“We aren't going to trouble our minds about him," went on Noll coldly.
“Then the sooner you start troubling them the better," replied Jebs. “Because he got away. Randy Hunter’s a boy who knows a thousand different tricks. At least nine hundred and ninety-nine of them are clear out of your class."
“What kind of tricks does he know?" grunted Emory. “Look, make this wise guy tell us what he’s driving at."
Jebs had a new inspiration. He fixed Emory’s eyes with his own. “Maybe my friend Randy knows some hoodoo stuff," he said. “Such as black magic, witchcraft—’’
“You shut your mouth!" barked Ferd at Jebs.
But Jebs kept his eyes on Emory. Emory had said nothing. He had shrunk back a little against the wall of the cave, and it seemed to Jebs that his thick jowls had grown a shade or so paler. Jebs congratulated himself on the success of his trial shot at psychological warfare. Emory was superstitious, as the cross-nail pattern on his shoes betrayed. The mention of black magic and witchcraft had frightened him.
“Now, why do you tell me to shut my mouth?" Jebs asked Ferd reasonably. “A moment ago, you people wanted me to explain about Randy."
Emory had recovered a little. “I’m protected against witches, anyway," he mumbled.
Jebs succeeded in snickering, as if in scorn. “Shoo, Emory, there are different kinds of witches. They have a thousand dodges. What may slow up one of them won’t affect another even a little bit, it may even set an easier trail for that one to follow. For instance," and he made his voice slow and insinuating, “a pattern of hobnails on the heels of your shoes, I understand that sometimes —"
“Hey!" bawled Emory.
He sprang up and toward Jebs pointing the gun. But
Noll spun around and snatched the weapon away.
’'Not so much yipping and yelling, you gump,” Noll scolded Emory. "No shooting, either. Not right now. We want to make sure that we aren’t overheard.”
Score two for his psychological warfare, decided Jebs. Noll, too, was impressed with the suggestion that Randy might be near at hand.
Emory fished out a dingy handkerchief and mopped his low forehead, now creased with worry.
"What I want to know,” he whined, “is how he found out about those nail crosses I’m wearing.”
"Oh, that?” said Jebs. "Randy told me about them.”
This statement was quite true, but both Ferd and Emory seemed to be making a great deal out of it. They goggled at each other, at Noll, at Jebs, and back at each other again. "If he could find that out—” began Ferd.
"Oh, lay off that crazy talk, the both of you,” exploded Noll angrily. He turned toward Jebs, the pistol in his hand, towering and assured. "Look here, boy, these two are brothers, and maybe they got reared to some funny beliefs. But I’m just their cousin, I got reared in a different home. I’ve been all around the country, and around lots of big towns, too. I don’t go for that talk about superstitious stuff.” Yet lots of people believe in what you call superstitious stuff, and if so many believe in it, there must be some truth to it,” argued Jebs. "Witchcraft, for instance.”
As he spoke, he watched Emory out of the corner of his eye, and saw the big youth flinch again. Emory was impressed by that argument, whether Noll was or not. "And there’s that ghost story,” went on Jebs, "about the headless man carrying his head for a lantern, with the eyes gleaming.” Once more Emory flinched, and Jebs congratulated himself on making up so good a story on the spur of the moment.
"Then there are plat-eye yarns,” he continued, "and curses, and planting crops by the full moon and so on.”
"Now keep your feathers on,” said Noll. "You’ve got things kind of mixed up there. Planting by the full moon isn’t a superstition, it’s the sure-enough real thing.”
"There’s a full moon tonight, isn’t there?” said Jebs. "Full, or nearly. You three Bickram boys have planted a crop of lawbreaking that you’re going to reap in a bumper harvest. Wait just a few hours, and see if I’m not telling you the truth.”
"I’m going to knock that smart monkey talk out of you,” promised Emory, and again set himself as if to leap at Jebs.
"Oh, you stand easy, Emory,” Noll withered him. "Ferd told me about the time you tangled with this kid at that square dance, and it didn’t sound to me as if you got anything but the short end of the rope.” Facing Jebs again, Noll spoke with quiet calm, as though discussing a matter of routine business. "You’re just wasting your breath, boy. Nobody’s going to trace us here, or you either. Make up your mind to that. We’re going to keep you for our guest for a few days.”
