"That's all the song so far," I said. "Maybe more later."
"But meanwhile," said Hoppard, "Becky's a-waiting on you in yonder." He looked me up and down. "Unless you're scared to go see."
"I got over being scared some while back," I said, and hoped that was more or less a fact. "I came here to find out about her."
Herod stomped over to the inside door and opened it, and I picked up my pack and guitar and went over and into the lean-to room. The door shut behind me. I heard a click, and knew I was locked in.
The room was a big one. It was walled, front and sides, with up-and-down split slabs, with bark and knots, and as old as the day Hell was laid out. The rear wall was a rock face, gray and smooth, with a fireplace cut in it and a blaze on the hearth, with wood stacked to the side. Next to the hearth, a dark-aged wooden armchair, with above it the biggest pair of deer horns I'd ever seen, and in the chair somebody watching me.
A woman, I saw right off, tucked from chin to toes in a robe as red as blood, and round her neck a blue scarf, tight as a bandage. Her face was soft-pale, her slanty Hoppard green eyes under brows as thin as pencil marks. Her lips were redder than her red robe. They smiled, with white teeth.
"So you're John," and her voice was like flowing water. "Come round where I can look on you."
"How do you know my name?"
"Say a little bird told me," she mocked me with her smile. "A bird with teeth in its beak and poison in its claws, that tells me what I need to know. We waited for you here, John."
"You know my name, and I know yours, Miss Becky Til Hoppard. Why aren't you in your grave down by the road, Miss Becky?"
"They told you. I nair went in it. I was toted off here and my folks said some words and burnt some plants, and here I am. They left that grave for a blind. My old folks and my brothers died in right odd ways, but I do fine with these new kinfolks."
Blood-red lipped, she smiled.
"What next?" I inquired.
"You," and she kept her smile. "You're next, John. Every few years I find somebody like you, somebody with strong life in him, to keep my life going. This won't be like poor Junius Worral, my first helper—he was traced here. Nobody knows you came. But why don't you play on your pretty guitar?"
I swept my hands on the silver strings. I sang:
Becky Til Hoppard, as sweet as a dove,
Where did she wander, and who did she love? . . .
All the way through, and she smiled and harked at me. "You sang that in town last night. I could hear you. I'm able to hear and see things."
"You've got you a set of talents."
"So have you. When you sang that song, I did spells to fetch you here."
"I don't aim to stay," I said.
"You'll stay," she allowed, "and give me life."
I grinned down at her, with my guitar across me. "I see," I nodded to her. "You took Junius Worral's life into you to keep you young. And others . . ."
"Several," she said. "I made them glad to give me their years."
"Glad?" I repeated, my hand on the silver strings. "Because they loved me. You'll love me, John.
"Not me, I'm sorry. I love another."
"Another what?" She laughed at her own joke. "John, you'll burn up for love of me. Look."
The fire blazed up. I saw a chunk of wood drop in on the blaze.
She quartered me with her gleamy green eyes. "I could call out just one word, and there's two Hoppard men out yonder would come in here and bust your guitar for you."
"I've seen those two men," I said, "and neither of them looks hard for me to handle."
"There'd be two of them . . ."
"I'd hit them two hard licks," I said. "Nobody puts a hand on my guitar but just me myself."
"Then take it with you, yonder to the fire. Go to the fire, John."
One hand pointed a finger at me, the other pointed to the fire. It blazed high up the chimney. Wood had come into it, without a hand to move it there. It shot up long, fierce, bright tongues of flame. The floor of Hell was what it looked like.
"Look on it," Becky Til Hoppard bade me again. "I can send you into it. I made my wish before," and her voice half-sang. "I make it now. I nair saw the day that the wish I made was not true."
That was a kind of spell. I had a sense that hands pushed me. I couldn't see them, but I could feel them. I made another step into the hot, hot air of the hearth. I was come right next to her, with her bright green eyes watching me.
"Yes," she sang. "Yes, yes."
"Yes," I said after her, and pushed the silver strings of my guitar at her face.
She screamed once, shrill and sharp as a bat, and her head fell over to the side, all the way over and hung there, and she went slack where she sat.
For I'd guessed right about her. Her neck was broken; her head wasn't fast there, it just balanced there. And she sank lower, and the flames of the fire came pouring out at us like red-hot water. I fairly scuttled away toward the door, the locked door, and the door sprang itself open.
I was caught behind the door as Hoppard and his son Herod came a-shammocking in, and after them his daughter Tullai. As they came, that fire jumped right out of its hearth into the room, onto the floor, all round where Becky Til Hoppard sunk in her chair.
"Becky!" one of them yelled, or all of them. And by then I was through the door. I grabbed up my pack as I headed out into the open. Behind me, something sounded like a blast of powder. I reached the head of the trail going down, and gave a lookback, and the cabin was spitting smoke from the door and the windows.
That was it. Becky Til Hoppard ruled the fire. When her rule came to an end, the fire ran wild. I scrambled down, down from that height.
I wondered if they all burnt up in that fire. I nair went back to see. And I don't hear that anybody by the Hoppard name has been seen or heard tell of thereabouts.
Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC Page 27