[Illustration: STEADILY SHE PROBED HIS FACE, AND SLOWLY SHE NODDED]

  Cat O’ Mountain

  BY
  ARTHUR O. FRIEL

  _Author of_
  “_King--of Kearsarge_”

  Illustrated by
  DONALD S. HUMPHREYS

  THE PENN PUBLISHING
  COMPANY PHILADELPHIA

  1923

  COPYRIGHT
  1923 BY
  THE PENN
  PUBLISHING
  COMPANY

  Cat o’ Mountain

  Made in the U. S. A.

  _To_

  _JAMES and CAROLINE MACK_

  _whose unfailing kindliness
  to the mysterious prowler of
  The Traps
  will long be remembered by
  “The Detective”_

FOREWORD

At the northern end of the Shawangunk range lies a region where the
Maker of Mountains went mad.

Into his new-laid rock the giant crashed his huge hammer, smashing
asunder his handiwork, gouging out chasms, splitting it into fissure
and cavern and abyss, slashing its eastern edge into a frowning
precipice. When he had gone, up into some of his hammer-scars welled
subterranean waters, forming crag-bound lakes hundreds of feet higher
than the rugged valley floor. Other chasms became gulfs of verdure,
crammed with a veritable jungle of hardwoods and evergreens. And there,
in the labyrinth of tree and bowlder, fierce brutes and venomous snakes
bred and fought and slew. It was the home of the wolf, the panther, and
the bear; of the rattlesnake and the copperhead.

Then came men: savages who killed and ate the wild beasts and clothed
themselves in their furry hides. Through the gorges and down the slopes
they laid their trails, along which they roved for centuries in hunt
and tribal war. At length they paused, staring eastward at new fires
burning below them--the fires of white men.

The inevitable followed. First by firewater, then by firearms, the
Dutch settlers crowded the tawny “duyvils” out of the forested
lowlands between the river of Hendrick Hudson and the mountain wall.
But behind that wall, in the natural stronghold created by the mad
Mountain-Maker, the red men long held their own. More, at times they
swooped out from the one small gap in the cliffs on bloody raids. And
when the vengeful whites retaliated with invasions of their fastness,
they ambushed those palefaces along their trails.

Then the settlers ended it. Trapped again and again within that gulf,
they in turn became the trappers. Stealthily moving in force, they
garrisoned the heights of Mohonk and Minnewaska; they outwitted,
outmanœuvred, outambushed the Indians; they herded them back against
their own precipices, cornered them among their own bowlders, slew
them without mercy. Returning to their lowland farms, they left behind
them a silent, blood-spattered, death-strewn hole in the hills which
henceforth--because of its traps and countertraps--was to be known as
The Traps.

Long afterward, men came in again; white men, and red men too, no
longer foes. They cleared little farms, brought in their women,
intermarried and interbred, led such primitive existences as might
have been expected. Dwelling in their own little world, they followed
their own inclinations in such matters as mating and hunting and
drinking--and thereby achieved a reputation somewhat dubious. The
tongue-wagging folk outside declared the Trapsmen were “wife-swappers”
and “moonshiners” and other things. And perhaps they were.

Rumor has asserted, too, that these men first settled that craggy hole
not because they would but because they must; that the country outside
was “too hot” for them; that they even had to obtain their wives by
becoming squaw men or by the primeval custom of capture; and that
for many years their land was distinctly unsafe for any man not of
their clan. This also may be true. Be that as it may, they lived hard
lives, and many of them died hard deaths. Yet they lived as free men,
untrammeled by slavish subservience to the myriad laws manufactured in
the cities beyond them.

But they, too, passed. As the bear and the wolf and the Indian faded
out of that country after the coming of the white man, so the Trapsmen
have almost vanished before the encroachments of commercialism. Beside
the upland lakes now rise those structures from which the pioneer
turns with loathing--summer hotels. Moreover, virtually all of the
intervening Traps has been bought in by the hotel barons. The little
homes of the vanished men are slowly rotting apart; their tiny fields
and their hard-grown orchards are going the way of the ancient Indian
trails--disappearing into wilderness where snakes thrive unmolested.
Few indeed are the people who now live in the mountain bowl; fewer
still those who are native-born. The others are from outside.

Yet there are, in the region round about, two or three old
men--taciturn, abrupt, whole-souled old fellows--who were born in the
Traps and who will die not far from the Traps. From them, and from the
whispering ghosts which, by day and by dark, have drifted along beside
me on the silent trails and talked to me in weird crevasse and uncanny
old house, I have learned the tale which is here set down. It is a
tale of Yesterday, in a land of Yesterday, chronicled by one who was
there--yesterday.

                                                                A. O. F.

  _New York, 1923._

CONTENTS

       I. THE PANTHER                       13

      II. NIGGER NAT’S GIRL                 24

     III. PIPE-SMOKE--AND POWDER-SMOKE      35

      IV. THE FUGITIVE                      45

       V. CREEPING THINGS                   56

      VI. THE KNOCK-OUT                     66

     VII. A MAN MEETS A MAN                 76

    VIII. THE HA’NT                         87

      IX. DALTON’S DEATH                    97

       X. A SCRAP OF PAPER                 108

      XI. AT THE BRIDGE                    119

     XII. THE LAW COMES                    129

    XIII. THE CODE OF THE HILLS            139

     XIV. COLD NERVE                       150

      XV. FIRE AND FROST                   160

     XVI. THE MOVING FINGER WRITES         172

    XVII. A STAB IN THE NIGHT              184

   XVIII. HUNTERS OF MEN                   195

     XIX. THE SUN BREAKS THROUGH           206

      XX. LIBERTY OR DEATH                 217

     XXI. THE HAND OF THE GHOST            229

    XXII. IN THE SHADOWS                   240

   XXIII. THE DEMON OF THE DARK            251

    XXIV. CROSS TRAILS                     262

     XXV. NINETY-NINE’S MINE               272

    XXVI. SNAKE STRIKES                    284

   XXVII. TRAPPED                          293

  XXVIII. AN ACCOUNT IS CLOSED             301

    XXIX. OUT OF THE PAST                  311

     XXX. THE CALL OF THE SOUTH            322

Cat o’ Mountain

CHAPTER I

THE PANTHER

High on the crags a panther screamed.

Savage, sinister, yet appallingly human--like the malevolent squall of
an infuriated hag--the cry tore through the night shadows whelming the
mountain-girt gulf of the Traps. Among the gigantic bowlders and the
uncanny crevasses of Dickie Barre it hurtled in a shattered wave of
sound. Out across the dense tangle of underbrush and the lazy-creeping
water of Coxing Hill it fled, freezing in their tracks the smaller
brethren of the wild--fox and raccoon and rabbit and mink--which moved
there in their furtive foraging. From the forested steeps of Mohonk and
Millbrook it reverberated, and among those trees it was swallowed up.

Again the malignant wail broke out; and now the beast which voiced it
was not in the same spot as before. Somewhere on the very brink of
the precipice of Dickie Barre the huge cat had been, and somewhere on
that edge he still was. But he was moving, seeking a crack or crevice
through which he might steal swiftly downward without hurling himself
to death on the rubble of cliff-fragments below; and his failure to
find it at once exasperated his ugly nature to its ugliest. His eyes
told him something down there was moving. His nose said the thing was
human, was hurt, was harmless. His fierce brain knew it would be an
easy kill, and his ravening jaws slavered at the realization that after
one rending attack he could gorge himself--on the tender flesh of a
woman.

Baffled, maddened, he screeched once more. Then he became silent. He
had found something promising: not a direct line of descent, but a
narrow shelf dipping diagonally down the face of the cliff. Along this
he proceeded with swift, sure stealth.

Then, down in the density behind him, a light shot out from between two
towering bowlders. A clean, brilliant beam it was--the ray of a carbide
camp-lamp. Its white sheen played up, down, right, left; and as it
moved, the rock-masses and the trees and brush round about stood forth,
then vanished again into the gloom. But it did not advance. Between
those two colossal blocks it stayed, peering like a dazzling eye.

All at once it jumped. From the chaos of chunks between silent cat and
silent light, a voice had cried out.

“Help! Oh--help!”

It was a high, clear, penetrating call, with an under-note of terror
and pain.

Two voices answered: one, a ferine snarl from the merciless
cat-creature beyond; the other, a quick response in the tones of a man.

“Right here! Where are you?”

“Here into the--the rocks! Oh, hurry up, before that critter gits to
me!”

“Coming!”

The glaring white eye moved forward in haste. Behind it, boots scraped
and bumped on rock. It rose in a steep slant, slid suddenly down,
accompanied by more scraping of boot-heels; disappeared between two
blocks leaning together; emerged beyond, ascended again, wavering
erratically with the strain of climbing a treacherous slope; halted at
the peak of another bowlder and rapidly searched the surroundings.

“Can’t see you!” the man panted. “Speak up!”

“Hold stiddy a minute!” implored the other voice. “I’m a-comin’--up
this rock--if I don’t slip. Oh!” The last was a choked moan.

“What’s the matter? Hurt?”

“Ye-yes. But wait--I’m a-comin’----”

The light quivered, as if the man behind it were impatient to leap
forward. But it remained poised on its own bowlder, shooting at the
upper edge of another mass of conglomerate beyond which the girlish
voice had spoken. A few seconds later, atop that rough stone, something
glinted red-gold in the white glare. Under it rose wide gray eyes, a
pale face--the eyes suddenly shut and the face shrank from the blinding
beam. Again the gas ray lit up the glowing glory of the red hair.

“All right. Stick there,” commanded the man. A quick twist of the
light--then another grind of sliding heels, terminating in a solid bump
like the impact of a gun-butt against stone. The white eye now was
swinging about at the base of the bowlder, hunting a way around the
almost vertical block. A few seconds, and it began staggering over the
smaller debris toward one corner.

“Oh--look out--here’s the critter now!”

With the warning came a swift scramble overhead. The light wheeled
and revealed a girlish figure in a torn drab dress swinging itself
out--slipping rapidly down--hanging by its hands from the upper edge.

“Hold hard!” snapped the man. “Don’t be silly--he’s a coward, like all
cats. He’ll run if you say ‘boo.’ Hang tight a minute. Don’t drop.”

But the girl, dangling with face turned upward and heels a yard or more
above the jagged jumble below, sniffed scornfully at his assertion of
knowledge. Before he could make two steps toward her she let go. Down
she darted in a grayish streak, and on the stones beneath she crumpled.

One sharp moan of pain broke from her. Then, looking upward, she
breathed: “Look!”

The light switched up. From the edge above now protruded another head:
a flat-nosed, fang-toothed, tawny visage whose eyes flamed green with
ferocity and whose snarling jaws writhed in malignant menace.

A startled grunt sounded behind the light. The white eye lifted, hung
poised as if held by a hand grown rigid. Beside it, twin tubes of steel
centered on that horrid head.

_Boomboom!_ A double flash leaped thundering from the tubes. In a swirl
of blue smoke the face of the great cat vanished.

The light pitched backward, fell clattering on the rocks. A muffled
impact and a sullen thwack of metal told that the man and his gun too
had been knocked down by the recoil. Over behind the bowlder something
else thudded softly and was still.

But, though dropped, the lantern burned faithfully on. Its ray lit up
a pair of high-laced boots, tan corduroys, and a hammerless shotgun
sprawling on a slanting bowlder. A second later a broad hand swooped at
it and righted it. The gun was lifted, broken at the breech, swiftly
reloaded and snapped shut. Then the legs drew up and the light rose,
darting at the girl.

She was huddled where she had dropped, but her pale face was alive and
her gray eyes wide open. As the glare fell on her she threw up an arm
to shield her dark-dilated pupils. Upon the tanned skin of that firm
young forearm showed a long red gash.

“Good Lord! You’re badly hurt!” exclaimed the man.

The lips under the shadowing arm curved in a strained smile.

“’Tain’t much,” she deprecated. “I got a gouge when I tumbled. Guess
you kilt Mister Catamount, or scairt him off anyway. They take a mighty
lot of killin’ sometimes. Now can you git me down to where I can walk?
My ankle’s hurt.”

A quiet laugh of admiration came from the invisible man.

“You’re a plucky little lady,” he informed her. “Most girls in your
place would be fainting or going all to pieces. As for walking, I
don’t know. This is a tough hole to navigate in after dark. But we’ll
see.”

The light moved toward her. As it advanced the man added in a chiding
tone: “You shouldn’t have dropped like that. No wonder your ankle’s
hurt.”

“Is that so! What was I goin’ to do, Mister Smarty--let that critter
claw me? And I hurt my leg an hour ago, not jest now. And I wish you’d
look and see if the catamount’s alive yet. He’s been pesterin’ round
here ’most a month, and you better kill him good and dead.”

