Read Online Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 05 by The Voice of the Mountain (v1.1) - Free Book Online Page A

           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