If anyone wanted to dig a well in Pizen Gulch he wouldn't think of doing
it without first sending for Noah Buckley, the water witch. He lived at
the head of Tumbling Creek. Noah wore a belt of rattlesnake skin to keep
off rheumatism. "That belt's got power," Noah boasted. And young boys in
the neighborhood admitted it. More than one who had eaten too many green
apples and lay groveling under the tree, drawn in a knot with pain,
screamed in his misery for Noah. If Noah was within hearing he went on a
run, fast as his long legs could carry him. And the young sufferer
reaching out a hand touched the rattlesnake belt and quicker than you
could bat an eye his griping pains left and the next thing he was up
playing around.
However, it was his power to find water that was Noah Buckley's pride.
He took a twig from a peach tree, held a prong in each hand, and with
head bent low he stumbled about here and there mumbling:
Water, water, if you be there,
Bend this twig and show me where.
If the twig bent low to the earth you could count on it that was the
spot where the well should be dug. To mark the spot Noah stuck the twig
at once into the earth. Mischievous boys sometimes slipped around,
pulled up the peach branch and threw it away. Again there would be a
doubting Thomas who sought to test the water witch's power by stealing
away the peach branch and dropping in its place a pebble. But Noah was
not to be defeated. He forthwith cut another branch, repeated the
ceremony, and located the exact spot again. Whereupon neighbor menfolk
pitched in and dug the well. Not all in one day, of course. It took
several days but their labors were always rewarded with clear, cold
water at last.
A well once dug where Noah directed never went dry. That was his boast
as long as he lived.
However, it was not so much his power to find water that strengthened
the faith of people in the water witch. It was what happened on Dog
Slaughter Creek. The Mosleys, a poor family, had squatted on a miserable
place there. One day the baby of the lot toddled off without being
missed by the other nine children of the flock. When Jake Mosley and his
wife Norie came in from the tobacco patch they began to search
frantically for the babe, screaming and crying as they dashed this way
and that. They looked under the house, in the well, in the barn. They
even went to neighbors' pig lots; the Mosleys had none of their own.
"I've heard of a sow or a boar pig too eating up the carcass of a
child," a neighbor said. "Maybe the babe's roamed off into Burdick's
pasture and the stallion has tromped her underfoot," Jake opined. With
lighted pine sticks to guide their steps they searched the pasture.
There was no trace even of a scrap of the child's dress anywhere to be
seen on ground or fence.
At last someone said, "Could be a water witch might have knowing to find
a lost child!" And the frantic parents moaned, "Could be. Send for the
water witch."
It was after midnight that neighbors came bringing the water diviner.
"Give me a garmint of the lost child," Noah spoke with authority, "a
garmint that the little one has wore that's not been washed."
The mother tearfully produced a bedraggled garment.
The water witch took it in his hand, sniffed it, turned it wrongside
out, sniffed it again. "Now have you got a lock of the little one's
hair?" He looked at Norie, moaning on the shuck tick bed, then at Jake.
They stared at each other. At last Norie raised up on her elbow. They
did have a lock of the babe's hair. "Mind the time she nigh strangled to
death with croup"--the mother fixed weary eyes on the father of her ten
children--"and we cut off a lock of her hair and put it in the clock?"
In one bound Jake Mosley crossed the floor and reached the clock on the
mantel. Sure enough there was the little lock of hair wrapped around
with a thread. Without a word Jake handed it to the water witch.
Noah eyed it in silence. "I'll see what can be done," he promised at
last, "but, Jake, you and Norie and the children stay here. And you,
neighbors, stay here too. I'll be bound to go alone."
With a flaming pine stick in one hand and the child's dress and lock of
hair in the other, he set out.
Before morning broke, the water witch came carrying the lost child.
They hovered about him, the parents kissed and hugged their babe close
and everyone was asking questions at the same time. "How did it happen?"
"Where did you find the little one?"
"I come upon a rock ledge," said Noah with a great air of mystery, "and
then I fell upon my knees. I'd cut me a peach branch down at the edge of
the pasture. I gripped the lost child's garmint and the lock of her hair
on one hand with a prong of the peach branch clutched tight in fists
this way," he extended clenched hands to show the awed friends and
neighbors. "I'd already put out the pine torch for daylight was coming.
It took quite a time before I could feel the little garmint twitching in
my hand. Then the peach branch begun to bear down to the ground. First
thing I know something like a breath of wind pulled that little garmint
toward the edge of the rock cliff. My friends, I knowed I was on the
right track. I dropped flat on my belly and retched a hand under the
cliff. I touched the little one's bare foot! Then with both hands I
dragged her out. This child"--he lifted a pious countenance--"could
a-been devoured by wild varmints--a catamount or wolf. There's plenty of
such in these woods. But the water witch got there ahead of the
varmints!"
The mother began to sob and wail, "Bless the good old water witch!" and
the joyful father gave the diviner the only greenback he had and said he
was only sorry he didn't have a hundred to give him.
After that more than one sought out the water witch. Even offered him
silver to teach them his powers.
"It's not good to tell all you know, then others would know as much as
you do," said Noah Buckley of Pizen Gulch, who knew that to keep his
powers a water witch has to keep secrets too.