Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 05 Read online

  MANLY WADE WELLMAN

  Silverjohn—so named for the lithe and powerful strings of his ever-present guitar—is back. In this fifth and most exciting novel in the series, Manly Wade Wellman’s popular hero is called by the voice of Cry Mountain... into a confrontation with his most threatening adversary.

  There are a wealth of cryptic stories about Cry Mountain, and as John listens to the tales of eerie, hostile animals, of brave daredevils who fared up the slopes never to return, and hears the enigmatic, unnatural keening voice emanating from the mountain, his adventuresome spirit is aroused. Too curious and intrigued—some might say foolhardy—to be dissuaded, John begins his long, perilous trek up the steep mountainside. There he finds mystery and danger enough for any man, and eventually meets the courtly, assured Ruel Harpe, descendant of the

  (continued on back flap)

  By Manly Wade Wellman

  THE VOICE OF THE MOUNTAIN

  WHAT DREAMS MAY COME

  THE HANGING STONES

  THE LOST AND THE LURKING

  AFTER DARK

  THE OLD GODS WAKEN

  THE VOICE OF THE MOUNTAIN

  MANLY WADE WELLMAN

  DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC.

  GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK

  1984

  All of the characters in this book

  are fictitious, and any resemblance

  to actual persons, living or dead,

  is purely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Wellman, Manly Wade, 1903—

  The voice of the mountain.

  I. Title.

  PS3545.E52858V6 1984 813'.54

  isbn: 0-385-18397-6

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 84-10114

  Copyright © 1984 by Manly Wade Wellman

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  FIRST EDITION

  For three old and valued friends

  Bob Bloch

  Fritz Leiber

  Frank Belknap Long

  One man with a dream, at pleasure, Shall go forth and conquer a crown; And three with a new song’s measure Can trample an empire down.

  —Arthur William O’Shaughnessy

  Contents

  FOREWORD

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  About the Author

  FOREWORD

  Be it pointed out, the various books of supernatural science and philosophy herein referred to actually exist, or in one case is intriguingly rumored to exist. Several actual persons come in for mention, though they do not take part in the story. And certain monsters are part of the folklore of the Southern mountains.

  But, so far as I can learn, there is no mountain called Cry anywhere in the world, and its tale as told here is entirely imaginary.

  Manly Wade Wellman

  Chapel Hill, North Carolina April 22, 1984

  Adventure was his coronal,

  And all his wealth was wandering. —Henry Herbert Knibbs

  1

  Back in and round here, amongst all these tall heights and deep hollows, there used to be places nobody outside knew much about; because nobody outside had air been there to find out about them. When it comes down to the true fact today, there are still a right good few unbeknownst places here and yonder. But no way near so many of them as there were back then, that day I went a-shammocking round and round and found out that for hell’s sake I’d gone and lost myself on a great big old mountain slope of trees.

  What I’d gone into those parts for was to learn what I might could find out about something I’d heard was named Cry Mountain. Folks here and there and yonder allowed that it was a mountain that could cry out aloud to heaven above and earth beneath, which you all will agree me was a curious enough tale. Curious enough even for me, who’d seen and done some curious things on other mountains called Hark and Dogged and Yandro and so on. That day I’d stopped at Sam Heaver’s crossroads store, where one time earlier I’d done a good deed by a- killing the terrible thing they called the Ugly Bird. Pretty Winnie still worked for Mr. Sam, and she gave me a smile, and her hair was like the thundercloud before the rain comes down. Back yonder that time, she’d said to me that she’d say a prayer for me air night of her life, and now she told me that she’d kept her word on that.

  Mr. Sam and I sat on the store porch and ate canned ham spread on soda crackers and drank from bottles of pop. I asked him could I leave my gear there behind his counter—my bedroll and spare shirt and soogan sack—and go have a look round in the woods there.

  “Sure enough and welcome, John,” he granted me, and so I strolled away. My silver-strung guitar I took along, just from force of long habit. A-walking in amongst tall, leafy trees up- slope, I strummed to myself and sort of whispered some old songs 1 liked.

  Those were songs that had won their service stripes, like “Young Hunting” and “Poor Ellen Smith” and “Rebel Soldier” and “My Lord, What a Morning.” I likewise tried to work out one I was a-making up myself at the time:

  “What’s up across the mountain,

  What’s there on the yonder side?

  Nobody’s here to tell me,

  Nobody to be my guide,

  But nair you doubt,

  I’m a-going to find out,

  All over this world so wide . . .”

  It took me a patch of time to pick all those and think them over in my mind, while I went on up a sort of slope and down another, a-working westward by where the sun had started its sink to the tall horizon. And I went another sight farther than I’d truly meant to go, a-being so long in my legs in their old jeans pants. I felt a tad tired and sat down on a round rock to peel off my slouch hat and wipe the sweat off my face. With my guitar betwixt my knees, I looked to where two hemlocks grew up beside a serviceberry tree from which the white flowers had long gone with the spring. Somehow other, it seemed to me, those two hemlocks and that serviceberry looked a right much like some other trees I’d looked on before; though where that might could have been, I couldn’t rightly say.

