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

a
mountain like that. Here and there grew bits of grass and patches of moss, one
or two clumps of toadstools, and some flowers. I didn't seem to know those
flowers, though I know most kinds hereabouts. The fenced-in part was maybe the
size of a great big stable yard. As Ruel Harpe and I sort of ambled along
together, it was a mite hard to recollect that I’d climbed up the steep, scary
side of Cry Mountain like a fly a-going up a wall. And what he'd
said about how he knew I was a-coming, how he'd more or less let me come, why,
that was on my mind. I decided I'd ask him about it.
                 “You
mean, you could have stopped me," I said, and thought, and decided to say
it. “The way you stopped Zeb Plattenburg."
                 “Oh,
that one," said Ruel Harpe. “He wasn't worth my trouble. You wonder what
happened to him, down there? You should be able to
guess. The bees. They settled on him, and one sting
should have been enough, but maybe a hundred of them stung him. A thousand.”
                I studied that. “These are special
bees. But ordinary bees, they die when they sting.”
                 “So
do these bees die when they sting, but there are always more bees to take the
places of the dead. Don’t get out there where they can
sting you, John. 1 might add I have other guardians on Cry Mountain than bees.”
                 We
walked along over the earth and rock under the trees. The light through the
leaves was green, like maybe down at the bottom of the sea. I looked thisaway
and that, but saw no sign of other living things, and
no sign of a house or cabin. “Where do you live?” I inquired Harpe.
                 “We
have comfortable quarters down under the rock.” “We?” 1 repeated him. “Then you’re not alone up here, I take it.”
                “No, I’ll introduce you to some
companions pretty soon. Choice companions. I’m careful
about companions.”
                 “You
nair wanted Zeb Plattenburg,” I made a guess.
                 “The one whose bones lie down there? No, I hadn’t any need
of him. I let him get just so close, then I got rid of
him.” “With your bees,” I said. “Did they take his head? I didn’t see it with
the rest of his bones.”
                “It was brought to me by—something
else. You’ve seen it over my gate. Impressive, isn’t it? I sent a friendly
creature for it.”
                 I
reckoned he wanted me to ask what sort of creature, but I didn’t.
                 We’d
walked while we talked, and we came to a big deep ditch of a place, with trees
a-growing thick along both sides of it. It was ripped deep into the earth and
rock, a good sixty feet long and ten or twelve feet wide, and when I looked
down into it I couldn’t make out the bottom, just shadowy rock sides that looked
as black as tar. Only, far far below, there was a flash that danced and winked
like flames of fire.
                “That,” said Harpe, “is what makes
the cry of Cry Mountain .”
                 I
looked down again into that dark gash with fire below. It made my head swim to
look. “I reckon you mean that the wind blows in and makes the sound,” I said.
                 “You’re
right, John, sometimes the wind does that. But there's a way to make the wind
blow. Let me show you.”
                 He
stepped up to a big tree, a sort of poplar. There was a hole in its bark, and
he dived his hand in and fetched out a crooked
something that first off looked like bone. It was as long as from Harpe’s elbow
to his fingertips, and I saw that it was hollowed out to be a horn, with the
small end shaped into a mouthpiece.
                 “I’d
rather you wouldn’t handle it, John,” he said. “Just look at it.”
                 I
looked. Its outside was carved in crossed lines, some sort