“Oh, he’s dead enough----”

“You go and look!”

Again the quiet laugh sounded.

“Just as you say, my lady. I think I heard him fall over back there.”

Once more the light turned. It wavered around the base of the bowlder,
bobbed up and down among the jags and juts of the rock-heap, paused,
swung slowly, came to rest on a furry huddle hanging limp over a
misshapen stone. There dangled two powerful fore-legs, topped by
massive shoulders, terminated by big paws. Between them hung a red ruin
which had been a head.

“Whew!” whistled the man, studying the size of the legs and the breadth
of the back. “What a brute! Never knew they grew so big. Lucky he was
close enough to take those charges before they could spread. Otherwise
that bird-shot would only have maddened him.”

Turning, he picked his way back to the spot where the girl waited. He
found her sitting up on a stone and frowning down at her left foot. For
the first time he observed that her feet and the shapely ankles above
them were bare. The left one was much swollen.

“He’s as dead as they make ’em,” he sang out cheerily. “We’re a
bunged-up lot, aren’t we? Cat lost his head, your arm and foot are
hurt, and my right shoulder’s kicked into the middle of my back from
letting both barrels go at once. And even my gun is all mauled from
falling on the rocks.”

“Ain’t that too bad?” The tone was amusedly sarcastic. “But I guess I’m
the wust off--I’ve got more bad luck comin’.”

“How so?”

“I’ll catch hell when I git home,” was the naive explanation.

For a minute the man was speechless. Then he chuckled.

“So? Then why go home?”

The mountain girl’s answer was as straightforward as before.

“I don’t know any other place to go.”

Her sober face told that she spoke the gaunt truth, and that she
dreaded the thought of returning to the house whence she had come. An
awkward pause followed.

“Well, you may not get there to-night,” the man declared. “I doubt if
I can find my way out of this mess of rocks before daylight, and you
certainly can’t go scrambling around on that bad foot. You’ll have to
come to my camp now and get bandaged up.”

The auburn brows drew together in another frown, and the eyes under
them peered toward him in open suspicion.

“I ain’t so sure about that,” she asserted. “I can git home some way
alone, if I have to, and I don’t figger to stay up here all night. Who
are you?”

“Oh, just a rambling camper. But don’t be silly. I’m not a skunk. I’ll
gladly take you home if it’s possible and sensible, but until you’re in
condition to travel it’s neither. Now you need a bandage on that arm,
some hot water on the ankle, and--are you hungry?”

“I’m ’most starved,” she admitted. “I got mad and run away this
mornin’, and I ain’t et since breakfast.”

“Oho! I’m afraid you’re a temperamental little redbird. Well, come on
down to camp and I’ll feed you bacon and beans--and hot coffee, lots of
it. How’s that?”

“Sounds awful good. I guess you’re all right. You go ’long and show the
way.”

She turned about on her stone. The movement disclosed a long rent in
the faded dress, running from arm to waist, through which glowed pink
flesh. Her skirt, too, was badly ripped. The man behind the light
switched it from her to the formidable mass of stones ahead.

“If you can stub along on one foot,” he suggested, “we can make better
progress by hugging each other. I can stand it if you can.”

A quick laugh answered him. The light veered back, revealing dancing
eyes, perfect teeth, and flushed cheeks under the glowing hair.

“I can stand ’most anything--if I have to,” she flashed. “And it looks
like I’d have to.”

“By George! Young lady, you’re a little beauty when you laugh! I think
I’m going to enjoy this trip. Wait a minute and I’ll let you put your
arm around my neck.”

Followed the grind of boot-soles and the approach of the lamp.

“You’re awful good.” She laughed again. “You’d ought to sell soft soap
for a livin’, you’ve got so much of it.”

“Humph! That’ll do. Now let’s walk.”

Slowly the white eye wobbled along among the tumbled blocks. The only
sounds behind it were those of labored breathing and curt directions
regarding the placing of feet. Not once did the girl whimper from the
pain of the injured ankle.

Presently the pair of tall cliff-chunks took shape ahead, their bases
lost among smaller stones, their crests invisible in the upper gloom,
their irregular sides framing a narrow black cañon which seemed to
end in emptiness. But out from that gloomy slit drifted a tang of
smouldering wood-smoke; and beyond it, the girl knew, the hidden camp
of her unknown rescuer waited.

At the entrance to the covert they paused. So narrow was the passage
that they could no longer advance side by side. But the carbide flame
showed that the footing ahead was smooth and almost level, offering no
obstacle to her progress alone; also, that the distance to the cavern
beyond was hardly more than a couple of rods.

“Now if you’ll hop along by yourself for a few yards more you’ll be
there,” spoke the tall, vague form behind the metal lamp. “Sorry my
doorway’s so tight, but it was made before I came here.”

The injured girl, drooping against a stone beside her, let the jest
pass without a smile.

“You go ahead,” she prompted wearily. “You’ve got boots.”

“What of it?” he puzzled.

“Snakes.”

“Ouch! Snakes around here?”

“Why, sure. This country’s full of ’em--rattlers and copperheads. Guess
you ain’t been into here long, mister.”

“Right. I haven’t. But--Lordy! You shouldn’t go around barefoot in
snake country.”

“Mebbe. But folks can’t wear out their shoes into summer if they’re
goin’ to have ’em for winter, can they?”

He made no reply. Into the gap he turned, and through it he passed to
the larger space beyond, his wide shoulders rubbing the rock as he
passed. Behind him she limped along, leaning against one wall.

At the end of the little cañon he stepped downward, halted, and set gun
and lamp on a rock shelf. Some twenty feet away, under an overhang of
the cliff, an open blanket-roll and various small camp-tools showed
beside an Indian fire--short sticks laid like wagon-wheel spokes, with
the flame at the hub.

“Now you can hug me for the last time--maybe,” he solemnly stated. “I’m
going to tote you over there. It’s rough going.”

With which she was lifted and carried across a rubble of fragments to
the blankets.

As he straightened up in the brilliant light thrown across by the
lamp, she saw him plainly for the first time: a lithe, firm-jawed man
whose face glowed red with new sunburn between a gray flannel shirt
and a head of silky blond hair; a clean-mouthed, clean-limbed chap
whose twinkling blue eyes might have brought an approving smile to the
lips of many a girl far more critical of men than this maiden of the
mountains. But no hint of liking for her new-found friend dawned in her
face.

Into her eyes darted a light of mingled recognition, suspicion,
repulsion. She shrank from him as if he had suddenly become one of
those snakes against which she had just warned him.

“Oh, Lord!” she breathed. “It’s you! The detective!”

CHAPTER II

NIGGER NAT’S GIRL

Blank astonishment crept across the countenance of the blond man.
Motionless as the rocks around him he stood, staring down at the
hostile face upturned to his.

“Detective? Me?” he muttered.

“Yes, you!” she flared. “Think you’re smart, don’t you? Mebbe you think
us folks are a lot of numbskulls, but we ain’t. And seein’ you jest
helped me out of a fix, I’ll tell you somethin’, Mister Spy--you better
git out of the Traps right quick, while you’re able to travel!”

The man threw back his head and laughed--a gurgling laugh of pure
enjoyment.

“Well, if this isn’t rich!” he chuckled. “Old Cap Hampton, the famous
dee-teck-tiff! Say, little redbird, I’m glad you dropped in this
evening. I was thinking I’d go to-morrow, but now I reckon I’ll stay
awhile. Looks as if this place might prove interesting.”

The gray eyes snapped.

“Oh, it’ll be interestin’!” was the ominous prediction. “If you don’t
git right outside the Big Wall and stay out--some of the boys will be
sleepin’ into new blankets and totin’ a newfangled shotgun, I shouldn’t
wonder.”

His gaze dropped to the blankets under her, which were obviously
new; then darted to his hammerless gun across the way. When his eyes
returned to hers the merriment was gone from them. They glinted like
cold blue steel.

“So that’s the game, eh?” His voice was hard-edged. “To kill a stranger
for his gun and money. Well, your ‘boys’ are slow. They were snooping
around my camp down by the creek last night, but they didn’t have the
nerve to do anything but watch. Thanks for your tip. Hereafter I’ll
load my gun with buckshot. You can tell your friends that.”

A flush of anger dyed the girl’s cheeks.

“Oh, that ain’t it!” she denied. “Strangers are safe enough, long’s
they mind their own business. But we’ve got no use for sneakin’ spies
that den up into the rocks like copperheads. And if you think anybody’s
scairt of your buckshot, Mister Spy, jest remember this is old Injun
country, and folks was gittin’ kilt into the Traps before your grandpop
was borned. If all the dead men that’s been shot and tommyhawked round
here should git up all together they’d--they’d shake the hills with
their trompin’! You and your buckshot--ha, ha, ha!”

Her scornful laugh stung like a whip-lash. Yet, though his sunburned
face grew still redder under its sting, he thought: “Lordy, what a
stunning little beauty she is with that color! There’s more than one
kind of wildcat in these hills, too. I like this place better every
minute.”

Aloud he said: “All right, fair damosel. I don’t know----”

Abruptly she started up--winced and paled as her sprained ankle stabbed
with pain--but caught the wall and faced him in righteous wrath.

“Don’t you cuss me!” she blazed.

“Huh? I didn’t!”

“You did! You called me a dam-somethin’----”

“Oho! Fair damosel? Why, that’s an old-fashioned compliment--means
‘beautiful girl,’ or something like that. Would you rather be called a
cross-eyed old maid?”

“No!” The word snapped. But she smiled in spite of herself.

“You must be a furriner to talk like that,” she added. “Why don’t you
say what you mean? Dam-o-sell--that ain’t a name to call folks by. It’s
’most the same as what mom calls me.”

“What’s that?”

“Dambrat.”

He regarded her a moment in silence.

“Your mother calls you a brat?” he slowly asked then.

“Brat--and lots of other things,” she nodded. “And now I’ve got to git
home. I’ll git a good hidin’, I shouldn’t wonder, but I won’t stay
here----”

“You will!” came his incisive contradiction. “You’ll stay here until
that foot is doctored and you’ve had some food. Sit down!”

At the crisp crackle of his command she eyed him in surprised defiance.
Her chin lifted, and she took a combative step on the hurt foot. Pallor
and pain swept again across her face, and she staggered. He promptly
picked her up, squirming and resisting; set her down on the blankets,
and inexorably held her there. Then, his eyes boring into hers, he
spoke in cool determination.

“Behave yourself. Listen to me.

“You’re not going away until I say so. I’ll not say so until you’re
better able to travel. You won’t be able to travel until that ankle is
reduced. It won’t be reduced until I’ve worked on it. That’s all there
is to that.

“Now about me. I’m no detective. I am Douglas Hampton, a rover, a
drifter, with no home and no folks. I’ve been in quite a few places,
done quite a few things; but I’ve never been a detective and I don’t
intend to be one. My last job was as reporter on a New York newspaper,
and I lasted almost a year. Got fired last week because the city editor
rode me too hard and I sat him down in his own waste-basket. Now I’m in
here because I feel like roughing it awhile and somebody told me it was
rough up here in the Shawangunks.

“I intended to stay here only a day or two and then ramble along,
stopping again wherever I found something that hit my fancy. But now
that people around here think they’re going to kick me out--I’ll stay
longer. I’m one of those cantankerous chaps who can be coaxed a mile
but can’t be kicked an inch. I always kick back.

“As I started to say awhile ago, I don’t know the history of this hole
in the hills, but I’m right willing to learn all about it--past and
present. And if people around here want to consider me a detective,
let ’em. I don’t care what they think. The only reason why I’m telling
_you_ who I am is--well, because I feel like it.”

With that he took his hands from her shoulders and straightened up. She
made no move to rise again. Steadily she probed his face, and slowly
she nodded.

“You talk straight,” she admitted. “But if you ain’t here to spy, what
are you doin’ up here, hid into the ledge? Folks said you went out
through the Gap this mornin’ with your pack and all. So to-night I
thought you must be some new feller.”

“I did go. I moved because I want to sleep at night instead of watching
men sneak around in the bushes. Then I decided to come back, and I
came. Didn’t try to hide myself, either--tramped right along the road.
You people ought to keep sharper watch on desperate dee-teck-tiffs who
wander in and out of here; you never know when they’ll come back.”

His cheerful grin brought an answering smile this time. But it did not
last long. At his next question it vanished.

“By the way, what am I supposed to detect in here? Detectives have to
detect something, you know.”

“You be careful, mister, or you’ll detect a rock fallin’ off onto your
head from up top, or a load of buckshot scatterin’ out of the brush.
Some of the boys are awful careless. If you figger to stay round here
you better stay away from these ledges--and keep out of caves--and
don’t ask too many questions.”

