Where the Summer Ends

.220 Swift



•I•

Within, there was musty darkness and the sweet-stale smell of damp earth.

Crouched at the opening, Dr Morris Kenlaw poked his head into the darkness and snuffled like a hound. His spadelike hands clawed industriously, flinging clods of dirt between his bent knees. Steadying himself with one hand, he wriggled closer to the hole in the ground and craned his neck inward.

He stuck out a muddy paw. “Give me back the light, Brandon.” His usually overloud voice was muffled.

Brandon handed him that big flashlight and tried to look over Kenlaw’s chunky 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.”



•II•

The cabin that Eric Brandon rented stood atop a low bluff about half a mile up a dirt road from the Warner farmhouse. Dell had made a show of putting the century-old log structure into such state of repair that he might rent it out to an occasional venturesome tourist. The foot-thick poplar logs that made its rough-hewn walls were as solid as the day some antebellum Warner had levered them into place. The grey walls showed rusty streaks where Dell had replaced the mud chinks with mortar, made from river sand hauled up from the Pigeon as it rushed past below the bluff. The massive river rock fireplace displayed fresh mortar as well, and the roof was bright with new galvanized sheet metal. Inside was one large puncheon-floored room, with a low loft overhead making a second half-storey. There were no windows, but a back door opened onto a roofed porch overlooking the river below.

Dell had brought in a power line for lighting, stove and refrigerator. There was cold water from a line to the spring on the ridge above, and an outhouse farther down the slope. The cabin was solid, comfortable—but a bit too rustic for most tourists. Occasionally someone less interested in heated pools and color television found out about the place, and the chance rent helped supplement the farm’s meager income. Brandon, however, had found the cabin available each of the half-dozen times over the past couple years when he had desired its use.

While the archeologist splashed icy water into the sink at the cabin’s kitchen end, Brandon removed a pair of fired cartridges from the pocket of his denim jacket. He inspected the finger-sized casings carefully for evidence of flowing, then dropped them into a box of fired brass destined for reloading.

Toweling off, Kenlaw watched him sourly. “Ever worry about ricochets, shooting around all this rock like you do?”

“No danger,” Brandon returned, cracking an ice tray briskly. “Bullet’s moving too fast—disintegrates on impact. One of the nice things about the .220 Swift. Rum and Coke okay?” He didn’t care to lavish his special Planter’s Punch on the older man.

Moving to the porch, Kenlaw took a big mouthful from the tall glass and dropped onto a ladderback chair. The Jamaican rum seemed to agree with him; his scowl eased into a contemplative frown.

“Guess I was a little short with Warner,” he volunteered.

When Brandon did not contradict him, he went on. “Frustrating business, though, this trying to sort the thread of truth out of a snarl of superstition and hearsay. But I guess I’m not telling you anything new.”

The woven white-oak splits of the chair bottom creaked as Kenlaw shifted his ponderous bulk. The Pigeon River, no more than a creek this far upstream, purled a cool, soothing rush below. Downstream the Canton papermills would transform its icy freshness into black and foaming poison.

Brandon considered his guest. The archeologist had a sleek roundness to his frame that reminded Brandon of young Charles Laughton in Island of Lost Souls. There was muscle beneath the pudginess, judging by the energy with which he moved. His black hair was unnaturally sleek, like a cheap toupee, and his bristly mustache looked glued on. His face was round and innocent; his eyes, behind round glasses, round and wet. Without the glasses, Brandon thought they seemed tight and shrewd; perhaps this was a squint.

Dr Morris Kenlaw had announced himself the day before with a peremptory rap at Brandon’s cabin door. He had started at Brandon’s voice behind him—the other man had been watching from the ridge above as Kenlaw’s dusty Plymouth drove up. His round eyes had grown rounder at the thick-barrelled rifle in Brandon’s hands.

Dr Kenlaw, it seemed, was head of the Department of Anthropology at some Southern college, and perhaps Brandon was familiar with his work. No? Well, they had told him in Waynesville that the young man staying at the Warner’s cabin was studying folklore and Indian legends and such things. It seemed Mr Brandon might have had cause to read this or that article by Dr Kenlaw... No? Well, he’d have to send him a few reprints, then, that might be of interest.

