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

basic matters, and now it’s time for a
conference of all of us.”
                 Scylla
bobbed out of sight again. Harpe offered me the blockade jug, and I trickled me
about a thimbleful into my clay cup. He poured himself a right good jolt. He
seemed to be able to handle good jolts.
                 The
curtain moved again and in walked Scylla, and behind her two other women. I got
up on my feet. Harpe didn’t stir an inch out of his chair. He might just as
well have been a judge a-holding court.
                 “Ladies,”
he said, “permit me to introduce to you our guest and new companion, John. John—no more of a name than that, no less. You will remember
times that we’ve watched him, heard him, knew that he
was determined to come up here to us. We’ve let him come, and now we make him
welcome to our community.”
                 I
stood and looked on those women. Scylla I’d met. She creased her scowl at me.
Of the other two, one was tall and gaunt and as straight as a guitar string,
with a smooth-cheeked face and a firm-held mouth and behind great big glasses
dark eyes so bright and sharp they could near about cut into you.
                She wore a black skirt and tailored
jacket and a white blouse, more or less like some boss lady in an office
somewhere. With her came a young one, a right young one, and she smiled on me
like a cat on a dish of cream, with little, even white teeth a-showing inside
wide, full red lips. Her black hair hung heavy on her shoulders, below a red
ribbon tied on it above the ears. Her face was round and rosy-tanned, and her
eyes were brown as brown. Her tight-filled blouse was a rosy tan color, too, it
more or less matched her face, and her short skirt was a darker brown. No
stockings on her curvy legs with the same rosy tan on them, and on her feet
sandals of dark shiny leather straps with what looked like silver buckles.
                 “John,
this is Alka,” Harpe made an introduction, and the tall one's tawny-braided
head nodded me. “And this is Tarrah."
                 The
young girl said, “Hello," and smiled me the wider.
                 “Sit
down at the table with us, ladies," Harpe said to them. “Sit down, all of
you. John will be interested to hear how you came to be on Cry Mountain , and what you do here to help me in a truly
great endeavor."
                 They
dragged them up chairs and sat down. Tarrah, the young one, fetched her chair
right close to mine. Harpe poured more liquor into clay cups and gave them
round. Scylla's scowling face looked like as if it didn't want to see me. The
one named Alka nodded again as she took her cup. Tarrah giggled up at me. When
I sat down, something sort of snuggled up against my boot. I didn't need to
look down to know that that was Tarrah’s sandal.
                 She
kept her smile on me.
                 “We
make John welcome here," said Harpe again. “We know of things he’s done,
we know how very well and profitably he’ll fit in with us."
                 “I
don’t aim to stay," I said right out.
                 “But
you must stay, John," said Harpe, and silk was in his voice. “You realize
by now that you couldn’t venture outside our stockade and live more than five
minutes.”
                I couldn’t think of air reply to
that. Harpe nodded Scylla. “You first, my dear,” he said.
                 She
sat a-clutching her cup. I saw her bony knuckles all white with the clutch.
                 “I’m
from Salem in Massachusetts ,” she began in her shrill voice.
                 “Yes,
and what a historic town,” put in Harpe. “The town of
witchcraft. Where, back in 1692, the colonial judges executed witches.”
                 “I’ve
read about it some,” I said. “What the histories call the Salem witchcraft delusion.”