Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1951

by The Haunts of Drowning Creek (v1. 1)

  The two boys backed water to study the situation.

  “It goes into a triple fork right here,” said Jebs from his forward position. “I see three channels, and any one of the three is apt to be the right one.”

  He leaned low and tried to peer along one channel and then another, but the crowding trees and tortuous bends ahead made it impossible to judge them. The main stream of Drowning Creek might flow right, left or straight ahead.

  “What do you think—” began Randy, then shut his mouth and listened.

  He heard stealthy noises behind him, smoother and quieter than splashes, but more like splashes than anything else. He looked over his shoulder.

  Into view from upstream came a craft that was neither boat nor canoe, but possessed features of both, and in its stern a single lean figure plied a whittled paddle.

  “Here comes somebody, Jebs,” he warned hoarsely.

  Jebs, too, looked around. The stranger’s craft was floating nearer.

  They could see that it was scooped and shaped from a single log of gum, for all the world like the dugouts of the first Indians. It was as long and wide as their own canoe, and its two ends tapered fore and aft to thin perpendicular edges, sharp as hatchets, so that the craft could move in either direction at the will of its paddler. Probably an axe had roughed out the first shape, but scraping and whittling had made the outer surface as smooth as though it had been planed. It was unpainted, and its color was the gray of the weathered wood of an old, paint-hungry shed. The figure in the stern sat on the hollowed-out bottom, without benefit of seat or cushion.

  “Hello,” ventured Randy.

  The paddler made a noise like a grunt, enough to show that his voice was young. He, too, backed water and let his dugout loaf along to a point in fine with their canoe, and not more than paddle-length away.

  Jebs and Randy saw that the stranger was no older than themselves, but of a quiet and deep solemnity, both as to expression and motion. He was built sparely, like Randy, but was not as tall, and his face looked like a long, sharp-chinned V, a little flushed as though not used to the outdoors. A scar traced thinly across that face, from side to side, slightly dinting the bridge of the short, straight nose. He looked at them levelly and enigmatically with dark eyes, slightly slanting, under straight black brows. He did not seem cheerful, he did not seem grouchy. His face was as blankly secret as the face of some old statue of a lost, mysterious people.

  He wore an old blue sport shirt, from the sleeves of which extended thin but wiry forearms. His trousers, what could be seen of them above the whittled thwarts of the dugout, were faded sun-tan, like old army summer slacks. And on his head was cocked aslant a cap such as neither Jebs nor Randy had ever seen outside of a motion picture.

  It was old, gray and battered, like the dugout. It was furnished with a trowel-like visor of smooth black leather that must once have gleamed but now looked cracked, dimmed, and incredibly ancient. Above the visor ran a brow strap, also of cracked leather, fastened at the temples with tarnished brass buttons. The flat crown of the cap was smaller in diameter than the sweat-band, and this difference in size drew the top forward above the V-shaped face. The whole effect was military, but military after the fashion of some army that had marched and fought long, long ago, an army that existed no more.

  In the waist of the dugout lay two small bundles of luggage, less in volume than a quarter of what Jebs and Randy had.

  “We’re Jebs Markum and Randy Hunter,” Jebs said briskly, by way of introduction. “We’re taking a kind of little float down-creek, but right now we don’t know which of these ways to follow.”

  “You don’t?” asked the stranger quietly.

  “No, we don’t.” Jebs peered into the central channel. “Middle way looks widest and clearest to me.”

  The gray-capped head dipped. A thin, sinewy hand shoved something down between the shabby knees, out- of sight. To Randy it looked like a folded and faded paper.

  “Right channel,” said the stranger definitely.

  Jebs and Randy both looked toward the right channel. It was the smallest of the three. There was barely space under the trees for the canoe to pass.

  “You sure of that, friend?” hesitated Jebs.

  “Yes.” Calm, quiet, enigmatic was the reply, but definite as before.

  “You reckon to go that way?” Jebs persisted.

  A nod of the gray cap. That was all.

  “Well,” Jebs finally broke the silence, “why don’t you?”

  “I’m just waiting for you. You’re ahead of me.”

  Randy made a sudden decision.

