Those tracks were made one by one, the way a man walks, a-putting one foot ahead of the other.
Well, maybe such a thing lived and walked on this earth. I recollected a book I’d seen in the library once, Oddities by Rupert T. Gould. And that Gould fellow knew what he was a-doing when he named his book that. Right the first chapter in it told what had happened more than a hundred years back, the westernmost part of England. There’d been a heavy snow to fall, and there were hoofmarks in it—hoofmarks in place after place, on top of houses and on walls. Hoofmarks, of something that walked on two hoofs. And folks in Devonshire were scared to go outdoors, and how should a man feel, all alone with a set of hoofmarks like that, on a mountain with a bad name?
I took me a good look all round, through the trees, and I was glad not to see aught that had such feet and walked thataway on only two of them.
Where there came down another little fall I pulled myself up to the ledge above, that sloped so that the stream could run along there. The trees I saw were oak and maple and locust, a-growing on both banks, with brush under them. I could see betwixt the trunks how far I’d come up, and likewise how far up the steep rocky face was above me. Still no sound of a bird or aught else. But if I could hear naught, I could feel. As I made my way on, I had me a feeling of something that followed.
That's no sure enough good feeling to have, all alone by yourself on such a climb. Because, as some of you all have heard tell, there’s a thing in some parts of this mountain country they call the Behinder. It sneaks up along behind a lonely traveler, and he nair sees it because it’s on his back quick as a mink on a setting hen, and that's the last second of his life. It so happens that once I had me a glimpse of a Behinder, up on the top of Yandro Mountain, and I'm honest to tell you that the glimpse is enough to last me forever, if I live to be a hundred and twelve.
I kept on my way, with my wits about me and the tail of my eye a-looking past my shoulder. If that was a Behinder, a-mak- ing air so slightly a soundless stir in the leaves, I'd do what I could. I reckoned what to do, if it got close, would be all a sudden to whip round and look it betwixt its eyes (if a Behinder truly has what we understand eyes to be) and say, “All right, what the hell do you figure to do?"
But no great much of a comfort in that, not all alone a-picking my way along the ledge where the water ran and the trees grew. I stooped quick, and grabbed me up a rock, one that likely weighed four pounds and was a pinky-gray flint kind of a rock. That would smash a skull if I had to do that. If the Behinder sure enough has a skull, has a sure enough head.
But I'm glad to say that naught tried onto me as I went along the ledge beside the stream to where came another fall of water from above. The rock was straight up and down there, but into the face of it had been dug or chipped some pits, big enough to grab with the hand or shove into with a toe. Who or what had dug them? But they made a ladder up, and I dropped that rock I'd had and swarved my way up. I reckon it may have been twelve or fourteen feet to the ledge above, but it seemed like as if it was as tall up there as the top of a church steeple. I knew that if I looked down below me, the face of Cry Mountain would look as straight up and down as the wall of a room, with me like a fly a-walking up it. Well I knew that thing, and you all can just bet your necks I didn’t look down. I kept a-climbing on those pits till I got to the flat face of a ledge above, and I sat for a second and looked at what was up there with me.
Some black walnuts grew there, and beneath them some scrub of different kinds. Where the dark soil had been flung up by the flow of the water, there were some smaller plants, about a foot and a half high, a whole bed of them. I studied them.
They made quite a bunch, each one a-putting up two or three sets of five leaves; five leaves, like the green fingers of a hand spread out for a grab. I right off knew what they were. Ginseng, the scholar crowd will call it, that’s a word from the Chinese language, I reckon, but here in these mountains we just call it sang and let it go at that.
You find you a nice patch of sang and you’re in the money. The roots, dried and cured out the proper way, will fetch sixty dollars a pound, more or less, at the merchant’s. And he sells it for away more than that, over yonder in China, where they say it will cure all sorts of ills, will make you live a hundred years, will make an old gray-haired grandsire get to chasing young women through the woods on a night when it’s pouring the rain. There it grew, and in rich soil. All except in one place, under the leaves, the soil looked pale. 1 wondered myself if maybe rocks lay there. I put down my hand and pulled aside some five-fingered leaves to see what kind of rocks.
