Page:Weird Tales Volume 42 Number 06 (1950-09).djvu/29

tetlle seemed the type to stop for a strange hitch-hiker, but maybe he couldn't help stopping for me.

"You sure you want to head for Piney's Grove, mister?" asked the tallest and oldest man.

"Piney's Grove, yes," repeated Mr. Beau gruffly. "Where the Pineys are supposed to live."

"Oh," said the tallest and oldest man. "You've heard about them."

"A little," said Mr. Beau, his toad-profile turned to me, "but not yet have I heard how I get there. If you please, friend."

The tallest and oldest man hooked his gaunt thumbs in the belt of his blue jeans and drummed his fingers on his hip bones. He squinted behind his glasses, and spit over one shoulder. "I myself never been down there. When I was just a chap, old folks used to tell tales about the place to keep us away from there."

"To make you stay away they must have told you where Piney's Grove was," said Mr. Beau.

"That's right, sir." The tallest and oldest man took one thumb out of his belt and pointed it down the road. "You have to go three-four miles. You curve around a quick bend, and you're not across Drowning Creek yet, but you see a sort of winding road going through the trees to your right. Them trees is thick and green a right much. From what I used to be told, you follow that road in to its end, and when you're at the end of it, why, you’re at Piney's Grove."

"Thank you, friend," said Mr. Beau. "When we're settled in, you all come and visit us, hear?"

Another batch of silence, and it still hung over the men at the filling station as Mr. Beau shifted gears, started the car and drove us away.

We ourselves didn't speak for a while. Mr. Beau hunched his slack, heavy shoulders over his wheel. Terry fluffed back her cloud of hair, that was like pale yellow leaves of autumn with the sun on them. I half lay in the rear seat, an elbow on my pack. Finally Mr. Beau turned just enough so that his words blew back to me.

"Mac?" I'd told them they might call me Mac. "We're just about due to leave the highway. Where would you like us to let you off?"

"Nowhere in particular," I replied. "I'm going nowhere." And that was as close to true as anything I'd told him and Terry since they picked me up.

"Just drifting?" he asked.

"Right now, I'm wondering if I mightn't ride on and see you come to this Piney's Grove; the place those men were so funny about."

Mr. Beau made a grump sound, the way a toad might try to chuckle. "If you really don't have a home or job, might you like to work for me a couple of days, Mac? You seem a nice young fellow, I like you and think I can trust you around."

Terry's shoulders tightened a bit, as if the suggestion worried her. She didn't turn her smooth, pretty face back to me, but I guessed it was frowning a little. "I'd be proud, Mr. Beau," I said. "Proud to helpyou."

"Then okay,” he said.

We drove along and found that quick bend we'd been told about. And just beyond, along the side of the highway, plodded toward us a straight, shabby old Negro. Mr. Beau put on the brakes and rolled to a stop and waited for the man to come up to us. He was a good-looking old brown-black fellow. He took off his shabby straw, hat, the way mannerly Negroes do in North Carolina. "Good evenin', lady and gentlemans,” he said, gently. "How you today?"

"Uncle," said Mr. Beau, "you know how to direct us to Piney's Grove?"

The Negro's face turned blank, the way those faces at the filling station had turned. The dark lids hooded the eyes a little. Then a finger like a black billy club pointed."That trail right there yonder, sir. You ain't fixin' to go there, is you?"

"Why not, Uncle?" asked Mr. Beau.

White-rimmed eyes were eloquent in the thunder-dark face. "Pineys might not like it, sir."

"You believe in the Pineys?” asked Terry, leaning across Mr. Beau.

The eyes hooded themselves again, courteously timid. "Most folks believes in the