“M-hm. I take it that this is a good place to keep _still_.”

Her tongue made no answer; but her eyes narrowed at the emphasis on the
word “still.” He laughed again and bent to freshen the fire.

When he had moved the sticks inward upon their common focus and the
flame was growing brighter and hotter, he frowned at a canvas water-bag
pendent from a splinter of rock; thoughtfully eyed the girl’s inflamed
ankle and gashed arm; glanced at a small coffee-pot at the edge of the
blaze, and ran a hand through his light hair. Then his face brightened.
Rising, he rummaged in a small bag of waterproof fabric, from which he
produced two flat tins of tobacco.

“Have to economize on water,” he said. “All I own is in that cloth
bucket, and the spring’s a deuce of a distance down. Between bathing
your arm and making coffee and fixing your ankle--well, I just can’t
cook that ankle as it should be done. But I can draw out most of the
soreness with a tobacco poultice. That’s what we’ll have to do.”

She eyed the two tins in his hand.

“Is that all the tobacco you’ve got?”

“Why, yes. But it’s enough to do the trick.”

“Then what’ll you smoke? There ain’t any stores here.”

“Then I don’t smoke for awhile,” was the matter-of-fact reply.

Dropping the cans beside her, he strode over to the lantern and brought
it and the gun to the overhanging wall. Swiftly then he put coffee to
boil, dipped a cupful of water from the canvas bag, flipped a clean
white handkerchief from the ditty-bag, and returned to her. Without a
word she let him inspect the lacerated arm.

“You got a nasty rip,” he stated, scowling. “Right along the bone. How
did you do it? Fall?”

“Yes.” Her tone was more gentle now than it had yet been, and her eyes
dwelt on the sober face bending over the injury. “I’ve--I’ve got a
little secret up here--a hole into the rocks that’s been my playhouse
since I was little, and when mom’s awful mean or pop’s ugly drunk
or--or I can’t stand it down there, I come up here and stay all by my
own self. This time I got to dreamin’, I guess, and I went to sleep
there. And when I woke up it was night. Mebbe I’d ought to have stayed
there till mornin’, but I was awful hungry, and I tried to git down the
rocks and took a fall.”

He nodded sympathetically, bathing the wound with gentle touch.

“And then that mis’rable catamount had to smell me. They’re awful bad
when they’re hungry and smell blood. I thought I was a goner till your
light showed. Who ever told you a catamount would run if you said boo?”

“Somebody who didn’t know as much as he thought he did, I guess.”

“I guess so too. They’ll run from a dog ’most every time--even a little
yippin’ yappin’ tarrier--and mostly they’ll run from a man, but not
always. If they’ve kilt somethin’ or are jest goin’ to kill somethin’,
look out. And they’re ready to tear up a young ’un, or a hurt woman,
any time. If you shoot ’em you’ve got to kill ’em stone dead or they’ll
rip you. Jonah Hay, he kilt one last winter--shot it four times and
blew its jaw off and everything--and it lived long enough to git to him
and claw his legs terrible. Its hide was longer than Jonah is himself,
and Jonah stands six foot.”

He nodded again, absorbed in his work but marveling at her new
friendliness. Now that she was talking, she chattered as easily as if
to an old friend.

“And there was Sam Codd--he went to chop wood and run onto a little
bobcat, nowheres near as big’s a catamount. The critter had kilt a
rabbit, and it come at Sam, ready to jump right onto him. Sam, he
backed more’n a quarter of a mile through the snow, holdin’ his axe
ready to bust the critter, till he got to his cabin. Then he jumped in
and got his gun. But by the time he come out the cat was gone back to
the rabbit, and when he got there the rabbit was et and nothin’ left
but blood and tracks.”

He desisted from his cleaning of the arm, which had remained as
stoically steady as if it were not in the least tender. Tearing the
edges of the big handkerchief, he bound it around the injury and
carefully knotted the edge-strips. Then he turned to the coffee, which
now was steaming. In a moment he put a cupful of the hot liquid in her
hands and dumped the grounds from the pot.

“Only one good cupful to a pot, but it’s strong enough to knock you
over,” he explained. “And I need the pot now for your ankle. After the
tobacco gets to drawing I’ll cook some grub and make more coffee----”

He paused suddenly, staring at one of the tobacco-tins he had picked
up. Its blue revenue-paper seal was broken.

“Now when did I open that can?” he puzzled, turning up the lid. “I was
sure these were fresh. Confound it, it’s only half full!”

She made no answer. She blew on the coffee and took a tentative sip.

“Ooh! It’s scaldin’ hot!”

“Uh-huh. Well, this other can’s full, anyhow. Guess I can make out.”

While the fresh water came to a boil he squinted repeatedly at the
opened can, half rifled of its fragrant brown slices. He did not see
the impish glances she threw at him. Nor, when he brought the hot
water, the tobacco, and more handkerchiefs, did he spy the laughing
light in the demurely downcast eyes.

With utmost care, though with necessary firmness, he bound the
hot-water-soaked slices around the swollen ankle. Then he poured more
hot water on the bandages until, despite herself, she flinched and drew
up the foot.

“That’ll do, I reckon,” he said. “Lucky I have plenty of handkerchiefs.
That’s one thing I’m a crank about--plenty of clean handkerchiefs and
socks. Now I’ll warm up some beans _a la_ can.”

“Don’t you want a smoke?” she teased.

“Well, since the tobacco’s all gone, I do,” he frankly admitted.
“However----”

“Then fill your pipe!” And from under the blanket-edge she produced the
missing slices.

“Well, you--you----” he stuttered.

“Now don’t you call me a dam-sell again, mister! You stuff your pipe
and have a good smoke.”

He scowled, grinned, laughed, produced a stubby briar, and obeyed
orders.

“I’ve a large mind to spank you,” he threatened, between puffs. “But I
never like to pick on a cripple. So instead I’ll condemn you to stay
here all night.”

“That’s all right,” she countered serenely. “I’ve made up my mind to
stay anyway.”

He missed two puffs while he stared at her.

“Glad to see you’re showing sense,” he blurted. “But what’s the reason
for the sudden change of heart?”

“You’re smokin’ the reason. ’Most any man round here would have kilt
that catamount. That’d be fun. But none of ’em would use up his last
smokin’ on a woman--not if both her legs were busted. A feller that
would do that is worth trustin’.”

He threw up his hands.

“Talk about feminine logic! That beats ’em all,” he laughed. “Well,
fair dam--I beg pardon--young woman, just who are you, if I may ask?”

The answer staggered him.

“Me? Oh, I’m only Nigger Nat’s girl.”

Over his pipe he blinked at her.

“My name’s Marry,” she went on. “Marry Oaks. My whole name is Marryin’,
but it’s Marry for short.”

“Marion,” he repeated absently. “But who’s Nigger Nat? Not a colored
man!”

The frank eyes looked steadily back at him.

“Why, yes he is. He’s yeller--half nigger. He’s my pop. And mom’s part
Injun.”

PIPE-SMOKE--AND POWDER-SMOKE

Dawn swept across the Shawangunks.

From the far-off crests of the Berkshires light leaped athwart the
silvery Hudson and smote the frowning cliffs of the Great Wall of the
Wallkill Valley: a grim gray precipice stretching mile after mile to
the northeast, towering eight hundred feet upward from the lower lands;
unscalable, impenetrable save at one small high gap--the Jaws of the
Traps, whence in other days the redskin had slipped forth in bloody
foray on the settlers below, and where in turn the white man had lurked
in retaliatory ambush. Through that gap now wormed the sandy road of
the descendants of those pioneers, and along that road at this early
hour passed nothing more sinister than dawn-sheen and morning breeze.

At the top of the crag-wall the light sped across the forested gulf
of the Traps itself, with its tiny scattered farmhouses and its rocky
clearings and mysterious by-paths, to strike against more cliffs--the
glacier-gouged wall of Minnewaska, holding in its stony setting a
tiny jewel of an upland lake; and the fissured butte of Dickie Barre,
father of gigantic bowlders and guardian of unknown caverns. And as the
dayshine flung itself against those forbidding ledges and then fled
on westward, the following breeze also threw against them a wave of
sound--the dry quacking chorus of myriads of katydids.

All through the moonless September night those queer insects had ground
out their tuneless song, so monotonous and so steady that the ears of
other living things had long since become dulled to it. But now, swept
by the dawn-wind in among the echoing crevices and cañons, it seemed
suddenly redoubled in volume. Upon the senses of native bird and beast
it made slight impact, for they were well used to it; but on the nerves
of a long, blanketed figure lying in a narrow passage between towering
stone walls it struck like the clatter of an alarm-clock. His towsled
blond head moved, his long-lashed lids lifted, and his blue eyes darted
about in inspection of his surroundings.

Beside his head lay a shotgun, its muzzle pointing outward, its
safety-catch off, ready for instant use. Beyond the slit of an entrance
showed nothing but more rocks and a labyrinthine tangle of trees and
brush. Behind, the sheer wall of Dickie Barre alone was visible across
a roomy space open to the sky. The only sounds were the everlasting
quack of the insects and the subdued _yarrup_ of some invisible
yellowhammer flitting about in search for a breakfast.

He yawned, stretched, and sat up. The blanket dropped from his chest,
and he stared blankly at it. Then his gaze shot toward the cliff beyond.

“Well, you ought to be spanked hard, you little bunch of wilfulness!”
he muttered. “Sneaked in here after I was asleep and spread this
blanket over me, didn’t you? And you needed both of ’em yourself--it’s
clammy up here at night. And walking on that bad foot, too!”

But his eyes belied his growling tone as he arose and tiptoed to the
end of the passage. As they swept the farther wall and dwelt on the
little huddle of gray blanket beside the charred embers of the fire
they softened still more. Obviously the girl muffled under that stout
sheet of wool was sleeping as peacefully on her mattress of fragrant
hemlock tips as if at home in her own bed.

“These mountain girls are as tough as rawhide,” he thought. “Imagine a
city girl going through what she did last night without a whine! And
sleeping like that under a rock. And----”

His hand strayed to a shirt pocket and fingered some crumbled shreds of
tobacco.

“And saving some smokes for me and stubbing over here on a sprained
ankle to give me half the bedding. Would any of those flossy dolls in
New York--or Chi or San Fran or N’Orleans--do that? Humph!”

Softly he stepped along the little shelf where last night he had set
lamp and gun; sank to a comfortable squat, his back against the wall;
filled and lit his pipe. Thereafter he squatted a few minutes smoking
and musing.

“‘Nigger Nat’s girl,’” he thought. “Daddy a drunken yellow mongrel,
mother a hard-tongued half-breed. How in thunder can a pair like that
produce such a witching wildcat as Marion Oaks? Her skin’s brown, but
the brown is only sun-tan, or my eyes are liars. And that hair and
those eyes! How come?”

A flirt of active wings drew his gaze away for a moment. On a limb of a
plucky young pine growing from the face of the cliff above, a pair of
inquisitive yellowhammers had paused to spy and gossip. Their bright
eyes peered knowingly downward, and as they bobbed and bowed their
restless heads the black crescents under their creamy throats vied for
notice with the brilliant red splashes behind their crowns. Up and down
the branch they hopped, murmuring fussily over this most scandalous
event--a man and a girl shamelessly occupying an outdoor boudoir, just
as if they were as free of convention as the birds themselves. The man
smiled up at them and waved a hand in acknowledgment of their sharp
scrutiny. Instantly they winnowed away on whispering wings, to perch
again farther on and renew their eager watch. Douglas resumed his
puffing and puzzling.

“Must be a throwback of heredity,” he decided. “There are such things
as red-headed niggers. Saw one in Detroit once. The white strain in
her folks cropped out strong when she was born. Must be tough for
a girl to be white and yet have the tainted blood in her veins. No
self-respecting white man could marry her, of course. But it’s a dirty
shame that you have to be cursed by your ancestors, little Miss Marion.
You haven’t a chance. You’ll become the ‘woman’ of some ignorant brute
down below, and before you’re thirty you’ll be old and gaunt and
broken-spirited.”

He flipped the ash from the top of his pipe-bowl and puffed on.

“And yet your mind is that of a white girl--and a thoroughbred, too,”
he silently asserted. “The tobacco and the blanket prove that. And
you despise your mongrel people. You run away up here to your little
secret ‘playhouse,’ and there you dream yourself to sleep, as you did
yesterday. And there’s poetry in you, too. Let’s see, what was that you
said--‘If all the dead men here should rise they’d shake the hills with
their tramping!’”

