Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 02

by After Dark (v1. 1)

  “I think you have a reasonable mind, Mr. Gray," said Brooke Aide's voice from wherever he was hid, in his way that made him sound so reasonable himself. “I despair of John, for whom I had hoped to do so much. You're more apt to listen to the voice of sense, even though you killed one of us."

  “He asked for it," said Mr. Ben. “He was a-trying to kill me.

  “He only wanted your jewel, your alexandrite."

  “And he nair got none of it, did he?"

  “Mr. Gray," said Brooke Altic, “you and I can come to a sensible agreement here. Take that jewel and wrap it up in a handkerchief, something white. Throw it out here into the yard where we can get it. And in exchange for that, I’ll engage to do you favors in a hundred different ways—"

  'That there's enough of that," busted in Mr. Ben. "I don't want no more of such fine talk from you. If you hanker for my alexandrite, or aught else I've got, come try to take it and see what you wind up a-getting instead."

  Another of Aide's waits before he made an answer. Then: "Mr. Gray, you make yourself sound as intransigent as John himself. Suppose we wait a short while here and give you time to come to your senses."

  "Hell's brass gates, you can wait till you're splayfooted and jimberjawed," Mr. Ben yelled right back to him. "I've spoken my piece and I'll stick to it."

  He pulled back away from the door and walked to where his jug stood. "I need a grain of blockade to take the taste of that no-good Shonokin out of my mouth," he allowed, and poured him a thimbleful. He took it down in one quick catch, and I saw his eye to glitter in the soft light in there.

  "Lord have mercy," he said, "maybe I talked to him all wrong."

  "You talked to him all right, Mr. Ben," said Hazel Techeray. "I done already told you how come him to want that alexandrite thing, use it to order you round. It wouldn't nair do to give it to him."

  "What I mean is, I could have made off to give it to him," he said. "I should ought to have talked like as if I agreed him, and then flung out a white cloth without the alexandrite, and stood by to plug whichever of them tried to pick it up. Maybe it ain't too late yet, maybe if I said I'd change my mind, didn't mea.n them things I said, then—''

  "I fear that won't work, Mr. Ben," I had to say. "The way you got him told, he'd know you meant that thing. He'd figure a trick and be a-looking out for it"

  "Well then, all right," he agreed me. "I'll let him have the thing how I laid it out to him. Let him come and try something on here. It'll be like to crawl down a black bear's mouth to take his food away from him."

  I let things stand at that. I told Mr. Ben to sit down and rest, maybe have another taste of that good soup, while Jackson Warren and I watched the different sides of the cabin. I picked up the rifle that had been laid out for me, though I didn't purely want to. And I made Callie to come into the front room, too. She and Hazel Techeray got a-talking things, the sort of things women talk, like as if they were on a visit together. Outside was the deadest quiet. I wondered if sure enough Brooke Altic was a-waiting for his words to sink into us.

  I think it was some spell of time before one of us spoke on the fix we were in. It was Hazel Techeray.

  "Mr. Ben," she said, "I've come to the same thought as you and John. It wouldn't be no point in a-throwing out a white cloth to them. They'd know right well you'd not put your jewel into it."

  "I been a-thinking that same thing," Mr. Ben agreed her.

  From outside came Brooke Altic's voice from somewhere near:

  "Hazel Techeray? Hazel Techeray?"

  "Don’t you reply him,” I whispered her, and went to where I could spy out betwixt two logs. I saw trees and some of the open ground, sort of washed pale by the light of the moon, but no movement in it. If I'd seen that, I’d have fired at it with my gun.

  "Hazel Techeray,” said Brooke Altic, "come out to us.

  We know you’re in there. Out here, we know everything you say or do, as soon as you speak or move.”

  I glanced round at her. She was pushed so low down in her chair, she near about fell out of it. She was close to a faint.

  “You’ve been a sad fool, Hazel,” Brooke Altic said to her, his voice all drawn out to carry inside to us. "I hadn’t truly thought that of you. But come out of there. We’re still quite willing to do all we promised for you, give you the honor and preferment we offered you. Come out, I say.”

  “No!” she screeched out, high and shrill as a note on a bugle.

