Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC (24 page)

"You heard
that doctor lady say Rixon isn't as big as you are, Moon-Eye," I argued
him. "You hit him and she won't like it."

He stalked on
toward the brick building where the scholars had their rooms.

Bang!  
 

The lantern went
out with a smash of glass.

The two of us
stopped still in the dark and stared. Up ahead, in the brick building, a head
and shoulders made itself black in a lighted window, and a cigar-coal glowed.

"I said I
didn't fear you, Moon-Eye!" laughed the voice of Rixon Pengraft. "Nor
I don't fear Old Devlins, whatever kin he is to you!"

A black arm waved
something. It was a rifle. Moon-Eye drew himself up tall in the dark.

"Help me,
John," he said. "I can't see a hand before me.

"You going
to fight him, Moon-Eye? When he has that gun?"

"Help me
back to Professor Deal's." He put his hand on my shoulder and gripped down
hard. "Get me into the light."

"What do you
aim to do?"

"Something
there wasn't a reason to do, till now." That was the last the either of us
said. We walked back. Nobody was on the porch, but the door was open. We
stepped across the chalk-drawn diagram and into the front room. Professor Deal
and Dr. McCoy stood looking at us.

"You've come
back," Dr. McCoy said to Moon-Eye, the gladdest you'd ever call for a lady
to say. She made a step toward him and put out her hand.

"I heard a
gun go off out there," she said,

"My lantern
got shot to pieces," Moon-Eye told her, "I've come back to do what
you bid me do. John, if you don't know the song—"

"I do know
it, Moon-Eye," I said. "I stopped because I thought you didn't want
it."

"I want it
now," he rang out his voice. "If my great-grandsire can be called
here tonight, call him. Sing it, John."

I still carried
my guitar. I slanted it across me and picked the strings:

He killed the
Mackey captain,
 
He went behind the hill,
 
Them Mackeys never caught him,
 
And I know they never will. . . .
 
 

Great-grandsire!"
yelled out Moon-Eye, so that the walls shook with his cry. "I've taken a
right much around here, because I thought it might be best thataway. But
tonight Rixon Pengraft dared you, said he didn't fear you! Come and show him
what it's like to be afraid!"

"Now,
now—" began Professor Deal, then stopped it.

I sang on:

When there's no
moon in heaven
 
And you hear the hound-dogs bark,
 
You can guess that it's Old Devlins
 
A-scrambling in the dark. . . . 
 

Far off outside,
a hound-dog barked in the moonless night.

And on the door
sounded a thumpety-bang knock, the way you'd think the hand that knocked had
knuckles of mountain rock.

I saw Dr. McCoy
weave and sway on her little feet like a bush in a wind, and her blue eyes got
the biggest they'd been yet. But Moon-Eye just smiled, hard and sure, as
Professor Deal walked heavy to the door and opened it.

Next moment he
sort of gobbled in his throat, and tried to shove the door closed again, but he
wasn't quick enough. A wide hat with a long dark beard under it showed through
the door, then big, hunched shoulders like Moon-Eye's. And, spite of the
Professor's shoving, the door came open all the way, and in slid the
long-bearded, big-shouldered man among us.

He stood without
moving inside the door. He was six feet three, all right, and I reckoned he'd
weigh at two hundred pounds. He wore a frocktail coat and knee boots of
cowhide. His left arm cradled a rifle-gun near about as long as he was, and its
barrel was eight-squared, the way you hardly see any more. His big broad right
hand came up and took off the wide hat.

Then we could see
his face, such a face as I'm not likely to forget. Big nose and bright glaring
eyes, and that beard I tell you about, that fell down like a curtain from the
high cheekbones and just under the nose. Wild, he looked, and proud, and deadly
as his weight in blasting powder with the fuse already spitting. I reckon that
old Stonewall Jackson might have had something of that favor, if ever he'd
turned his back on the Lord God.

"I thought I
was dreaming this," he said to us, deep as somebody talking from a
well-bottom, "but I begin to figure the dream's come true."

His eyes came
around to me, those terrible eyes, that shone like two drawn knives.

"You called
me a certain name in your song," he said. "I've been made mad by that
name, on the wrong mouth.

"Devlins?"
I said.

