Читать книгу Tom Slade: Forest Ranger - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 5

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Whoever Watson was, about the only thing he seemed to have was his Bend. But it was a terrible bend. From whichever direction the motorist approached it, it was a place to cause a shudder. At night, thought Tom, it would be the worst kind of a death-trap. He paid his respects to it by jamming on his brakes and going around the horrible corner at a decorous speed. That was more respect than he had shown the remote little village itself which lay just westward of the bend. The turn formed almost a right angle. The narrow, grass-grown road ran west and east, then turning as if some giant had pulled it across his knee and broken it, it ran north and south.

After Tom had made the turn, he paused to look about him. He was so interested that he drove his long-suffering car into a thicket of brambles and sauntered out into the road. He saw that the road, such as it was, bordered the lower reaches of a mountain which towered in the southwest. It was because the road followed so closely the base of that frowning height that it made so abrupt and perilous a turn. Off to the north and east the land lay in low, undulating fields as far as the eye could see.

The road was not exactly cut into the mountainside like many scenic highways—it followed a natural course around the base of the heights. It cut a sharp corner because the base of the mountain did. In other words, this sequestered road enclosed a mountain or jumble of mountains. Off to the other side of the road was low country. If you plunged off the road at the bend you would go down twenty or thirty feet, and that would be enough.

“Some place, I’ll say!” mused Tom.

He shaded his eyes and looked away off up into that mountain wilderness. “What the—dickens——” he said, somewhat puzzled. Then he concentrated his gaze on something which he saw or thought he saw. The trees upon those distant slopes were still bare, though here and there a patch of green could be seen in the bleak landscape.

“That’s some blamed kind of a thing away up there,” said Tom. “I’ll be hanged if it——”

He changed his position and gazed again, long, intently. Then, as if resolved to settle some matter in his mind, he strode back along the road, around the bend, and to the little village. He paused to gaze again far off into that rising wilderness. But from this new point of view he could see nothing.

Beside its perilous corner, Watson’s Bend possessed about twenty houses, a village store, a tiny schoolhouse and some chickens perched in a row on a wayside watering trough. Watson’s Bend was absolutely harmless save for its sharp turn in the road.

On the platform of the village store sat three men who had not yet recovered from their astonishment at seeing the stranger go rattling by.

“That turn in the road is the sharpest thing I ever saw outside of a razor,” said Tom. “But I don’t suppose there’s much traffic through here ordinarily.”

“Don’t drive like yer hadn’t oughter do ’n’ ye’ll be all right, I reckon,” said one of the men.

“’T’wan’t fer that there bend this town wouldn’ hev no name at all,” said another, evidently the local wit. “Yer in the army?” he asked, alluding to the khaki which Tom almost invariably wore.

“No, I’m mixed up with the Scouts,” Tom said. And he could not deny himself the pleasure of adding, “Ever hear of them?”

“We got one on ’em.”

“No, we hain’t, they go in gangs, sort o’ regiments like,” said another of the trio.

“Sterrett’s youngster, he’s one on ’em.”

“No, he hain’t nuther.”

“Yere, he is,” said the first speaker, “he’s one them all ’lone scouts.”

“He hain’t got no togs,” said another of the three. “’N’f I wuz Sterretts I wouldn’ git ’im none. He’s a dirty little devil of a Heinie, that’s what he is. All ’lone scout, huh? If I wuz ter give ’im anything, I’d give ’im a taste er harness strap.”

“The war’s over,” said the one member of the trio who was hatless. Tom thought he was the presiding genius of the store.

“How’d yer find that out?” the village wit shot at him.

Tom laughed too and, looking casually about him, wondered how they had found it out.

“Nice day,” the hatless man said.

“You bet,” said Tom. “I was going to ask you if that’s a fire lookout station away off up the mountain. I saw it from around the Bend, I don’t seem to be able to see it from here. Kind of a box up on—I guess it’s on a framework? I could only see the top part.”

“’Tain’t, but uster be,” said one of the trio. “They ain’t nobody up there now—’less yer call a spook somebody.”

“There seem to be plenty of woods all around to get on fire,” Tom said.

“Oh, there’s woods enough,” said the other loiterer. “I’d take my chances with a fire any time before I’d get inter a mess with a spook, I would. I seed fires sence I wuz a kid, ’n’ I ain’t seed nobody killed by one yet, I hain’t.”

“Lizey Henk’s man wuz killed by a wood fire,” the other visitor said. “Comin’ through from Skunk Holler.”

“That wuz thirty year ago,” said the other.

“Killed then or killed now, it’s no matter,” his companion retorted. “All Derry Conner’s woods wuz burned down. Nobody never knowed what started ’em.”

“’Twas the ole feud started it, that’s what ’twas. Derry’s wife’s folks wuz agin her hookin’ up with Irish. Skunk Holler ’n’ Irish Pond wuz alluz hittin’ back one way or another.”

The proprietor of the store leisurely pulled a corncob pipe out of his ticking overalls and, disregarding the conversation, proceeded to fill and light it. It seemed to Tom that this comfortable, white-haired man was not altogether of a mind with the others.

“Lizey Henk’s man wuz tipsy,” the old man finally drawled.

Tom was rather amused at these village reminiscences with all their quibblings and ignorant prejudices. But he thought that the store owner was rather more intelligent, or at least more mellowed than the others, and so to him he addressed his next question. There was something breezy and offhand and broad-minded about Tom which set him off in strange contrast with these citizens of Watson’s Bend.

“Well, anyway,” he said cheerily, “tell me about the ghost. I don’t know as I’m specially interested in ghosts, but I’m blamed interested in saving the forests, and you can bet there ought to be somebody up there for what’s the use of having it if they don’t use it? Why, you’ve got miles and miles of unbroken forests around here. That’s a nice state of things.”

“’N’ I s’pose you’d like to go up here?” the old man asked.

“Well, I sure wouldn’t let a spook keep me out,” laughed Tom.

“If you went up there ye’d come back lickety-split, hop, skip and a jump, quick enough,” said the humorist of the party.

“No, he wouldn’ come back nuther,” said the other loitering historian. “Did Chevy Ward come back? Yere, I reckon! But not hop, skip and jump. He come back ’cause we carried him back, me an’ George Terris an’ Denny.”

“What happened to him?” Tom asked.

“Murdered.”

“Murdered? Did they get the one who did it?”

“A spook done it, him ’n’ his spook dog. Why, sonny, if yer wuz to offer one thousand dollars ter any one round these parts ter go ’n’ look after that hell spot, they’d on’y laugh in yer face. The State wardens they ain’t even tryin’ ter git anybody, not this season, as I heered. Let the ole woods blaze away, I don’t want ter go near no place that’s haunted.”

“Reckon the ole thing’s ’bout fallin’ ter pieces anyway,” said the store proprietor.

Tom gazed at him. That, at least, seemed a sensible observation.