Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1951

by The Haunts of Drowning Creek (v1. 1)

  “What’s the matter?” sniffed Pullis, counting away. “Don’t you trust me?”

  “That’s a silly question if I ever heard one,” said Jebs to Driscoll in a matter-of-fact tone. “You can just everlastingly bet Ambrose doesn’t trust Pullis any, and neither would I.”

  “Shut up!” barked Pullis, and Ambrose lifted the pistol as though to club Jebs with its barrel. Jebs subsided, his hands folded.

  “Wonder where all this money came from,” said Pullis.

  “We saw some from France,” said Randy pleasantly. “Some from England, and some from Spain.” He was turning the first batch of pancakes over in the griddle.

  “Why, fancy that,” drawled Pullis. “Hear what the kid says, Ambrose? Education’s sure enough a wonderful thing.”

  “It is, at that,” agreed Ambrose sarcastically. “These kids is so well educated they found the dough for us, and now we got it without havin’ to be educated ourselves.” He eyed Jebs and Driscoll with a maddening smirk.

  Pullis was gathering up the stacks of coins and sliding them back into the open bag. “Ambrose,” he said, I counted out what seems to be around three thousand bucks, more or less, and it took not quite a third of the dough in this old poke to make that much. So I figure ten thousand in each sack, making twenty grand in all. I guess it’s all here.”

  “Ain’t that chow ready yet, kid?” Ambrose snapped at Randy.

  “Just coming up,” said Randy.

  He brought two cups and the coffee pot to the window seat. The men watched him carefully.

  “Leave the pot here,” ordered Pullis. “If you got foolish and flung that in one of our faces, the other of us would have to plug you.”

  Randy returned to the fire and dished up two plates of pancakes.

  “What happens to us when you leave here?” he asked.

  “We’ll let you know. Hustle up the cakes, bub.”

  Randy brought the two plates. Pullis took one and put it on his knee. Ambrose sat down beside him on the window seat with the other.

  “Nice and polite, ain’t they, Ambrose?” said Pullis. “They give us the dough, and even dish us up a nice breakfast!”

  Both men laughed loudly.

  As their merriment rang out in a hoarse duet, a sudden shadow blackened the open window space behind them.

  In shot two enormous arms, long and thick as wagon tongues. Two great sinewy hands, each nine inches across the back, seized the necks of Ambrose and Pullis. A moment later, both men were whipped into the air and shaken back and forth like empty garments in a high wind.

  FIFTEEN

  CHANGE OF FORTUNE

  DESPITE the danger that had closed around them, the three boys almost burst into laughter at sight of the looks of blank surprise that showed on the faces of Pullis and Ambrose. Another fierce, violent shake of their dangling bodies, and then the two outsize hands that clutched the men slammed them heavily down on the window seat.

  Into the room between and above Ambrose and Pullis loomed the bearded face of Sam Cohill, and it smiled with fierce triumph.

  “Got your warning signal,” he said, “and here I am, just in time to entertain unexpected guests.” Twisting his head sidewise, Ambrose glanced up.

  “I told you that haunt yarn was true,” he groaned weakly.

  Randy jumped to grab the fallen shotgun. Pullis tried to twitch away from Sam Cohill, his hands outstretched to push Randy back from the weapon. But the giant whacked Pullis against the wall beside the window, with such force that pieces of broken plaster dropped from it. When Sam Cohill dragged him down again, Pullis sat in limp, groggy silence.

  “Keep quiet,” warned the giant grimly, “or I’ll spring your ribs loose from your backbone.”

  With a wide-flung shove of both arms, he sent the two men staggering into opposite corners of the room. Then he crooked one monstrous knee, shoved a moccasined foot through the window and over the seat, and dragged his great hulk of a body into the house.

  When he stood up straight on the tiled floor, his mane of tawny hair seemed almost to brush the lofty ceiling. With his big right hand he stroked his pointed beard, and he scowled down, first at Ambrose, then at Pullis. They trembled and shifted their eyes to avoid his gaze. It was like an old-fashioned caricature of a stern schoolmaster with two shame-faced boys caught in some act of mischief.

  Sam,” said Driscoll, “what’s that you said about a signal? You mean a distress signal, a warning?”

