth, painted as red as fresh blood, popped open.
“Who are you?'' she sort of breathed at me.
“My name's John, and don't be scared, I'm not here to do you air hurt. What might could I call you?''
She didn't reply me that right off. She still looked at me, and I looked back at her. She was maybe somewhere in her forties, a-trying not to seem to be that many years. She was plump above and below her small waist. Her hair, you might could say, was the color of government whiskey that had been aged in the barrel, and her eyes, as I've said, were dark as iron, with specks of brighter green. On her feet were blue canvas shoes, and the blue of her blouse was what I've heard called peacock blue; though peacock feathers have eyes in them, all over them.
“You're a foreigner,'' she said, her voice all shaky. “I don't know you none from round here.''
“No, ma'am, I'm just a visitor hereabouts. What name might could I call you?''
“Hazel Techeray,'' she said, and she smiled an impudent-faced smile, like as if that name should be good news to me.
I was a mite surprised to hear it, and that's a natural fact. From what Mr. Ben had said about her, calling her Witch Hazel Techeray, Fd more or less reckoned she’d be some sort of ugly old woman with a cast in her eye, maybe a-riding on a broomstick. But Hazel Techeray had looks, though if a man had sense he’d feel put on his guard by such a look as she gave me out of that green-specked eye.
"And you call yourself John,” she said, the slow way some women use when they’re a-trying to be specially nice. "John, eh? I think you’re the one who plays the silver- strung guitar, aren’t you?”
"You seem to have been a-hearing a couple things about me,” I said, and wondered myself if she hadn’t maybe heard them from Brooke Altic.
"Yes,” she said, and that little fire at her feet crackled as it began to rise up. "John, did air a woman tell you that you’re a right fine-looking man?”
"Not many,” I said, for not many women had air said such a thing to me, not unless they reckoned they’d get something out of me for the saying of it. "But I said, I wondered myself why you wanted to build that fire here, since it’s a warm day and I didn’t think you were a-fixing to do some cooking or the like of that.”
"No, John. I just thought Fd make a wish.”
Still she smiled on me. Her teeth were white and strong and more or less hungry-looking in that red mouth of hers. A wish, she’d said. I thought on how Fd heard tell of wishes made in certain ugly names, by folks who’d made them to do somebody harm.
"Just a little old simple wish,” she said one time more. She reached into a pocket of her patchwork skirt and out came her hand with a pinch of purple-looking dust in the fingers. She flung it onto the fire, which sent up new flames that same shade of purple, with pale, greasy smoke.
"I made my wish before this,” she said, with the words spaced out like as if she was a-reading them out of a book. “I make it now. There was no day when I have not seen my wish fulfilled.”
I’d heard those same words spoken before, long years back. They were what a witch person says to do you harm.
The purple fire cracked and popped as it grabbed the twigs. I had an ugly sense of a crowd gathered close round us—a crowd, maybe not of people, maybe not Shonokins even, but a crowd. Close in, close enough to see if I looked over my shoulder. I didn't look. I knew words I'd better say my own self, another set of words, and say them quick.
“Hazel Techeray,” I said, a-remembering the thing as I repeated it over, “I forbid you this house and premises. I forbid you the sheds and stables. I forbid you each bed, that you may not breathe upon them. Breathe elsewhere, until you have climbed air hill, until you have counted air fence post, until you have crossed air water. And thus dear day may come again into this house, in the name of the three holy ones of power.”
Right as I finished, the fire blinked out, like as if somebody had doused water on it. And that sense of the crowd all drawn up behind and round us, it went, too, and I well knew that she and I stood there alone.
“What's all that you said?” she sort of jerked out.
“Something I recollected pretty well from a book called The Long Lost Friend,” I replied her, a-keeping my voice easy. “It's not a far off different from another thing I've heard said from another book called Albertus Magnus. And it backs a witch spell away from a place, away from people.” I smiled. “Appears to be a-working right well here, doesn't it?”
She tried to give me a smile back, but her wide, red mouth shook and twisted and her eyes couldn't look straight into mine.
“So you know witch stuff too, John,” she said.
I shook my head no. “Only just enough of it to do something against it.”
She reached out a hand to me. It was a slim one and a soft-looking one, with a ring on it, but I didn’t take it.
“John,” she said, “you’re a witchman and I’m a witch- woman. We can help each other. If you’re a stranger hereabouts, why not do yourself some good? You’ve got power—”
“At least enough to blink out your spell-fire for you, Miss Hazel. I don’t guess it will do you aught of good to build another against Ben Gray and his place.” I made a guess. “What will the Shonokins say if you go back and tell them you failed? What would Sim Drogus say, if you care about him?”
“Care about that skimpy little Sim Drogus?” Her voice climbed high and sharp. “Care about that little old scrap of nothing? John, you and I are more the right kind to care about one another.”
“I don’t want to hurt your feelings,” I said, “but I’m not the right kind for you, not for a second.”
“Wouldn’t you want to be happy, John?” she almost squealed. “Don’t you want money, want a big place in this world? You need money, I can tell that. I doubt if you have as much as four dollars in those old clothes of yours.”
“No, ma’am,” I agreed her. “Nowhere as much as that. Nor do I need it. I’m a kind of expert in a-doing without money.”
I looked her up and down. Her pink face wadded itself up with anger. She dived her slim hand down into the front of her blue blouse. Out it came again with a long, lean knife, sharpened bright on both edges.
"We'll see,” she gritted at me, and made a slash at me, a-trying to give me both edge and point at the same time.
&n
bsp; Only, she nair gave me the one or the other. When I saw the knife flash out, I made a step clear of it. She struck so hard that when she missed she all but fell down. She scrabbled her feet back under her and turned. The knife came up again. I quick recited something else:
"I conjure you, knife, that would injure or harm me, by the priest of all prayers, who had gone into the holy temple of Jerusalem, and said: An edged sword shall pierce your soul that you may not injure me, who am a child of truth.” She'd fetched the knife high to make another stroke, but it fell out of her hand and went clank on the ground. She bent and tried to grab it up, and it slipped away from her. Again she reached for it, but I was there first. I kicked it out of her reach and got hold of it myself. I whirled it round my head and flung it far off amongst the pine trees.
"What I said against you then is likewise out of The Long Lost Friend” I told her. “Miss Hazel, you'd better try your witch ways on somebody else, because they won't work at all on me. Nor yet on Mr. Ben Gray, after what I spoke, nor yet on his property. Why don't you go home?''
"We'll see,” she spit out again, and her pink face looked near about green. "We’ll see.”
"We've done already seen, and that's a fact,” I said. And I turned round and walked off from her, out of the clearing. And I knew she didn't make to follow.
I came along to the little stream and made a big step across it and headed back toward Mr. Ben’s. Still I didn't look back to see was she a-following after me. Some of the strangeness had gone since I'd been in that clearing, but the woods still had an unchancy feel. I told myself that these were Mr. Ben's own woods, and most time must be good to be in, but not just now. Most of all, I felt I'd not want to be in them by night, when in the dark you hear dead voices talk and the trees are different from what they are by day, when they seem to move and reach for you with claws instead of branches.
I got to where I saw the house and the sheds and so on. No movement there. I walked round to the front door and in, and they all hailed me.
Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 02 Page 8