  She had jumped up on her feet. She rocked back and forth, and put her hand on the chair back to hold herself steady.

  “I ain’t a-going to do it, I won’t do what you tell me to!” she hollered, loud enough to be heard all the way to the county seat. “You can’t make me!”

  Silence again, while you might could have counted a slow six. I could hear myself breathe where I watched.

  “Then I’ll stop trying to talk sense to you, Hazel,” came Brooke Aide’s voice at last. “But I still offer reasonable terms to everyone else there in that cabin. As for you, I wash my hands of you. We all wash our hands of you. Ben Gray and John had better wash their hands of you.”

  Hazel Techeray let go the grab she had on the chair. She started to walk toward the door, slow as somebody in a dream. Mr. Ben jumped to her side and took hold of her arm.

  “Don’t you nair think of a-going out to them,” he said in her ear.

  “If I did, maybe youins would be better off,” she mumbled back to him.

  “Don’t you nair believe for a second we’ll be better off,” he said back. "But if you was to go out yonder to them, you'd be another sight worse off. You done heard what Brooke Altic said about that.”

  "Well, if I can sure enough stay in here—”

  "I done already said you could,” he broke in, "and what I say is what I mean.”

  I harked at all their talk while I watched out toward the side and front of the house. Jackson Warren sort of kept up a tour here and yonder, and he came to my side and peeked through the space.

  "I think I make out one of them in that little string of bushes,” he said under his breath, and fetched up his rifle to aim. But I grabbed it and pushed it back down.

  "No, hold your fire,” I told him. "Let's not send them a shot till we can be certain sure it's smack in the bull's-eye.”

  "I could hit one of them from here by this light,” he argued.

  "You've got to kill with a shot,” I said. "A-killing one is what we've got to study to do.”

  Kill. We were down to that. Kill something, that was the way of mankind.

  Again I had that thought about the cruelty and selfishness in the whole history of this world. Man had got rule of the world, or anyway he reckoned he had, not a-being aware of how the Shonokins felt about it. And man had killed and killed. Not only other men. There wasn't one kind of animal he'd spared without a selfish thought about it. Folks talk and talk about kindness to animals, sure enough. But we're kind to horses because they work for us, cattle because they give us meat and milk, sheep because they have wool, dogs because they'll hunt for us and bark strangers off from the door. Even cats, because they look pretty a-sitting by the fire. Other than that—man has killed off things like buffalo and passenger pigeons; he catches fish by the twenties and flings them on the bank. He bums down forests, dirties the rivers and the lakes. Man doesn't have half sense. And to settle things with other men—well, that comes out to more killing.

  "Hold it till you have a center shot," I warned Jackson Warren again.

  And there I was, a-doing the same thing, a-fixing to kill Shonokins. And how about the Shonokins, who wanted to rule instead of man? Did they have enough of man nature in them to settle it all by kill, kill, kill?

  The night outside seemed to get just a tad darker as I kept my watch, my own gun in my hand.

  It was some time along later, maybe past nine o'clock as Jackson Warren said by his watch. We'd taken our turns on guard a couple of times. Now it was Hazel Techeray in one of the back rooms, and Ben
Gray a-squinting out at the front. Callie and Warren and I sat at the table, a-having the first cups from a fresh pot of coffee. I'd dipped out a little more soup, and I relished that.

  Then, thunk! Something hit hard on the front wall. Thunk! Something else hit close to the first. I jumped up quick to find out what.

  Ben Gray was at a space in the logs.

  "They're a-trying those devilish fire arrows again," he said.

  I opened the door a couple of inches and looked to see.

  Both their arrows had driven into the logs under the porch roof, and they burned bright all along the lengths of their shafts. But they didn’t set air blaze to the logs. I watched, and they died down. The Long Lost Friend still shielded us.

  "I'm afraid we must burn you out of there," called the voice of Brooke Altic from a dark place.

  ''Don't hold your breath till it happens/' I called hack. "We've got your fire stopped."

  "Might I be allowed to come and talk to you?" he asked.

  "If you come into sight with your hands up, all right," I said. "Just you by yourself, none of that trouble gang you've got with you. But I'll guarantee your talking won't get you much."