"Devil
Anse," he nodded. "The McCoy crowd named me that. My right name's
Captain Anderson Hatfield, and I hear that somebody around here took a shoot at
my great-grandboy." He studied Moon-Eye. "That's you, ain't it,
son?"

"Now wait,
whoever you are—" began Professor Deal.

"I'm Captain
Anderson Hatfield," he named himself again, and lowered his rifle-gun. Its
butt thumped the floor like a falling tree.

"That
shooting," Professor Deal made out to yammer. "I didn't hear
it."

"I heard
it," said Devil Anse, "and likewise I heard the slight put on me by
the shooter."

"I—I don't
want any trouble—" the Professor still tried to argue.

"Nor you
won't have none, if you hear me," said Devil Anse. "But keep quiet.
And look out yonder."

We looked out the
open door. Just at the porch stood the shadows of three men, wide-hatted, tall,
leaning on their guns.

"Since I was
obliged to come," said Devil Anse Hatfield, and his voice was as deep now
as Moon-Eye's, "I reckoned not to come alone." He spoke into the
night. "Jonce?"

"Yes,
pa."

"You'll be
running things here. You and Vic and Cotton Top keep your eyes cut this way.
Nobody's to go from this house, for the law nor for nothing else."

"Yes,
pa."

Devil Anse
Hatfield turned back to face us. We looked at him, and thought about who he
was.

All those years
back, sixty, seventy, we thought to the Big Sandy that flows between
West
Virginia
and
Kentucky
.
And the fighting between the Hatfields and the McCoys, over what beginning
nobody can rightly say today, but fighting that brought blood and death and
sorrow to all that part of the world. And the efforts to make it cease, by
every kind of arguer and officer, that couldn't keep the Hatfields and the
McCoys apart from each other's throats. And here he was, Devil Anse Hatfield,
from that time and place, picking me out with his eyes.

"You who
sung the song," he nodded me. "Come along,"

I put down my
guitar. "Proud to come with you, Captain," I said.

His hand on my
shoulder gripped like Moon-Eye's, a bear-trap grip there. We walked out the
door, and off the porch past the three waiting tall shadows, and on across the
grounds in the night toward that brick sleeping building.

"You know
where we're going?" I inquired him.

"Seems to me
I do. This seems like the way. What's your name?"

"John,
Captain."

"John, I
left Moon-Eye back there because he called for me to come handle things. He
felt it was my business, talking to that fellow. I can't lay tongue to his name
right off."

"Rixon
Pengraft?"

"Rixon
Pengraft," he repeated me. "Yes, I dreamed that name. Here we are.
Open that door for us."

I'd never been in
that building. Nor either had Devil Anse Hatfield, except maybe in what dreams
he'd had to bring him there. But, if he'd found his way from the long ago, he
found the way to where he was headed. We walked along the hallway inside
between doors, until he stopped me at one. "Knock," he bade me, and I
put my fist to the wood.

A laugh inside,
mean and shaky. "That you, Moon-Eye Newlands?" said Rixon Pengraft's
voice. "You think you dare come in here? I've not locked myself in. Turn
the knob, if you're man enough."

Devil Anse nudged
my shoulder, and I opened the door and shoved it in, and we came across the
threshold together.

Rixon sat on his
bed, with a little old twenty-two rifle across his lap.

"Glad you
had the nerve, Moon-Eye," he began to say, "because there's only room
for one of us to sit next to Anda Lee McCoy—"

Then his mouth
stayed open, with the words ceasing to come out.

"Rixon,"
said Devil Anse, "you know who I am?"

Rixon's eyes hung
out of his head like two scuppernong grapes on a vine. They twitchy-climbed up
Devil Anse, from his boots to his hat, and they got bigger and scareder all the
time.

"I don't
believe it," said Rixon Pengraft, almost too sick and weak for an ear to
hear him.

"You'd
better have the man to believe it. You sang about me. Named me Devil Anse in
the song, and knew it was about me. Thought it would be right funny if I did
come where you were."

At last that big
hand quitted my shoulder, and moved to bring that long eight-square rifle to
the ready.

"Don't!"

Rixon was on his
knees, and his own little toy gun spilled on the floor between us. He was able
to believe now.

