Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 02 Read Free Page B

           "Why,"
I said, "I hadn't much thought about that. Likely I'll find a place to
make a fire and roll up in my blanket."
                 Callie
came up beside Warren . "Come with us, John," she invited me. "My father knows
who you are. He'll be glad to have you at our house."
                 "And
you and I can talk," Warren added on, and it sounded to me like as if I'd
be a-hearing something right strange, maybe right unchancy.

2
     
                Jackson Warren's car was old and dim
and rusty, with two-three dents that told you it had been bumped in its time;
but when he got it out of the parking area with Callie a-sit- ting at his side
and me with my gear in the back seat, it ran all right, strong and smooth. It
had to, on the bumpy, wiggly dirt road we followed,
with the rows of big, dark trees to either side.
                 "This
is more or less my father's road nowadays,'' said Callie .
" Nobody much lives along this stretch. It hooks on to another track
outside our place, the old Immer Road .''
                 "Immer,"
I repeated her. "That's what the old settlement was called."
                 "In
German, that means something like always or forever," said Warren .
                 "Likely
it was just somebody's name once," said Callie. "But, John, we
wondered why you didn't contribute there at the singing."
                 "Something
told me not to,” I said.
                 "And
something told you right,” said Warren . "Apparently you have a good sense of
what to do and what not to do."
                 "You
were a-going to tell me about the Shonokins," I reminded him.
                 And,
as he drove, he told me about the Shonokins.
                 Not
many folks knew any more about them than I'd known when he'd first said the
name to me. They were an old, old people, he allowed, who'd been a-making
themselves hard to find or even to notice over nobody could say how many years. Warren knew about them because he'd worked up
North with somebody named John Thunstone— “The same good name you have,
John”—and Thunstone had managed to do things against them, even in New York City . But lately, they'd started to show up
here, in these mountains.
                 It
wasn't easy, Warren went on to tell, to make out a Shonokin as
different from ordinary folks. One way was by their eyes, which in the daytime
had a pupil that ran up and down like a cat's instead of a round circle. And on
their hands, the third fingers were longer than the middle fingers.
                 “Always
you see males,'' said Warren , “ if you see any Shonokins at all. I've heard
Thunstone say that he wonders if there are any female Shonokins.''
                 I
thought that over to myself for a second or two. “If they
don't have females, how does science explain where Shonokins come from?'' I asked finally.
                 “Science
doesn't recognize that there are any such things as Shonokins.”
                 He'd
told all that in a few words, and he brightened up when Callie allowed that he
talked like a scientist himself.
                 “No,
Callie,” he said, a-rolling her name on his tongue. “I'm just an obscure seeker
for the truth, old enough to be your father.”
                 “You're
no such thing.” She smiled back. “My father's Ben Gray, and he's near about old enough to be your father.”
                 “You’re
very kind,” he sort of chuckled, “but my hair's popping out in pale patches
while I study the way the Shonokins are coming out of their hiding in these
parts. I wonder if John believes any of this? ”
                 “Why
shouldn't I believe it?" I came back at him from where I sat behind. “You
sound honest enough to tell it."
                 About
then he brought us into a