  I got up off the rock and lit out again, upslope and down, mostly through pine and laurel and hickory and sourwood. Those trees looked familiar, but why not? They grow all through these mountains. I walked on for maybe better than an hour, and decided I’d have me another rest. I wished I’d fetched along my old army canteen full of water. I sat down on a rock, and looked to where grew two hemlocks and a service- berry tree.

  This time, 1 well knew they were the same trees I’d seen before. And I was on the same rock where I’d sat myself a while back. I’d just been a-traveling in a big old blind circle.

  I fear I cussed out loud at myself for a-doing such a fool thing. But my next thing to do had better be a smart thing, one way or the other.

  I sat on that rock just long enough to make up my mind on what to do. I sure enough didn’t know which way to take to get back to Sam Heaver’s store, nor yet halfway which one. I’d just been a-rambling round, a-singing to myself like a gone gump, without an eye to my back trail. Well then, I took a look to where the tree-grown slope rose above me, with the sun a-mak- ing long shadows here and yonder. If I kept on and up and up, I’d come to the top of some ridge. From there, if somehow I got my luck back, perhaps I’d see something of the country below me, see something that might could be a help t
o a man who'd gone and got himself lost on that lonesome mountainside.

  So I took off again, a-starting to feel thirsty. There was no trail thereabouts, and the trees and brush were a hamper to me. By then, the light was a-getting dimmed out. Evening was on its way in and it turned things gray. And no spring, no stream could I find. I reckoned I’d come right high up at that point, and likely there’d been no rain lately. I kept on and on, near to three hours longer, till the air turned from gray to plumb gloomy, and well I knew there was no sense a-roving into the night.

  I’d been a damn fool enough already, and I couldn’t be more of a damn sight bigger one if I tried to climb that slope in the dark, the moonless dark under a sky all speckly with stars above the branches of the trees. I was tired and thirsty and lost, but I purely had to make me a camp.

  So I stooped down and dragged together chunks of dead branches. I broke them up to the right size. In my pocket I had me a little bitty box of matches, and I gathered dry twigs and set them afire, then put bigger pieces in. That gave me some sort of cheer in the gathered-down night. I could hear tree frogs a-singing off there somewhere, and once an owl spoke, a long wail. I sat there by my fire and wished I had me some of that food I’d eaten on the porch of Sam Heaver’s store, and a long drink of water from his spring. What a cool spring that was, I recollected. I picked my guitar and somehow I found myself a-picking one of the saddest songs I know:

  “Poor little lamb,

  Poor little lamb,

  Lost way down in the valley,

  Birds from the skies a-picking out its eyes,

  And the poor little thing cried 'Mammy’ . .

  I stopped then. My voice sounded right cracked and pasty. For lack of water, I put a pebble in my mouth to see if that would wet it. It didn’t wet me much, but somehow I wasn’t as bad off as that poor little lamb. Not quite. Not yet. I huddled down close to my fire, and somehow I slept.

  But I woke up like as if I’d heard a sound and, as I woke, I could still hear it. Off yonder, nobody could possibly have said where, a big old voice made a moan in the night. Awooo awooo . . .

  And, gentlemen, that was a right pitiful sound to hear.

  While I lay beside my fire and wondered, it died away. What on this earth could make such a lonesome sound? I listened, but all was quieted down again. I put more wood on the dying coals, and finally I got myself back to sleep again.

  When I woke up for good, it was a gray morning with lacy hunks of fog all amongst the trees round about me. 1 fought the best I could against all the tiredness and thirstiness I felt. I shoved on my old hat and slung my guitar behind me, and started on up that slope again.

  Still no water, air place I went, but 1 had me a trifle of luck when I found a bird’s nest in a bush, with four freckled eggs in it. I sucked those four eggs. They weren’t what you’d call rightly fresh, but they gave some ease to my dried-out throat, and when I moved on ahead, they kept me a-moving.

  It was about ten o’clock by sun when I came to the rocky backbone ridge of that mountain so high, and I could look all round me for I can’t rightly tell how many miles in all directions.

  That crazy-headed way I’d come up didn’t have what a man could call a safe promise for a-going down again. Back down yonder I could just see hollows and rises, plumb fluffed over with trees. Naught that looked like Mr. Sam’s store or air other house, high or low. So I set my eyes forward to the west, down an everlasting slope to a deep valley and what seemed to be, right far off and far down, a dark crease at the bottom that might could be where a stream ran. I wished to my soul that I was next to that stream, to drink deep from it, maybe to jump right into it with all my sweaty clothes on. But then I likewise made out, in a little clearing down there, a cabin.

  So far down and away was that cabin that it didn’t look as big as the matchbox in my pocket, it looked more to be about the size of the joint of my thumb. There it stood, so far down below me. From where its chimney would have to be, a gray thread of smoke came a-tumbling up into the air.

  A cabin chimney with smoke to it meant that somebody was at home there. Just possibly, a kind-hearted, helpful somebody. For Td got to where 1 could use some kind-hearted help. I said myself a congratulation with my dried-out lips, then I said a prayer for strength, and started down to that cabin.

