The Witch of Black Ridge

By H. K. Yeager

Is there a witch in the Ozark Mountains? Are there still cougars in the Ozark Mountains? Or are those, like so many other things, just legends?

Ted Garret, reporter for a midwestern newspaper, decided to get away from it all one weekend. In the Missouri wilderness, he discovered several things -- about himself, about his job, about his fiancee Louise, and about the Witch of Black Ridge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: H. K. Yeager
• Release date: Nov 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310532214

H. K. Yeager

H. K. Yeager lives in a small town, in an apartment that overlooks a river and a white stone dome.

Book preview

Prologue: The Legend

Epilogue: Yellow Cat

Characters

Ted Garrett – A cub reporter for a metropolitan newspaper, he visits Black Ridge ostensibly to fish but really to decide whether to marry Louise Mueller.

Rafe Yarnell – A village grocer who also loves Louise, he holds open house at his store on Saturdays for the locals.

Old Looey – Suffering from black lung disease, the aging miner insists that the witch of Black Ridge really exists but there never was a yellow cat.

Mary Aenne Crewes – Growing up in the fifties, she wants a medical career and plunges into conflict with her parents, her fiancé, and her peers.

Bert and Ida Crewes – The preacher believes a woman’s place is in the home and his immense spouse agrees.

Professor Michael Lear – Aenne’s beloved friend believes she belongs wherever she decides to be but wishes it could be with him even though this seems impossible.

Jean Courier – Mary Aenne Crewes’ young fiancé is sensuous but mean.

Marie Courier – Practical yet cruel, she blames Aenne for a double tragedy.

Paul Courier – Jean’s younger brother is as spoiled as his mother and brother can make him.

Lena Dawson – Lead Spring’s version of a prostitute, she is scorned by most.

Betty Weber – The professor’s housekeeper knows when to watch, when to ignore, and when to keep her mouth shut.

Ellen Gastineau – Lead Spring’s postmistress doesn’t know how to keep her mouth shut.

Nola Kuster – Marie Courier’s next-door neighbor disapproves of Jean Courier’s young fiancée.

Willie Kuster – Nola Kuster’s son is Jean Courier’s best friend and even loans Jean Courier his new cream-colored Chevrolet coupe.

Little Raisin – Her real name is Michelle and she inadvertently costs Aenne Crewes her home.

Grandpap Usher – An erudite war veteran, he has chosen to end his days on Black Ridge.

Nanny The Goat Lady Usher – Grandpap Usher’s common-law-wife is an herbalist.

George Faris – A would-be deer slayer, his medical practice and his wife await him in the city.

Ike Epperson, Curt Meyer, and Darrel Boyd – Faris’ hunting companions can’t keep any secrets from Dumb Annie.

Dumb Annie – A strange young woman who rarely speaks, her silent appearances and disappearances around Black Ridge lead the miners, farmers, and villagers to call her a witch.

Louise Mueller – After completing her medical residency, she wants to open a rural practice but her fiancé’s career is in the city and he wants to stay there.

Black Ridge – An enchanted small mountain of unrivaled beauty casts its spell on many who visit it.

THE LEGEND

On the eastern edge of a small mountain in the middle of a lead belt, the hill dwellers and the hard rock miners seldom mention the witch of Black Ridge.

When they do talk about her, they call her Dumb Annie. For although a few of them claim to have conversed with her, most say she rarely speaks except to tell you Yes or No or to give a sharp order.

Some wonder how she lives but the handful brave enough to have put the question to her report that she only smiles and says, I get by. I pay my rent, never offering to elaborate.

These same folk claim that they see her sometimes at sunset, leading back a sheep rancher’s stray lamb or in spring dawn laying a bunch of fresh wild greens on the doorstep of an old widow’s backwoods cabin or at summer noon striding up the mountain to a shanty where a sick toddler wails. Or, they say, you might glimpse her at midnight, if you’ve the need to be up at such an hour, slipping silently through the pines, a yellow cat at her side.

Then there are those who insist that there is neither yellow cat nor Dumb Annie.

Just a story, they avow. Mighta been a bit o’ truth to it, oncet. ’At’s how them legends gits started. But it’s a story’s all.

Yet those same scoffers look up at the dark mountain the whole time they’re denying the tale.

And when the foxes bark on a late December evening and the captured rabbit screams her death in the snow, believers and debunkers alike lift their eyes to the shadowed mountainside, as if they expect to catch a momentary glimpse of the witch of Black Ridge.