The archeologist had appropriated Brandon’s favorite seat and drunk a pint of his rum before he finally asked about the lost mines of the ancients. And Brandon, who had been given little chance before to interrupt his visitor’s rambling discourse, abruptly found the other’s flat stare fixed attentively on him.

Brandon dutifully named names, suggested suggestions; Kenlaw scribbled notes eagerly. Mission accomplished, the archeologist pumped his hand and hustled off like a hound on a scent. Brandon had not expected to see the man again. But Dell Warner’s name was among those in Kenlaw’s notes, and today Brandon had run into them—Kenlaw, having introduced himself as a friend of Brandon, had persuaded Dell to show him his family’s version of the lost mines. And that trail, it would seem, had grown cold again.

The chunky reddish-grey squirrel—they called them boomers—that had been scrabbling through the pine needle sod below them, suddenly streaked for the bushy shelter of a Virginia pine. Paying no attention, Dan romped around the corner of the cabin and bounded onto the porch. Brandon scratched the Plott hound’s blackhead and listened. After a moment he could hear the whine and rattle as a pickup lurched up the dirt road.

“That’ll be Dell,” he told Kenlaw. “Dan knew he was headed here and took the short-cut up the side of the ridge. Dog’s one of the smartest I’ve seen.”

Kenlaw considered the panting black hound. “He’s a bear hound, isn’t he?”

“A damn good one,” Brandon asserted.

“A bear killed young Warner’s father, if I heard right,” Kenlaw suggested. “Up near where we were just now. How dangerous are the bears they have up here?”

“A black bear doesn’t seem like much compared to a grizzly,” Brandon said, “but they’re quite capable of tearing a man apart— as several of these stupid tourists find out every summer. Generally they won’t cause trouble, although now and then you get a mean one. Trouble is, the bears over in the Smokies have no fear of man, and the park rangers tend to capture the known troublemakers and release them in the more remote sections of the mountains. So every now and then one of these renegades wanders out of the park. Unafraid of man and unaccustomed to foraging in the wild, they can turn into really nasty stock killers. Probably what killed Bard Warner that night. He’d been losing stock and had the bad sense to wait out with a bottle and his old 8-mm. Mannlicher. Bolt on the Mannlicher is too damn slow for close work. From what I was told, Bard’s first shot didn’t do it, and he never got off his second. Found what was left pulled under a rock ledge the next morning.”

Dell’s long legs stuck out from the battered door of his old Chevy pickup. He emerged from the cab balancing several huge tomatoes in his hands; a rolled newspaper was poked under one arm.

“These’ll need to go into the refrigerator, Eric,” he advised. “They’re dead ripe. Get away, Dan!” The Plott hound was leaping about his legs.

Brandon thanked him and opened the refrigerator. Finger-combing his wind-blown sandy hair, Dell accepted his offer of a rum and Coke. “Brought you the Asheville paper,” he indicated. “And you got a letter.”

“Probably my advisor wondering what progress I’ve made on my dissertation,” Brandon guessed, setting the letter with no return address carefully aside. He glanced over the newspaper while his friend uncapped an RC and mixed his own drink. Inflation, Africa, the Near East, a new scandal in Washington, and, in New York, a wave of gangland slayings following the sniping death of some syndicate kingpin. In this century-old cabin in the ancient hills, all this seemed distant and unreal.

“Supper’ll be a little late,” Dell was saying. “Faye and Ginger took off to Waynesville to get their hair done.” He added: “We’d like to have you stay for supper too, Dr Kenlaw.”

The redhead’s temper had cooled so that he remembered mountain etiquette. Since Kenlaw was still here, he was Brandon’s guest, and a supper invitation to Brandon must include Brandon’s company as well—or else Brandon would be in an awkward position. Had Kenlaw already left, there would have been no obligation. Brandon sensed that Dell had waited to see if the archeologist would leave, before finally driving up.