  “One of the oldest in the world, and I managed it right under these guys’ noses,” said Randy.

  “But what—” began Driscoll.

  “First let’s tie them up,” said Sam Cohill.

  “You won’t have to tie me,” Ambrose whined.

  “I’ll be the judge of that. Randy, Jebs, keep those guns ready. Driscoll, trot down cellar and look on my shelves. You’ll find a coil of leather cord. Fetch it back up here.”

  Driscoll hurried away. The coil he brought was made up of several lengths of buckskin thong, knotted together into a single strand of many feet. Driscoll tried to unfasten one of the knots, but it was tightly drawn and defied his finger nails.

  “Don’t bother to do that,” said Sam Cohill. “Give it here.”

  He unwound eight feet or so, and made two loops close together, around his big hands. Then he flexed his mighty muscles and tugged. The stout leather strand broke with an audible pop. Jebs gasped in admiration, and Ambrose looked paler than ever.

  “You’re strong as a mule,” praised Randy.

  Sam Cohill’s deep laugh made the room vibrate 194 like a roll of thunder. “As strong as a mule, and fairly half as smart.” He beckoned to Pullis. “Come here, you.”

  “But that stuff about the distress signal,” reminded Driscoll.

  “Oh, that,” said Randy. “I knew Sam would be somewhere near, within seeing distance of the sky over the house. So I got two smudgy smokes up in the air—the hunter’s signal for distress, or danger, or a call for help. Like showing a flag upside down.”

  “Double for trouble,” nodded Sam Cohill. “Yes, Randy, I was heading back.” With the length of cord he had broken off he commenced to tie Pullis, who held out his crossed wrists submissively.

  “I got down to Chief Thunder Horse’s cabin last night, and there were a couple of other Indians I know,” he said. “They had a whole bushel of fresh fish, and we pitched in and cleaned a mess of them, fried them up and ate them for supper. Then we sat talking until it got pretty late, and finally the Chief invited me to sleep there all night. When I started back at dawn, I saw Randy’s two smokes, and knew I’d better come close without making any noise. I could hear the talk that showed what was up, and acted accordingly.”

  Kneeling, he finished tying another shorter length of buckskin from one of Pullis’ ankles to the other, like a hobble rope. “Now you,” said Sam Cohill to Ambrose.

  Ambrose came in turn to be tied. “So that’s why you smoked up the fires, first the one down cellar and then the one here,” he mumbled to Randy.

  “Why didn’t you stop him, you dumb cluck?” snarled Pullis. “Everybody knows what that double smoke means.”

  “I didn’t,” Ambrose confessed woefully. “I don’t ever hunt anythin’.”

  “Nothing except other people’s money,” said Driscoll. “Randy, I want you to excuse me for what I was thinking. When you shut me up talking about Sam, and offered to cook for them, I thought you were turning yellow and quitting.”

  “Not me,” said Jebs. “I figured that Randy was up to some dodge, though I wasn’t sure just what.”

  “Two smokes,” said Sam Cohill again as he tied Ambrose’s wrists and then hobbled his ankles. “How’d you know it would work, Randy?”

  “I didn’t. But you’re a hunter, and I figured you would know what the smokes meant,” said Randy happily. “I had to depend on you, Sam.”

  The giant gestured with his spade-sized hand for Pullis and Ambrose to sit on the floor where Jebs and Driscoll had
sat only a few minutes earlier. Silently and fearfully they obeyed.

  “You boys had better gather up that gold they were running so lovingly through their fingers,” advised Sam Cohill next. “But those leather bags look pretty old and brittle. They mightn’t stay together for a long, rough journey, with so much weight inside them. Keep an eye on our guests, I’m going downstairs.”

  He departed through the archway. His broad back seemed almost to fill it for the moment he was inside, and he had to duck low under its curved top. When he had vanished, Ambrose sighed in awe.

  “So you weren’t kiddin’, after all,” said Ambrose. “He really was a giant, not just a dummy you rigged up. Who is he, anyway?”

  “Just a growing boy, a friend of ours,” replied Jebs. “His name’s Sam Cohill. But you two had better call him Mr. Cohill. He might not like it if you acted disrespectful.”

