Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1951

by The Haunts of Drowning Creek (v1. 1)

  Then the great trumpetlike laughter was joined by another peal of merriment, young and clear and carefree. After a moment, the voice of Randy:

  “That’s a good one!”

  A final chuckle, that must have come from a chest as big as a barrel. And the great bass voice made reply:

  “Shucks, sonny, I heard a hundred jokes like that one when I was in the show business. ‘Samson Cohill, the Mountain That Walks Like a Man! That s how they used to advertise me in those days!

  ELEVEN

  THE BIG HERMIT

  JEBS relaxed his tight-strained muscles so suddenly and completely that he swayed, stumbled and almost fell downstairs.

  “Randy!” he called in a trembling voice. “Are you all right, boy?”

  “Is that you, Jebs?” Randy called back. “Sure I’m all right. Is Driscoll with you?”

  “I’m here, too,” said Driscoll.

  “Tell your friends to come on down,” seconded the strange booming voice. “There’s nothing here for them to be afraid of.”

  Jebs glanced back into Driscoll’s wonder-widened eyes, and shrugged his mystification. Then they both started to walk downstairs. Gaining the floor of the cellar, they stared.

  The big underground compartment, stone-walled, stone-floored, and set here and there with huge, rough-plastered pillars to support the heavy timbers of the house, was brilliantly illuminated by two oil lanterns, one on the table, the other hung by a nail to a pillar. Randy sat on the edge of the table, feet drawn up and hands clasped around his sun-browned knees. He looked no larger than a small child beside what sat beyond him on the bench; it was the fearsome Titan, from a single glimpse of which they had retreated in such headlong disorder.

  The shaggy head of the big stranger rose as high as Randy’s, though Randy sat a foot and a half higher from the ground. And the immense white teeth in the bearded face gleamed out like a row of piano keys, not in menace but in a friendly grin.

  “Well, pickle me for a pig’s foot!” exploded Jebs. “What goes on here? Randy, you ought to—to make some introductions or something.”

  “What’s that you’ve got in your hands, Jebs?” inquired Randy, and Jebs opened both his clenched fists. The rock fell with a thump, the mud with a slack plop. And yet again the deep-chested mirth of the giant rang out, shaking the solid walls of the cellar.

  “I take it your young friend with the yellow hair was all organized for armed action,” he observed genially to Randy.

  Relax, relax!” Randy bade his friends, and swung down from the table. “Jebs Markum, Driscoll Jordan, allow me to present Mr. Sam Cohill, who’s been living quietly and peaceably here until we so rudely disturbed his evening at home.”

  “Howdy,” managed Driscoll.

  “How are you?” said Jebs.

  The man-mountain called Sam Cohill rose ceremoniously to his huge feet. As when they had first seen him, his towering height and his broad bulk seemed to fill the entire lantern-lit cellar.

  They could see that he was dressed in a sort of loose shirt, apparently home-sewn of some striped material like bed-ticking, and trousers, also homemade, of stout blue cloth that looked as coarse as canvas. His vast middle was encircled by a strap of harness leather, which fastened in front with a big steel buckle the size of a can of sardines. His head was crowned with a great shaggy mass of hair, thick and tawny as the mane of a lion, and his enormous anvil-shaped chin sprouted a dense brown beard, trimmed to a blunt point. He had a nose large even for his dsantic bony face, with wide nostrils, like the muzzFes of a double-barreled shotgun. Under bristling brows were set two gleaming eyes of grayish blue, steady as searchlights. And, vast as he was, there didn't seem to be any extra flesh upon him. He was a generous extra helping of human muscle and bone.

  “That’s right, boys, don’t be afraid,” he grinned. “I won't bite you. I’m not the biting kind.”

  “Well—” said Driscoll, and paused.

  “I know what you’re trying to guess,” said Sam Cohill. “How big is this fellow—right? Well, I’m just exactly seven feet eleven inches tall in my big, bare feet. I measure an even yard across the shoulders, and my hand,” lifting a huge knuckly paw, out of proportion even to the great wrist and forearm— “is nine inches wide across the back. My weight—I try to keep it down and stay healthy—was four hundred and ten pounds last time I was on a scales, four years ago, and I don t think it s changed an awful lot.”