  "On second thought,” he said, "I don't think I'll come in sight of you, John. Somehow I don't feel as if you're to be trusted."

  "That makes it unanimous," I replied him. "I wouldn't trust you air farther than a toad can spit."

  By then, I reckoned, I was a-talking as mean to him as Ben Gray his own self. I waited for him to reply me. Again he took him several seconds before he did.

  "John," he said my name, "I do hope you enjoyed the beautiful sunrise this morning. Because it's the last one you'll ever see."

  "I'll be a-seeing tomorrow's sunrise," I made the promise. "And day after tomorrow's sunrise, and more to come, if the good Lord spares me."

  "Don't call on the Lord to spare you, John," said Brooke Altic, hard as a frozen rock. "Don't call on me to spare you, either. We bide our time here, but we'll husk you and your friends out of that cabin like nuts out of their shells."

  "And here we sit and wait for you to try it on," I said. "We banter you to try it on. We're ready for you to try it on."

  "Wait and find out."

  As his voice trailed off on that, it sounded sort of tired.

  I shoved the door all the way back shut. The others looked at me, looked at one another. They'd been a-harking, and all but Hazel Techeray had harked with a gun at the ready.

  "Again you spoke him your piece right,” said Mr. Ben to me.

  "By now,” I hoped, "we may have spoken all the pieces we've got to speak. I'm tired of a-talking. It'll maybe be some kind of action from this on out.”

  "What will they do?” asked Callie from one of the rear doors.

  "Whatever they do, we'll contrive to counterpunch them,” Warren said, like as if he'd figured out how.

  "I tell you again, if they come into the open, hold your fire till they get in close enough to stop a plumb-center shot,” I warned them. "It won't help us to just wound one. They've got to have a corpse on their hands to be sure enough scared out.”

  Outside somewhere at the front, rose the note of a whippoorwill. Whi-ah-whoo, it said, whi-ah-whoo.

  "Sounds to me like some devilish old Shonokin a-signal- ing,” whispered Mr. Ben.

  "Sounds to me like just only a whippoorwill,” I said.

  Whi-ah-whoo, whi-ah-whoo, came from out yonder in front. I went to look through a space thataway.

  Something little and dark seemed like as if it crept along in the road, where the moonlight filtered down.

  "I see it,” said Warren’s voice beside me.

  Next second, before I could raise a hand to stop him, he shoved his rifle through the space in the logs and fired.

  "I done told you not to do that,” I scolded at him.

  That little dark thing had spun over and over and lay still as a stone. He’d hit it where it lived. Then we heard a laugh.

  "Really and truly,” came a-mocking the voice of Brooke Altic, "that was cruel of you, John, or whoever fired. Snuffing out the life of a poor, pitiful little whippoorwill, when it was only trying to find a bug for its poor, pitiful little supper. The humane society would have something unpleasant to say to you.”

  “At least you know that we’re ready to shoot/’ barked out Jackson Warren.

  Brooke Altic laughed again. “Ah, a new voice heard from.”

  “My name’s Jackson Warren,” said Warren. “Why don’t you show yourself? You’d be considerably easier to hit than a bird.”

  “Jackson Warren,” Brooke Altic repeated him. “I’ve heard that name, I believe.”

  “I’ve helped a man named Thunstone against you.”

  “Yes, of course. Hello, Mr. Warren. Good-bye, Mr. Warren.”

  Warren slewed round to point his rifle to where the voice came, but I grabbed his shoulder and yanked him away, from the wall.

  “You hold your fire till I give you an order,” I said, “or you and I are a-going to have trouble.”

  He scowled in the soft light, but he moved back. Silence again, except only for Hazel Techeray. She mumbled and mumbled where she sat in her chair. All of a sudden she got up.

  We others stood and gopped at her while she stood there; for she stood proud again, strong again, the way I’d seen her stand when first I came up on her in that clearing in the woods behind Mr. Ben’s place. She flung her arms out sideways, like the arms of a cross.