“Thanks, I’d be glad to,” Kenlaw responded, showing some manners himself. Either he felt sheepish over his brusque behavior earlier, or else he realized he’d better use some tact if he wanted any further help in his research here.

Brandon refilled his and Kenlaw’s glasses before returning to the porch. Dell was standing uncertainly, talking with the archeologist, so Brandon urged him to take the other porch chair. Taking hold with one hand of the yard-wide section of white-oak log that served as a low table, he slid it over the rough planks to a corner post and sat down. He sipped the drink he had been carrying in his free hand, and leaned back. It was cool and shady on the porch, enough so that he would have removed his mirror sunglasses had he been alone. Brandon, a true albino, was self-conscious about his pink eyes.

As it was, Kenlaw was all but gawking at his host. The section of log that Brandon had negligently slewed across the uneven boards probably weighed a couple hundred pounds. Dell, who had seen the albino free his pickup from a ditch by the straightforward expedient of lifting the mired rear wheel, appeared not to notice.

“I was asking Dr Kenlaw what it was he was looking for in these mines,” Dell said.

“If mines they are,” Brandon pointed out.

“Oh, they’re mines, sure enough,” the archeologist asserted. “You should be convinced of that, Brandon.” He waved a big hand for emphasis. Red clay made crescents beneath untrimmed nails.

“Who were the ‘ancients’ who dug them?” Dell asked. “Were they the same Indians who put up all those mounds you see around here and Tennessee?”

“No, the mound builders were a lot earlier,” Kenlaw explained. “The mines of the ancients were dug by Spaniards—or more exactly, by the Indian slaves of the conquistadors. We know that de Soto came through here in 1540 looking for gold. The Cherokees had got word of what kind of thieves the Spaniards were, though, and while they showed the strangers polite hospitality, they took pains not to let them know they had anything worth stealing. De Soto put them down as not worth fooling with, and moved on. But before that he sank a few mine shafts to see what these hills were made of.”

“Did he find anything?” Dell wanted to know.

“Not around here. Farther south along these mountains a little ways, though, he did find some gold. In northern Georgia you can find vestiges of their mining shafts and camps. Don’t know how much they found there, but there’s evidence the Spaniards were still working that area as late as 1690.”

“Must not have found much gold, or else word would have spread. You can’t keep gold a secret.”

“Hard to say. They must have found something to keep coming back over a century and a half. There was a lot of gold coming out of the New World, and not much of it ever reached Spain in the hands of those who discovered it. Plenty of reason to keep the discovery secret. And, of course, later on this area produced more gold than any place in the country before the Western gold rush. But all those veins gave out long before the Civil War.”

“So you think the Spaniards were the ones that dug the mines of the ancients,” Dell said.

“No doubt about it,” stated Kenlaw, bobbing his head fiercely. “Maybe that’s been settled for northern Georgia,” Brandon interceded, “although I’d had the impression this was only conjecture. But so far as I know, no one’s ever proved the conquistadors mined this far north. For that matter, I don’t believe anyone’s ever made a serious study of the lost mines of the ancients in the North Carolina and Tennessee hills.”

“Exactly why I’m here,” Kenlaw told him impatiently. “I’m hoping to prove the tie-in for my book on the mines of the ancients. Only, so far I’ve yet to find proof of their existence in this area.”

“Well, you may be looking for a tie-in that doesn’t exist,” Brandon returned. “I’ve studied this some, and my feeling is that the mines go back far beyond the days of the conquistadors. The Cherokees have legends that indicate the mines of the ancients were here already when the Cherokees migrated down from the north in the thirteenth century.”

“This is the first I’ve heard about it then,” Kenlaw scoffed. “Who do you figure drove these mines into the hills, if it wasn’t the conquistadors? Don’t tell me the Indians did it. I hardly think they would have been that interested in gold.”

“Didn’t say it was the Indians,” Brandon argued.

“Who was it then?”