BOOK ONE: 1982

Chapter One: YARNELL’S GROCERY

Ain’t no yaller cat. As hard as the ore he wrestled from the rock, a miner spat on the bare wooden floor for emphasis.

Ain’t no Dumb Annie, neither, put in a sunburned farmer. Not ’ny more, leastways.

Having nearly struck a big yellow cat when I turned my pickup onto the dirt road leading into the village from the blacktop, I hesitated on the sunken steps of the weathered building. A cracked and peeling cant-lettered sign swinging from the porch overhang declared this to be Gert Yarnell’s Grocery. A rickety screen door was all that stood between the February chill outside and the talkers inside but the envelope of warmth produced by a wood stove in the store made it seem like spring out here on the porch. The men, whom I could see pretty clearly through the torn screen, were hard rock miners and farmers, hill people likely to frequent such a market on a Saturday to trade political views and catch up on the local gossip. They’d probably been here all morning so how could they know about the big yellow cat I’d seen not twenty minutes before?

Is too an Annie, wheezed an ancient shot driller perched on a keg in a corner of the store. He coughed wrackingly into a dirty blue bandanna, gasped, leaned against the wall and closed streaming eyes while his companions waited politely for him to continue. After a recuperative sixty-second doze he opened his watery eyes again to croak, That wild gal whut bided a spell with Grandpap Usher and the Goat Lady. Some years back, it was. Name o’ Annie.

Same gal ol’ Pastor Bert Crewes over to Lead Spring always held she wanted t’be th’ bride of the devil? wondered the other miner.

I hear tell he useta damn ’er in church ever’ Sunday, confirmed the sunburned farmer.

The old miner coughed again. Always fancied ol’ Bert ‘n’ Ida knowed Dumb Annie somehow.

Had ’em a gal of their own ’bout the same age, recalled the farmer. Run off to the city, she did.

Whut I heard, too, agreed the other miner.

Weren’t no witch, though, the sunburned farmer declared.

Mary Aenne. The old shot driller pronounced it Mary Anny. He gasped for breath and closed his eyes once more. ’At was ’er name. Mary Anny Crewes.

Weren’t no witch, though, insisted the farmer. Th’ Crewes gal married Charlie ‘n’ Marie Courier’s oldest boy. Lived right there at his Ma’s house in Lead Spring ’til th’ axy-dent. Then she run off someplace.

Dumb Annie, the old miner informed them, his eyes still closed, left Grandpap and Nanny Usher’s cabin ‘n’ went on up the Ridge to live in Turkey Strut Shack fer a spell. Then she come back down to th’ cabin later on.

Weren’t no witch, reiterated the farmer.

Gone now, anyway, stated the other miner unequivocally. Disappeared after the fire.

The old shot driller kept his pale, watery eyes shut a few more seconds before opening them again to fix his companions with another wet stare. Ain’t gone, he declared solemnly. Aint gone a-tall.

Aw, ’at’s jist a story, argued the younger miner. Mighta been a bit o’ truth to it oncet. ’At’s how them legends gits started.

Folks sees her up on the mountain after Christmas, insisted the rheumy-eyed old shot driller. Calls her a snow ghost ’cause she comes back ever’ winter.

A story’s all it is, contradicted the other miner.

Helps with the birthin’, wheezed the old man, ignoring his younger colleague’s disagreement. He nodded wisely at his own declaration. Yessir, lotsa folks gits cut off from ol’ Doc Elder in the dead o’ winter, he cain’t git over here from Lead Spring when the snow flies. But young-uns gittin’ theirselfs borned don’t take no ’count o’ all that. His cackle of amusement culminated in a paroxysm that left him trembling and snorting. Ain’t gone a-tall, he gasped after his coughing fit subsided. Then he slipped back into his aged nap as the others mumbled and scuffed their feet on the dusty wooden floorboards of the store while they glanced out the back window at the dark mountain rising above the village.

Ain’t no yaller cat, though, the younger miner agreed with the old shot driller, getting in the last word. But he stared up at the mountain, too, searching its shadowed slope.

I decided it was time I announced myself. I’d been eavesdropping, I never could resist local color and since I’d just come close to running over one a few minutes before, my bump of curiosity itched about the yellow cat they spoke about. But I knew I wouldn’t get any information from these hillbillies if they caught me spying so I stamped my feet noisily on the top step and swung open the sagging screen door. Instantly several faces turned my direction and the only people inside who didn’t try to bore holes in me with their stares were the old sleeping miner and a tall, red-bearded, middle-aged man talking quietly with the white-aproned guy standing behind the counter.