  “I made my wish before this,” she rattled out the same words I’d heard her say that morning. “I make it now. There was no day I didn’t see my wish fulfilled—”

  Then she went silent as a graveyard on a dark night. Her arms dropped to her sides. She slumped herself down, like a flag when the wind dies out of it. Her head bowed. Her hair looked tired on her head.

  "I can't make it work," she whimpered.

  "Sure you can't," I said. "You quit a-being a witch. Nair spell will work for you now. You shouldn't ought to try."

  "But I was a-trying to do good for us with it," she halfway shed tears to say. "While Brooke Altic was a-talking to Mr. Warren, I said me a spell on him."

  "Ain't we had us a good old horse doctor's dose of spells?" wondered Mr. Ben from where he stood on watch next the door. "Ain't we near about ready to trust in powder and lead and maybe God up in heaven?"

  Hazel Techeray stumbled back again to her chair and sat down. She near about fell out of it as she fell into it.

  "I said a spell that should have killed Brooke Altic dead in his tracks," she blubbered. "And it didn't." Her face twitched. "It didn't do no such thing."

  "Miss Hazel, you're through with spells," I said to her. "Anyhow, it wouldn't work, with what I did here to put off witch spells."

  "You're right, John, and I reckon I did wrong to try it,” she moaned. "I was just only a-trying to help out the only way I knew."

  All this went on in the dimmest softest of light in that room, from the turned-down lamp in the corner. Likely we were darker inside there than the Shonokins outside. And better off, too. The death of one of us wouldn't whip us, the way the death of one of them would whip them.

  A sort of wind came a-rising up. We could hear it out yonder amongst the trees. It pushed against the front of the house, pushed harder. Callie came into the front room, and her eyes were big, the way they could get big.

  "We're about to have a storm," she said.

  "A storm made by Shonokins," I guessed.

  "This might could be called a natural wind,” I said, a-harking to it. "Made by some natural power. Just now, the Shonokins are at the edge of this property. Likely they're a-running their power line right across some of Mr. Ben's land, legal or not.”

  The wind started in to shriek outside. It rattled those planks we'd nailed at the window. It sniffed and shoved at the door, like some big old thing that wanted to come in.

  Outside there, above all the noise of the blowing, rose up another noise, loud and wailing
.

  It was the Shonokins, a-laughing about it.

  13

  Gentlemen, that was a storm for whosoever might could call for one. The wind came a-howling through those spaces betwixt the logs in the walls, would have blown out our lamp if it hadn’t been set in a corner, with a chimney and shade to it. That wind grabbed on to the house and pulled it back and forth and near to round about, like as if it wanted to drag us up by the roots. Then came rain, a flood of it like from a bunch of fire hoses. Rain came in through the log spaces along with the wind. And in a minute, hail, a rattling, pounding bait of hail, a-popping on the logs and roof-shakes like the Devil’s own personal buckshot, like dice a-tumbling in the Devil’s favorite cup.

  I saw the dim lamplight flicker on Mr. Ben’s strong-lined face. He downright grinned across the room at us.

  'This here cabin has stood up under worse storms,” he said, loud enough to be heard over all the racket. "My old folks built it on a rock, same as that house they tell in the Bible. Hell, I even been out in worse than this in my time.”

  As I harked to him, I wondered if I’d been out in worse. Maybe I had been, once off at the war. I recollected the rain that long-ago night, a-soaking me down to my underwear, a-running into my combat boots, the rain and the wind that awful night. And the mortar shells a-busting here and there, near and far round me, and the mean, streaking cuts of tracers all over like fireflies. It had been like a dress rehearsal for the day of judgment. I wondered myself if that storm had been as bad as this loud one on us now.

  "We're in the hands of God,” said Callie to Warren, loud enough for us all to hear her.

  "Oh yes,” Hazel Techeray wept, off by herself.

  "And I sure enough hope you’re right on that, daughter,” spoke up Mr. Ben. "I hope God ain’t took off the night and left things to the cheap help.”

  Just right then, quick as it had come on us, that quick the storm was gone. The wind dropped dead, the rain and the slam-down beat of the hail stopped themselves. Silence fell on us, so purely complete you could hear it a-being silent. You asked yourself what had happened to the noise. You could have heard a pin drop, if somebody had dropped a pin.