Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 05

by The Voice of the Mountain (v1. 1)

  “That would take a better man than you,” I said.

  He tried it on. He rushed me with both fists a-flying. 1 ducked and blocked them off, and flung my own fists. I hit him three times to his one, but he was powerful for strength even if he'd lost the edge of it. One solid punch of his fist might could come close to a-counting for three of mine. Gamely he came back to where the shooting was. It was like a bull in a fight against a mountain lion. He was a-getting tireder yet. Finally he pulled away a good dozen paces, and let his arms hang down, to get strength back into them.

  “John,” he sort of groaned, “you're pretty good.”

  “Thanks for the compliment,” I said again. “Want to keep on with this? We've had a patch of fun so far.”

  He gave me his bloody-mouthed grin, and it was a right weary grin.

  “Maybe I’ll just wander away,” he said. “Think about things.”

  With those words, he suddenly headed off amongst the trees, toward where the stockade was put up.

  I watched him run for a second, but just a second. I followed on, and I came to him as he reached the stockade. Some laurel grew there on the inside, and outside I saw pines and locusts.

  Harpe was at a big post of the stockade. With his big strength, he dragged that post aside to the left, and then the post next to it to the right. He made a gap where something big could come through.

  Outside, beyond the stockade, things waited.

  It was like as if that all his sentinels had gathered to hark at him. I saw the Bigfoot a-towering up yonder, taller than air giant man, even than Goliath; black hairy all over, a head on high as big as a bushel basket, with glaring eyes set in it. And near to him, across his great big toes stole the Flat, black and fuzzy as a bearskin rug come to life. Over farther off, a-sneaking a look from behind a tree, was the Behinder. Gentlemen, you all be glad you nair saw air such a thing as that.

  And other things. The swarm of big bees was there, a-hang- ing in the air like a blanket and a-putting out a hum that boomed, but naught came in. It was like as if they harked at what Harpe called to them, but not one of them did what he bade:

  “Come!” was what he yammered to them. “Come help me!”

  I walked in behind him, but not in reach of him.

  “What's the matter, Mr. Harpe?” I asked, a-making it sound cheerful. “Won't your friends jump to your word when you need them?”

  He paid me no mind. Again he yelled, “Come get him!”

  And no move from those things amongst the trees outside the stockade. They stayed right where they were, all of them.

  Somehow, I found out that I could laugh. “You're in a right poor way for stumps,” I said. “Whatair gets done to me, it's you who's got to do it, all by yourself without your amulet to give orders for help.”

  He spun round to me, so fast that the fringes of his sleeves whipped in the air. Then he bent himself down quick and came up with a big, jagged rock in each hand. He flung them at me, one rock and then the other. Both of them missed, by the grace of the good Lord Almighty, or he might could have had me right there. I backed away quick and then 1 ran, and I’m not ashamed to tell it, for he was a-stooping for more rocks.

  He got two and flung them both at me while he ran after me, and that’s always a mistake. Stand still to fling something or you’ll miss, the way he did then. He came after me with slapping feet, and I stopped to face him, almost beside the fresh dirt of Scylla’s grave, a few steps from the big cleft from which Cry Mountain wailed. He closed in.

  “So you dare make a stand,” he spit out, and came a-reach- ing for me with his two big hands. He wanted to get hold of me.

  I let him have my left, speared it into his face as he bored in, then I laid my right on him, just at the side of his jaw. He shammocked a couple of steps away, but he didn’t go down. He was right hard to hurt, and that was a natural fact. Back he came, arms out to hug me, and this time he got them round my body and dragged me to him. As he did that, I dug my right fist into his belly and felt the air go out of it. I put my left there and my right again, and that knocked him clear of his hold on me. I went to work then, the hardest and fastest I could, to his head, his body, his head and body again and again, ten times or more.

  It hurt him bad to get hit like that, and he couldn’t hit me back but one time. He landed that one high on my head and I shook it off as I worked my own hands into him, all over. I’d nair punched thataway in all my days on this earth, and well I knew I had to, for I was a-fighting for my life.