"Guest?” repeated Jebs.
"You’ll stay right here with us. Eat in here, sleep in here. You see,” said Noll, "we planned a nice profitable year in these parts, gathering in beaver fur and maybe one or two other worthwhile items. You and your smart buddy, what’s his name?”
"Randy Hunter,” Jebs told him.
"Well, you’ve fixed it so that there’ll be search parties combing everywhere after us, including up to our house. So we’re going to make a quick, fast haul of all the beaver we can get out of that lake, and then dust away out of this part of the country.” Noll fixed his hard gaze on Jebs again.
"I’ve told you how I can’t afford to be arrested.”
"Shoo,” cried Jebs, "are you dumb fool enough to go to Beaver Lake when they’ll be waiting for you there?”
"No, we’re smart enough. After starting out at that point, the search parties will be pushing and prying around other places. They won’t waste time gopping at those beavers. After we’ve skinned as many beaver as we can manage in the next couple of days, we bid Moore County goodby forever. And you stay right here till we go.”
"And what happens to me then?” asked Jebs.
Emory scowled. "You’ll never live to tell anybody—” "Shut up!” Noll snapped at his cousin. "Jebs, you just take it easy-like and don’t study up ways to give us any extra trouble. When we leave, you can go, too. You’ll not know how to set anybody chasing us then. Now, sit down,” and Noll pointed to a box against the wall.
Jebs sat down. He was inclined to think that he had talked himself out of an immediate destruction. Noll had told him earlier that he, Jebs, would never get back to his friends, "any more than your buddy who sank down under that beaver pond.” Now Noll was speaking as though Jebs would be set free after the Bickrams had fled from the Sandhills country. That meant Jebs’s talk about Randy’s probable escape had affected the chief of the Bickrams, had made him hesitate against firing a fatal shot.
Noll’s cold voice broke in upon his meditations.
"We’re going to stay here for tonight, anyway,” said Noll. "Early tomorrow we’re going to scout around, gather what stuff we may need from our house before anybody comes nosing up there. Then we’ll see about grabbing some beaver. Just now, we’d better get some sleep.”
"Who’s going to stay awake and guard our little prisoner?” asked Emory.
"I’ll do that,” offered Ferd. "We can divide the night into watches and I’ll take the first watch.”
But Noll shook his head. "No, that wouldn’t work. Emory there would doze off on his watch, anyway. And I don’t think it will be necessary. Here, Ferd, keep watch over Jebs while I fix him so he won’t be going anywhere.”
He handed Ferd the revolver, then took a coil of clothesline rope from a peg driven into the dirt wall, and stepped close to Jebs.
"Are you going to leave me tied up all night?” asked Jebs.
Noll grinned, but not in friendly fashion. "That won’t be necessary, either,” he said. "I’m just going to stake you out, so you won’t be leaving us without saying good-by. First off, are you carrying a knife?”
He stooped and patted Jebs’s pockets, located the hard lump of a horn-handled pocketknife, and possessed himself of it.
"All right now,” he said, and knelt.
With quick skill he flung a loop of the line snugly around Jebs’s ankle and then produced a
hank of fishline, with which he lashed the loop so as to hold the ankle snugly without squeezing it. Pausing, Noll rose and went to one of the shelflike niches, poked in it, and discovered a package with an outer wrapping of cellophane. He tore away a sizable chunk of this, returned, and carefully continued his lashing with the fishline, partially tying a big flake of cellophane into it. He cut the clothesline at the distance of some feet from the ankle loop, and lashed a similar confining loop around Jebs’s wrist, with the cellophane in the lashing as before.
"Get me the ax,” Noll ordered Emory, took it in his hand as Emory brought it, and stepped to where several bits of loose wood lay in a heap, as if for a stock of kindling. He selected two stout billets, hacked them to points, and with the back of the ax drove them strongly into the floor at points near opposite walls.