His gaze grew absent, as through the smoke he visioned an army of
musket-bearing pioneers, shaggy-haired and deerskin-clad, and of
fierce-faced Indians carrying bow and tomahawk, marching along the
ancient trails. They passed, those long-dead fighting men, and in their
wake strode whiskered mountaineers of a later day, gripping shotgun
and rifle, watching one another in distrust--the victims of bullet and
buckshot hurled from the masking thickets of rhododendron, the men who
had died at the hands of their neighbors. Crag and crevasse echoed to
the tread of their ghostly feet, and the cliffs quivered in unison. Out
through the Jaws of the Traps they swung into the eye of the rising
sun. The caverns ceased to echo. The man found himself staring at a
gray blanket and listening to the rasping clack of the katydids.

With a long sigh he arose and knocked out his pipe against his thigh.

“Oh, well,” he muttered. “The past is past, the present is here, and
the future is rolling closer every minute. Poor little kid, with your
dreams and your picture-words! I’m sorry for you. But all I can do is
to cook some more grub for you and take you home. Then we’ll each have
to gang our ain gait.”

He moved toward the dead fire, still stepping softly. But half-way
across the rocky rubble he halted short, struck by a sudden memory.

“By thunder!” he exclaimed. “I wonder if----”

Back into his mind had come a fragment of a tale told months ago in New
York by a chance acquaintance--a man from up-State.

“Yessir,” he heard the voice saying, “there’s queer things back in the
hills--stories that’s never been told much. These fellers I’m thinkin’
about, now: they were the hardest crowd you’d ever want to meet. They
were bad whites and bad Indians and bad niggers, all in this one gang
and livin’ in back of a long mountain wall with only one way into it.
Outlaws? Yessir, and worse’n that. Land pirates, I’d call ’em. Cut your
throat and never even wipe off the knife afterward.

“Well, sir, they’d come out of this here hole-in-the-wall I’m tellin’
about, and they’d waylay folks drivin’ along the roads, the rich folks
in coaches and so on. And they’d kill the men travelers and strip ’em
clean. And they’d carry off the women and hold ’em for ransom. And if
the ransom wasn’t paid the women never got out. They had to stay there
and be the women of that gang. If they were extry good-lookin’ maybe
they never got a chance to be ransomed. More’n one fine lady went into
that hole in the hills and never was heard of again. Yessir. That’s
right.

“Oh, yes, it was a long while ago. Good many years before our time.
After the Revolution, maybe--it was pretty rough in lots of places
round here then, and these fellers could fight off a whole army by
guardin’ that gap of theirs. What ever become of ’em I don’t know.
But the descendants of that gang and the women prisoners are livin’
there yet--outlaw white blood and high-toned white blood and nigger
and Indian blood all mixed up together--and I’ve heard tell that some
of ’em are handsome, especially the women. No, I never was in there
myself----”

The memory-voice died and was lost. Vainly he racked his brain for
more of the tale. Where did that man say the place was? In these
Shawangunks? Farther south in the Ramapos? Up north in the Catskills,
or far beyond in the Adirondacks? No answer came. The rest of the
story, its beginning and end, were lost in the fog of many such chance
conversations at odd moments and in odd places.

But he was sure that the locale of that legend was somewhere in the
mountains of New York State. And out there across the Traps was a long
mountain wall with but one way of entrance. And this girl’s father and
mother were of mongrel blood, and----

“By the Lord Harry, it fits!” he exclaimed aloud. “If this isn’t the
place it ought to be. And there’s been a lady--a real, high-bred
lady--in your family not many generations ago, Miss Marion, or I’m a
Chinaman!”

The surrounding rocks reverberated with his words. The blanket before
him moved quickly. Out from it rose dancing gray eyes, glowing cheeks,
and laughing red lips.

“Mornin’, Mister Detective!” she caroled. “Are you talkin’ into your
sleep, or did you find a drink somewheres? You’re foolish, sounds like.”

Somewhat sheepish, he stood a moment without reply. His eyes dwelt on
the wealth of tumbled hair, now glowing like forest-fire in the clean
light of the new day: no pale sandy tresses, but rich, vivid, Titian
red. Nowhere in it showed dark streak or telltale kink.

“Listen,” he countered. “Did you ever hear of a crowd of men--white and
red and black--who went out through the Gap over yonder and brought in
women and made slaves of them?”

At once her friendly face turned cold.

“You’re huntin’ into the wrong place,” she told him, lifting her chin.
“Our fellers don’t do that. You better look somewheres else.”

“Oh, shucks! Can’t you get rid of that idea that I’m hunting somebody?
These desperadoes were all dead long before we were born. But haven’t
you heard some such story from the old folks?”

After watching his frank face a moment she shook her head.

“No, never heard tell of such a thing. If they’re all dead, what’s the
good of worryin’ about ’em anyway?”

He shrugged and moved on toward the charred sticks, meanwhile turning
the conversation into another channel.

“How’s the ankle?”

She probed under the blanket, threw the covering aside, pushed herself
up, and took a tentative step.

“Why, by mighty, mister! You’re a reg’lar doctor! It’s sore, but it
ain’t half as bad as ’twas. It hurt terrible last night when I----”

She stopped abruptly, but her eyes went to the entrance.

“When you came and covered me up? Serves you right. That was the most
foolish thing--but I thank you, just the same.”

Her lips opened, but for a moment no word came. Her eyes still were
fixed on the narrow slit, and a little frown of concentration furrowed
her brow. He pivoted and squinted against the glare of the rising sun
now darting in at that crack. Then she spoke--low and tense.

“Where’s your gun? Layin’ there?”

“Yes.”

“Go git it!”

He sprang for the passage, where the weapon still lay beside his
discarded blanket. As he moved he heard a badly balanced stone outside
grate under the weight of a moving body.

In a bounding rush he was across the open cavern and between the
bowlders. With a swoop he snatched up his gun. His clutching hand
closed with one finger inside the trigger-guard.

Before he realized that he was pressing the little curved lever,
the gun jumped violently backward. A thundering report smashed out.
Powder-gas stung his throat. The firearm fell with a sullen _clack_ on
the stones beside his feet.

Vaguely his deafened ears received the echo of the shot roaring along
the farther wall of the Traps, a mile away. He felt, rather than heard,
something fall among the rocks outside.

Grabbing the gun again, he slipped forward to the entrance. At the
corners of the upstanding bowlders he halted short, staring at a
huddled form which had collapsed among the prone blocks beyond.

Only the head and upper torso of the stranger were visible, his lower
body and legs lying behind a slanting stone. But clear in the sunlight
showed a wan, pinched young face, swarthy-skinned, with close-cropped
black hair. Along the stone under the head crept a red trickle.

Suddenly Douglas was thrown aside. From behind him Marion darted,
wild-eyed. From her pale lips broke a sharp cry: “Steve!”

Across the stones she struggled. Beside the youth she dropped. Then she
turned to Douglas a face startling in its white wrath.

“You--murderin’--hound!” she choked. “You’ve kilt him!”

CHAPTER IV

THE FUGITIVE

Dumb, Douglas leaned his gun against the wall and moved outward.

“Don’t you touch him!” blazed Marion. “Don’t you put a hand onto him or
I’ll--I’ll use that gun onto you! I might have knowed you was lyin’--if
I’d knowed Steve was out I’d never trusted a word you said. Now you’ve
got him, leave him to be buried where he was borned. Oh, Steve, Stevie
lad! And I--I give this feller the word to git his gun and do for you!
If I’d only knowed you was out! Oh, Stevie boy!”

In a storm of grief she dropped her head on the thin chest, hugging the
limp lad to her with convulsive strength. A few feet away the blond
man halted, dazed by the unintentional tragedy and the violence of the
girl’s outburst. For minutes he stood there motionless, hardly grasping
the significance of her denunciation.

Then his brain began to work. Her words, repeating themselves, became
appallingly plain. This young Steve was “out”--and his swarthy pallor
was not merely that of unconsciousness or death: it was that of long
confinement in some place whence he had just escaped--a place where
hair was kept cropped. And he, Douglas Hampton, who had been half
accepted by this girl as the chance camper he claimed to be, now had
become in her mind a far blacker monster than a mere “detective”--a
merciless bloodhound who killed poor fugitives on sight. Gazing
miserably on the mountain maid mourning her luckless boy lover, he
found the sight unendurable. His head drooped, and his eyes rested
unseeing on the stones between him and the pathetic pair.

Up overhead fluttered the yellowhammers, scared by the shot but
emboldened by the ensuing silence to wheel about and whet their
curiosity in scrutiny of the tragic group on the stones. High on the
cliff behind, an unseen squirrel fussed and fumed; and from crack and
cranny along the wall and from crevices among the fallen fragments
more than one furtive little eye peered out. Steadily the sun slipped
upward in the clean blue sky, lighting up in pitiless nakedness one
more spectacle such as it had seen all too often in the long stretch
of time since men first penetrated into this grim gulf. The wretched
man neither heard nor saw any of these things. Stone-still he stood,
staring down at a spattered splotch of white on a gray rock.

All at once his blank gaze focused sharply on that white spot. He
started. In one stride he was beside the rock. As he stooped and
squinted, a light flamed in his face. With a bound he was up and
leaping toward the limp form beyond.

“Git away!” shrilled Marion, lifting a tear-swollen face and turning
on him like a tigress. “Keep your bloody hands off him--he’s mine! My
onliest----”

“Listen to me!” he commanded. “I never hit him! The shot struck that
stone yonder--the whole charge! It was an accident anyway--and he was
out of line--the shot couldn’t hit him from where I stood. Let me see
that wound.”

For an instant she sat rigid, unable to believe, yet thrilled with
hope. Quickly, but gently, he raised the head of the youth and probed
the injury he found. Then he nodded vehemently.

“This is no gunshot wound,” he asserted. “It’s a cut and a bump. He
tumbled and knocked his head against a stone. Got a hard crack, but
nothing dangerous. Poor kid, he looks half starved, and that smash he
took just finished him--for awhile. All he needs is water, food, rest,
and safety. I’ll give him all of them.”

After one stare at the split scalp now turned toward her, she sprang
up, her cheeks aglow with joy. But then she paused and shot a glance at
the gun near by.

“And you’ll take him back! No you won’t--I’ll----”

In the nick of time he caught her wrist as she started toward the
weapon.

“Take him back where?” he snapped. “I’ll take him nowhere, except back
among the rocks. After he’s able to walk he can go where he likes. He’s
nothing to me. If he’s anything to you, don’t stand in his way. I’m
trying to help him. Now behave!”

She was tugging furiously away, but as he released her she stood where
she was, fighting now against her distrust of him. He lifted the
sagging body, got a firm grip, and lurched back toward the cliff.
As he passed the shot-scarred stone he grunted and jerked his head
downward toward it. Following, she paused an instant and studied the
white patch, glanced at the little cañon, then moved on with clearer
face. She knew well how shot-marks looked; saw, too, that the tall
stranger had spoken truth when he said Steve was out of his line of
fire from the walled passage. Though she had not seen the gun fired,
she realized now that hardly any man would have made so poor a shot if
he had actually been trying to hit the hunted youth.

Yet, when Douglas edged into the slit and bore his burden through, she
halted behind him and put a tentative hand on the gun, still loaded in
one barrel. Narrowly she inspected the “newfangled” weapon--so unlike
the ancient muzzle-loaders common in the Traps--wavering between a
desire to draw its remaining charge and fear lest it might disastrously
explode again. After a dubious moment she shook her head and went on.
She must trust this man, whether she would or not.

Down on the tumbled blanket and the bough-tip bed Douglas laid the
youth. Then he reached for the canvas water-pail. Its lightness brought
a frown to his brow. Hardly a cupful remained in it.

“I’ll git somethin’,” she volunteered, reading his thought. Before he
could fathom her purpose she was leaving through the passage, limping
a little but moving as if sure of herself. Presently she returned,
carefully bearing a jug.

“Well, you witch! Where did you dig up that?”

“That’s one of the questions you better not ask round here,” she
parried. “Jest hold up his head while I give him a good snort.”

Smiling grimly, he raised the lad’s head and opened his lax mouth
while she pulled the corn-cob plug. Deftly she put the nozzle to that
mouth and poured the “snort.” The aptness of the word was speedily
demonstrated by the uncouth noise which erupted from Steve.

His eyes flew open, rolled, blinked. He coughed, sprayed a mouthful of
the colorless but powerful liquor on his helpers, gasped, and struggled
up as if kicked out of sleep. Wildly he stared at the two faces so near
his. Then, as the girl put the jug again to his mouth, he grabbed it
with both hands and gulped thirstily. When he lowered the vessel he
licked his lips, and across them flitted a faint grin.

“Gawd, am I dead or dreamin’?” he breathed hoarsely. “Marry! Be ye
there? An’ this here licker--I’m a dunkey if ’tain’t real! Who--who’s
this feller?”