  “You probably know more about the creek than we do, but this central channel looks broad, and we’ll try it for the time being. Just to see what it’s like, you understand.”

  “If you want to.” And the straight, close mouth smiled. For just the quarter of a second it smiled, and then it straightened itself again, and Randy couldn’t really be sure that the smile had been there at all.

  “Let’s get going, Randy,” whispered Jebs, and dug in his paddle.

  They slid the canoe into the central channel. They paddled fast, as though they would be glad to get out of sight of the stranger in his dugout canoe and his strange, gray cap and his level gaze and his quiet, mysterious manner.

  “Shoo,” said Jebs, after a moment, “that was a creepy-acting guy, wasn’t he?”

  “Creepy may not be the exact word,” Randy grinned, “but it gives the idea.”

  Then they both shut up again, and quickly, for that adequate-seeming channel had suddenly narrowed, just around a sharp curve. Jebs had to stab with his paddle at the bank to the right, Randy at the bank to the left. A moment later, and they would have rammed into a jagged and crisscrossed jumble of logs and sticks that lay across the stream like the half-built framework of a very untidy dam.

  Carefully they drew up to the bank, where there was just enough room for Jebs, then Randy, to step ashore among thick-grown and muddy-rooted trees. They stood on tiptoe, craned their necks, and looked over the log jam. Water seeped and trickled audibly among the rotting timbers.

  “We’ll have to portage,” said Jebs.

  “How far?” asked Randy dolefully. “Do you—”

  “Wait, I heard something—somebody—moving. Look, there he comes!”

  Jebs pointed. A human figure was picking its way along the fabric of logs, just a little way ahead, a plump-bodied man.

  “I hope he’s not another mysterious stranger,” said Randy. “What’s he doing here in this jungle?”

  “We’ll ask him if he looks as if he’ll give us an answer,” replied Jebs, and the two hopped from log to shaky log, approaching the plump man.

  He stood straddling from one fallen trunk to another, and dipped a home-woven net into the water below the jam. His clothes looked rough and shabby, and he wore a wide black hat. Beneath it his face vas mild, heavy, and the color of an old saddle.

  “How you?” he said hospitably. “Kind of strange lere, ain’t you? Me, I’m dipping me some minnows dr bait.”

  “We’re campers,” said Jebs diffidently. “We’re trying to see how far we have to tote our canoe across these logs.”

  White teeth grinned in the brown face. “Why you vant to do that? The water makes a pond below here, md the way back into the creek’s all grown full of uniper. Boat won’t get you through. Right way’s the right way.” And the brown-faced man chuckled at his own pun.

  “You mean, the channel to the right of the three back there?” asked Randy. “The channel that odd character told us to take?”

  “Somebody told you to take it, he told you correct.” Again the brown face smiled. “I ought to know, I live on that right-hand channel, over yonder way,” and a brown hand gestured.

  Randy looked at his watch. “It’s past four, Jebs. We’d better get back to it, and start looking for a place to camp tonight.”

  “You boys can camp at my landing,” offered the brown man. “Couple miles,
about, back down the other channel. I got it cleared nice.”

  “Might we draw some water?” asked Randy. “Sure, sure. Got a well. Help yourself. So you camping out on this creek? Ain’t scared of haunts?”

  “Haunts?” repeated Randy.

  “He means ghosts, Randy,” said Jebs. “Why?” he asked the man. “Are there ghost stories told about this creek?”

  “A many a story, boy. Lots of us think they’re true.”

  Jebs ruffled his blond hair. “I’ve heard some kind of whisper about a lost house, and money hid in it, and ghosts connected somehow.”

  “I’ve heard the same,” nodded the minnow-catcher. “Haunts is special thick around that old place, I’ve heard tell. Me, I wouldn’t go near there, even if I knew where it was.” He studied them with black, wise eyes. “Sure you ain’t afraid?”

  “No,” said Randy, wondering if that was quite the truth. If there was a ghost in all this world, this hushed, tree-hidden creek would be exactly the place for it to lurk.

  “Excuse me for asking,” said Jebs, “but aren’t you an Indian?”