But not rocks, after all. Bones.
They were pale bones, as smooth as if they’d lain there a hundred years. And they were human bones. By their size, I reckoned they’d once been a fairly well-grown man.
I dragged the sang plants as far apart as I could to see those last remains of who had lived and now lived no more. The bones lay more or less together, not scattered out, the ribs there with arm bones to right and left and leg bones at the bottom. Like as if whoair it had been was down on his back to die. Only there was no skull to them, no skull at all. Who had these dry bones been?
I made out a dark band that wound round the spine, and moved off quick, for it might could be a snake again. Then I had a second look, and it was just an old, old leather belt, near about rotted away. A big square brass buckle looked up at me. And it had two letters on it, two block letters.
ZP.
All right, I said to myself, ZP stands for a name, and I reckoned I’d heard the name, at Preacher Larrowby’s house. ZP—Zeb Plattenburg. It had to be Zeb Plattenburg who lay there, what bones were left of him, where he’d been a-climbing Cry Mountain, the way he’d bragged he’d do, and had got that far and no farther.
I want you all to know I felt a chill in my own bones, a sort of stir in my hair. Tombs McDonald had said that Zeb Plattenburg had been a bold, daring young fellow, who’d more or less dared himself to try this climb, and had made it up as far as where the sang grew so thick and so rich. I took me a look all round and up and down, and was glad that no leaf stirred just then, no shadow moved. I got down on one knee and prayed a prayer for rest to the soul of Zeb Plattenburg, who’d climbed to there and died there because there was no rest in his bold, careless heart.
But what had gone with Zeb Plattenburg’s head? I could find no trace of it. It couldn’t have rolled away through that tangly bed of sang. Somebody—something—must have toted it off somewhere.
I got up from where I’d prayed and kept on up Cry Mountain, up beyond where Zeb Plattenburg hadn’t lived to get to. For I, too, had sworn and vowed I’d make that climb to the top.
I worked my way along that ledge that had itself a bed of sang, with under the sang what had to be Zeb Plattenburg's last resting place. I walked under trees beside the long flow of water and amongst bushes. Again there was the feel of a something on the follow behind me, and I looked back and looked again, and naught to see there. You all can bet I felt creepy. But all the while I was a-making it farther up to the top of Cry Mountain than Zeb Plattenburg had managed before he was some way struck dead and his skull taken away. I'd heard tell, time and again, that a pure heart will win over evil, and I sure enough wished that my heart was a purer one.
Where the water flowed down from above onto that woodsy ledge, I stopped and sat down. It wasn't noon yet, but I'd made myself tired and hungry with all that swarving and climbing. So I put myself on a knob of rock where I could look all ways—up, down, forward, and back—and got out the last chunks of corn bread and ham that Tombs had put together for me, and bit into them. I drank from my canteen to help the last crumbs down into me. Yet again, a long look all directions. If there was aught there, it was a-crowding in on me unseen.
I pulled my guitar round where I sat. I swept at the strings and worked me out a tune. I sang, with the words a-coming to me as I sang them:
“Cry Mountain, cry,
Why do you cry?<
br />
Does wind or rain
Put you in pain,
Or do you tell
A man will find hell
If he comes to your top?
Me, I won't stop
Till I reach to where I know
What it is makes you cry so . . ."
I stopped and made a whisper of the strings with my thumb. I thought to myself, that song was no great one, the words or either the music. But if I had me some time later, maybe I’d work it into something better. But what I did hope was that this mountain had heard me, that it knew it was John against the mountain. If I’d truly been a country fool to climb so high on it, I’d at least made it farther up than poor Zeb Plattenburg. And Td climb higher yet. I turned my eyes upward to see how I could do it.
Right off, I saw how I’d nearly made it. The lip of the precipice was just above there, with trees grown close on it and a-bending down, big bushy-topped pines and old oaks, some more black walnut, maple, gum, and mountain ash and others. And next thing I saw, on the face of the rock ran a sort of cut- in ladder.
