Read Online Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 02 by After Dark (v1.1) - Free Book Online

though, and I kept on my way till I came to where I saw rocks
piled up in a clear space by the track side.
                 They
were a great big rock on a little one, and, gentlemen, I mean that great big
rock was great big. The bottom one was maybe the size of a dishpan turned
upside down, and on it was set a round boulder that
must have been six feet through. I reckoned it would weigh tons. It would have
taken a derrick to set it thataway. I stopped there to look, while my blood and
belly and ears jangled.
                 That
boulder had a ribbed, green look that reminded me of some sort of a melon. I
couldn't rightly say what kind of rock it was, though I mostly know the rocks I
see as I wander the mountains. The one it stood on, or balanced on, was a dark,
slaty kind, such as sometimes a man will break off into chunks to make a
foundation for his house or barn. Whatever did they mean, I wondered myself,
and who’d set them up there, and when? I put out my hand to touch the big top
rock.
                 And
quick I took my hand away again, the way you’d pull back from a-touching a hot
stove. That boulder had sent a stabbing shock through me like electricity. As I
stepped away, I saw that it bobbed, swayed back and forth, so much, I wondered
if it would come off the little underneath rock and maybe roll on me.
                 If
it had, I couldn’t have got myself out of its way. I stood where I was, like as
if roots had come out of my boot soles and grown down into the ground. I hate
as much as the next man to admit a-being scared, but right then I was. Somebody
who says he’s nair been scared likely nair came up against something to scare
him.
                 I
watched that big old darnick of a boulder sway itself at me, back away from me,
at me again for maybe six seconds before I jumped back on the hard-pounded
trail and sort of ran crookedly there to get clear. I took up my journey once
more. The stir in me fell off a little bit, and I looked behind me as I walked.
The boulder was still a-rocking from my touch on it. I didn’t look back again
as I went on ahead.
                 After
all, the way I told myself, there were other balanced rocks in this world. I’d
heard tell of them in England , quite a good few there. And there was one
in the Chimney Rock part of these very mountains where I was, and a right big
one somewhere in the Colorado mountains . You could come on such things. The
only point was , such balanced rocks were usually one
and the same with the chunks they balanced themselves on. And this one was
another sight different from the piece underneath.
                 Which,
I figured as I kept on a-going, meant it must have been put there by somebody,
by the hands of somebody. Put there for a purpose. What purpose?
                 I
couldn’t reply myself on that. I felt right glad that I’d left the thing behind
just now, and that the jangle in me had gone quieter. Felt glad, till I
reminded myself that Fd meet up with it again on the
way back. But all right, Fd decide on that when I came
back. Just now I’d do what Fd said Fd do, go on to the
settlement they'd once called Immer, the settlement where the Shonokins were
supposed to be. I came to a stream, narrow but fast-flowing, right across the
track. I jumped it.
                 After
dark, the Shonokins, that's what Brooke Altic had said to me. I was glad that
the sun kept a-climbing and a- climbing, with now and then a patch of it
amongst the trees. That was a comfort to me, and right about then I sort of
needed comfort.
                 I
tried to reckon how long 1'd been on the way. I hadn't brought a watch; I don't
often have one. I looked up at the sun—it wasn't much up from when Fd started, probably no more than twenty minutes' worth.
Usually I do a mile in better than that time, but then Fd stopped a little while to study the balanced rock. I