Morning, I began. It seemed an appropriate salutation since it wasn’t quite noon.

No one spoke.

Need some groceries. That seemed an appropriate reason for my being here.

It was, after all, a grocery store.

No one spoke.

Going fishing for goggle-eye up on the mountain, I volunteered, this too seeming an appropriate motive for visiting such a village on a February Saturday.

At least that’s what I’d been telling myself since I’d left the city last night after quarreling with Louise.

No one spoke.

Name’s Garrett. Ted Garrett. That seemed an appropriate introduction because it’s my name.

No one spoke.

My fiancée tells me the fishing’s great in these hills. She grew up around here so I guess she ought to know. That also seemed appropriate, especially since it happened to be true.

No one spoke.

Drove down from the city, I explained. That, too, seemed appropriate. I’d traveled all night and all morning to get here. I was tired. I’d eaten nothing since yesterday. And I needed supplies for my fishing expedition.

No one spoke.

I considered telling them I really was going up on the mountain to get drunk while I thought about Louise and me and our engagement that suddenly seemed like it might get broken off. It’s like this, boys, I imagined myself confiding, she wants a career more than she wants a wedding. So I’m going to camp out up on Black Ridge and pretend to fish while I get very drunk and after I’ve sobered up, I’ll drive back to the city and tell her where to shove her plans for a country medical practice because I don’t intend to share my bride with twenty or thirty hick patients a day.

Of course, I said none of this but the temptation was strong to utter the words just to see the reaction I’d get.

Almost as if I’d yielded to that temptation and spoken aloud, the tall, quiet man in front of the counter observed, Black Ridge is as good a place as any to think something through. He hefted his bag of groceries and turned back to the white-aproned storekeeper. I’d better mount up so I can get these eggs back to Lead Spring before they hatch, Rafe.

The proprietor, somewhere in his mid-thirties by my guess, grinned as if his tall, middle-aged customer had told a rich joke but the smile never quite reached his eyes, though the sunburned farmer standing near the wood stove actually chortled.

I didn’t get it. Mount up? Hatch? Then I recalled seeing a gray horse grazing near the store. Perhaps the red-bearded man had arrived on horseback, then, perhaps a fairly long ride awaited him, though surely not long enough for eggs to hatch as he had joked to the store’s proprietor. I gave this little further thought, however. I was too startled by his observation that the mountain was a good place to think. It was as if he’d read my mind. Besides, I was confused by his reference to Lead Spring. I was tired and I’d had nothing but coffee since the day before. After Louise and I quarreled, I’d moped around my apartment an hour or two then thought, What the hell, I would just take off and do a little fishing. I had a week’s vacation left so I’d thrown some gear into the bed of my pickup then driven all night, stopping only to refill gas and get rid of coffee before taking in more. The gasoline was a buck and a quarter but coffee was a dime. So I hadn’t been all that sleepy during the trip and I sure didn’t remember driving through a town named Lead Spring. What Spring?

The storekeeper pointed a stubby forefinger at his rickety screen door.

I was more confused than ever. I thought this was Black Ridge, and flung my own arm backward toward the screen door and at the tiny village tucked into the foot of the mountain.

It’s Black Ridge, right enough, confirmed the proprietor. He offered no further explanation.

The tall, middle-aged man felt sorry for me, I guess, because he raised a thumb upwards and backwards at the rear window of the store, through which I could see the shadowed mountain rising darkly over the town. So’s that. The town was named for the mountain. Lead Spring’s a little under twelve miles west of here.

That explained why I didn’t remember going through Lead Spring. I’d come into the village of Black Ridge from the east.

Seeing my glance at the grocery bag he held, the tall man took further pity on me and added, Nice little market in Lead Spring, Mr. Garrett, but they don’t sell fresh guinea eggs. Look me up after you’ve caught your limit of, er, ah, goggle-eye, did you say? I’ll treat you to breakfast. You’ll probably be tired of your own cooking and your own thoughts by then. As he brushed past me to go out the door with a See you to the proprietor, I noticed he walked with a slight limp.

But he was gone before I could find out his name or get his address or ask him how he knew I wanted to go up on the mountain to think.

What for you? demanded Rafe Yarnell brusquely.

