The Second Ardath Mayhar Read online

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFO

  A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

  DEDICATION

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  THE METHODIST BOBCAT

  THE LYCH ROAD

  THE VEAULES

  MAY BANKED FIRES RISE ANEW

  THE GUARDIANS OF THE SHRINE

  ARPEGGIA’S DEATHSONG

  THE PLACE OF THE ANCIENTS

  OLD MAN, BAD SCENE

  THE SWAMP RUNNER

  FATE HAS THREE FACES

  MINDBEND

  IN THE LONE GRAY

  THE DAY OF THE DRUM

  DEEP WOODS LADY

  WELCOME TO SHIARA

  THE LAST PAS SEUL

  MY FRIEND EDDY

  THE FACE IN THE FOG

  NORTHER

  PER CASTANEA

  THE BLUE-FIRED COW-KILLING CRAZIES

  PURSUIT

  LALIQUE

  THIS IS THE NIGHT!

  STONE CIRCLES

  CONFLICT

  NIGHT SONG

  The MEGAPACK® Ebook Series

  COPYRIGHT INFO

  The Second Ardath Mayhar MEGAPACK® is copyright © 2017 by Wildside Press, LLC. Originally published as The Methodist Bobcat and Other Tales. Contents copyright © 1993, 2003, 2010 by Ardath Mayhar. All rights reserved.

  * * * *

  The MEGAPACK® ebook series name is a trademark of Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.

  “Night Song” was previously published in Midnight Zoo in 1993.

  “The Face in the Fog” was previously published in Hardboiled, September, 2003.

  A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

  The author of sixty-two books, more than forty of them published commercially, Ardath Mayhar (1930-2012) began her career in the early 1980s with science fiction novels from Doubleday and TSR. Atheneum published several of her young adult and children’s novels. Changing focus, she wrote westerns (as Frank Cannon) and mountain man novels (as John Killdeer), four prehistoric Indian books under her own name, and historical western High Mountain Winter under the byline Frances Hurst.

  I only met Ardath in person once, but I corresponded with her for many, many years and read many of her manuscripts. I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that she was deeply suspicious of ebooks, even when they were taking off and becoming a significant part of many writers’ incomes. Fortunately her son is more practical, and he has allowed me to begin issuing most of her work in electronic format.

  This collection—which features 27 stories—was originally published in paperback as The Methodist Bobcat and Other Tales. I’m delighted to be able to include it in the MEGAPACK® line.

  Enjoy!

  —John Betancourt

  Publisher, Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidepress.com

  ABOUT THE SERIES

  Over the last few years, our MEGAPACK® ebook series has grown to be our most popular endeavor. (Maybe it helps that we sometimes offer them as premiums to our mailing list!) One question we keep getting asked is, “Who’s the editor?”

  The MEGAPACK® ebook series (except where specifically credited) are a group effort. Everyone at Wildside works on them. This includes John Betancourt (me), Carla Coupe, Steve Coupe, Shawn Garrett, Helen McGee, Bonner Menking, Sam Cooper, Helen McGee and many of Wildside’s authors…who often suggest stories to include (and not just their own!)

  RECOMMEND A FAVORITE STORY?

  Do you know a great classic science fiction story, or have a favorite author whom you believe is perfect for the MEGAPACK® ebook series? We’d love your suggestions! You can post them on our message board at http://wildsidepress.forumotion.com/ (there is an area for Wildside Press comments).

  Note: we only consider stories that have already been professionally published. This is not a market for new works.

  TYPOS

  Unfortunately, as hard as we try, a few typos do slip through. We update our ebooks periodically, so make sure you have the current version (or download a fresh copy if it’s been sitting in your ebook reader for months.) It may have already been updated.

  If you spot a new typo, please let us know. We’ll fix it for everyone. You can email the publisher at [email protected] or use the message boards above.