  Again the smile of white teeth in the brown face. “I ain’t a Dutchman, boy. But I won’t scalp you.”

  They said a thankful goodbye and re-picked their way over the timber tangle to where their canoe waited.

  “So that’s an Indian,” said Randy. “Nice, wasn’t he? Are there lots of Indians around here?”

  “Up and down the creek, quite a few. You know, the town of Pembroke’s practically made up of Indians. The Drowning Creek ones trap and fish, and farm a little.”

  “He’s a noble red man, and let’s look for his landing,” said Randy. “Hoist the canoe around, end for end, and we’ll fight back to where we ought to be.”

  They paddled upstream to where the three channels branched, and this time took the right one. Almost at once it broadened into a watery travel-way.

  In less than an hour they sighted the landing. It was a rough pier, made from a strong pole lashed with wire across two living trees that grew out into the water. Back from this crosspiece slanted other timbers to rest on rocks on shore, and these timbers were floored over with heavy, rough-split slabs.

  “Looks just right to camp,” said Jebs.

  Randy peered past his friend. “Look, Jebs. That

  Indian has a dugout just like the one Mr. Mystery in the cap was using.”

  “No.” Jebs, at the bow, could see more clearly. “That dugout happens to be Mr. Mystery’s identical dugout.”

  As they paddled near, they saw that indeed it was the craft they had met with above the forks.

  And on the downstream side of the pier, against one of the main supporting trees, sat the stranger himself. His feet dangled above the water, and he had a knife in one hand and a half-cleaned fish in the other.

  THREE

  CAMP FOR THE NIGHT

  ABOUT the time they saw him, the stranger saw them. He shifted his body a trifle and watched them draw close to the pier. His gray cap hung on the short stub of a branch beside him, and they could see that his hair was as dark as Randy's, but cut shorter and closely curled. After gazing at them for a quiet moment, he went back to cleaning his fish. It was a middle-sized bream, and two more lay near by on the split slabs of the pier.

  ‘"Hey, there,” Jebs greeted, as he tied the canoe to the roots of a tree by a line at the bow.

  “So you got here,” said the stranger.

  “The Indian who owns this place directed us, and said we could camp here,” volunteered Randy. “Do you know him?”

  “No.”

  The stranger had finished cleaning the last of the bream. He rose and picked up all three of them, then walked along the pier to shore. Beyond the planking, the shore showed almost clear of brush, though trees still stood. Randy and Jebs saw a boat, tightly built of boards and turned upside down on two rocks. Beyond the boat ran a trail through the thicker woods.

  Randy and Jebs unloaded their camping equipment, wading ashore with load after load. The stranger knelt by his own possessions, and once he glanced from the scantiness of those possessions to the considerable volume of gear brought into view by his new camp neighbors. His glance might have meant disdain for such luxury, or envy of it, or just a glance.

  Then the stranger stood up. In his hand he had taken a machete, its blade curved like a short, heavy saber. Even at the distance of some paces, Randy and Jebs saw the brightness of its well-sharpened edge. The stranger stepped to where a jack-oak sapling grew. He looked the sapling up and down, then took hold of it and twitched it slantwise. Swipp!

  That machete was sharp as a razor and swift as a snake. With one slicing stroke, the stranger had provided himself with an oak pole nearly two inches through, and tapered to a slanting point. Quickly he pruned off twigs and the slender top.

  Randy, slinging his hammock between two trees, watched. The stranger pulled from one foot a big shoe, army-made like his old sun-tan slacks, and with its broad heel drove the stake upright, some seven or eight feet from a tree. Quickly he strung a length of stout cord from tree to stake, a yard or so above the ground. Over this he tossed an ancient canvas tarpaulin with loops of cord through the metal eyelets at the edges. With his machete he rapidly cut smaller pegs, and used these to fasten down the loops. Within a surprisingly short time he had completed the shaping of a makeshift tent, open at both ends.

  “Good work,” commented Jebs, still trying to be friendly.

  The V-shaped face looked briefly over the blue- shirted shoulder, and the smile appeared briefly.

