Wrack and Rune (12 page)

“The cops gave me the runaround,” Cronkite panted, “so I called out the cavalry. Okay, Professor?”

“Good thinking, Swope.”

“It was your idea really,” the youth replied modestly. “When you mentioned about the bull, I thought of horses. Want me to try the Headless Horsemen of Hoddersville?”

“Let’s—er—hold them in reserve for the moment. Get a few of the mounted men out in the road directing traffic, will you? If we can break up this jam, maybe some of these oafs will go home.”

“Sure thing, Professor.”

Cronkite began deploying his new recruits. Shandy decided it was safe enough now for him to leave the scene of major turmoil and find out what was happening down by the runestone. He walked along the narrow road, anxiously scanning the tangle of cars for any sight of his wife and Laurie. To his relief, he didn’t find them. With any luck they were safely back at the Crescent now, drinking the coffee he could so well have done with a cup of himself and talking over their experiences as women have such a profound need to do.

Fergy’s parking lot was choked with vehicles. The Bargain Barn appeared to be doing a land-office business thanks, no doubt, to the spate of traffic. Fergy had a couple of helpers, Shandy noticed. There was a woman presiding over the cashbox wearing three or four sweaters although the evening was still balmy. Perhaps she was the current Mrs. Fergy, or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

He also noticed how dark it was getting. The college owned some portable searchlights. If the Lumberjacks could get the road passable, maybe they could be got over here. He’d have to ask the president, if Svenson was in fact among those present.

The logging road toward which Shandy had been so glibly directing sightseers all evening even though he himself had never gone up it proved easier to find than he’d expected. A huge boulder did in fact mark its opening and a cordon of Balaclava students in a remarkable assortment of protective coverings had it well policed.

“You’ll have to go to the end of the line, sir, and wait your turn,” said an individual wearing a black velvet riding cap, a fencing visor, hockey shin guards, and a baseball catcher’s chest pad.

“I’m Professor Shandy.”

“Oh, sorry, sir.” The student lifted her steel-mesh mask for a better look. “We’re trying to keep them from all jamming in at once.”

“And you’re making an admirable job of it. Keep up the good work. I have to see President Svenson about searchlights. Is he in there?”

The visored vigilante so far forgot herself as to giggle. “Can’t you hear him?”

“Now that you mention it, I do catch a distant rumble. I thought it must be an oncoming thunderstorm. I gather he also has the situation well in hand.”

“With nickel-plated knobs on, Professor. Walk straight in and don’t trip over the blackberry vines. Nobody remembered to bring any Band-Aids. Move along there, please.”

The latter remark was addressed not to Shandy but to the lines of people who were entering the road shoving and snickering, and coming back awestruck and silent. Shandy joined the ingoers and found out why.

By now it was getting quite dark there under the oak leaves. The runestone stood in a little pool of yellow light provided by a battery lantern the president in his infinite wisdom had thought to fetch along. Over and behind it loomed a shape such as nightmares are made of.

Thorkjeld Svenson was wearing gray work pants and a dark gray flannel shirt with the sleeves turned back halfway to the elbows. Lost in the gathering murk, the gray clothing turned his body to an amorphous mass. The great hands and forearms, the noble yet ferocious head loomed impossibly large, incredibly threatening, as though the spirit imprisoned in the stone had sprung forth as a living menace. The fact that Svenson was leaning negligently on his own personal forged-to-order double-bitted ax with a handle five feet long did not tend to dispel the illusion. Anybody blind enough or mad enough to stretch forth a hand toward the runes caused him to emit a rumbling “Arrgh” that could reduce even the boldest to a palpitating jelly.

“God, President,” Shandy gasped, “you scared the hell out of me.”

“Good.” Svenson shifted his position slightly, striking a dull glitter from the sharpened ax edge in the lantern’s rays. “What’s happening?”

“Riot, rapine, and general pandemonium, but I think we’re getting it under control. The students are doing a great job.”

“Damn well better.”

“What’s worrying me now is the light situation. Could we get those portable floodlights over here from the college?”

“Why the hell not? Call Buildings and Grounds. No, don’t. Yackasses all goofing off this time of night. Security. Lomax boys. Tell ’em I said get a move on. Arrgh,” he added as some near sighted maniac got too close to the runestone.