  DEDICATION

  For Charles Shadden,

  Who Owned That Bobcat

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Although I pretty much stopped writing novels around 1999, I still find short stories breaking out from time to time, and some of these are new—or newish. Some, as well, are old ones that got put back in the files and either never were published or never were submitted to magazine. “Welcome to Shiara” is one of the oldest tales I found, one of my very early ones.

  All of these were fun to write, and I hope you will have as much fun reading them as I did putting these together.

  —Ardath Mayhar

  Chireno, Texas

  June 2010

  THE METHODIST BOBCAT

  From time to time, Solomon Peat revisits me with another tale from the past. As he speaks in my father’s voice and with his inimitable style, I am always ready to listen! However, my friend and classmate Charles Shadden (who else?) was the one who had a pet bobcat and a visiting preacher.…

  Solomon Peat was sitting on the front porch of Mrs. Bragg’s store, his hickory splint chair leaned back against the wall, his bare feet stretched out to catch the breeze wafting over miles of pine forest from the river. For once, he and the five small boys who were his usual audience were quiet, all being occupied with sipping sweating bottles of strawberry pop.

  From inside the store there came a voice, gruff and firm. “Sol, put on your shoes! It may be spring, but going barefoot is for children, not old duffers. You’ll put off customers!”

  “My Lord, woman, can you see through walls now?” Sol complained.

  Nevertheless, he shuffled on his worn canvas scuffs, just in time. A car was pulling up in front of the store, and he recognized the driver. Lucy Finner would definitely have been offended by bare feet. She even glanced disapprovingly at the unshod toes of the line of small boys swinging their legs off the edge of the porch.

  Still, she greeted them as she passed. “Morning, Chuck, Will Henry. Hi there, Les, Tim, Fane. Tell your folks hello for me.” The boys nodded back solemnly without missing a sip.

  She glanced up at Sol as she climbed the steps. “And Solomon! Not telling tales today?”

  He took a last sip. “Now, Lucy, you know it’s not polite to talk while you’re drinkin’ pop.”

  Will Henry made sure his last gulp had gone down. Then he piped up, “Miz Finner, did you hear about our bobcat kitten? Daddy found it in a den with its dead mother. It’s big enough to drink milk out of a bowl. We’re goin’ to raise it. You ever hear about anybody raisin’ a bobcat?”

  Lucy Finner plopped into one of the other chairs and began to laugh. When she caught her breath, she gasped, “Yes, indeed, Will Henry. My folks and I got pretty well acquainted with that cat, too. I’ve never been so scared in all my life....” She went off into another gale of laughter.

  Sol thumped the front legs of his chair onto the porch and put his hands on his knees. “Now you know you have a story to tell, Lucy. Sit back and tell us. Your husband’ll expect you to shoot the breeze with Mrs. Bragg, so he won’t worry if you’re a bit late getting home.”

  Although Mrs. Bragg pretended to scorn the tall tales spun on her porch, she came stumping out and dropped into the wicker rocking chair kept for her personal u
se. “Getting warm inside,” she said, fanning her face with a handkerchief. “It’s cooler out here.”

  Lucy Finner looked down the porch at the waiting audience. “You want to know about that bobcat, I see. Sol, you know my husband about as well as anybody. Did you ever hear him tell about Bobby?”

  Sol squinted, thinking hard. Then he began to grin. His belly began to quiver with chuckles beneath his faded blue overalls. “You bet,” he rumbled. “But he never said that you and your folks ever knew that cat.”

  “I met Bobby the same day I met Lawrence,” she said. “Let me put this in order for you, or you’ll get all confused.

  “You see, Larry’s Uncle Edward was a hunter. When Larry was about six, Ed shot a bobcat and then found she had a kitten in her den. He managed to catch it, and he decided it would be a nice pet for his nephew. So Larry and his mother and dad spent several weeks getting up at night to bottle feed that bobcat kitten, and once it decided to live, it settled down and was just like a house cat, though it got to be about four times as big.”