  “Say, why can’t we just call this whole thing quits?” pleaded Pullis. “Nobody’s got hurt. You got the money, you got our guns. We won’t bother you again. Why not let us go and forget we were ever here?”

  “That would be against the law,” said Driscoll. “Letting criminals escape. We might get into trouble doing that.”

  “Right,” approved Randy. “First you stole our canoe, upstream on Drowning Creek. Then you fired at Sam Cohill if you hadn’t been so scared, you might have hit him. Then you tried to take the money at the point of your guns. It looks to me as if you’re under arrest for larceny, highway robbery, and assault with deadly weapons.”

  “Both guilty as charged,” finished Sam Cohill, returning.

  He had brought up two canvas bags, crudely but stoutly sewn with heavy linen thread.

  “Put the money in these,” he directed. “Then we’ll march our prisoners down to the boats, head to the main creek—”

  “We can pick up our canoe there,” put in Jebs.

  “Sam,” said Driscoll warmly, “we’ll never get through thanking you.”

  “What else could I do, Driscoll? You made a friend out of me last night, when I said I recognized your rights to this house, and you told me that I could stay here as long as I wanted to. That’s the kind of talk that makes friends, son, and I hope all this has proved it to you.”

  With that he held out his big hand, and Driscoll offered his. In Sam Cohill’s vast palm it looked like the hand of a baby. They shook.

  FORTY-EIGHT hours later, the group that had again gathered at Chimney Pot House seemed almost to have forgotten the nerve-tingling danger that had flavored the end of the treasure-seeking adventure.

  Nine people had arrived in the front yard of the ruined mansion, by various routes. From Moore County, summoned by telephone messages, Mr. Mar- kum and Major Hunter had traveled by automobile to Wagram. There they had met Randy and Jebs, listened with utter amazement to the story of the escapade, and then had allowed themselves to be carried by canoe and dugout down the creek, up the narrow side stream, and so to the final destination in the center of the swampy timberland. Young Deputy Sheriff Ken Bailey of Lawton County had first received custody of the captured Pullis and Ambrose, seen them safe into the county seat at Laurinburg, and then had followed the towering, woods-wise Sam Cohill along strange and almost imperceptible trails from near Wagram to the same spot. And Driscoll Jordan, greeting these guests at the half-fallen home of his ancestors, introduced them to two more guests - Chief Thunder Horse of the Drowning Creek Indians and his nephew.

  Chief Thunder Horse, despite his seersucker pants and striped T-shirt, looked every inch the noble old warrior of some frontier romance. He was tall and straight, with a brown face like a proud old hawk, and abundant black hair, generously streaked with silver. Grave and courteous he was, after the tradition of the Indian race, but articulate and even scholarly of speech. He informed his new acquaintances that Chief Thunder Horse was only his circus name, conferred upon him by a New York publicity man; he had been christened Tracy Locklear, had attended grammar and high school, and had gone for two years to Davidson College.

  His nephew proved to be the plump, friendly Indian who had extended to the boys the hospitality of his boat landing on their first night on the creek. His name was Ted Ballard, and for years he had known and kept the secret of Sam Cohill’s whereabouts.

  “I’m still dizzy with what happened,” said Ken Bailey. “First I return from the county seat at Laurin- burg with news for Driscoll—the reason Chimney Pot wasn’t recorded there was because Scotland County’s only about sixty years old, and it used to be part of Robeson County. I phoned to Lumberton in Robeson, they told me about old records of Chimney Pot, and I headed back to Wagram to find Driscoll gone. Then, day before yesterday noon, in trails the boy with two prisoners, two other boys, more than a hundredweight of gold—and Sam Cohill over-shadowing everything.”

  Sam Cohill grinned from beside the fire pit where he tended the ribs, chops and quarters of a well-conditioned young hog from his sty. These choice pieces slowly cooked upon a scaffolding of green poles, and from time to time the giant swabbed them with a makeshift brush made of wadded cloth on a stick, which he dipped into a simmering potful of his own barbecue sauce. That sauce was compounded of vinegar, mustard, walnut catsup, onions, garlic and several seasoning herbs.