“How long do you plan to stay here, President?” Shandy asked.

“As long as Orm needs me,” replied the great man simply.

“In that case,
requiescat in pace.
Mosquitoes bothering you much?”

“They wouldn’t dare.”

He should have known better than to ask. Shandy slapped at a whining pestilence that was trying to feast off his own less august person and took his departure, remembering to look suitably grave, as indeed he felt.

Out on the road, things were looking up. At least the traffic was beginning to move, though at a crawl, as the Lumberjacks lolloped up and down the lines urging drivers on. Nobody cared to argue with them. Their steeds were no slim-ankled equine playthings but mighty Belgians, Clydesdales, and Suffolk Punches that could tow an automobile or demolish one with a few well-placed kicks. So far the horses hadn’t been required to do so and probably wouldn’t have to. Like Thorkjeld Svenson, they were intimidating enough just to look at.

Nor were the riders puny racetrack jockeys with schoolboy figures and secret yearnings to write like Dick Francis, but burly farmers raised on home-pressed cider and home-fried doughnuts whose rhetoric was unpolished but whose views on damn fools who didn’t know enough to get their cussed carcasses out of where they didn’t belong were loud and efficacious. In short, when a Lumberjack told you to git, you got.

Spectators were still entering the barnyard to view the by now perfectly clean spreader where Spurge Lumpkin had met his ghastly doom, but they weren’t getting any farther and word was beginning to spread that there really wasn’t much of anything to see. Shandy saw that Roy was letting young Ralphie drive the tractor now, and moseyed on up to the house.

He was familiar enough with geese to be no more than reasonably intimidated by their hissing and flapping. He dodged his way through the flock with only minor attacks on his pant legs and put in his SOS to the college. After considerable bickering and a liberal use of President Svenson’s name, not to mention some of the president’s favorite expletives, he got a promise to have the battery-operated floodlights shipped over to Lumpkin Corners as forthwith as traffic conditions would permit. Then he called home, got no answer, dialed the Ameses’, and found, as he’d hoped, that Helen and Laurie were there drinking his coffee.

“What’s happening, Peter?” Helen asked. “Do you need more helpers? We’ve already scared up as many of the students as we could, but we might try scouting around down in the town.”

“No need. The Mounties are on the job.” He explained about Swope’s alerting the Lolloping Lumberjacks. “And I believe the Headless Horsemen are planning to take over the late shift. I’ve just arranged with Security to send us some portable floodlights. All in all, it looks as if the tide of battle has turned.”

“Is Daddy Ames all right?” Laurie piped into the phone.

“Having a whale of a time. When last seen, he was cleaning Henny Horsefall’s old over-and-under.”

“Good heavens, he isn’t shooting at people! He’s blind as a bat.”

“Oh no. I believe Henny let off a few blasts of rock salt earlier on. He’s pretty sore about all this, as you can imagine. He was all set to give young Swope a pantload for writing that article, but the young idiot’s been knocking himself out to make amends, so it appears that Horsefall’s decided to forgive and forget. So long as Swope stays out of range, anyhow.”

“And Roy? What’s he doing?”

“Commanding the heavy armored division. That reminds me, would you call Security right away and ask them to bring along a few spare cans of gasoline for the tractor? I don’t know whether Horsefall has any or not.”

“Sieglinde phoned a while back to see if we’d heard from anyone.” That was Helen again. “She says Thorkjeld’s uncle is having fits about having been left at home. Apparently he had a date with Miss Horsefall.”

“He wants to rune her reputation, if you ask me. Tell Sieglinde the president has the situation under control, as she might expect. God knows when we’ll be home. Don’t forget about that gas. We need the tractor.”

Peter hung up, grabbed a cup of the coffee Miss Horsefall and her goosegirls had prepared, and went back to the fray. It was really dark now and, as he’d anticipated, the new crowd that were bulling their way through the cordon made the earlier lot seem in retrospect like a bunch of Sunday school picnickers. What they needed was light.

He collected Roy Ames and Cronkite Swope. The three of them spent an interesting quarter-hour fiddling wires on the illegally parked cars. No doubt their owners would be surprised to find their headlights on at high beam, and no doubt a good many of them would have run-down batteries to contend with, and no doubt there’d be a few more fistfights and a lot more profanity, but Shandy went right on fiddling. In his considered opinion, it served the bastards right.