His brown eyes glared into the cool blue ones. Involuntarily his right
hand gripped the jug-handle as if it were a gun-stock. His gaunt face
tightened into a menacing mask. He wavered like a mortally wounded
wildcat gathering its last strength to spring.

“I’m all right, Steve,” soothed Douglas. “I’m not after you. You’re
safe, and this is Marry, and that’s real stuff in the jug. Calm down.”

Under the steadying influence of the quiet tone the youth relaxed a
little. Yet his lined mouth remained set as he demanded: “Who shot at
me?”

“Nobody,” Douglas told him. “My gun exploded accidentally. I didn’t
even see you. You fell and cracked your head.”

The boy still glowered suspiciously, but when Marion spoke his gaze
shifted to her.

“That’s right, Steve. You’re all right, ’cept a little cut and a bump.
Tell me quick--how long you been out? Are they after you?”

A savage smile twisted the thin mouth.

“I dunno if they’re trackin’ me--I reckon so. I ain’t seen ’em. I got
’way Monday night, an’ I ain’t goin’ back till I git Snake Sanders.
Cuss him, he put me away--an’ I never done it, Marry, I never! It was
Snake done it! An’ I got the blame. Three years I been doin’ time--but
I’ll take them three years outen him quick’s I git to a gun! Yas, an’
all the rest of his life too! I’ll----”

“Don’t you! He’ll git you, not you git him. You might’s well try to
git a copperhead by grabbin’ onto him with your bare hands. And you’ve
got to keep out till the officers quit huntin’--they’ll be into here,
if they ain’t here now. Don’t you go near the house or a gun--don’t
move or make a noise till I tell you, or you’re a goner! Now gimme
that jug and I’ll put it back. We’ve got to go quick to some other
hide-out--there’s been shootin’ up here and we don’t know who’ll
come--gimme that jug!”

“Not till I git ’nother big snort under my shirt,” refused Steve,
lifting the jug in unsteady hands. “I ain’t et much for four days,
an’----”

“Gimme that jug!” she stormed. “Know whose it is? Snake’s!”

The boy started as if stung. His grip relaxed, and she yanked the jug
from him and grabbed up the corn-cob. Douglas noticed, in an absent
way, that the clay was smeared with a streak of green paint.

“Snake’s? I been drinkin’ that varmint’s licker?” raged Steve. “I’d
ruther lap up p’ison! Gimme that jug back! I’ll bust it!”

“No you won’t!” She backed off. “He’s right round here now somewheres,
I shouldn’t wonder, a-sneakin’ and a-slidin’ along, and you’ve got to
lay low awhile--you ain’t even got a gun. I’m goin’ to put this right
back where ’twas. You keep quiet.”

She hobbled away. Steve struggled to rise and overtake her, but found
himself powerless in the grip of Douglas.

“Cool off, Steve,” advised the blond man. “Think what a joke this is on
Snake--you drinking up his licker. Wouldn’t it make him mad?”

A sudden hard grin split the pallid face. Steve sank back.

“That’s right, too--uh--what’s yer name?”

“Call me Hamp.”

“Hamp. Good ’nough. I dunno ye, an’ ye don’t b’long round here, but ye
act right. Got anything to eat, Hamp? I been goin’ a long time, an’
it’s ’most took the tuck outen me.”

He began to blink a little uncertainly. The “licker” was fast getting
in its work on his woefully empty stomach.

“Got a can of beans and some water, and they’re yours.”

“Gimme ’em!”

The demand crackled like an electric spark. The hard-set visage turned
ravenous, and the wiry frame lifted itself and set its back against
the wall. When Douglas tendered the opened can it was snatched and a
quarter of its contents dumped into a grimy hand. An instant later the
whole handful had been wolfed down and another was being stuffed into a
fast-working mouth. When Marion came limping back from her mysterious
pilgrimage only an empty tin and greasy lips remained to tell what had
happened.

Unspeaking, the blond man opened another bean-can, put in a tin spoon,
and handed it to the girl. She sank on a stone and began eating
eagerly, but far more daintily than the boy. Douglas watched silently,
but he nodded as he noted the instinctive difference in her way of
feeding herself. Steve also watched, but with a different thought.

“Marry, ye’re gittin’ awful purty,” he vouchsafed. “When I went ’way ye
was thin’s a rail, but now ye’re han’some as a little red wagon. Ain’t
ye got a kiss for me?”

“Not till you wash your face, you dirty thing,” she composedly
answered. He grinned and wiped his mouth on a tattered sleeve much too
big for him. “Where’d you git the clothes?” she demanded.

“Them?” He glanced down at threadbare coat, thin shirt, and ragged
overalls. “Found ’em into fellers’ barns down yender. Hid my pen-clo’es
into one feller’s hay. Purty smart, hey?”

“Smart! Don’t you know the officers’ll track you that way? They will,
sure’s you’re livin’.”

“They’ll have a job findin’ me now I’ve got here,” he muttered, though
plainly disconcerted. “’Less’n somebody blabs.”

Brown eyes and gray eyes switched to the quiet man who sat taking it
all in.

“Don’t worry,” said he. “I haven’t seen you folks at all--either of
you.”

After a narrow stare Steve nodded slightly. Not another word was spoken
until the meagre meal was finished and the water-bag was totally empty.
Then Marion took command of the situation.

“We’ll be goin’ now,” she stated, rising. “No, don’t come with us.
Steve and me, we’ll go ’long by our own selves, and then you won’t know
what’s ’come of us if anybody should ask you. We’re awful obliged to
you, stranger, and we wish you good luck. G’by.”

“I’m not saying good-bye. I’m staying here, as I told you before. Maybe
we’ll meet again.”

She took several halting steps outward before responding, Steve
trailing silently behind her. At the edge of the cañon she paused and
spoke over one shoulder.

“If you’re stayin’, don’t stay _here_. It’s no place for you. You’ll be
better off down below. There’s Jake Dalton’s place, down towards the
Clove, where nobody lives any more, and you could go into there and
live pretty safe and comf’table if you mind your own business--and if
the ha’nt don’t git you.”

“Oho! A haunted house!”

“So folks say. Jake, he got kilt last spring by somethin’--nobody
knows what. They found him after he’d been dead a week or so, and
they couldn’t look at him right close. But he wasn’t shot or cut or
clawed--he was jest swelled up terrible. Two or three fellers stayed
into his house since, and they got drove out--somethin’ was there that
they didn’t see, but they could hear it and _feel_ it. Some say it’s
Jake’s ha’nt. Others say it ain’t Jake but the thing that kilt him. If
you want to try livin’ there nobody’s likely to bother you much. It
sets on the left of the Clove road, down yonder, with two big pines
back of it.

“Now we’re goin’. Oh, and one other thing--you better not come round
Nigger Nat’s house. He ain’t sociable. G’by.”

Out through the crack they passed. For a minute or two the blond man
sat looking moodily at the exit. Then he arose and followed.

The rocks outside were vacant. The trees and undergrowth showed no sign
of life. Even the curious yellowhammers were gone. Nowhere, except on
two stones--one scarred by shot, one stained with blood--was anything
to show that since the last sunset two young hill-folk had come
suddenly into the life of Douglas Hampton and as swiftly vanished from
it.

“Well,” he muttered, picking up his gun and turning back, “Steve, you
tough young wolf, you don’t know how lucky you are. I only hope you’ll
treat her right in the years to come.”

CHAPTER V

CREEPING THINGS

Up on the brink of Dickie Barre, on a triangular outcrop of stone bare
of brush but topped by whispering pines, Douglas lounged in luxurious
content, basking in the mellow warmth of September sun.

Behind him his pack leaned against the base of a pine. Beside him lay
his gun. Before him stretched the long panorama of the Traps.

From the half-naked rock of Millbrook Mountain, where the rim of the
great bowl curved westward to merge into the Minnewaska steeps, to the
castle-like peak of Sky Top, beneath which the strange lake of Mohonk
nestled out of sight in a cup of sheer stone, rambled the top of the
Great Wall. Northward from Sky Top it dipped downward in a long sweep,
and there the east-swinging wall of Dickie Barre seemed to close in and
complete the unbroken ring of uplands surrounding the forested chasm.
But the man loafing up on the breezy point knew that such was not the
case.

Though he had not yet traveled in that direction, he had been studying
a couple of squares of Government topographic map, of which several
were in his ditty-bag; and he knew that the walls did not close. They
pinched together into a narrow ravine, then veered apart again, each
pursuing its own way into the north until it became only a series
of rounded knolls sinking into the other low hills beyond. And that
ravine, or perhaps the wider valley floor beyond, must be the Clove of
which Marion Oaks had spoken.

Through that ravine and on into the north, the map said, ran a
road--the inside road of the Traps; and along that road-line, at wide
intervals, were the little square symbols which, to the topographer,
signify “houses.” One of those dots must be the house where Jake Dalton
had lived before he was found “swelled up terrible”; where now even the
hard sons of the craggy hills dared not sleep because of the fearful
thing which could not be seen but could be felt. Before sundown, the
lone blond man intended, he would find that house and see whether it
was fit for habitation. If so, he meant to inhabit it, ha’nt or no
ha’nt.

Everything impelled him toward that house. To live continuously among
the bowlders where he had stayed last night was neither comfortable
nor sensible: the place was too far from water, from food, from
human associates; and when the drenching fall rains should come, as
they might at any time, he would be almost unprotected. For sinister
purposes, for the concealment of nameless activities and of wanted men,
the maze of cliff-blocks was ideal; but for the steady residence of a
man who dodged neither lawmakers nor lawbreakers it was the reverse.
And to a red-blooded, two-handed fellow like Douglas Hampton the story
of the uncanny house was enough. Had it been an even poorer place than
his rocky lair, he would have journeyed thither to seek the solution
of its mystery.

But the day was far from old, and there was time to loaf and look and
bask and think, unworried by necessity. Here was none of the rush and
drive of the city, the scurry to fill assignments, the fret and fume
of the hordes of business-slaves hurtling over-ground and underground
in ant-like activity. Here was nothing to do but relax, absorbing the
golden sunlight and the green beauty of nature and the clinking music
of unseen hammers far below and far away on the Mohonk slope, where
millstone-makers were rifting rock in their little quarries. What
though one had no habitation? What though his food was almost gone
and the pipe dangling from the corner of his mouth was empty? Time
enough to seek shelter when night approached; time enough to rustle
for food when the last crumb had vanished. Now was the hour to let his
city-starved soul feast on freedom.

So he leaned there on an elbow, blinking outward and downward at the
varying verdure of the hardwood forests, the red spots of sumach and
the orange tips of goldenrod brightening the little fields, the tiny
houses dotting the openings, the little ribbons of smoke drifting away
from their chimneys. His thoughts moved in a slow circle--from Marion
to Steve, from Steve to the haunted house, from the haunted house to
the legend of the long-dead outlaw gang, from the gang to its women
prisoners, and so back again to Marion. Where was she now? Down in one
of those houses, beaten and sworn at for running away? Much nearer,
still talking with her escaped-convict lover in the “hide-out” to
which she had taken him? Limping along somewhere in the masking brush,
forgetful of pain, thinking only of bringing food to the worn-out
fugitive? Only the labyrinth below could tell; and it was not in the
habit of telling tales about its children.

And this Snake Sanders, who had wriggled out of the way of officers and
let a boy suffer the penalty of some unknown crime--who and what was
he? The thinker, accustomed to studying faces and voices, felt that
Steve’s denial of guilt and denunciation of Snake were genuine. His
virulent hatred, his vicious threat against that man, were those of the
bitterly wronged. Yet Marion, herself swift-tempered and courageous,
had shown that she feared this Snake, who might be a-sneakin’ and
a-slidin’ along near at hand----

The blond man grew tense. Something _was_ sneaking along, though not
very near. Something was creeping stealthily toward him from the thick
growth behind; something which made no footfall, but which caused a
slight difference in the rustling of the breeze-kissed leaves.

He started to turn his head, then checked the movement. He felt that he
would see nothing: that the creature was traveling with Indian stealth,
keeping itself masked; that his look behind would only warn the
sinister thing that its approach was known. He was lying dangerously
close to the edge, and his nerves shouted to him to get back while
there was time. But he held himself where he was.

His eyes flicked downward at his gun. Then he carelessly raised
himself to a sitting position, took his pipe from his mouth and glanced
at it, put it back, and let his hand stray down to his shirt pocket. It
hovered there a moment, then sank loosely as if empty. But cupped in
his palm now was a little round mirror.

Casual though his movements had been, the soft rustle of progress
had ceased. Only the little flutterings caused by wandering
air-currents came to him. As he sat still, however, apparently
absorbed in contemplation of the scene below, it recommenced. Slowly,
imperceptibly, he turned his hand, slanting the mirror up and down by
degrees, watching it from the corner of his eye. It was a schoolboy
trick which he had used more than once in later years when desirous of
seeing something behind without turning his head. And now, listening
keenly and moving the telltale glass with practised hand, he soon
located the advancing thing behind the pine, some ten feet away, where
his pack lay.