  Jebs felt encouraged. “Say,” he elaborated, “if we’re going to camp here together, we ought to know each other’s names, huh? We told you ours, back up the creek. Call me Jebs, and this is Randy.”

  “I’m Driscoll Jordan.”

  As he spoke, Driscoll Jordan squatted beside a small fire, built in a gouged-out hole. He took one of the fish, ran it through lengthwise with a green switch, and drove the butt of the switch into the ground so that the fish hung at an angle above the fire, just at the proper roasting distance. With other switches he impaled and set the other two fish up for roasting.

  Meanwhile, Randy built a fire for himself and Jebs, between two convenient rocks near the shore of the creek. He started a tiny blaze with slivers, fed it larger with bits of wood, and larger still with chunks. He chose dead boughs of oak to break up for his fire, so as to make proper coals. Jebs, thumbs in the waistband of his swimming shorts, strolled to the pier and looked for a long time at the gray cap that hung on the stubby branch against the tree trunk.

  “That’s quite a headpiece you wear around, Driscoll,” he said after a moment.

  “I like it,” said Driscoll, his eyes on the fish.

  Jebs was of a good-humored mischievousness. He played pranks on those he liked, and he was quite ready to like Driscoll, despite those earlier rebuffs.

  “I don’t rightly know if I can say the same,” he tried to joke. “I mean, I don’t know whether I like the cap or not.”

  Driscoll straightened up beside his cooking fire. “You don’t have to like it,” he said, not harshly nor threateningly, but quite definitely. “It suits me.”

  Jebs was grinning. “That cap puts me in mind of what happened at school a couple of years back,” he announced. “A new kid came there, from out west somewhere, and he was wearing a kind of flower-patterned shirt. I remember he had to wrestle someone or other, to prove he had a right to wear that shirt. How was that for a deal, Driscoll?”

  “It ought to be all right,” said Driscoll, and as he spoke he flung himself upon Jebs.

  Jebs was bigger and stronger, but he never got set. Driscoll’s lean-corded arms snapped around Jebs’ thick waist, Driscoll’s heel hooked back of Jebs’ unready ankle, and down went Jebs like a sack of grain falling from a wagon. Randy jumped up and started swiftly toward the struggling pair, but Driscoll’s hands had clamped on Jebs’ broad shoulders and ground them briefly against the earth. Next moment
Driscoll had sprung up and back, grinned again in his quick, camera-shutter way, and took the cap from where it hung. He set it at a jaunty slant on his head. “I guess I keep the cap,” he said.

  Randy strode toward Driscoll, fists clenched.

  “That wasn’t fair,” he accused. “You didn’t give Jebs a chance to get set for a wrestle.”

  “You sure enough didn’t,” added Jebs, struggling to his feet with his blond brows locked in a fighting frown.

  “Well,” said Driscoll evenly, “he outweighs me by about twenty pounds. I had to blitzkrieg him, or maybe he’d have thrown me, and I’d have had to get rid of my cap.”

  It was the longest speech he had yet offered, and he still seemed quietly cheerful. Randy felt that here was somebody who would never make any trouble for you unless you shoved your nose past where his began. But if you did that—

  “Who said you’d have to get rid of your cap?” challenged Randy. “Jebs was just talking about something that had happened in school. He hadn’t even said he wanted to wrestle.”

  “I just like the cap,” said Driscoll, tapping his forefinger on the ancient visor. “I’ve had it all my life, and my great-grandfather wore it about ninety years ago.”

  “So that’s what it is!” exclaimed Jebs, whose good humor had returned promptly, as it always did after a tussle. “Hey, I ought to have known that all the time. It’s a rebel cap—Confederate—from the War between the States.”

  “Of course,” agreed Randy.

  “It was my great-grandfather’s,” said Driscoll. “He gave it to my father, and my father left it to me.”

  “Why couldn’t you tell us all this?” asked Jebs.

  “You never asked me.”

  The situation had relaxed. Randy and Jebs went back to feed their fire again, and, while it burned down to the coals they wanted, they dived from the pier. Driscoll watched them quietly, now and then poking at his fish or doing something around his camp. After a brief, refreshing swim, Jebs and Randy climbed back up to their fireside.