Where the Summer Ends - By Karl Edward Wagner Page 0,52
shoulder. The archeologist’s blocky frame completely stoppered the opening as he hunched forward.
“Take hold of my legs!” came back his words, more muffled still.
Shrugging, Brandon knelt down and pinioned Kenlaw’s stocky legs. He had made a fair sand-lot fullback not too many years past, and his bulk was sufficient to anchor the overbalanced archeologist. Thus supported, Kenlaw crawled even farther into the tunnel. From the way his back jerked, Brandon sensed he was burrowing again, although no hunks of clay bounced forth.
Brandon pushed back his lank white hair with his forearm and looked up. His eyes were hidden behind mirror sunglasses, but his pale eyebrows made quizzical lines toward Dell Warner. Dell had eased his rangy denim-clad frame onto a limestone knob. Dan made a black-furred mound at his feet, tail thumping whenever his master looked down at him. The young farmer dug a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket, watching in amused interest.
“Snake going to reach out, bite his nose off,” Dell ventured, proffering the cigarettes to Brandon, selecting one himself when the other man declined.
The cool mountain breeze whisked his lighter flame, whipped the high weeds that patchworked the sloping pasture. Yellow grass and weed—cropped closely here, there a verdant blotch to mark a resorbed cow-pie. Not far above them dark pines climbed to the crest of the ridge; a good way below, the slope leveled to a neat field of growing corn. Between stretched the steep bank of wild pasture, terraced with meandering cow paths and scarred with grey juts of limestone. The early summer breeze had a cool, clean taste. It was not an afternoon to poke one’s head into dank pits in the ground.
Kenlaw heaved convulsively, wriggling back out of the hole. He banged down the flashlight and swore; dirt hung on his black mustache. “Goddamn hole’s nothing but a goddamn groundhog burrow!” Behind his smudged glasses his bright black eyes were accusing.
Dell ’s narrow shoulders lifted beneath his blue cotton work shirt. “Groundhog may’ve dug it out, now—but I remember clear it was right here my daddy told me granddad filled the hole in. Losing too much stock, stepping off into there.”
Kenlaw snorted and wiped his glasses with a big handkerchief. “Probably just a hole leading into a limestone cave. This area’s shot through with caves. Got a smoke? Mine fell out of my pocket.”
“Well, my dad said Granddad told him it was a tunnel mouth of some sort, only all caved in. Like an old mine shaft that’s been abandoned years and years.”
Ill-humoredly snapping up his host’s cigarette, Kenlaw scowled. “The sort of story you’d tell to a kid. These hills are shot through with yarns about the mines of the ancients, too. God knows how many wild goose chases I’ve been after these last couple days.” Dell’s eyes narrowed. “Now all I know is what I was told, and I was told this here was one of the mines of the ancients.”
Puffing at his cigarette, Kenlaw wisely forbore to comment.
“Let’s walk back to my cabin,” Brandon suggested quickly “Dr Kenlaw, you’ll want to wash up, and that’ll give me time to set out some drinks.”
“Thanks, but I can’t spare the time just now,” Dell grunted, sliding off the rock suddenly. The Plott hound scrambled to its feet. “Oh, and Ginger says she’s hoping you’ll be down for supper this evening.”
“I’d like nothing better,” Brandon assured him, his mind forming a pleasant image of the farmer’s copper-haired sister.
“See you at supper then, Eric. So long, Dr Kenlaw. Hope you find what you’re after.”
The archeologist muttered a good-bye as Warner and his dog loped off down the side of the pasture.
Brandon recovered his heavy Winchester Model 70 in .220 Swift. He had been looking for woodchucks when he’d come upon Dell Warner and his visitor. From a flap pocket of his denim jacket he drew a lens cover for the bulky Leupold 3x9 telescopic sight.
“Did you say whether you cared for that drink?”
Kenlaw nodded. “Jesus, that would be good. Been a long week up here, poking into every groundhog hole some hillbilly thinks is special.”
“That doesn’t happen to be one there,” Brandon told him, hefting the rifle. “I’ve scouted it several times for chucks—never anything come out.”
“You just missed seeing it—or else it’s an old burrow,” Kenlaw judged.
“It’s old,” Brandon agreed, “or there’d be fresh-dug earth scattered around. But there’s no sign of digging, just this hole in the hillside. Looks more like it was dug out from below.”