"Now move over here, Jebs,” said Noll, and when Jebs did so Noll tied the free ends of the lengths of clothesline tightly to the two stakes. Jebs could sit or lie on the pine straw between the two, not uncomfortably confined, but he was unable to move within reach of either stake because of his bonds.
"See how that arrangement works?” said Noll to his cousins. "Without a knife, he can’t fling himself loose from those lines unless he rattles the cellophane a right smart.” Noll rattled a piece in his own hand by way of illustration. "Likewise, he’d have to thrash around in the pine straw, and that would make a lot of rustle, too. And,” Noll turned his eyes on Jebs, "I’m just about the lightest sleeper you ever met, boy. I wake up if a bird scratches its feathers a mile away.”
He pulled out one pallet and made it up again, crosswise on the floor in such a position as to hem Jebs away from the door.
"Give me back that shooting iron, Ferd,” he said. "Here’s where I’ll sack in tonight. You’d better lie quiet and rest easy, Jebs Marcum. If I wake up all of a sudden, I may start slapping a mess of lead over in your direction. Emory, Ferd, you can sleep closer to the door.”
So saying, Noll cupped his hand around the top of the lamp chimney and blew quickly and strongly down into it. The light went out. Jebs, picketed in two directions like a half-broken horse, heard his captors seeking their couches. Then all was silent, until the snoring of one of the Bickrams, probably Emory, showed that slumber had come to the hidden den where he was held prisoner.
UNEXPECTED VISITOR
Jebs lay quietly, as Noll had commanded him. He was not the boy to court a volley of bullets by restless tossing and rustling. But, if his body remained motionless, his mind raced madly.
He thought of his home, of the bed he had so light-heartedly deserted to sneak out upon the adventure that had suddenly taken this baleful turn. His father and mother must be asleep by now, or, if not, they would be certain that their son was safe and quiet between sheets. He wouldn’t be missed at home until breakfast time. Meanwhile, what would be happening to him?
Randy had absented himself without leave, too. Major Hunter would not think to glance into Randy’s room, find an empty bed, and go searching. The officers of the law — Deputy Sheriff O’Brien and Mr. Meadows, the game warden — planned to scout the shores of Beaver Lake, but not until tomorrow night. Then they would find nothing. The Bickrams were setting no traps tonight, and would be watching out when next they visited the lake. No, not until Jebs’s father and Major Hunter raised the alarm in the morning would anyone come searching for him and Randy.
Wait, Jebs told himself. He’d already decided that Randy was safe and free. Randy had to be safe and free. Jebs had argued that point successfully. But what if something unthinkable, unforeseeable, had happened, down there under the surface of the lake, and Randy was — gone? The Bickrams felt sure of that, and Jebs’s opinion was one alone against the three of theirs. Where was Randy? Was he really alive, or was he —
Again Jebs refused to say the word, even in his thoughts. His free hand tugged his disordered hair, then it reached across and gropingly investigated the lashings that moored the loop of clothesline around his wrist. Noll had spoken the truth. That fishline was so tightly whipped around the larger cord, and so closely drawn and knotted, that nobody could loosen it without a knife. Jebs’s fingertips brushed the tag of brittle cellophane and it rustled drily. To Jebs’s ears it seemed an echoing rattle inside the cave, as though someone had shaken a great loose sheet of tin.
"What are you up to, Jebs Markum?” came the instant sharp demand of Noll Bickram from the darkness a few feet away. "Speak up, boy, or this gun will start speaking, right now.”
"Take it easy,” protested Jebs quickly. 'I was just wallowing, down here, to be more comfortable.”
"Then stop wallowing,” said Noll. "Next time you start making a fuss like that, I’ll guarantee I’ll fix you so you’ll never worry about being comfortable again.”
Jebs obediently subsided, his heart beating like an Indian dance drum. Noll Bickram had certainly spoken the truth about how lightly he slept. There was nothing for it but to lie here, wakeful and worried but dead quiet, hour after eternal hour.
The next thing that Jebs knew, a light gleamed somewhere and voices murmured. The Bickrams were moving around and one of them had lighted the kerosene lamp. Jebs rose on his free elbow. Ferd saw him, and laughed shortly.