  “That’s what we want to do with ours,” Will Henry said. “Have a great big cat that can lick the fur off any tomcat anywhere.”

  Sol made a shushing gesture. “Let her tell her tale, boy,” he said. “Lucy, how did your family get involved?”

  “Mrs. Finner, Larry’s mother, was a devoted Methodist. The church was just up the street from their home, and the Finners always put up visiting preachers and their families. Of course, the only room available was Larry’s—nobody thought anything of turning over his room to visitors. That was the way things were done, back in the Thirties.

  “Papa was a Methodist minister, and he was called to Templeton for an interview. Of course, the Finners put us up and shoved Larry onto a pallet in their room. What nobody thought of was the fact that Bobby had a habit of roaming in the evenings and coming home after midnight to jump into bed with Larry. I never noticed the cat flap in the screen door, and if I had, it wouldn’t have meant anything to me.”

  Will Henry began to grin. Chuck looked sideways at him and his lips curved. Tim nudged Les, who elbowed Fane, and all three had wide white grins in their black faces.

  Lucy glanced at Letitia Bragg and went on. “We had ridden the train all day and were tired before supper was over. I went to bed right afterward, and by the time Mama and Papa crawled in on either side of me I was pretty well out of it. We all slept like logs. Then in the middle of the night there came a sharp flap!—and a heavy weight came plopping down right in the middle of the bed, which was mostly me. Nearly knocked all the breath out of me.

  “I screamed like a train whistle and sat up straight, right along with Mama and Papa. There was a dim light in the hall, enough to show a big round cat-face the size of a plate, its green eyes glaring at us. The thing snarled, and its teeth looked like a tiger’s.

  “I don’t remember getting out of bed. Papa never remembered running out right through the screen door and onto the street. Mama was behind him and I was behind her, and every time I looked back that huge cat was directly behind me, bouncing along as if he intended to eat us all alive.”

  The boys were bent double, heads on knees, shaking with laughter. Sol was rumbling with chuckles, and even Mrs. Bragg couldn’t quite manage to look grim. Lucy sighed deeply, but laugh wrinkles deepened around her mouth.

  “We ran as hard as we could, all the way up the street, which was totally empty at that time of night, until we got to the corner, where a big power pole was set. It had L-shaped rods set into its sides, and Papa caught hold of the lowest one, swung me up above him, and pulled Mama along behind him as we climbed it almost to the top.

  “The cat sat at the bottom, staring up at us as if it wondered what on earth we were doing. After a bit, we began to wonder, too, but we didn’t really consider coming down. Every time one of us would move, the cat would reach up and bury its claws in the pole, as if it might come up after us, and we’d go still as a bunch of mice.”

  This time Mrs. Bragg couldn’t quite smother her chuckle. That set Sol and the boys off, so Lucy had to wait for them to stop before she went on, “That was the longest night I ever spent, before or since. It was summer, but the breeze up that pole was pretty brisk, particularly with us in our night clothes.

  “When it finally started to come daylight, Papa looked down and heaved a sigh. ‘That beast’s moving away,’ he said.

  “Mama gave a groan and began to climb down. Papa started down, too, and I could hear his joints popping as he went. He guided me down, too, and lifted me to the ground at last.”

  She rose and straightened her back, with a few pops of her own. “When we crept back to the Finner house, we felt mighty sheepish, because the first thing we saw was that bobcat, sitting in the entry hall waiting for us. Larry was calling it to get its breakfast, and it trotted back to the kitchen and settled down just like any tabby cat.

  “Mama wanted to pretend we never left the house at all, but between the busted screen door with a Papa-sized hole in it and the state of our nighties, which had creosote from that pole all over them, there was no hiding it. Anyway, Papa was a minister and he thought a lie was next door to murder.”

  She stared down at her feet and looked sheepish. “Of course, poor Larry got blamed for the whole thing, though if he’d been in his own bed, as he should have been, nothing would have happened at all. Nobody fussed at Bobby, of course. When you’re a forty-pound bobcat, not much of anything or anybody is going to tangle with you.”