It was no little bunch of shallow hand-and footholds this time, like those I’d used below. These were deep and roomy, near about like a staircase, only the rock was too steep for a staircase. Like a ladder, as I’ve told you all. And there was no point in my a-waiting down there on that lump of rock. I swung my guitar back behind me, and I set myself to those steps and went up them.
I climbed and I climbed with both my hands and both my feet, and in time I got to the top. I dragged myself up on a flat place, level and broad, with tufty grass under the trees. I got hold of the stem of a sapling and hauled myself up to where I could stand.
The top of Cry Mountain was as flat as a table, but a table grown over with trees. I moved a little in amongst them. Through the leafy branches ahead I saw something else. A stockade, I made it out to be. Big stout poles of different kinds of wood, driven in so close together you could barely see betwixt them. Somebody had made that fence of poles, had driven them in. I walked toward them, right delicate as I moved, ready for what might could happen.
Close in, I saw there was a gate. It was made of stout rails laid across. There was a foot log at the bottom and a cross-log at the top, and the gate fitted in there like as if a master builder had done it. Centermost of that log above the gate was fastened a skull, with eyes of dark shadow and a grin of its teeth. I looked up at it, and I could swear it looked down at me.
That selfsame moment, something made itself heard.
Not the voice of Cry Mountain this time, not that lonesome sound. It was a deep hum, like bees, but louder. I turned to see, and sure enough it was bees.
A swarm of them drifted amongst the trees toward me. There must have been a nation of them, bright and brown, and they were big—bigger than bees, than bumblebees—more like a world of flying mice or sparrows for size, and all of them a-humming as they came at me.
I ran hard against the rails of the gate, so hard I almost bounced off. I grabbed hold, a-fixing to climb over.
“I’ve been waiting for you to get here,” said a deep voice the other side of the gate. “I’ve watched you all the way up. You’d better come in, quickly.”
The heavy gate swung inward, with a screech of wood on wood. And you all can bet I flew through and inside it.
5
The gate swished in the air as it swung shut behind me. I heard the heavy snap it made as some kind of catch or lock caught itself. That swarm of great big bees came up and fluttered itself right against the rails of the gate. The bees hung there in the air like a lumpy brown blanket, feet tall and feet wide, and all the humming was like the rush of falling water.
“Don’t be afraid of them now,” the deep voice said to me. “A sting from one of them would kill you like the bite of a poisonous snake. But they never come past this fence.”
I turned round and had my first sight of who was a-talking.
He was big, so heavyset that you didn’t realize right off that he had a good height, but he wasn’t porky. He looked as hard as iron. He’d weigh maybe twenty-five pounds more than I do. He wore a good-looking old-timey hunting shirt down to his knees, buckskin as pale as cream with long fringes at the sleeves and cape collar. On each side at the front was worked a thunderbird in red and blue beads. The collar lay open, and on his hairy chest hung what at first I thought was a crucifix. A red silk sash went round his waist. His square-jawed face looked middle-aged and smart as hell. The dark, gray-shot hair was balded off his brow, but it was long over his ears. He had a short, straight nose and a mustache swept out right and left, and on his lower lip and chin point a streak of beard the size and length of a paring- knife blade. His eyes, and they were eyes as gray and shadowy as smoke, studied me all over from head to foot.
“You’re a tall man,” said his deep, croony voice. “Taller than I am, and I’m six feet or nearly. And you’re strong and active, you’ve had to be with all the climbing and hiking you’ve done these past few days.” He stopped again, his eyes still a-climbing all over me. “And your name’s John.”
“How come you to know my name?”
“I make it my business to know some interesting things, even things far off beyond these mountains. I have methods of finding out—you may find them hard to believe. I let you come here because I thought we might profit each other.” He smiled on me, a tight-mouthed smile. “As for me, my name’s Ruel Harpe. Harpe with an e at the end of it.”
“Harpe,” I repeated him. “I’ve read that name in a history book.”