  Harpe’s knees buckled under that storm of blows. His feet stumbled under him to keep him from a-falling. He went on the whirl away, and then he was at the rocky lip of the cleft.

  I saw his feet move fast, like as if he did a dance. Next second, he lost air balance he had, and down he tumbled into Cry Mountain’s open mouth.

  He screamed as he fell, long and wavery I went to the edge of the thing, close as I dared, and looked down past the blackness to the red glow of the fire down there, so far it looked like the burning heart of the earth itself

  His cry drifted up to me, up, I couldn’t say you how long it came. It grew fainter and fainter as he fell that everlasting deep way, until all of a sudden it stopped.

  Ruel Harpe had struck bottom, struck it for good.

  I was dizzy and I drew' back away so that I wouldn’t fall after him, I sweated and breathed hard. I swabbed my face with my sleeve. My knuckles were cut open with the blow's I'd struck, and my right hand was gashed on the back with that knife.

  At last I took a look all round me.

  That’s when I saw the three women, Myrrh and Alka and Tarrah, saw them where they’d come out in the open to watch the fight. After a moment, they started to walk slowly toward where I was.

  I had the time at last to realize how tired out I was, from a-fighting Ruel Harpe for something like fifteen-twenty minutes,

  15

  What now?

  That was the thought in me while those three women came a-walking, side by side, to come to where I was. Skinny, careful Alka. Curvy Tarrah. Beautiful Myrrh. They came close and looked on me, and all their faces were pale.

  “We saw what happened,” said Alka to me, in a dull, hushed voice. “You killed him, John.”

  It wasn’t quite an accusation, but it was near about one.

  “I did no such a thing,” I told her back. “I whipped him, and I can say I whipped him good. But he got there to the edge of that place, and he fell down into it without me a-touching him.”

  We all looked there, to that rocky gash where he’d fallen. Nair sound came from it. The air was quiet all round us. I made myself go back over and look down, and it made me feel dizzy to look. Blackness, deep blackness like to the center of the world, all down to the red glow like fire.

  “What now?” said Myrrh, the very words I’d thought to myself.

  “I’ll go see what now,” I said to her, and headed off to where the nearest stretch of the stockade was.

  But I’d better say, where the stockade had been.

  As I came to it amongst the trees, it was down, like as if it had been rotted away. Those poles that had been strong and high, they sagged, they drooped, they tumbled air whichaway.

  They looked like pieces of old rotten wood, abandoned and let go to ruin. You could see how they yielded down from where they’d stood so high and strong. But now, a hog could have come through, if there’d been a hog there.

  Ruel Harpe had conjured up that stockade But he was gone, and his conjure tricks were gone, and so was his stockade.

  I studied the trees beyond, where they’d been fenced off. The sun was higher up and the mist was a-fading out. Naught was there, not a motion, none of the things Harpe had fetched there to be his sentinels, his guards. I looked and listened. All of a sudden, I heard a crow overhead somewhere, caw caw. A crow? How long since I’d harked at a crow? A mountain boomer squirrel answered it, answered it grumpy-voiced, chit- tery-chattery.

  Things were ch
anged a right much round there since Harpe had taken his long fall. With him had vanished all that slew of unchancey things beyond the stockade that had crumpled on itself.

  I turned and went back to where I’d left the women. And they were a-gabbling about something. They stood all round Scylla’s grave. I came there, and what I saw was that the grave was busted open and something wrapped in a gray blanket sat up in it.

  “She’s risen from the dead!” screamed Tarrah at me.

  The gray, grubby blanket stirred and fell open to both sides. Scylla’s wrinkled face and Scylla’s glittery eyes showed themselves to us.

  “No,” she grated. “I wasn’t dead, but I might as well have been—deader than hell. Somebody give me a hand, I want to get up from here.”

  I put down my own hand. Her clawlike fingers grabbed tight to it, and I heaved her to her feet. She stepped out clear of the blanket, clear of the grave.

  “Thank you, John,” she said, the first kind word she'd air said to me. She looked round at all the others. “No, I wasn’t dead,” she repeated. “I just lay there and thought, or maybe I dreamed.”