I was puzzled both by the tall man’s invitation and by the storekeeper’s hostility but ignored Rafe Yarnell’s rude proprietary tone and tried to inject a little humor into my own inquiry. Do people here invite strangers to dine without introducing themselves or giving directions to their homes?

Nope, conceded Rafe grudgingly before repeating just as rudely as before, What for you?

I fumbled my grocery list out of my shirt pocket and between the two of us we located enough food to supply an army. Except for his terse references to my menu requirements and my rather more polite replies, the entire transaction took place in relative silence. No one else spoke, either.

I paid and prepared to leave. At the door I said, By the way.

Several pairs of eyes met mine once more.

Anybody around here looking for a yellow cat? Just as I turned off the blacktop onto the gravel road into the village here, I saw a yellow cat. Pretty big cat, too. Bigger than any ordinary housecat I ever saw. Crouched by the side of the road. Almost ran over it. Anyone in Black Ridge own a large yellow cat?

The sunburned farmer gave a derisive snort and the hard rock miner spat again onto the dusty, bare boards at his feet as Rafe Yarnell stared out the back window of his grocery store at the mountain rising blackly behind the town.

I should have been ready for it but I wasn’t.

The old shot driller roused suddenly from his slumber on the corner keg to stare at me with pale, watery eyes.

Ain’t no yaller cat, he wheezed.

Chapter Two: RIDGE ROAD

I knew damn well there was a yellow cat. I’d seen it, a huge, tawny blur near the junction of highway and village lane. But I wasn’t going to argue about it, I let the matter ride and stomped off Yarnell’s rickety porch to head for my truck with my supplies.

I had hoped a short walk through the village in the crisp, cold air would clear my head of thoughts about Louise and me so I’d parked my pickup at the edge of the village. Now I regretted it. The drive to Black Ridge had been fairly long and, combined with last night’s quarrel, seemed to have left me achingly tired. In spite of the February chill, sweat soaked my flannel shirt and I was thirsty and the back of my throat tickled. The two grocery sacks grew heavier with every step I carried them so by the time I reached the truck I was almost panting. I even had begun to sense motion just outside my line of vision.

It’s the altitude, I told myself. Ted Garrett’s getting soft, I told myself. I knew the elevation here only was about 600 feet higher than I was used to but it was as good an excuse as any for the way I was feeling: stale, disgusted – with myself as much as with Louise but I wasn’t quite ready to admit that – and so tired I imagined peripheral movement.

I hadn’t imagined the yellow cat, though. It had crouched near the edge of the gravel road and at first I’d taken it for a pile of dusty, yellow rags. Then I’d glimpsed a tawny, quick flash as it leaped to the side of the track to melt into the thick brush lining the village lane.

Yarnell’s Grocery’s habitués must have been discussing a different yellow cat, I decided. They surely didn’t believe there weren’t any yellow cats in the vicinity whatsoever. In fact, they’d pretty well ignored the context of my assertion that I’d spotted a yellow cat on my way into town, they’d been too busy denying there was a yellow cat belonging to some hillbilly named Dumb Annie some of them said was a witch and some of them said wasn’t one and most of them insisted didn’t exist either. Maybe if I’d been able to command their attention – if I could have made them listen to my account of my very real yellow cat encounter just outside their village, rather than leaving them to argue among themselves as to the existence or nonexistence of some yokel magician-midwife – maybe if I’d shouted, Now, look here! I damn’ near hit a big cat up by the junction and the sonofagun was as yellow as butter on a pancake – one of them might have exclaimed, Why, everyone knows the Smith’s cat takes a nap up close t’ the blacktop ever’ afternoon ’bout this time! Or somebody would’ve volunteered, Bertie Jones got ’er a big ol’ yaller tom. Musta been him y’almost run over. Or someone may have commented, I says to Miz Ross t’other day, I says that fool fee-line o’ yers is a-fixin’ to git hisself kilt.

But they’d been too involved in their argument over the whereabouts of some hick woman who might or might not have lived on Black Ridge, depending on who you listened to, and who might or might not have been a ghost or a witch or a folk healer or a bride of the devil, again depending on who was doing the talking, for anybody to pay much credence to my testimony that there was, indeed, a huge yellow cat right outside their village.

Most of them had agreed on one thing, though. Dumb Annie, whoever she was or she wasn’t, didn’t have a yellow cat. But this apparent consensus didn’t necessarily imply there weren’t any yellow cats in Black Ridge at all, did it?

