The World Ends In Hickory Hollow by Ardath Mayhar Read Free Book Online

be there, but I rapped on the doorframe just the same, so deeply ingrained is the habit of knocking before entering someone else's home. The door flapped open in a gust of wind, and I jumped, but there was nothing alive in the house. And no vehicle was left in the garage.. Whoever had lived here had gotten into the car or truck and gone away down the oil-topped county road.
    "Why, why, why did they leave here where they had survived and could keep surviving, given a little luck, to go out into who knows what and take their chances?" I cried aloud. There was no answer then. There never has been. Not one of those who left has ever returned, and I suppose we'll never know what drove them out into the bombed chaos that was "out there."
    We walked out into the pastureland, cutting fences wherever we found them.
    "In the old days, this would have gotten us hung," laughed Lantana. "Used to be, if they caught you with wire cutters, they'd put you in jail."
    Now, we opened the way to any surviving cattle to wander over wide reaches of country, and down to the river, where there was always browse. Then we took down the bars that closed off the big hay barn, so that they could reach the tons of baled hay that waited for them there.
    When we felt that we had spent as much time as we could spare, we got back into the wagon and returned to the river, picking up my cut saplings all the way. We were learning to waste nothing, even whittling material.

CHAPTER FIVE

    The river was high and brown with the runoff from the past weeks' rains. Most of the leaves had fallen and lay in yeasty drifts and piles, starred, still, with an occasional scarlet sweet-gum leaf or golden spray of hickory. It was easy, with the bushes bare, to spot the next trail, which was well-used, beaten down to the bare earth.
    We stopped, and Lucas got down to examine the tracks in the yellow-brown clay. "Pony track," he opined. "Cows, too, and calves. Sneaker tracks, big and little. Been used since the last hard rain."
    Cheered at the prospect of finding another enclave, we turned up the lane. Even Maud seemed to sense welcome ahead, for she stepped out at a better than average pace. We emerged from the belt of woodland that lined the river-bank onto a sloping meadow, through which the track curved upward toward a brown house that topped a low ridge. Smoke curled from a central chimney stack, and seldom have I seen so welcome a sight. Before we were halfway up the slope, we could see the figures of children pelting down the way to meet us.
    The house sat in the midst of a young orchard, bare, now, but showing promise. A big garden divided the rear part of the orchard, and I could see great green collard plants still heavy with leaves. The rest had been cleared and turned to catch the winter rain. Someone else was looking toward survival, you could tell by the condition of the land and the plants.
    Three youngsters escorted us up to their home, chattering all the way. Carl was the oldest, a towheaded twelve-year-old with prominent ears and eyes that knew more than they intended to reveal. Carol, his just-smaller sister, must have been ten or eleven, blond and vivacious. The youngest, Cookie, was not more than four, as fair as her siblings, but tongue-tied at being among so many strangers.
    They had been so cordial that we expected welcome from their parents. That, however, was not the case. They met us at the house-yard gate, which remained firmly closed. Their eyes were also closed–on the inside, which is hard to cope with.
    "Curt Londown ," the man greeted us. "Wife Cheri. We're doing fine, and we don't need a thing. Good of you to come by, but there's not a bit of good your wasting your time here."
    Mom Allie can handle any situation ever conceived by God or man. She managed to engage the taciturn couple in conversation for a full five minutes. I said nothing, just used my eyes, and at the end of our very short visit, I knew that they were probably well-fixed for