  Most of the party sat in groups, on the stone steps of the fallen porch, on Sam Cohill’s big bench that had been carried up for their accommodation, and on Driscoll’s spread tarpaulin. They were already eating, for Sam Cohill had fetched various choice morsels from his larder for appetizers.

  “Too bad Judge Forman’s not with us,” said Driscoll.

  “He’s at Laurinburg, attending to your interests,” Ken Bailey told Driscoll. “He’s clearing the old records of Chimney Pot—got them from Lumberton.”

  “I think,” added Sam Cohill, “a drainage project can be worked out to make this land worth something for you again. And I’ve studied those house timbers. They can be used to frame a new house, not as big as the old one, but good enough for any young fellow to live in when he’s grown up and running his own place.”

  “And it’s all Driscoll’s, is it?” asked Randy. “The treasure, too?”

  “So Judge Forman believes,” said Major Hunter. “If the money was treasure-trove pure and simple, the government might take a long old time deciding who should have it. But, on the records, it seems to be a part of the Jordan estate. There’s no Confederate government to claim it, and the United States government is asking only income tax. Judge Forman says he’ll iron out the details and clarify your rights.”

  “Where’s the money now?” asked Jebs, sniffing the aroma of the nearly done barbecue.

  “When we took Pullis and Ambrose to the county jail, we put the money in the courthouse vault at Laurinburg,” Ken Bailey told him. “The government takes over all gold and pays you face value in legal tender.”

  “Twenty thousand dollars,” said Jebs dreamily. “Driscoll, if you aren’t too rich and high-toned to talk to poor boys, what do you figure on after you pay the taxes?”

  “You and Randy and Sam will have to pay part of those taxes,” replied Driscoll, nibbling at a piece of smoked fish. “We’re going to split that money. Ive talked it over with your father, and Ken, and the Major, and Judge Forman. They all agree with me that it’s fair.”

  “But it’s yours,” said Randy. “We didn’t expect—”

  “You rate it, all of you,” interrupted Driscoll stubbornly. “Who was it worked out that clue to ‘set the cross and dig the gold’ riddle? You and Jebs. I was pawing around the dark without you. And who got the money back after those thugs took it away? Sam Cohill. You’ve earned your share. I won’t hear any arguments about it.”

  “Tell them how you want to divide it, Driscoll,” prompted Ken Bailey.

  “Well,” said Driscoll, “the place here—old Chimney Pot—deserves some consideration and reconstruction. Judge Forman introduced me to a builder yesterday, and the builder thinks that for around eight thousand doll
ars a fairly decent house can be set here, for when we cut some timber, drain land, and start a farm. Later on, I want to live and work right here where my ancestors used to be.”

  “That leaves twelve thousand dollars,” computed Jebs excitedly.

  “I’ll divide that into four equal parts, three thousand dollars each. Even after taxes from three thousand dollars, there’ll be something like twenty-five or twenty-six hundred dollars in each share for you, Randy, and Sam. Randy, you and Jebs keep talking about how you want to go to the state university after you finish high school. That ought to take care of a good chunk of your expenses.”

  “What will I do with twenty-five hundred dollars?” said Sam Cohill, looming over the group as he stepped back from the barbecue pit. “I don’t need any money.”

  “You’ll have plenty of expenses,” said Jebs. “How about new clothes cut specially to your measure, and double barber fees for shaving those whiskers, and so on?”

  “Don’t forget,” chimed in Randy, “people know you’re living here. You’ll have to look your best for them.”

  “Maybe so,” admitted Sam Cohill. “Everybody I’ve met has been good to me. They’re interested in me—not as a side-show, but as a neighbor. Maybe I ought to look and act like an average citizen.”

  “That’s right,” said Ken Bailey, “and Driscoll and I want you to stay on this place as a kind of manager —keep an eye on the building activity, the timber cutting and so on, for part of the profits we’ll begin to get after a while.”

  “Do that thing for me, Sam,” begged Driscoll. “You see, I won’t be here myself. With my share of the cash, after the expenses of putting Chimney Pot back on the map, I reckon on going to the university along with Jebs and Randy.”

  “Well, if you want it that way,” consented Sam Cohill. “Now, you boys help me slice up this barbecue.”