"Listen,"
Rixon jibber-jabbered, "I didn't mean anything. It was just a joke on
Moon-Eye."

"A mighty
sorry joke," said Devil Anse. "I never yet laughed at a gun going
off." His boot-toe shoved the twenty-two. "Not even a baby-boy gun
like that."

"I—"
Rixon tried to say, and he had to stop to get strength. "I'll—"

"You'll
break up that there gun," Devil Anse decreed him.

"Break my
gun?" Rixon was still on his knees, but his scared eyes managed to get an
argue-look.

"Break
it," said Devil Anse. "I'm a-waiting, Rixon. Just like that time I
waited by a lonesome river ford."

And his words
were as cold and slow as chunks of ice floating down a half-choked stream in
winter.

Rixon put out his
hand for the twenty-two. His eyes kept hold on Devil Anse. Rixon lifted one
knee from the floor, and laid the twenty-two across it. He tugged at barrel and
stock.

"Harder than
that," said Devil Anse. "Let's see if you got any muscle to match
your loud mouth."

Rixon tugged
again, and then Devil Anse's rifle stirred. Rixon saw, and really made out to
work at it. The little rifle broke at the balance. I heard the wood crack and
splinter.

"All right
now," said Devil Anse, still deep and cold and slow. "You're through
with them jokes you think are so funny. Fling them chunks of gun out
yonder."

He wagged his
head at the open door, and Rixon flung the broken pieces into the hall.

"Stay on
your knees," Devil Anse bade him. "You got praying to do. Pray the
good Lord your thanks you got off so lucky. Because if there's another time you
see me, I'll be the last thing you see this side of the hell I'm six foot three
of."

To me he said:
"Come on, John. We've done with this no-excuse for a man who's broke his
own gun."

Back we went, and
nary word between us. The other three Hatfields stood by Professor Deal's
porch, quiet as painted shadows of three gun-carrying men. In at the door we
walked, and there was Professor Deal, and over against the other side of the
room stood Moon-Eye and Dr. McCoy.

"Rixon named
somebody McCoy here," said Devil Anse. "Who owns up to the
name?"

"I do,"
said she, gentle but steady.

"You hold
away from her, Great-grandsire," spoke up Moon-Eye.

"Boy,"
said Devil Anse, "you telling me what to do and not do?"

"I'm telling
you, Great-grandsire."

I looked at those
two tall big-nosed men from two times in the same family's story, and, saving
Devil Anse's beard, and maybe thirty-some-odd years, you couldn't have called
for two folks who favored each other's looks more.

"Boy,"
said Devil Anse, "you trying to scare me?"

"No,
Great-grandsire. I'm not trying to scare you."

Devil Anse
smiled. His smile made his face look the terriblest he'd looked so far.

"Now, that's
good. Because I never been scared in all my days on this earth."

"I'm just
telling you, Great-grandsire," said Moon-Eye. "You hold away from
her."

Dr. McCoy stood
close to Moon-Eye, and all of a sudden Moon-Eye put his hickory-sleeved arm
round her and drew her closer still.

Devil Anse put
his eyes on them. That terrible smile crawled away out of his beard, like a
deadly poison snake out of grass, and we saw it no more.

"Great-grandboy,"
he said, "it wasn't needful for you to get me told. I made a mistake once
with a McCoy girl. Jonce—my son standing out yonder—loved and courted her.
Roseanna was her name."

"Roseanna,"
said the voice of Jonce Hatfield outside.

"I never
gave them leave to marry," said Devil Anse. "Wish I had now. It would
have saved a sight of trouble and grief and killing. And nobody yet ever heared
me say that."

His eyes relished
Dr. McCoy, and it was amazing to see that they could be quiet eyes, kind eyes.

"Now,
girl," he said, "even if you might be close kin to Old Ran
McCoy—"

"I'm not
sure of the relationship," she said. "if it's there, I'm not
ashamed."

"Nor you
needn't be." His beard went down and up as he nodded her. "I've fit
the McCoy set for years, and not once found ary scared soul among them. Ain't
no least drop of coward blood in their veins." He turned. "I'll be
going."

"Going?"
asked Professor Deal.

"Yes, sir.
Goodnight to the all of you."