It was creeping now on the ground, free from the brush beyond but still
unseen; keeping itself concealed behind pack and pine, making only a
slight slither as it came. The sound died. For a long minute all was
quiet. Then, slowly, above the edge of the pack rose a hat.

Shapeless, dingy felt it was, with a ragged hole below its crown. Under
its brim glimmered black eyes, beady and cold as those of a reptile.
Little by little the nose came up into view--a flat, wide nose with
something of the triangularity of a snake’s head. There it poised,
mouth and jaw hidden behind the bulk of the pack.

The opaque eyes fixed greedily on the new shotgun lying beside the
watcher’s leg. Then they returned to the back and shoulders of the
blond man, and the lids narrowed into wicked slits. The nose drew
downward, the eyes followed, the hat faded. Above the pack nothing
showed except the low branches of the pine.

Little sounds of movement came--of movement but not of advance. Douglas
moved the mirror to right and left of the lump of blankets. His fingers
grew rigid. Something had appeared beside the pack--a light but strong
box, from which a dirty black-haired hand was lifting a lid. As that
lid arose the box was tilted so that its top became an open side,
facing toward the man on the brink. And out from it crawled a big
copperhead.

Head raised, it glided forward a foot or two and stopped, its tail
still in the box, which lay motionless. Its venomous eyes focused on
the still figure of the man beyond, who remained as rigid as the rock
on which he sat. Its tongue ran out and vibrated in menace. Slowly it
slipped forward a little farther, then paused again. Douglas braced
himself to snatch up his gun, whirl, and fire the instant its approach
was resumed. But it was not resumed.

Instead, the repulsive creature lay quiet, absorbing the warmth of rock
and sun. Minutes passed, and it made no move. Then from beyond the
pack came a faint sibilant sound--an almost inaudible noise which was
not hiss nor breath nor whistle, but something of all three, and which
seemed to arouse the reptile. It turned, and crept sluggishly toward
the spot whence the sound had come.

Twice that indescribable sibilance was repeated, and the snake moved
on in its deliberate, fat-bodied way. Just then a sudden gust of wind
swooped playfully along the brink, startling the leaves into a flapping
chorus like the beating wings of trapped birds. The hideous thing on
the ground slid around the pack, paused, was gone.

Douglas drew a long breath and became aware that his shirt was clammy
with cold perspiration. A chill shivered down his back. Moving the
glass, he scanned all around and above that pack. Nothing showed. The
gust of wind fled along on its frolicsome way, and all grew quiet. No
sound came from behind the pine.

Still controlling his movements, he looked casually around, then arose
as if tired of sitting. As he stood up, however, his gun was in one
hand, and he loosely swung its twin muzzles to cover the pack. Feigning
a yawn, he stepped lazily toward the pine, dropping the mirror into a
trousers pocket as he moved. With a quiet click his safety-catch slid,
and two solid charges--of buckshot--were ready for instant use.

A good stride away from the blankets he turned aside and drifted around
the butt of the pine. Then he halted, sorely puzzled. The man who
should have been lurking there was not. The box, too, had vanished. Not
even the snake----

But yes, the snake was there. It was curled just below and behind the
pack, hidden from any eye except one searching for it; three feet of
silent death, ready to strike its fangs into the hands of the man
stooping to lift his back-burden before slinging it on his shoulders.
Even now, with that man’s eye on it, it was poising in venomous
alertness, its tongue vibrating again like a blur.

Douglas stepped onward a little, lifted his gun, and fired. The snake
rolled writhing away, blown apart. Instantly he wheeled, the other
barrel ready to meet any menace. But still nothing showed itself. The
growth beyond seemed empty.

Warily watching, he stepped to his pack, swung it up one-handed, and
stood a minute longer scanning his surroundings. Seeing nothing new,
he got into the straps and strode away. Only a few rods to his left,
he knew, ran a faint trail--the path by which he had come here after
finding a steep slope which had enabled him to climb Dickie Barre. The
trail would be empty, of course; the skulking assassin in the felt hat
would be so cunningly hidden in the encompassing tangle that no mere
stranger could find him. No use hunting him.

But as he emerged into that path he stopped, startled. There, only a
few feet away, stood the man.

So astounded by the other’s audacity was Douglas that he stood gaping.
The sinister hillman grinned guilelessly.

“Howdy, stranger!” he greeted. “Scairt ye, did I? Was that ye
a-shootin’ jest now?”

Douglas swallowed an impulse to leap at him. Still amazed, he glanced
rapidly over him. Below the ophidian eyes and flat nose which he had
seen before, he now noted a coarse mouth, tobacco-yellowed teeth,
scraggly black beard about a week old, long lean frame, and nondescript
garments. His curving hands were empty. His snake-box was not with him
now. Nor had he any gun.

The man moved slightly, shifting a foot. In the movement was something
reptilian--a sinuous smoothness that was serpentine. And in the short
sentences which he had just spoken was a repellent hiss.

“Howdy yourself!” growled Douglas. “What are you doing here?”

“Jest a-ramblin’ round, stranger. Might ast ye the same. What was ye
shootin’?”

“Snake.” Douglas gave him a hard look.

“Yeh? Huh! Awful waste o’ powder. Us fellers use sticks onto them
things. Thought mebbe ye got what ye’re into here for.”

A cunning wink followed his last utterance.

“Meaning?”

The yellow teeth bared themselves in a wide, silent laugh. But the
beady eyes held no mirth.

“Think I dunno ye? Huh! I ain’t no fool. Ye ain’t here jest to look at
rocks an’ things. Trouble is, ye dunno this kentry an’ how to work it.
None o’ ye do. Everybody into the place knowed days ago ye was here,
an’ ye’ll never git yer man ’less’n ye do business. I’m the feller to
do business with.”

Again the cunning wink.

“Meaning?” repeated Douglas.

“Huh! Ye know. We’ll work shares. I’ll toll yer man to ye for half the
reward. Who d’ye want? How much’s he wuth?”

The blond man bit back a sudden desire to grin.

“Who are you?” he countered.

“Me? Snake Sanders.”

CHAPTER VI

THE KNOCK-OUT

Douglas deliberately swung the pack from his back and dropped it.
Against it he leaned his gun, making sure, as he did so, that he had
restored the safety-lock. As he faced Snake Sanders he caught the black
eyes fixed again on the weapon, and in them glinted the same light of
cupidity which had been there before.

“Right purty gun ye’ve got, stranger,” Snake admired. “Don’t look
sensible, though, without no hammers onto it. What’s one o’ them guns
cost?”

“Oh, several dollars. But what about this business of yours?”

“It’s like I tell ye.” Snake dragged his gaze away from the shotgun.
“Do business with me an’ ye’ll git what ye want. Otherways ye git
nothin’--but trouble.”

“So? And who’ll make the trouble? You?”

“Me? Huh! I don’t have to. Ye’ll jest fall into it.”

“Fall into it. Sure it won’t come crawling up on me from behind?”

The black lashes flickered.

“What ye mean by that?”

“Your name’s Snake.”

Sanders’ beady stare beat into his inscrutable face. Presently the
serpentine man grinned and subtly relaxed.

“Names don’t hurt. Think I’d try to do ye after I got my money, mebbe?
That ain’t my way, stranger. Folks calls me Snake ’cause I can handle
snakes. They don’t never bite me. I can tromp right round ’em into my
bare feet, an’ pick ’em up into my bare hands, an’ they lemme alone. I
can talk to ’em--snake talk--an’ they mind. If I’d of been over yender
’fore ye kilt that snake o’ yourn, now, I could have sent him away jest
by talkin’ to him.”

His gaze never wavered as he talked. He gave no sign of guilt. Unaware
that he had been observed in the little round mirror, he was sure there
was nothing to connect him in this man’s mind with the fact that a
copperhead had lurked beside the pack, and he was bold enough to make
capital of the presence of that reptile. Evidently he was proud both of
his name and his diabolical gift.

“Ye must have hearn o’ me,” he went on. “I’ve done business before.
Nobody round here knows it, o’ course. I keep my tracks covered. But
they must have told ye outside ’bout Snake Sanders. I’m him.”

Douglas kept the disgust out of his face. He wanted to know just how
deep was this man’s duplicity. He had not yet learned that it was
absolutely bottomless.

“I’ve heard the name. People around here don’t monkey with you much, do
they?”

A hissing laugh came through the yellow teeth, and for once the eyes
showed a glint of amusement.

“No they don’t. I’ve got this hull place right into my hand, mister.
Folks step wide o’ me. Some fellers has got brash an’ throwed buckshot
at me, but they don’t no more. They’re dead. Others has learnt.”

“I see. Those fellows stepped on snakes, maybe?”

“Mebbe. I ain’t sayin’. But come on, stranger, we can’t talk here all
day. Who d’ye want? How much?”

“I think,” was the slow answer, “that the party I’m interested in just
now is out of reach.”

Snake looked blank. Reaching smoothly into a pocket, he drew out a plug
of tobacco, bit off a chunk, and chewed.

“Got away clean, ye mean. Ain’t into here nowheres? Huh! Don’t be
too sure. There’s lots o’ hide-outs into here that ye dunno ’bout. I
know ’em. I can git anybody--man, woman, or chile. An’ there’s more’n
one way to skin a skunk. If yer man ain’t too well knowed, why won’t
’nother man do?”

Again the insinuating wink.

“Meaning?”

“Aw, come off! Ye know. Fix it onto some feller we can git. Take him
out, fix up yer case, railroad him an’ git yer money. Think I dunno
how you detectives work? Ye must think I’m simple. It’s done right
’long--grab a feller that ain’t got no friends an’ send him up. What
chance has a feller here got when he gits drug into the courts outside?
Puh!” He expectorated profusely and waited.

Douglas laughed out in contempt. He took a couple of slow strides
forward. Snake shifted again, and his eyes narrowed once more.

“You’re barking up the wrong tree,” the blond man derided. “I’m no
detective. I’m hunting nobody. I’m in here for--my health. See?”

Snake saw--or thought he did. Instantly he changed front.

“I knowed it. Ye needn’t jump onto me, now. I was jest a-tryin’ ye out.
If ye was a real detective ye’d be down snoopin’ round houses, not
a-hidin’ out up here. Wal, ye come to the right place, stranger. Where
ye from? What’d ye do? Go on, tell a feller. I’ll keep it dark. Got
money, o’ course. Gimme some an’ I’ll fetch ye all the feed ye want.”

“And fetch the officers along too, when they come.”

“Aw no. That talk I jest give ye was all moonshine--not a true word
into it. I was jest makin’ sure o’ ye, I tell ye. Now I know ye
I’ll----”

“Shut up!” Hampton’s anger broke out. “I’ve been making sure of you,
too. You’re a liar. You’re a treacherous sneak. You’d sell a hunted
man to me--you’d sell an innocent man to me--you’d sell me, too. You
think I’m after somebody, eh? Well, you’re right. I’m after the man who
thought he was going to get my gun and money, the man who didn’t get
them and is trying to trap me now, the man who sneaked up and let that
copperhead out of the box! I’m after Snake Sanders! And I’ve got him!”

So rapid had been his words, so swift was his following leap, that
Snake stood flat-footed as a big fist smacked into his face. He was
knocked headlong backward.

Into the bushes he sprawled with a crash of breaking branch and twig.
Into the bushes Douglas jumped after him. But Sanders, though dazed by
the impact of the blow and the shock of finding himself caught, was
neither senseless nor helpless. He wriggled over and seemed to curve
upward. Head-first, like a striking reptile, he threw himself at the
legs of the man above. His punisher lurched over him and fell.

Snake’s lean frame wriggled forward again and started up. But he was
not quite free. Without waiting to rise, Douglas darted a hand backward
and clamped it around one bare ankle. Holding his grip, he rolled over,
twisting and yanking the trapped leg.

The hillman tottered and lost his footing. But even before he hit the
ground for the second time he lashed out in air with his free foot. His
heel thumped into the blond man’s face, snapping his head back like a
fist-blow. Hissing furiously, Snake jerked up his leg and let drive
again. The fierce foot-punch missed this time, for its mark had ducked
aside and the leg shot over Douglas’ shoulder. Promptly it was seized,
held, forced down.

Both men now were in a grotesque posture for fighting. Snake’s legs
were spread, with his antagonist sitting between them and clutching a
foot on each side, while Snake himself sat on one booted ankle, pinning
it down. But the advantage was decidedly with Sanders, for both his
hands were free. He shot them straight for the other’s throat.