  And, gentlemen, I was something like three hours on the way. For the slope of the mountain was high, high, steep, steep, all the long way down, as steep as it could be and still get itself named a slope. You purely had to lower yourself from rock to rock on it, all amongst trees and clumpy patches of brush a-hanging there with their roots in the rock. Time and time again, I'd come down to a rocky ledge as high above the next one below as the eaves of a house. And meanwhile, as I scrambled my way, I was dead tired and near about gone crazy from thirst. I took me a tumble or two on that hellacious journey down. Once, if I hadn't landed in a bunch of thorny bushes, likely I'd have smashed my guitar that I loved with all my heart.

  I lay where I'd fallen for a moment, a-feeling to see if the bushes had kept my bones from a-being busted here or there, and that's where I heard again what I'd heard in my camp the night before, that muttering moan with a howl cut up into it.

  Awooo awooo awoooawoooawooo . . ,

  Not rightly what you'd love to hear, if you'd got yourself lost and alone.

  The cry died out. I was right glad to hear it no more, and I made myself busy to crawl out from amongst those bushes that had broken my fall. The thorns on them raked my hands and face. I picked up my hat and, more careful now, I started my climb down again. I was thirsty right down to my toenails, and I felt weaker with air foot. I made it toward the bottom of the slope below. Gentlemen, I’d nair wish you all such a task as that.

  But some way or other I did make it, came all the way to more level ground and the cabin and its gray chimney smoke. I sort of staggered toward the door of it. That was a cleated- together door, of two broad planks chopped with an adze. My knees shook under me like grass stems in a high wind From somewhere down in my dry throat I got strength enough to call out:

  “Hello, the house! Hello!”

  The cleated plank door opened in the wall of clay-chinked logs, with a creak of rusty hinges. A man came out and gopped at me.

  “Hey, friend,” he said. “You look to be in a fix.”

  I wasn’t about to argue that point with him. I got out just one hoarse word, and that word was “Water.”

  “Surest thing you know,” he said, and walked quick to where I stood a-swaying on my feet. He was about as tall as up to my ear, built close-coupled, with a black-and-white checked shirt and old jeans pants like mine. He had a tawny brown beard, thick-grown and cut short to his jaw. He got his chunky right arm round me and helped me make a few stumbling steps to the door and up over the door-log and inside.

  “You have you a seat right there,” he bade me, and slid me onto a sort of homemade sofa of a thing with a dark blue blanket on it. Then he went to where a galvanized iron pail stood on a bench and dipped a tin cup into it and fetched it to me. I took it in both my shaky hands. There was maybe an inch of water in the bottom of the cup. I drank it down in just one swig, and I could swear to heaven I heard it sizzle in my throat.

  “Is that all the water you’re a-going to give me?” I was able to ask him.

  “You can have some more directly,” he said, a-taking the cup back. "Maybe your mouth is wet enough with that swallow to tell me what I might could call you

  "Just call me John,” I said.

  "John,” he echoed me. "Shoo, are you that John, the one they call Silver John? I should ought to have guessed it, by them silver strings on your guitar there. All right now, you can have you some more water.”

  He gave me another inch in the cup and watched me while I drank it. Then he stooped down and dragged my old boots off me, one and then the other. I wanted to say I’d do that, but I’d have been too tired out to try. Then he fetched me a little bitty more water, and then m
ore again. Each drink of it just purely soaked into me till at last I found myself a-sitting up straight, not all limped over, and a-feeling a right much better.

  "John,” he said, "if I’d given you a whole big bunch of water right off, you’d have made yourself sick a-drinking it down fast, likely right bad sick. But by now, you look to be fairly all right. I’ll fix us up a little snack to eat, and you can tell me how came you to be in that bind I found you in.”

  He started in to stir up a corn dodger in an iron pan and built a fire in his stone fireplace and propped the pan slantways to cook the dodger. From a shelf he took down a little can of Vienna sausages and prized that open. Next, he fetched water in a tin basin for me to wash off my face and hands, and that made me feel another sight better yet. I told him my tale of how I’d got myself lost, and my ears felt long and fuzzy to own up to it. He heard me all out to the end, and then he allowed it might could have happened to air man of mankind if he got to a-wandering round in that lost part of the mountains.

  While I talked, I was a-having me a pretty close look at where I’d been fetched into. The room must have been all the front half of the cabin, something like sixteen feet square as I reckoned. Its walls showed to be of logs with plaster chinking betwixt them, and here and there was tacked up a colored picture. The floors were of broad adze-chopped planks, round about eighteen inches across, fastened down with hardwood pegs and smooth from rubbing or either just a-being trod on for years and years. The furniture—table, chairs, bench, cot bed in a back comer, the sofa-thing I sat on—all of it was homemade and stout-made. The legs of the things were thick pieces of branch from this hardwood tree or that, the bark still on. The chairs and the sofa were seated with broad splits of wood. A black bearskin lay out in front of the fireplace. As for that fireplace itself, it was mortared of different stones, gray, dark gray, brown, one or two bits a sort of greenish. On the fireboard shelf above it were stacked pots and dishes, and there were four-five books that looked worn from lots of a-being read.