  Randy had walked into a dim comer, and now he came back with a tin dishpan full of water. "You can wash your hands in this, Jebs,” he said, grinning.

  Thanks, said Jebs, and plunged his muddy hands into the pan. “I was worried silly about you. You yelled for us to run, and I figured you’d be running, too. But you didn’t show up, and ”

  “I stopped just one-tenth of a second, to set down the lantern, Randy explained. “In that second I saw that Sam here he says to call him Sam—was pulling back away instead of chasing us. He said, ‘Please don’t think I want to hurt you,’ and he sounded worried and bashful instead of dangerous. So I didn’t run. I stayed, and we were getting acquainted when you came back.”

  “All I hope,” said Sam Cohill diffidently, “is that you boys won’t let the world know there’s a big freak of a giant out here, trying to live his own life in peace. I don’t want anything but to be left alone.

  I won t hurt anybody, and I stay in this swamp so that I won’t be stared at.”

  “Don’t think we’re here to stare at you,” Driscoll assured him.

  Oh, you re different,” said the giant. “I heard you talking. I know you own this place. Anyway, you seem all right. You’ve got good manners, and I hope you don’t broadcast my whereabouts.”

  “But where did you come from?” Driscoll pleaded, laying his machete on the table.

  “Originally,” said the huge fellow, lowering his bulk to the bench, “I came from Newton, Kansas.”

  “He was just about to tell me all about himself when you came in,” said Randy. “Go on, Sam. We’re listening.”

  “I was born on my father’s farm, just on the outskirts of Newton,” began Sam Cohill. “My father was six feet six—just a dwarf alongside of what I’ve become. His name was Elkanah Cohill, so when I was born he named me Samuel.”

  “How does that figure out?” wondered Driscoll.

  “It’s in the Bible. Elkanah was the father of Samuel. A better Bible name might have been Goliath.” The wide, bearded lips twitched in a wry grin. “By the time I was three years old, I stood five feet tall. When I started school, I was six feet. It was tough on a kid, I tell you; to be as big as a big man, but still just a kid in your heart and mind.” The big bass voice sounded mournful.

  “I sure enough see what you mean, Mr. Sam,” Jebs told him.

  “Just call me Sam, sonny, like your pal Randy. Well, my folks were worried over my growth. They took me to doctors, to see why I was sprouting up out of all reason. The doctors said it was because of my glands working too much and too fast. I had what they called an agromegalic condition: sort of like Primo Camera, the fighter, only I wasn’t tapering off to be a six-foot-seven runt, like Primo.”

  “There was nothing the doctors could do?” said Randy.

  “Nothing that worked. They could explain the why and wherefore, but that didn’t help me any when I was embarrassed at having to have a special school desk and chair. And the other boys, the ordinary-sized ones, never gave me any peace. They nicknamed me Sam Molehill, and I got razzed and laughed at, every second. You can imagine—all the wornout gags about how’s the air up there, and you’ll be a big help to your mother when you grow up. Some of the kids used to ambush me and throw stones and eggs and tomatoes.”

  “I’d think you’d grab six in one hand and half a dozen in the other, and beat their dumb heads together,” said Jebs.

  Sam Cohill sighed, like waves breaking on a beach. “Once I did that, just once. A boy about fourteen I was nine—began kicking my shins. I smacked him just once
, open-handed, and he didn’t wake up for ten minutes. He had to have a doctor to see if he’d be all right. After that, I knew for sure that never, never, on any account, must I lift my big hand to anybody littler than I was—never hit anyone I didn’t want to squash like a spider. And everybody, practically, was littler than I was. Maybe if I’d been good at games they wouldn’t have been so rough on me. But I was slow and clumsy. I couldn’t catch or bat a ball. And they were scared to play football or wrestle with me. By the tune I was eleven years old, I was six feet ten inches tall, and everything I wore had to be specially made. And that cost money, particularly shoes.”

  He raised one of his enormous feet into view. It was clad in a moccasin as big as an overnight dressing case, made of deer skin tanned with the hair on.

  “About that time,” went on Sam Cohill, “some show people visited us. They wanted me to travel with them. They offered me a good salary and all my living expenses. They even agreed to see to my education—the kids traveling with that show had their own teacher. Since I was only a big expense to my father, I agreed, and so did my folks. I went with the show.”

