Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 02 (19 page)

 
          
“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.

 
          
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.

 
          
Warren
went to a chink in the logs and put his eye
to it.

 
          
"A
spell brought that on,” he said.

 
          
"Spell?”
Hazel Techeray echoed him. "But—but—”

 
          
"The
protective spell John said may not work against everything,” he said.
"Storms can be raised. Guazzo tells us about them in his
Demonalotry
book.”

 
          
"Shoo,”
I said. "One time way out west, I saw me some Indians dance and sing and
pray to bring rain down when they were a-hurting for it. And it looked to be a
natural thing to me.”

 
          
Outside,
a drawling, teasing voice: "Hello, the house again!”

 
          
It
made me mad. I drifted to a log space.
"Hello yourself,
Brooke Altic,” I called into the night.

 
          
"Is
that you, John? How did you like our little operatic performance?”

 
          
"For
the beginning of the overture, it was right amusing,” I said. "You know,
Mr. Altic, you just fixed yourselves so there's no point in using fire arrows
anymore. The logs and the roof must be soaked as wet as sop.”

 
          
“By
the ones I worship, you may be right,” came his drawl. “We live and learn,
don't
we
, John? But I don't want to talk to you. Let
me address myself to lovely little Callie Gray.”

 
          
“I
won't say one word to him,” she whispered.

 
          
“Don't,”
said
Warren
, from where he kept his lookout, gun in
hand.

 
          
We
waited and said naught.

 
          
“Miss
Callie Gray,” said Aide's slow voice, “I'm driven to wonder if you may not be
the only rational person in that beleaguered house. I'd like to say to you,
this whole little incident might turn out to your advantage.”

 
          
She
didn't speak. Not one of us spoke.

 
          
“Callie
Gray, you could make yourself happy among us,” said Aide's voice. “You could be
prosperous among
us,
you could be fruitful among us—”

 
          
“That
will do out there,” yelled
Warren
at him, mad enough to sting like a hornet.

 
          
“Do
I hear the voice of Jackson Warren?”

 
          
“You
don't hear the voice of Callie Gray,” came back
Warren
. “She knows all about those plans you want
to make for her.”

 
          
“All about them?”
Altic mocked him.

 
          
“Yes,
she does, and she's not having any.”

 
          
A laugh out there.
“I suppose you have the right to speak
for her.”

 
          
“I'm
doing it.”

 
          
Callie
had moved up behind
Warren
, and she put her hand on his arm. It was pretty to see her do that
thing, in the dim light.

 
          
“Now,
then,” came Aide's mockery-sounding voice, "you think you've said enough,
do you? You think we'll just quit and go away? Leave you alone?"

 
          
"We
don't think nair such thing," Mr. Ben told him from where he stood to look
out another place. "We think you'll use round out there till one of you
gets out in the open and we can take a fair shot at him."

 
          
Brooke
Altic laughed his laugh. "You ask too much from us, Mr. Gray, a whole lot
too much. Various things will happen without that happening. We've just begun
to open our bag of tricks." He paused. "Of course, you can get rid of
us by throwing that alexandrite out to us."

 
          
"Don't
hold your breath a-waiting that long," Mr. Ben spit out.

 
          
Thunder
rolled fit to bust your ears just then, and a bright flash of lightning flung a
moment of white fire in at all the log spaces.

 
          
"That
near about hit the place," gulped Hazel Techeray, scared.

 
          
Another thunder roll, another white fiery flash that came in and
lighted up the whole room for a second.

 
          
"They'll
blast this house down.” Hazel Techeray was near about a-sobbing.

 
          
"Not
them," I said to calm her down. "They want us alive or, at least,
some of us."

 
          
No
more thunder after that. The silence came a-creeping back in round us.
Finally Aide's voice from outside broke that silence.

 
          
"You
people simply won't listen to reason," he said, like as if he mourned at
it, from somewhere close to the side of the cabin.

 
          
I
pushed over close to the wall at that point and looked out. The moon showed
itself again, and maybe two-three
stars,
and I saw
just a big pine tree. Likely he was behind that, within feet of where I stood.
I poked my rifle through the logs.

 
          
“We'll
always listen to reason,” I said. “That's how come there's no point to listen
to you.”

 
          
“John,”
he mocked.
“Oh, John, John.
You're a thorn in the
flesh of progress, John. The United States Government would never like what I
could say about you.”

 
          
“Get
the government in here to hark at both sides of the story,” I said.

 
          
“John,”
he said my name again, “you have a lost cause. As lost as the cause of the old
Confederacy. By now, we've brought our line of power to this point. We can do
whatever we want to with you.”

 
          
I
decided not to swap words with him on that. He sounded another sight readier of
tongue than what I was. I looked out there at his tree. The rifle Mr. Ben had
given me would have slapped a bullet all the way through it, but just to wound
Altic wouldn't finish him. We had to have a Shonokin dead.

 
          
I
heard a creaky, grinding sound, and the house shifted on its foundation rocks.
It was like something with water a-pushing it in a flood. Hazel Techeray made
one of her whimpers again. Callie said, “What in the name of gracious?” And Mr.
Ben said something I'd bet he wouldn't want written down as his last words in
this life.

 
          
I
peeked out again. The trees in the yard waved their branches like arms and I
heard the whipping rustle of their leaves. The house creaked. Gentlemen, it was
a mean night on us there.

 
          
For,
as I reckoned, the Shonokins had somehow or other put their line of power along
the ground to us like a gun aimed to a target. They wanted to scare us right
out into the open. If that happened, what would come next?

 
          
I
couldn't reply myself on that, so I didn't try.

           
Yet again I took a squint. Out
yonder, something sort of scuttered amongst some bushes. I aimed the best I
could and touched my trigger. The rifle banged.

 
          
“Yowl”
came
a howl to answer it. Mr. Ben edged along toward
me.

 
          
“I
got him, I think,” I whispered. "I hope.”

 
          
There
was a low muttering sound here and there, like voices. I heard a rattle of
leaves, where maybe something was a-being dragged. I had a hope for what it
was.

           
But then, A1tic's voice came again,
his drawly, mocking voice again.

 
          
“That
was only a slight flesh wound on a friend of mine. Let me make a last offer
before we throw that place down on top of you fools. All of you can come out
and be safe, except John.”

 
          
“They
want to kill you, John,” Hazel Techeray whispered me.

 
          
“All
except John,” said Altic again. “Come out without weapons, and you can leave
along the road. Leave safely, leave alive. Just give us that alexandrite.
That's a promise on the spirit we Shonokins worship. When I say that, you know
I mean what I say.”

 
          
“Miss
Hazel's right,” said Mr. Ben. “They're a-fixing to kill you, John.”

 
          
“Kill
John, and nobody else,”
Warren
added on. “They want to save the rest of us for purposes of their own.
If we stay in here, they won't try to smash us with the house.”

 
          
“Well,
don't say aught back to them,” said Mr. Ben.

 
          
The
house gave itself a grind again. We felt a shove all round us, like as if the
air had gone as heavy as water. The stout old rafters above our heads creaked
in their fastenings.