His arms were struck up and his savage clutch failed. His feet were
freed, but the hands which had gripped them now were fists, shooting
short-arm jolts into his jaw. And, short though those blows were, they
crunched his teeth together with a force that made him blink groggily
and throw himself aside.

An instant later he found himself grappled. Douglas was clinching
him, shoving him down, striving for a leg-hold with his knees and
relentlessly forcing one of his arms up behind his back. Douglas’ eyes
were ablaze with wrath and his jaw set like a rock. Now he had this
treacherous reptile in a real grip, and he meant to smash it. And
Snake, reading the grim purpose in the face of the man against whose
back he had loosed creeping death, felt fear stab through him.

Heretofore the sinister hillman had fought only in a flurry of surprise
and rage--though he would not have neglected to make his work complete
if once he got the upper hand. Now the fury of desperation fired him.
He snaked himself over sidewise, wriggled a leg loose, twined it around
the booted leg beside it, and, by a curling twist, eased the strain
on his pinioned arm. His yellow fangs fixed themselves in his enemy’s
shoulder. His free hand clawed for the blue eyes.

Douglas released his arm-hold, evaded the gouging nails by a backward
jerk of the head, got both hands to his foe’s throat, tore him loose.
Both scrambled to their knees and up on their feet. Both struck with
savage fists at the same instant. Both blows landed.

Squarely between the eyes Snake’s knotty fist cracked. Douglas saw
a red flash, followed by floating rings of flame. His own knuckles
tingled from their impact with a bristly chin. Vaguely he saw the face
beyond the wavering fire-spots fade backward. His other fist, swinging
for it, hit nothing.

For an instant he dug his knuckles into his eyes, trying to clear his
sight. Then he squinted around. Snake was down again, clawing at the
ground, trying to rise. He jumped for him--stubbed a toe against an
unnoticed rock--stumbled and sprawled.

As he pushed himself up, raging, Snake got to his haunches and lurched
at him in a clinch. Douglas threw himself into the wiry arms and
grappled for a hold of his own. And then for a few minutes it was a
straining, kicking, punching rough-and-tumble, each fighting with all
he had.

Again and again each secured a throat-hold but lost it. Over they
rolled, kicking whenever a foot came free, slugging with either fist
or both, striving to dash each other’s head against stone or root,
heaving and wrenching until they had tumbled out of the brush and
into the trail where they had first stood. In Douglas grew amazement
at the strength and endurance of his antagonist. In Snake’s brain
gnawed a keener fear of the man on whom he had exhausted in vain every
foul trick he knew. Neither could quite overcome the other. Both were
gasping and growing dizzy from the violence of their combat. And they
fought on.

Suddenly, in a final squirming spasm, Snake twisted himself free.
Before Douglas could clutch him again he had rolled away and was
shoving himself up. The blond man got his feet under him and pitched
to a stand. Then, too short of breath to renew the duel at once, they
balanced themselves and glowered.

Snake was a hard sight, and Douglas was not much better. The
hillman’s face was gashed by cuts and smeared with mingled blood and
tobacco-juice, his right eye was shut, his mouth was a blubbery pulp,
his clothes hung in rags. The other’s bloodshot eyes gleamed between
puffy lids, his nose leaked a red drizzle, his light hair was stained
from a cut scalp and full of dirt, his shirt was ripped to the waist
and crimsoned at the shoulder where Snake’s teeth had sunk. But neither
saw anything except the menace in the other’s eyes.

The same thought came to both--probably born in the vindictive brain of
Snake and involuntarily transmitted by his look: the thought of the gun
leaning against the pack. True, it was “newfangled,” and Douglas knew
it was locked against discharge; but in a fight a gun is not only a gun
but a steel bar and a club. It was behind its owner, and a swift dash
past him might make Snake its master. He attempted the dash.

Without the slightest preliminary movement he was speeding past
Douglas. But the latter was not asleep. Pivoting on a heel, he swung a
round-arm blow flush under the passing jaw.

The shock was terrific. Between the impetus of Snake’s plunge and the
body-drive of the punch, the impact was more than doubled. The slugging
arm dropped, numb to the shoulder. Snake also dropped--numb all over.

His feet left the ground, and he straightened backward in the air. Flat
on his back he struck, arms at his sides, legs stretched nerveless,
head a little to the right, blank face turned to the brush. There he
lay without a quiver of life.

Douglas stood peering down, slowly swinging his numbed arm at his side.
Minutes passed. His breathing grew normal; his arm lost its wooden
feeling. Somewhere a bird chirped noisily. Up from the unseen chasm
of the Traps idled a new breeze, bearing the music of the far-off
hammers. The warm sun beat down on the two men. Still Snake Sanders lay
motionless.

The swollen-eyed man above him trod tentatively on a grimy hand. It
gave no answering twitch. He stooped, studied the face, put a thumb on
the left lid, pushed it up, and peered at the eyeball. Then he stood
up, unconsciously rubbing his thumb against his shirt.

“Well, Mister Snake Sanders,” he said grimly, “if I were you and you
were I, you’d drag me over to the edge and pitch me off to smash on
the rocks, most likely. That’s what I ought to do to you. But I don’t
happen to be built along those lines. Just what can a white man do with
a reptile like you under such circumstances?”

The problem remained unanswered, though he ran a hand repeatedly
through his thick hair and frowned down at the body.

“If I could only have hit you harder, maybe you’d die of a broken
neck,” he mused. “I’ve known such things to happen. But I did the best
I could, and you’ll live just the same. The devil takes care of his
own, anyway.”

Slowly he turned and walked to his pack. Deliberately he got into the
straps, wincing as the injured shoulder came under pressure.

“Must wash that place well when I reach the creek,” he muttered,
“or I’ll get blood-poisoning. Guess a complete bath wouldn’t be
inappropriate.”

He settled the pack, gripped his gun, stepped to the edge of the brush,
and picked up his hat. Then he looked again at the silent Snake.

“On the whole, I think I have a good deal the best of it,” he declared.
“Your little copperhead trick did me no harm, and I know a lot more now
than if you hadn’t tried it. Yes, a whole lot. As for damages to our
respective complexions and temperaments, I’m no worse off than you; and
in the matter of general condition you’re certainly much worse than I.
So we’ll call it quits--for the present.”

He plodded away. But after a few steps he looked back with a hard smile.

“Besides,” he concluded, “I was forgetting. Our young friend Steve has
some business to settle with you. His account is three years old--maybe
more--and mine has only just begun. So you’re Steve’s meat, Snake.
Steve’s meat.”

CHAPTER VII

A MAN MEETS A MAN

Along the Clove road plodded a man with a battered face and a torn
shirt, toting a pack and a gun. The face was not so much disfigured
as it had been awhile ago, for it had just been laved in the cold,
clear water of Coxing Kill; but it still bore obvious marks of
conflict, chief of which was a pair of puffy eyes ringed by darkening
discolorations. The rent shirt gaped at every stride, disregarded by
its wearer, who swung along as if careless of the opinions of others.
Judging from his gait, he knew where he was going and purposed to reach
his destination before early sundown should cut off the light from his
ridge-flanked road.

Behind him, perhaps a quarter-mile back, another man was riding in the
same direction on the same road. A big-framed, eagle-nosed, long-jawed
old man he was, with white mustache drooping around his mouth and
ragged wisps of snowy hair sticking out from under his nondescript felt
hat. His shoulders, though humped up as he lounged forward on the reins
lying loosely along the back of a white horse, were wide and bulky; and
the gnarled hands holding those reins were corded with sinew. Seventy
if a day, he still looked powerful enough to handle many a man of
half his years; and the direct gaze of his steely blue eyes betokened
fearlessness of heart, simplicity of nature, and honesty of soul.

Neither of the two men saw the other. Between them intervened windings
of the tree-lined road; the tramping man cast no glance behind, and the
one following was not looking for him. Each in his own little cloud of
dust, the pair ambled on and drew steadily nearer to a dingy house,
behind which a man and a woman were harvesting corn.

At the swinging approach of the pack-bearer the couple halted their
toil and squinted at him. He waved a jaunty hand. Neither of the
harvesters answered the friendly gesture. In slouching attitudes they
stood, wooden-faced, watching him pass. With a careless smile he looked
them over, then turned his gaze forward and ignored them.

Had he been let alone, he would have passed without a word and speedily
forgotten them. But, though the couple made no threatening move, they
had animals which did. With a sudden bound three dogs appeared from
nowhere and silently rushed at him.

They were treacherous-looking mongrel beasts, and their teeth gleamed
wickedly as they came. The man halted--took one comprehensive
look--stepped back and lifted his gun.

“Call ’em off!” he barked. “Call ’em or bury ’em!”

A shrill shriek of command burst from the woman. A sour snarl broke
from the man. At the sound of the shrewish voice and the menace of the
gun the dogs slowed abruptly. But they growled, and they did not turn
back.

“Call ’em off, I said!” commanded the man behind the gun. “When I say
off I mean off! Drive them back and tie them up!”

Instead, the man advanced, muttering. His brown face, of distinctly
negro cast, was ugly; and he still gripped his corn-knife--an
abbreviated scythe, short-handled, which would be a fearful weapon at
close quarters. The dogs, emboldened by his approach, began slipping
forward again.

“You can keep back too,” the stranger warned. “This gun is likely to
scatter right at you. Take those beasts away quick if you want them to
live. I won’t say it again.”

“Shoot them dawgs an’ ye won’t git fur from here,” the other snarled
throatily. But he paused, and at the cessation of his steps the brutes
also stopped. The woman still stood in the corn.

Just then the white horse and its white-haired driver came jogging
around a bushy turn. The old man sat up with sudden energy,
involuntarily jerking at the reins. The horse stopped.

One swift survey the old man took. Then his right hand shot to the
whip-socket, and with awkward speed he clambered out into the road.

“Nat!” he yelled explosively. “Git them dawgs in or I’ll give the hull
pack o’ ye a-hidin’! Shoot ’em if ye want, stranger--they ain’t none of
’em no good!”

Douglas, his finger already tightening on one trigger, held his fire
and flicked a glance sidewise to see what sort of man was coming. He
found the old fellow running nimbly toward him, reversing his whip so
that its heavy butt was foremost. At that instant the man Nat, his eyes
glinting viciously, hissed at the dogs.

“Look ou-u-ut!” yelled the oncoming driver.

In the nick of time Douglas turned his eyes back--just as a dog left
the ground in a fang-grinning leap. The other two were crouching. The
blond man jerked his gun a little downward to meet the rising body.
The dog’s breast struck against the muzzles. Teeth clashed in a fierce
snap. From the gun burst a muffled roar. The dog was blown backward.

Under the impact of dog and powder-recoil Douglas staggered. But he
gave no ground and lost no time. His second finger released the other
hidden hammer at an upshooting shape. In a crashing flare another hairy
form whirled over and flopped to earth.

At the same instant teeth stung his left side. A sudden weight on his
shirt yanked him almost off balance. Under his arm he found the wicked
face of the third hound. Then a black streak appeared on that dog’s
head, a resounding thwack hit Douglas’ ears, and the beast dangled
limp, held up only by its teeth, which were caught in the cloth.

“I told ye, Nat--I told ye!” panted the old man, whose whip-butt had
knocked out that third dog. “I been tellin’ ye right ’long---- Git
back, ye yeller hound!”

Mouthing an inarticulate oath, the owner of the dogs himself was now
jumping forward, face convulsed and corn-hook lifted. Whether he was
attacking Douglas or his aged rescuer neither stopped to ascertain.
Both acted. The empty shotgun jabbed for the assailant’s face, the
barrels crunching solidly against his forehead. The whip-butt swung
down with the force of a blackjack on his crown. His eyes rolled, his
legs caved, and he fell.

The young man and the old one swept their surroundings. Two dogs were
fairly blown apart. The third still hung limp from Douglas’ shirt. The
man lay in a queer huddle, his corn-hook sticking in the ground beside
him, where it had fallen on its point. The woman, shrieking with rage,
now was running at them with a similar blade.

“I told ye, Nat,” the old man said harshly, as if the fallen man
could hear him, “if ye didn’t learn them dogs manners or tie ’em up
somebody’d fix ’em. I told ye I’d do it myself the next time they come
for me. Ye can say g’by to this here one too.”

Wherewith he clutched the dangling hound by the scruff of the neck and,
in one wrench, tore it away from Douglas’ shirt. He flung it down,
hopped up, and landed with all his weight on the brute’s neck. Under
his heavy brogans sounded a crack of bones.

“’Lizy, ye better hold yer hosses,” he coolly cautioned the woman, now
close at hand. “I don’t want to handle ye rough, but sure’s God made
little apples I’ll crack ye one ’less’n ye drop that ’ere cawn-hook.
I’m a-warnin’ ye.”