"Looks like our star boarder’s waking up,” said Ferd to Emory, who also gazed at Jebs with his habitual unfriendly knotting of the eyebrows.
"Yes, and it’s about time,” added Noll, who knelt near the foliage-draped doorway and touched a kindled match to the wick of a small kerosene stove. "The sun’s getting ready to show his face outside.”
"Did I sleep all night?” yawned Jebs, wondering how he had managed it.
"Boy, you sure did,” said Noll. "After I told you the one time that I wanted you to lie still, there wasn’t another sound or wiggle out of you from then on. Emory, go cast those lines off of the stakes, but leave the loops on his wrist and ankle so we can moor him back down when we need to. Breakfast is going to be ready in a few minutes now.”
First a sooty coffeepot was brought to a boil on the kerosene stove, then a frying pan was set in its place and big thick slices of bacon tossed in. Ferd took a stack of tin plates and a bundle of knives and forks from one of the shelf niches. At Noll’s curt gesture, Jebs joined his three captors around the stove and all of them ate bacon, cold corn bread and canned jam, and drank strong black coffee without cream or sugar.
"Now what do we do?” asked Ferd between mouthfuls, and Noll began to issue orders.
"We’ll do just what I said last night,” he replied, with the air of a military leader. "We’ll head for the house and get whatever we may want to carry off, before any searchers get started this morning. Once we’ve got it stashed away out of reach — we’ll load up the car, and drive it some place where nobody’s apt to look —we’ll come back here, get some traps and watch our chance to set em in that beaver pool.” He pointed to a great bundle of traps, a dozen or more, hanging to a peg driven into the wall of the cave. "Ferd and I are going out to handle these things. Emory, stay here and keep an eye on Jebs until we get back.”
"Hadn’t I better do the guarding?” offered Ferd, but Noll shook his head.
"No, Ferd. You’re a sight better and quieter a hand in these woods, especially since we want to nose out whoever may be setting up a posse to follow us. Here, Emory, take the pistol.” He passed it over, then went and lifted the shotgun from its pegs, flipped open the breech and fed two red, brass-capped shells into it. "This will be artillery enough for us if we need it,” he announced grimly. "That’s Number Nine buckshot I put in, and it’ll stop a deputy sheriff just as quick and sudden as it’ll stop a deer.”
Jebs did his best not to tremble or stare. Noll sounded coldly businesslike rather than murderous. That meant he was more dangerous than an eager, nervous killer.
"Emory,” continued Noll, "keep between the door and this prisoner. Don’t let him come close enough to try to grab that gun away from you. And if he looks as if he wants to reach for
the lamp, or for anything to throw, just up and shoot him loose from it.”
"That would be a pleasure,” grinned Emory.
"Well, remember, business before pleasure,” said Noll sharply. "I don’t want that gun to make so much as a whisper of noise unless it has to. Keep Jebs alive for us if you possibly can. And, Jebs,” added Noll to the captive, "you remember that it’s best to make no foolish moves. You want to stay alive and healthy, just as much as I want you to.”
So saying, Noll pushed aside the branches at the door, peered out, then departed. Ferd followed at his heels. Emory picked up a bucket of water and set it on the oil stove, then squatted beside it, sourly watching Jebs. Jebs met Emory’s gaze in silence. Neither spoke nor moved for long minutes. Finally Emory looked into the water pail, from which steam was beginning to rise.
"I reckon it’s hot enough now,” he announced, and lifted it carefully from the stove, then set it midway between himself and Jebs. He pointed to the stack made up of frying pan, tin plates, knives and forks that had served the party at breakfast. "All right, you,” he growled at Jebs. "Get busy. Wash them dishes up.”
For a moment Jebs felt himself swelling with angry protest against such a dictatorial order to do menial labor. But he kept quiet, for a sudden hopeful plan sprang into his mind, quieting his anger like water poured on fire.
"Where’s the soap?” he said.
Emory’s thick forefinger pointed to a big half bar of yellow soap, and Jebs picked it up.
"You know,” he said casually, "your cousin Noll is a good example of what happens to a man when he gets deep into crime. He has to be hiding, worrying, ready to kill —”
Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1953 Page 11