The Lost and the Lurking

Country folk, especially backcountry folk, are like to be a mite suspicious of strangers. But a plain man with a civil manner and no highfalutin airs can count on a neighborly reception from simple, decent people, so when the natives of Wolver looked to be fixing to whale on Silver John, he reckoned maybe it wasn't the sleepy little hamlet it seemed. But then, if it was, he had no business there anyhow. The man who picked the guitar with the silver strings had seen some doings in this mountain country, and had a reputation with some almighty powerful souls, not all of them flesh and blood. So when the government got curious about the goings-on in Wolver, it wasn't so strange that they should have asked Silver John to see what he could see, nor at all peculiar that the wanderer had shouldered his pack and his guitar and hiked up the trace of a road to take a gander. Wolver had a desolated look, from the smoking trash piles outside the town to the tumbledown ruined church. The children in the grimy yards stared at him dully, while their elders ignored him or watched him with undisguised hostility. John had no quarrel with them, but it sure looked like they were set on picking one with him...