“It’s a name with an interesting significance, isn’t it?” While we talked, I was a-having myself a look round to make out what kind of a place this was on top of Cry Mountain. Outside the gate, those big bees had hummed off somewhere away. Where I was inside grew trees, all manner of trees. Pines and hemlocks and cedars, rich green. A stand of hickory. Laurel, thicketed here and yonder And maple and ash and wild cherry and so on, but no brush—that had been cleared away. Streaks of sunlight came a-stabbing down here and there. Somewhere amongst trunks and branches, I thought I glimpsed somebody a-standing to watch and hark at Ruel Harpe and me, without a-coming into sight.
I turned back to where Ruel Harpe stood, still a-making his study of me. He put up a broad-backed hand and sort of stroked that blade of beard.
“An interesting significance,” he repeated over again. “There were two Harpes I read the mention of,” I said. “Brothers, in what used to be wild country in Tennessee and Kentucky, back about the seventeen and nineties.”
“That's right," he nodded me. “Micajah and Wiley Harpe. Big and Little Harpe, they were called. They're credited with being more or less the founding fathers of American outlawry."
“People were purely scared of them,” I said.
“That's true, but the Harpes have never been truly understood. Anyway, here you are. It's my duty to show you hospitality"
You might could figure that when he said the word “hospitality," he was hospitable. But the sound of his deep voice was more like an order to come along, like as if I was under arrest. When we started out together, he didn't have his hand on my shoulder or aught like that. But it felt like it.
Well, the top of Cry Mountain, that flat, tree-grown top of it, was several acres big, as I judged. And grown up with trees but no brush under them as I’ve said, just flat, rich-looking ground, not what you'd expect on top of a mountain like that. Here and there grew bits of grass and patches of moss, one or two clumps of toadstools, and some flowers. I didn't seem to know those flowers, though I know most kinds hereabouts. The fenced-in part was maybe the size of a great big stable yard. As Ruel Harpe and I sort of ambled along together, it was a mite hard to recollect that I’d climbed up the steep, scary side of Cry Mountain like a fly a-going up a wall. And what he'd said about how he knew I was a-coming, how he'd more or less let me come, why, that was on my mind. I decided I'd ask him about it.
“You mean, you could have stopped me," I said, and
thought, and decided to say it. “The way you stopped Zeb Plattenburg."
“Oh, that one," said Ruel Harpe. “He wasn't worth my trouble. You wonder what happened to him, down there? You should be able to guess. The bees. They settled on him, and one sting should have been enough, but maybe a hundred of them stung him. A thousand.”
I studied that. “These are special bees. But ordinary bees, they die when they sting.”
“So do these bees die when they sting, but there are always more bees to take the places of the dead. Don’t get out there where they can sting you, John. 1 might add I have other guardians on Cry Mountain than bees.”
We walked along over the earth and rock under the trees. The light through the leaves was green, like maybe down at the bottom of the sea. I looked thisaway and that, but saw no sign of other living things, and no sign of a house or cabin. “Where do you live?” I inquired Harpe.
“We have comfortable quarters down under the rock.” “We?” 1 repeated him. “Then you’re not alone up here, I take it.”
“No, I’ll introduce you to some companions pretty soon. Choice companions. I’m careful about companions.”
“You nair wanted Zeb Plattenburg,” I made a guess.
“The one whose bones lie down there? No, I hadn’t any need of him. I let him get just so close, then I got rid of him.” “With your bees,” I said. “Did they take his head? I didn’t see it with the rest of his bones.”
“It was brought to me by—something else. You’ve seen it over my gate. Impressive, isn’t it? I sent a friendly creature for it.”
I reckoned he wanted me to ask what sort of creature, but I didn’t.
We’d walked while we talked, and we came to a big deep ditch of a place, with trees a-growing thick along both sides of it. It was ripped deep into the earth and rock, a good sixty feet long and ten or twelve feet wide, and when I looked down into it I couldn’t make out the bottom, just shadowy rock sides that looked as black as tar. Only, far far below, there was a flash that danced and winked like flames of fire.
Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 05 Page 5