“The Indians weren’t the first people here. When the Cherokees migrated into the Tellico region not far from here, they encountered a race of white giants—fought them and drove the survivors off, so their legends say”

“You going to claim the Vikings were here?” Kenlaw snorted. “The Vikings, the Welsh, the Phoenicians, the Jews—there’s good evidence that on several occasions men from the Old World reached North America long before Columbus set out. Doubtless there were any number of pre-Columbian contacts of which we have no record, only legends.”

“If you’ll forgive me, I’ll stick to facts that are on record.”

“Then what about the Melungeons over in Tennessee? They’re not Indians, though they were here before the first pioneers, and even today anthropologists aren’t certain of their ancestry.”

Brandon pressed on. “There are small pockets of people all across the country—not just in these mountains—whose ethnic origins defy pinning down. And there are legends of others—the Shonokins, for example...”

“Now you’re dealing with pure myth!” Kenlaw shut him off. “That’s the difference between us, Brandon. I’m interested in collecting historical fact, and you’re a student of myths and legends. Science and superstition shouldn’t be confused.”

“Sometimes the borderline is indistinct,” Brandon countered. “My job is to make it less so.”

“But you’ll have to concede there’s often a factual basis for legend,” Brandon argued doggedly. “And the Cherokees have a number of legends about the caves in these mountains, and about the creatures who live within. They tell about giant serpents, like the Uktena and the Uksuhi, that lair inside caves and haunt lonely ridges and streams, or the intelligent panthers that have townhouses in secret caves. Then there’s the Nunnehi, an immortal race of invisible spirits that live beneath the mounds and take shape to fight the enemies of the Cherokee—these were supposedly seen as late as the Civil War. Or better still, there’s the legend of the Yunwi Tsunsdi, the Little People who live deep inside the mountains.”

“I’m still looking for that ‘factual basis’,” Kenlaw said with sarcasm.

“Sometimes it’s there to find. Ever read John Ashton’s Curious Creatures in Zoology? In his chapter on pygmies he quotes from three sources that describe the discovery of entire burying grounds of diminutive stone sarcophagi containing human skeletons under two feet in length—adult skeletons, by their teeth. Several such burial grounds—ranging upwards to an acre and a half—were found in White County, Tennessee, in 1828, as well as an ancient town site near one of the burials. General Milroy found similar graves in Smith County, Tennessee, in 1966, after a small creek had washed through the site and exposed them. Also, Weller in his Romance of Natural History makes reference to other such discoveries in Kentucky as well as Tennessee. Presumably a race of pygmies may have lived in this region before the Cherokees, who remember them only in legend as the Yunwi Tsunsdi. Odd, isn’t it, that there are so many Indian legends of a pygmy race?”

“Spare me from Victorian amateur archeology!” Kenlaw dismissed him impatiently. “What possible bearing have these half-baked superstitions on the mines of the ancients? I’m talking about archeological realities, like the pits in Mitchell County, like the Sink Hole mine near Bakersville. That’s a pit forty feet wide and forty feet deep, where the stone shows marks of metal tools and where stone tools were actually uncovered. General Thomas Clingman studied it right after the Civil War, and he counted three hundred rings on the trees he found growing on the mine workings. That clearly puts the mines back into the days of the conquistadors. There’s record of one Tristan de Luna, who was searching for gold and silver south of there in 1560; the Sink Hole mine contained mica, and quite possibly he was responsible for digging it and the other mines of that area.”

“I’ve read about the Sink Hole mine in Creecy’s Grandfather’s Tales” Brandon told him. “And as I recall the early investigators there were puzzled by the series of passageways that connected the Sink Hole with other nearby pits—passageways that were only fourteen inches wide.”

The archeologist sputtered in his drink. “Well, Jesus Christ, man! ” he exploded after a moment. “That doesn’t have anything to do with Indian legends! Don’t you know anything about mining? They would have driven those connecting tunnels to try to cut across any veins of gold that might have lain between the pits.”

Brandon spread his big hands about fourteen inches apart. He said: “Whoever dug the passageways would have had to have been rather small.”