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

I
drifted right off, quick and easy.
                 Maybe
I had dreams, I sure enough should ought to have had
dreams to warn me of what would come; but if I did dream, I’ve purely forgotten
what it was. I woke when the morning was at a gray, to hear Tombs a-bustling
here and yonder.
                 “You
lie back, take it easy, you’ve got a hard day ahead of you,” he said. “I’m
a-fixing us what’ll be a good breakfast. I’d put baited lines in the branch out
yonder, and I’ve pulled us out two of the best trout you could call for.”
                 He
said the truth that time. He’d scaled and gutted those trout before they’d more
than stopped a-wiggling, and with hoecake and honey and coffee they were fit
for the best folks on earth to eat. I had a quick shave and dragged on my boots
and picked up the croker sack he'd given me, and slung on my guitar.
                "Belt that canteen on
you," he told me. "I put spring water in it, and there's an old
saying round here that if you drink the spring water in these here parts,
you'll find your way back to drink it again, come hell or heaven or the day of judgment ."
                 "I
hope to my heart that that comes true for me," I said.
                 "And here." He held out something in a paper poke.
"I split some hoecakes and laid in slices of that
wild hog ham. You may find that worth your biting into along your way." He squinted his eyes at me. "John, I pure down wish
you'd change your mind."
                 "I
don't do that when my mind's made up," I said.
                 "Oh, sure, sure."
                 He
walked out with me and all the way to his branch where he panned his specks of
gold. He took me to where big rocks stuck up, with the water a-swirling round
them.
                 "You
can cross over here, John," he said.
                 "And which way to Cry Mountain on the other side?" I asked.
                 As
I spoke, I heard that cry, Awoooooo .
                 "Just
you keep an ear ready to hark at that," said Tombs. "That'll guide
you. John, I ain't about to tell you goodbye. Goodbye has a sort of final
sound. I'll just say , do your best where you're
a-going, and come back here and stay a week."
                 We
shook hands together. His grip was as strong as a trap. Then I put myself to
that crossing on the rocks. One-two of them were mossy
and slippery, but I made the trip all right. On the far side I turned. Tombs
still stood there. I put up a hand to him, and he put up a hand to me. Then I
headed in amongst the trees on my bank of the stream, and I saw him no more.
                 No
trail there, but I set my face for where Cry Mountain ’s cry had risen.
                 Those
trees were thick-grown and big, all kinds. From high on some of them hung down
crawly vines. 1 pushed along under them. It was dead quiet under there, quiet
as in some church where they were a-getting ready to bury somebody that was
dead. And it was dim dark, too; the sun was up but it didn’t get through all
the leaves and vines. Underfoot, my boots found fallen twigs and pine straw,
and likewise pebbles and rocks. That part of the mountain forest was like as if
no living soul had air walked in it except maybe the panther, bear, and fox.
Just them and, one time back yonder, that Zeb
Plattenburg man they’d told me about. And he, if I was to credit them, had gone
only one way through, had nair come back to tell of it.
                 I
wondered myself did I truly stay on the right way to Cry Mountain I’d been
a-trying to seek that way for an hour. I stopped and tasted the good sweet water
in the canteen lent me by Tombs McDonald. Then I stood still and harked, with
naught to hear but my own breathing. I stood till Cry Mountain cried out.
                 Yes,
I was headed right, and no I reckon