P
ETER SHANDY WAS NOT
sure when or how he got to bed. He had some faint recollection that a bus came over from the college to collect the president and his cortege. He had a dim notion that Roy Ames boosted both him and Tim aboard, and that one of the Lomax brothers who worked for Security was driving, though it might have been their sister-in-law herself for all he knew. He was out on his feet by then.

Long after the traffic had been set in motion and dispersed, the invasion of trespassers quelled, and the last tussle over who turned on whose headlights quieted down, a Lumpkinton police car had at last appeared. Shandy vaguely recalled that the two officers in the car had threatened to run Henny Horsefall in for disturbing the police and that the Lolloping Lumberjacks, respectable citizens and taxpayers though they were, had backed their mounts up in a circle around the cruiser and prepared to have their trusty steeds kick the living hell out of it if the cops didn’t lay off their old friend and comrade Henny; and furthermore where the hell had the cops been when they were needed, and if they thought Town Meeting was going to vote them the raise they’d been bitching for on the strength of tonight’s performance, they’d better think again. The Lumberjacks had thereupon dispatched a posse to gallop to the police chief’s house and wake him up and ask him who the hell he thought he was anyway, and the minions of the law had decided to adopt a more conciliatory attitude.

As to what arrangements had been made for the morrow’s onslaught, Shandy neither knew nor cared. He lay rapt in slumber until half-past eleven the next, or maybe the same, morning, and woke to find Helen bending over him with an expression of wifely concern.

“Peter darling, are you all right?”

“I don’t know yet,” he mumbled. “Kiss me and see if I respond.”

“You’re all whiskery.”

But she kissed him anyway. “I couldn’t bear to wake you. I expect Tim isn’t up yet either. You’ve missed the funeral.”

“Mine or his?”

“That poor Lumpkin man’s, of course. Roy went because he thought his father would want him to. He really is a darling boy. Oh, speaking of boys, Cronkite Swope is in the hospital.”

“Huh?” Shandy hurled himself out of bed. “Why?”

“He had an accident on his motorbike. Or off it, I suppose.”

“Good God! When?”

“Sometime in the small hours, I believe. They found him in the road.”

“Who found him?”

“Peter, I don’t know. Grace Porble got the news thirdhand from somebody who got it from Mrs. Lomax. At least, I assumed it was from Mrs. Lomax. It generally is.”

“When did you talk to Grace Porble?”

“Around a quarter to nine. I called to let Dr. Porble know I wouldn’t be at the library this morning because you’d been out all night being a hero. He’s frothing because you didn’t send for him.”

“What could Porble have done with that mob? Bop them over the head with Webster’s Unabridged? Drive them off with hard words? Fine them a nickel a trespass?

“He could have glared. He glares beautifully. Any man who can reduce a library full of students to absolute silence with one haughty glance is not to be taken lightly. Now go shave off those dreadfully unbecoming whiskers while I make your breakfast. Or lunch, or whatever. How about pancakes and sausage and fried apples and things?”

“Sounds pretty good for starters. What hospital is Swope in?”

“
How many hospitals do we have around here? He s over at the Hoddersville General, of course.”

“Good. Swope can’t have much wrong with him, then. Anything worse than an infected hangnail would overtax their facilities.”

“You’re in one of your moods, I see. I’ll go start the pancakes.”

Helen went off to the kitchen. Peter stood in the bathroom scraping off his overnight accumulation of hispidity and pondering. Was it a strange coincidence that Swope had been injured so soon after he’d called attention to the runestone? Was it a natural result of Swope’s having torn all over hell and gone on that flimsy bike for so many hours that he was no doubt as punchy as the rest of them?

Or was it something that Shandy, if he’d had half a brain, could have prevented? To how many people had Fergy repeated his superstitious blether about the curse of the runestone? How many others had thought up curses of their own? Shandy cussed himself a little and stood in shorts and undershirt wondering what to put on. Time was when he’d only have had to choose between a good gray suit and the corduroys he wore in the turnip fields. Now that he had a wife, his wardrobe was growing more complicated. He settled for a short-sleeved blue shirt and a pair of darker blue slacks, and presented himself at the table.