  “Was it fun?” inquired Driscoll, and Sam Cohill grinned again, sadly.

  “You can’t imagine how miserable and homesick I was, going from one strange town to another. I was just eleven, remember, for all that big height. They had me dressed up in a Lord Fauntleroy costume, and teamed me with a married couple—midgets. According to the posters, that midget couple was my father and mother. We were billed as the Fantasy Family. Day after day, town after town, I was stared at and laughed at by big crowds of goggling, snick- cring people who’d come to make fun of the strange people—the freaks.”

  Sam Cohill fell silent for a moment, brooding and scowling, like a mountain pondering the woes of other mountains.

  That was tough,” Driscoll ventured.

  “It was, but can you guess how tough it was, boys? Maybe you 11 understand, a few years from now. Two of you three, and a forefinger as big as an ear of corn pointed first to Driscoll, then to Randy, “are probably going to be bigger than average—six feet, even an inch or two more than that, when you’re full grown. That’s not abnormal, boys, but it’s tall enough to be uncomfortable. The whole world is made for people of rfiedium size. You’ll find you have trouble fitting into theater seats that are too small and close together for your long legs, lying down in Pullman berths or hotel beds that are too short. You’ll have to duck down to get under low doorways, to keep from gashing your scalps on awnings. And that’s just a hint of what it’s like for a man like me.”

  “You make me glad I’m going to be no more than middling tall,” said Jebs.

  The big brilliant eyes fixed him. “How tall are you, Jebs, and how old?”

  “I’m going on seventeen, and I’m about five feet seven.”

  “When I was your age, I was considerably more than seven feet tall, and still growing so fast I almost blurred the publicity photographs. They made me into a show all by myself then, with high-heeled shoes and a silk hat, to fake my height up to eight feet. I traveled with carnivals. By the time I was twenty and had my full growth, I’d become enough of an attraction to get an offer from one of the biggest circuses of the country. Once, between seasons, I acted in a moving picture out in Hollywood. It was a serial, some fantastic thing about giants coming down here to conquer Earth from another planet.” “That sounds as if you must have made some money,” said Randy.

  “Oh, I made money, but what good was it to me? What could a giant freak spend money for? Just expensive specially tailored clothes, that used enough cloth and leather to outfit three or four average men, and quadruple meals—a four-pound steak, or half a ham and a dozen eggs. I bought books to read, and I spent some tune learning foreign languages from other show people that came from abroad. My pleasures had to be private pleasures, not to be shared with strangers. And never once, in all the years I was on show, did I stop wishing that I didn’t have to be stared at, grinned at, mocked at, by those audiences.”

  “We said we could understand that,” said Driscoll, “and we aren’t mocking you.”

  No, you aren’t.” Sam Cohill relaxed some of his fierce mood. “You’re gentlemen, all three of you.”

  “But how did you wind up here?” prompted Randy.

  “Well, I made friends with an Indian in the last show I was with. They called him Chief Thunder Horse, and he pounded the drum for a bunch of dancers in paint and feathers. He told me that he’d made enough money to retire to his old home—the shores of Drowning Creek in North Carolina. When he talked about the quiet, lonely woods around the creek, where you weren’t apt to see anybody except a few other Indians, I said I wished I could retire there, too. So we left the show together, at Raleigh. We rode here at night, in a truck we hired. Nobody had a chance to bug out his eyes at me. And he introduced me to other Indians along the creek, quiet, polite fellows who never giggled or pointed their fingers at me, who just accepted me as another human being, maybe fairer-complexioned and bigger- built than themselves. One of them told me a rumor about this old house, back here in the forgotten swampy forest.

  “I borrowed an axe and chopped myself a trail in here. I settled down in the cellar, which is sound and dry. The Indians understood my being anxious to be left alone. They’re wonderfully polite and thoughtful that way. They’ve helped me by telling everybody the old story of a ghost in the swamp country. Some foolish folks it scares. Others, more logical, decide any whispers about an old house are just legends, and don’t come prying.”

  “That explains a lot,” said Driscoll under his breath.