  “How old were you and Larry then?” asked Solomon Peat.

  “I was five and Larry was almost six. Fourteen years later we got married, and Bobby lived long enough to be at our wedding. He was pretty stove up by then, but he watched the ceremony in the Finner parlor as if he knew what was happening. A few weeks later he didn’t come back from his nightly ramble, and we hoped he’d just gone to sleep in the woods, where he belonged.”

  Will Henry’s eyes were wide and bright. Weddings were not his thing, but one with a bobcat in attendance fired up his imagination. “My sister...,” he began, but Sol shook his head and the boy stopped.

  “Don’t often find one the caliber of old Bobby, I expect. How many years ago was that, Miz Finner?” Sol asked.

  She gazed off over the pines, silent for a long moment. “Forty-seven years ago, Sol Peat,” she said. “And Larry says he never missed his bobcat, because he had me to take his place.”

  Letitia Bragg snorted and rose in one great heave. “Come in and get your catfish, Lucy. Larry’s going to be wondering about you.”

  With a sigh, Lucy Finner turned to follow the storekeeper into the grocery store, while the line of small boys and Sol Peat filled their minds with visions of three terrified people fleeing through the night with an interested bobcat at their heels.

  They were still laughing quietly when the Finner Plymouth pulled away down the dusty road.

  THE LYCH ROAD

  While researching something else entirely, I ran across the information about the church requiring people to be buried in the churchyards of their original home places. Given the lack of roads at that time and the terrible weather in the British Isles, that struck me as being totally inhumane.

  Rowall woke, as usual, to the pain of his chilblains and the crowing of the scraggly cock in the hen-run. For a long moment, while nerving himself for the icy plunge from his scanty covers into the frozen morning, he forgot what this day would hold.

  When he remembered, he went even colder, and as he climbed out of his pallet bed he shivered with worse things than the early frost. Father was dead.

  That was bad enough, in all conscience, but the thought of the effort and the danger involved in getting him to his grave was even worse. Why couldn’t the Bishop sit warm in his palace and let poor folk be? What good was served by having men buried only in their home churchyards, when they had lived for sixty
years without ever visiting the place of their birth?

  Rowall was no coward. Had he not stood fast while hearing the Wish-Hounds coursing over the moors? And had he not even heard, above the whine of the wind and the voices of the spectral hounds, the shrill horn of their master, long dead and held down in his own grave by a great slab of stone?

  To travel the Corpse Road was a thing he did not like, but he had done it before, with his Grandsir and his uncle and his mother. And now he must take that way to carry his father, too, the long way to his waiting tomb. The Lych Road had no bridges, no post houses, no aids to the traveler. It had only the cold dank miles of moor and the rushing rivers, unbridged and dangerous, and the lurking mists and the mire that lay at a distance, and yet near enough to trap those who went astray in the fogs.

  The others had died in summer. That was the difference. Now it was fall, and an early winter was in the nip of the air and the crackle of the frost. If he waited, the ground would be frozen hard, and his father would have to be salted down, as others had been in the past, to wait for spring. That was a thing that edged toward sacrilege in Rowall’s mind, and he was determined to get the old man decently underground, if it could be done.

  He yelled as he stepped on the flagstone floor. His woolen stockings did little to shut out the chill. Margret thrust her tousled head around the corner from the kitchen, where she slept warm before the hearth, and frowned at him. Then she remembered, too, and her eyes grew round as she stared up at her brother.

  “Today? It will snow, Gram says. A bad day to be out, at best. And on the moors, it will be terrible cold.”

  “He must go, else we will have to bide with him in pickle until thaw. The men have given their words to be here by dawn. Go and build up the kitchen fire. They will be wanting something hot in their bellies before we set out. Mull some of the last of the ale...it’s little enough we can do to cheer them.” Rowall pulled on his awkward hide boots and stood, stamping his feet well down.