Surely the villagers didn’t really believe a yellow cat couldn’t possibly be found anywhere in this entire area…

I snickered at the logic circles my mind was spinning around the subject of a local legend. At the time I had no idea what the tragic accident had been, though the sunburned farmer at Yarnell’s store had referred to one. I didn’t know then that some while ago a strange, mute figure had appeared in Nanny Usher’s goat pasture seemingly out of nowhere or that this same quiet creature had disappeared again later on. Nor did I realize yet that quite a few of the villagers whispered at night of unusual comings and goings or that some who whispered of such events also hinted at old wrongs and flames in the night and silver hidden deep in the mountain. I had no knowledge of any of these at the time.

The snicker turned into a mammoth sneeze as I thumped my grocery bags onto the bed of the pickup. Teddy, boy, I muttered to myself, not only are you going soft in the body, you’re getting mushy in the head. There’s no big story for you in a hillbilly myth. You’re sick, that’s all. I didn’t know, of course, how prophetic this self-analysis really was and that I was actually coming down with a cold. I merely debated with myself whether there was useable material in the tale based on local gossip about nonexistent Dumb Annie and her nonexistent yellow cat I had heard at the little market. God knew I could use a story. I hadn’t sold any of the literary potboilers I’d written and on a newspaperman’s salary, I needed all the extra cash I could earn because I didn’t want to touch my savings.

Especially if I decided to marry Louise as planned… Louise, who’d been born in these hills… Who’d spent her girlhood here, gone to school near here, picked berries and wildflowers and played in nearby streams… Louise, who’d left the mountain to work her way through college then attend medical school in a city as harsh in its own right as Black Ridge must be in winter, only to fall for a cub reporter on a metropolitan newspaper who didn’t want to share her with the rural poor she planned to serve in exchange for tuition… Louise, who mysteriously disappeared some week-ends after telling me she needed to see patients at an out of town clinic… Louise, who’d lost her temper and shouted good-bye at me as she stormed from my apartment last night after I’d pointed out better ways to live… Louise, who’d never mentioned the witch of Black Ridge in all the months we’d been engaged… Who’d never once referred to Gert Yarnell’s Grocery or Dumb Annie or to her yellow cat…

So while I called myself soft in the head, the whole time I was wondering why on God’s green earth Louise hadn’t seen fit to share this local legend when she knew I was a writer and I’d be interested.

Then I told myself again that I probably was coming down with something, never suspecting it might actually be the case.

Or at least partly the case.

I made up my mind to stop by Yarnell’s Grocery on my way back to the city on the odd chance that there really was something to the village gossip the store’s patrons had argued about this morning. Maybe I could get some of them to talk to me about this Dumb Annie – who weren’t no witch, and who was gone now, anyways, because she had disappeared after the fire – just in case there was a story in it somewhere, after all. If nothing else, it might make good filler for the Sunday supplement.

I didn’t care if the locals who gathered at Yarnell’s on Saturdays disagreed about the fate of Dumb Annie. I didn’t care, at the time, anyhow, that Louise never had mentioned her. I didn’t care that Yarnell’s customers denied the existence of the yellow cat. I didn’t even care that Louise hadn’t ever talked about one, either. I knew there was one. I’d seen it.

So I promised myself I’d return to the market at the end of the week to convince somebody to tell me about Dumb Annie. And about her yellow cat. I’d make them believe me when I said I’d seen one. After my head had cleared, after I’d done a little fishing and a lot of thinking, I’d go back to Yarnell’s for the truth.

I encountered no cats along Ridge Road, yellow or otherwise. At least, not on the way up the mountain.

I returned to Gert Yarnell’s Grocery a lot sooner than I’d originally planned.

Chapter Three: ROCKFALL CREEK

The road twisted around the mountain like a trumpet vine on a telephone pole then ended suddenly in a stand of wind-leaned pines and tall oaks. I braked the pickup and heaved myself out of the cab to look for a path, finding nothing at first but a snow-dotted carpet of needles and damp leaves beneath the branches.

This part of the dark mountain was incredibly green, the pines and cedars retaining their verdure even in February, as they’ll do except in driest winters.

Deep pink tipped the black branches of the oaks, hinting at the buds of leaves to come later, when the rest of the snow melted, and the redbud and dogwood limbs already had begun to brown and swell with the promise of spring.

I discovered the old game trail in the waning February light as once again I relieved myself of the coffee I’d drunk during my night drive to Black Ridge.

In spite of the sweat trickling down my back in the chill breeze and the raw scratch in my throat, I paused to