  “Scylla, who’d have thought?” stammered Alka, and put her hand on Scylla’s shoulder. “How did you breathe?”

  “I don’t think I breathed,” said Scylla. “But I wasn’t dead.”

  All of us stood together and puzzled in silence. Then I said, “I get it. The poison you took was Harpe’s magic-mixed poison. Harpe’s finished—gone down there.” I pointed at the cleft. “He’s gone, down there. And so’s all his magic gone, and I reckon that means your poison went.”

  “John fought him,” said Myrrh in a hushed voice, “and he fell down into that hole.”

  Scylla squinted at Myrrh. “Who’s this pretty girl? Where’s she from, anyway?”

  “Harpe fetched her here,” I said, “for something that didn’t work out.”

  “You can tell me all about it at breakfast,” allowed Scylla. “I can use some breakfast.”

  “Breakfast’s on the table,” said Alka. “We got it there, and came out to call Ruel and John. Maybe things are a trifle cold by now, but—”

  “Let’s go see.” Scylla led the way to the passage. She moved sort of stiff at first, but then better. I reckoned her joints loosened up. She came to the entry and craned her neck to peer.

  “No lights in there,” she said. “Dark as where I lay underground.”

  Alka came and took her own look. “Those were Ruel’s lights, remember,” she said. “He had an enchantment to make them shine. Now he’s gone, and they’re gone, too.”

  “I have candles in my room,” Scylla said. “I can get in there and find them. I’ve often moved around in the dark, I know how.”

  She headed in. Tarrah and Myrrh stood where they were. I followed Scylla, with a hand on the rock wall to guide me. It seemed a mile-long way in yonder.

  When we got to the main room, it was so dark, charcoal would have left a white mark on it. I got out my box of matches and lit one. I saw the table, with dishes of breakfast laid out on it, and at one end Harpe’s pile of papers and the crumbly old Judas book he’d translated. Scylla headed for the curtained hallway, a-moving like as if she knew her way. My match went out. I stood in the dark, a long wait of time, till I heard her come back. Then I struck another match. I saw her, and she had two great big candles, one in each hand. She came close and held one out.

  "Light it,” she bade me, and l held the match to the twisty wick. The candle gave us a right much more light. I saw that it was a black candle and the other was black, too. Likely they were for use in witch doings. She dripped wax on a comer of the table top and stuck the candle in it, and its flame rose high and bright, like the petal of a lemony-yellow flower. She lit the other candle from the first.

  We walked back through the outer passage. "John,” she said, "I’ve turned you over and over in my mind as I lay so long underground, and I think that you may have the right on your side here and there. Let’s bury the hatchet.”

  "Just so long as you don’t bury it in my back,” I said, and Scylla laughed, and it was what you might could call a friendly laugh.

  Outside, we called the others to follow us in, and the candle showed us where to set our feet. We got to the table where the one candle burnt and Scylla stuck up the other beside it, and we sat down, The breakfast was eggs and bacon and toasted muffins, and they'd gone cold, and so had the coffee. Scylla went to the rope and tugged, and came back.

  “We can't get anything more that way,'' she reported. “Let's make out with what's here." She drank some cold coffee. “John and I think we can be friends," she said.

  “Yes," I said, and had me a bite of muffin.

  Scylla questioned Myrrh about herself, and shook her tumbly gray head over what Myrrh replied her.

  “Ruel was wrong about what he tried with you," she said. “He was wrong about everything." She looked at the Judas book and the translation pages. “About that, too," she said. “Now that he's gone, it's up to us to decide things for ourselves."

  “Myrrh and I will start down the mountain, directly we're through eating," I said.

  “We'll all have to go down," said Alka. “Back into the world." She said it with a happy voice. She wanted to go back.

  Scylla turned a look on her, with the candlelight a-flickering on her wrinkly face. “What do you propose to do, Alka?"

  “I was a librarian," Alka answered her. “A very good one. I begin to wonder if Ruel got me here by exaggerating the trouble I was in. I can work in a library again, do some research and writing again. After all, research and writing was what I did here. Yes, I can do it. I can find old friends who'll help me to get a job."