  “Old Chief Thunder Horse, though that’s only his circus name, has been my contact with the outside world. I had money enough saved up to get started right, and I’ve made more—not much, but all I need —by trapping muskrat and coon and a few mink. The Chief sells the skins for me, and buys the few things I need. I have a garden patch out behind the house, and farther off in the woods a pen with a few pigs. I catch all the fish I need, and some for my Indian friends. I snare rabbits and quail. Once in a while I get myself a deer.”

  “With a gun?” asked Randy, who could not imagine those big hands working a rifle.

  “No, son, firearms are too noisy. I hunt with this.”

  Sam Cohill extended a rafter-like arm into a corner and brought out a huge bow, full seven feet in length and strung with heavy twisted cord. To it was slung a canvas quiver, filled with arrows that looked like small javelins.

  “Look across the floor,” said Sam Cohill, “and you’ll see the fireplace I made for cooking, and my big bed, and so on.”

  “You said you liked to be lonesome,” spoke up Jebs, “but right now you’re talking to us as if you’re glad for company.”

  “Oh, once in a while some of the Indians look in on me. But mostly I’m contented to be alone. On the shelf yonder are some books that I read over and over.” He paused. “Now, boys, there’s a matter we’d better clear up right now.”

  “What?” asked Jebs.

  “Since you’ve come, are you going to run me off the place?”

  “Why should we do that?” Driscoll almost snapped.

  “Oh, I know what the situation is. When that other pair of men showed up, fired their gun off and ran away, I was up in the house. I came down cellar when I heard you outside, but after you got into the house I could hear every word you said. I know that Driscoll here is descended from the people who built this house. What is it you call it?”

  “Chimney Pot,” said Driscoll, “and, as far as I know, I’m the only living heir.”

  “Anyway,” wound up Sam Cohill, “according to law, I’m trespassing.”

  “I don’t have the slightest notion of telling you to go away, Sam,” Driscoll assured him at once.

  “You’re perfectly entitled to expect me to leave,” said the big man. “I can always pull deeper into the swamp and build myself a cabin there. I’ve learned to be pretty good with tools. I made
this bench and table. And, as I said, I like to be all alone. If you say for me to get out—”

  “Just what kind of skunk do you think I am?” Driscoll demanded. “You haven’t hurt the place a bit by staying here. If anything, you’ve improved it. I wouldn’t want you to think I was running you off.” “Well, we can talk it over later, maybe,” said Sam Cohill. “But right now”—and once more he rose to his immense height—“I think I’ll go out for a little walk.”

  “At night?” said Jebs.

  “I can roam these swamp trails as well in the dark as at full noon. And I want to visit the Chief. He was going to buy me some things in town. Anyway, you boys ought to have a chance to talk over your own business in private.”

  He tramped to the door, heavily as an elephant, and with something of an elephant’s power and dignity of motion. Stooping his shaggy head low between his yard-wide shoulders, he mounted upward and out of sight to the house above.

  TWELVE

  “SET THE CROSS...”

  THREE pairs of eyes followed Sam Cohill’s mammoth figure out of sight. Then Jebs emitted a low whistle. ^

  “Who’d have ever thought that such a big guy had such a small amount of meanness in him? I think he acts as if he’s kind of in our league, huh? Glad we found him here, instead of those haunts everybody gasses about up and down the creek. He stretched his arms. “Me, I’m tired. I feel as if Id chopped two acres of cotton.”

  “It’s a good thing you are tired,” said Driscoll. “We’ll have to camp here tonight, and we didn’t bring any bed rolls.”

  “Could we borrow from Sam Cohill?” suggested Randy, lifting the lantern from the table and carrying it toward the rear of the cellar. “Look here, he’s pretty comfortably fixed.”

  Against one wall the giant had built himself a bed, rough but adequate. Four logs enclosed a rectangular space fully nine feet by six, and this space was closely filled in with tips of evergreen boughs, laid butt down and tightly packed, so as to form a primitive mattress more than a foot thick. Over the greenery lay huge coverlets, each made by sewing two ordinary blankets together, and there was a pillow made by stuffing a grain sack. k “Clever little cuss, this Sam Cohill,” said Driscoll. Here, on the other side—look at his cooking tackle.”