  Scylla brooded. “As for me, why don't I stay a witch?" she inquired us. “Not a black witch, though. I've had my game with that, and the best I can say for it is, no black witch is ever happy. But there are white witches who help people, cure their sicknesses, make their crops and their trades flourish. I've heard of such, in the Ozarks. I could go there and live."

  “And prosper," said Tarrah. “I've been in the Ozarks. The name of Scylla could become famous."

  “I might not go as Scylla, that was just my coven name.” She smiled. “My real name in the public records is Mary Ann Dobinson.”

  “Old Mr. Vance Randolph in the Ozarks would be glad to talk to you,” said Tarrah. “Help you know the Ozark people.”

  “Vance Randolph,” said Scylla, a-committing the name to memory. “What will you do, Tarrah?”

  “Well, no more witchcraft,” said Tarrah, quick off. “I wish I could do what Myrrh talks about, work in some store or shop. Meet people there, maybe meet some nice young man.”

  “Why not come to Larrowby?” Myrrh invited her. “I don't think I'll be long at my job in my father’s store. I’ll be a-getting married.”

  You couldn’t rightly tell by the candlelight, but I’d swear she blushed to think on Tombs McDonald.

  “Come with me to Larrowby,” she invited Tarrah again.

  We talked about a-getting down Cry Mountain. I allowed it was a right much of a trip down, and then another good long trudge before you came to air sort of house. I took one of the candles, found my way back to the room where I’d stayed those two nights, and fetched back my guitar and other stuff. The women were at the table, a-making sandwiches.

  “The way you talk, we’ll need a lunch on the trip,” said Tarrah.

  They’d fetched out the big steak Myrrh hadn’t touched the night before, and sliced it up thin. Somebody, Alka I think, had brought a can of sardines and another of potted ham. They likewise had a package of big crackers, and they spread ham on those, or put steak slices or sardines betwixt them. They made up five packages of them, with pieces of the newspapers Harpe and I had read. I put two of the packages, for Myrrh and me, into my sack. Then I picked up Harpe’s writing and the crumbly pages of the Judas book.

  We all went out. I laid my gear down at the door of the entry.

 
“What do you propose to do, John?” Scylla inquired me.

  “Come and see,” I said.

  They all trailed behind me as I walked back to the grave where Scylla had lain and dreamt betwixt life and death. It was a gouged-open hole the size of Scylla when she got up from it, with the dark, damp dirt flung up on all sides. I stooped and pushed the Judas book and the written translation down on the blanket she'd left there. Then, from my back pocket, I fetched the amulet I'd ripped off of Harpe’s neck, to take his magic power away.

  For a second I looked at the cleft where he’d fallen, but just for a second. No point in a-flinging his amulet down there to whereair he was, no point at all. I put the amulet down amongst the wadded papers. The women watched me and said naught.

  I went to the hollow tree and fetched out the ivory horn Harpe had blown to make Cry Mountain reply him back. I brought it to the grave and put it in, too.

  “That horn is a valuable prehistoric artifact,” said Scylla.

  “That horn’s a big troublemaker,” 1 said, and draped the blanket over all I’d set in there. A-kneeling down, I raked and scooped with my hands to pile in the dirt Scylla had shoved up when she’d waked. I filled the place and stood up again.

  There lay Harpe’s magic, all buried, but how to keep it there? I recollected what I’d heard tell of the Grand Albert book, how you couldn’t get shed of it if you burnt it or flung it in the water; you must bury it and say a funeral over it. So I stood by the covered-in grave, and I repeated some of the words I’d said when I’d preached what I’d thought was Scylla’s funeral. I stooped again and moved the headstone I’d put there, this time to lie right on the middle of the grave. Nearby lay a big flake of rock, broken and sharp. I gouged a cross into the headstone, deep as I could. Again I straightened up.

  “Nobody air better try to dig that up again/' I said. “There’s been enough digging at that place.”

  “Amen,” said Myrrh, like as if she was in church. And “Amen,” said Scylla after her.

  I sought out the stream. That ran all clear and happy, it was a natural thing. I washed the caked dirt off my hands and arms. Then I went and picked up my sack and slung my guitar behind me.