The thin-faced female, whose coarse hair and high cheek-bones hinted
strongly at Indian blood, screamed out again. She burst into a torrent
of vituperation that brought a red wave across the face of the
younger man and a corresponding flush into the leathery cheeks of his
fighting-mate. But she made no attack with the ugly blade in her hand.
Standing over the huddled Nat, her bony bare toes digging at the turf
like the claws of a cat, she vented her fury in language which would
have brought swift physical retaliation if she had been a man. And the
pair stood silent and took it.

“Ye’ll pay for them pups, Eb Wilham--ye’ll pay dear!” she foamed at
the last. “Nat’ll take it outen ye! Him an’ Snake’ll fix ye--an’ ye
too, ye sneakin’ ’tective! Ye mizzable pair o’ sneakers, ye better live
together an’ sleep together an’ watch out fer each other now!”

She bent and squinted at her mate. The two men looked suddenly at each
other. The hillman stared as if seeing the other for the first time.
The newcomer stared straight back, taking his first comprehensive view
of the two-handed old fellow and realizing what the woman’s threat
signified. For a minute old blue eye and young blue eye held straight
and steady. Then on each mouth quirked a smile.

“If you’ve run out of words, I’ll say a few myself,” clipped Douglas,
turning to the woman. “If there’s any more trouble coming from this it
comes to me, not to him. I never saw him before, and he doesn’t know
me. So you can tell your nigger man to take it out on me. As for Snake,
I knocked him cold awhile ago and I can do it again. I’ll be around
here for some time, and anybody wanting the same dose Snake got can
come and get it. That’s all.”

He nodded to the old man and turned away. He took three steps before Eb
Wilham stopped him.

“Hol’ on!” the latter exploded in the abrupt way that seemed habitual.
“I’m a-travelin’ your way. If ye want a ride, set in. ’Lizy, git some
sense. This feller’s right--I dunno him. But I’m a-goin’ to know him
if he’s willin’. An’ as fur’s Nat an’ Snake’s concerned, I been takin’
care o’ myself seventy-three year an’ I figger to keep on doin’ it.
What say, stranger? Walk or ride?”

“Ride, if it doesn’t get you into trouble,” Douglas acquiesced.

“No trouble. Snakes an’ yeller dawgs has bit at me before an’ I ain’t
dead. Chk! Hoss, g’yapalong! G’yap, I tell ye!”

The white horse, sedately cropping grass, took a few last bites, and
came obediently. His master climbed spryly into the weather-beaten
wagon and rolled an equally weather-beaten thumb at the rear. Douglas
heaved his pack in behind and swung himself to the seat beside the
driver.

The sharp-faced female screamed out with a fresh burst of abuse. Old
Eb’s mouth tightened, and he lightly touched the horse with his whip.
The animal jumped in an astonished way and began slowly, heavily
pounding along the road. Woman, man, dogs and house disappeared behind
in a drifting cloud of dust.

“Ain’t no use listenin’ or talkin’ to a mad woman,” Eb barked
conversationally. “Ain’t no use into it at all. Uh--right fine weather
we’re a-havin’, stranger.”

“Right fine,” agreed Douglas. “Aren’t you worried about riding with a
detective, Mr. Wilham?”

The keen eyes shot at him and returned to the horse.

“Not a mite. I ride with who I want to. Folks that’s scairt o’
detectives mostly has some reason to be. I ain’t got no reason.”

“Found--one honest man in the Traps,” laughed Douglas.

“That ain’t nothin’,” Eb retorted. “Folks is mostly honest round here.
Good hard-workin’ fellers. Don’t jedge the rest of us by them Oakses.
Or Snake Sanders. Did ye say ye licked Snake?”

Getting no answer at once, he took another survey of his passenger.
Douglas was staring at the road. So the hard pair behind were “them
Oakses”--the parents of the catamount girl!

“Er--oh, yes. Laid him out on top of that ledge back yonder. Ought to
have thrown him off. But I didn’t.”

The horse thumped out a dozen steps while Eb digested this.

“Ye’re right, stranger. Snake’s a bad ’un. Ye must o’ had a hard
tussle--Snake ain’t easy to handle.” The shrewd eyes took in the
battered face. “Up top o’ Dickabar, hey? Hum!”

He became abstracted. The horse jogged on, steadily eating up distance.
The silence grew strained.

“Mr. Wilham, I’m no detective,” Douglas asserted. “I’m just a rambler
who blundered in here. My name’s Douglas Hampton. I’m not after
anybody, and I’m staying awhile just because I like this country.
I don’t know who started this fool story that I’m a detective, and
I don’t care much. But now I’m here, I’ll stay until I’m ready to
go--unless I get starved out; I haven’t much left to eat. That’s all
there is to it. Believe it or not. It’s true.”

The heavy hoofs beat another measure.

“I believe ye,” aggressively. “I know how ye feel. I’m full o’ that
same kind o’ cussedness myself. There’s some folks round here that’s
ignorant and scairt of any new feller, and there’s some that’s got
reasons besides bein’ ignorant. I ain’t sayin’ who they be; I ain’t
talkin’ ’bout my neighbors even if I don’t like some of ’em. But seein’
it’s gone round that ye’re a detective, ’most everybody’ll believe
it, an’ ye better act accordin’--kind o’ go careful, I mean. Where ye
stayin’? Anywheres special?”

“Up in the rocks last night. Thought I might find a house I could live
in down here. Know of any?”

“Hum. Wal, we’re a-comin’ to a house, but I don’t think ye’d want it.
It’s--uh--kind o’ lonesome. Folks says there’s some funny things into
it. There ’tis now.”

They emerged from a tunnel of trees, and Douglas looked at a house
which he knew must be that of Jake Dalton. It was at the left of the
road, in a clearing rank with uncut grass, behind which rose forest
headed by two giant pines. It was a little box of a place, not more
than twenty feet square; weather-worn, with patched roof and tiny
sagging porch. The small bare windows gaped black and blank at the
forest cordon. The door stood ajar, as if the latest occupant had
left in haste. About it hung an air of abandonment, of desolation, of
forbidding loneliness.

“Looks all right to me,” declared Douglas. “Not very cheerful, but I’ll
try it one night, anyway. Whoa!”

Eb drew the reins. The horse stopped. Douglas got out and lifted his
pack. The old man sat soberly staring at the house.

“I dunno,” he muttered. “I dunno. Stranger, ye better ride on a piece.”

“Where to?”

“Um--I dunno. Mebbe somebody’d sleep ye. I’d do it myself, but I’m
a-goin’ to High Falls an’ I ain’t comin’ back to-night.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it just the same. But I reckon I’ll stop here for
the night. Much obliged to you, Mr. Wilham, for the ride, and more for
helping me against those dogs.”

“’Tain’t nothin’,” was the hasty disclaimer. “Them dawgs ought to
been kilt long ago--I give Nat warnin’ more’n once. An’ don’t call me
Mister. I ain’t used to it. ’Most everybody calls me Uncle Eb.”

“All right, Uncle Eb,” smiled the other.

The bright old eyes dwelt on him, and an answering smile lifted the
white mustache.

“Gorry, ye look funny with them eyes all bunged up,” chuckled Eb.
“Snake’s got a hard fist, ain’t he? I wisht I could been a peewee bird
up into a tree an’ seen that fight. It must of been good. Wal, son, if
ye can lick Snake mebbe ye can handle whatever ye see round this house.
I’ll stop here an’ visit with ye to-morrer, mebbe, when I come back.
Shall I fetch ye some food from High Falls?”

“I wish you would. Lots of it. And some tobacco.”

“Smokin’ or chawin’?”

“Smoking. And for food get whatever comes handy. I’m not fussy.”

He drew out a small wallet. Uncle Eb waved it aside.

“Pay me when ye git yer stuff, boy. I dunno yit what it’ll cost. I’ll
git jest what I’d buy for myself. Then if--if ye ain’t here to-morrer I
can use it to home. G’by. G’yapalong!”

The hoofs hammered again into the sand. In a fresh cloud of dust the
rickety wagon rolled away and was gone among the trees beyond.

Douglas shoved his wallet back into its pocket and stood a minute
eyeing the little house glooming under the solemn pines. Then, reaching
to his pack, he pulled from under its straps his coat. From that
garment he drew two buckshot shells. Coolly he reloaded his gun.

“I reckon I’ll be here to-morrow when you come back, Uncle Eb,” he
muttered. “Now, Mister Ha’nt, let’s get acquainted.”

CHAPTER VIII

THE HA’NT

Sunset stretched its long shadows again across the Traps.

Up on the heights, the light of day still was bright and clear. But
down in the bluff-bulwarked valley of the Coxing Kill, a thousand feet
lower than the Minnewaska table-land behind which the sun was rolling
down in the southwest, the dusk was slowly shading into dark. Already
the air vibrated with the swelling chorus of the katydids, scraping out
their insistent warning of frost which had not yet come; and from every
grassy space cheeped the lonesome dirge of the crickets. Night was
drawing on.

Down on the diminutive stoop of a little house beside the Clove road,
a man stirred and glanced around him with a frown. The steadily
increasing clack of the big green bush-bugs and the growing chill of
eventide had routed the thoughts which he had been drawing through
the stem of a blackened but empty pipe--thoughts which, to judge from
his absent gaze and the half-smile on his lips, were more pleasant
than those now obtruding themselves. He shook his shoulders as if to
dislodge the night chill settling there. Abruptly he stood up.

His swift survey swept the little fallow field at his right, where the
black choristers of the grass were chirping away among the unseen
roots; the narrow sand-track of road, empty of all but thickening
shadows; the darkling mass of trees and brush at his left. Then he
pivoted and peered into the darkness lying beyond a door which had been
standing open at his back.

Nothing showed in the room beyond--nothing, that is, which should hold
the fixed attention of a man; nothing alive. Vaguely, in the wan light
still entering through the cracked panes of a curtainless side window,
he could see a rickety table with one leg broken, a chair minus a back,
a little rusty stove, and, in one corner, a jumble of small things
recently dumped from his pack. Along a wall which started beside the
open doorway showed the faint outlines of three more doors, all in a
row. And that was all.

Nothing, surely, in such a scene need make this man listen keenly
and half lift the shotgun in one fist. Yet he stood there for a long
minute, searching the room repeatedly, then centering his gaze on the
first of those three doors in the wall. That door stood open. And the
queer chill between his shoulder-blades was not all due to the coolness
following the sinking of the sun: it was that clammy feeling inherited
by mankind through countless generations--the subconscious warning that
a hidden menace lurks behind the back. And his ears subtly corroborated
the caution of his nerves. Despite the clamor of the insects, he could
have sworn that in the first room there at the right he had heard a
slight rustle.

That room was the bedroom. It was a mere cubby-hole, not more than
seven feet square, containing only a crude bed and a lamp-shelf, both
fixed. The bedstead, which the new tenant had inspected and decided to
use, apparently had been built in the room by the former owner; a solid
contrivance of boards and hardwood posts, with interlaced ropes serving
as a spring, and a noisy mattress of corn-husks. Head, foot, and one
side were snug against three of the walls, leaving only a yard-wide
space between bed and door. At the foot was the one tiny window of the
room.

To enter that sleeping-closet, anything must go through the door or
the window. The window now stood open, for Douglas had forced up its
cobwebby frame after sweeping the floor as best he could with a stubby
old broom found in the grass; but that opening was within ten feet
of his left hand as he sat on the steps, and nothing could possibly
have gone in there without his knowledge. Still less could anything
have gone past him through the door. Yet he felt in his marrow that
something was there.

With slow, careful shifting of his balance he stole across the meagre
stoop. Not a board creaked, not a sound did his descending soles make.
With the same stealth he leaned against the door-jamb and inched his
head inside. At length, braced by hands against the wall, he was
leaning far in and peering through that right-hand door. In the dimness
beyond stood no living thing.

Until his arm-muscles began to ache he hung there; and never a sound
came to him from within. Yet his nerves continued to deliver their
warning. In that room where Jake Dalton had slept was _something_;
something besides the bed and the bare lamp-shelf; invisible,
intangible, but--_something_!

He drew back and glanced around once more. The dusk was drawing around
the little clearing a closer cordon of gloom; an eerie whisper came
from the pines, swept by a gusty wind; the throb of insects resounded
as before. Nothing moved. He felt for a match. When he had it, he
stepped heavily into the house and tramped over to his gas-lamp,
hanging on a nail; turned its valve, shook it up, and waited for the
water and carbide to mingle and form the gas. In the brief interval of
waiting he watched all around and rapidly reviewed his movements since
opening that window.

He had explored the place, finding at the second door a stairway
leading into a dusty loft littered with dead wasps; at the third, a
room even smaller than the bedroom, partly filled with stove-wood.
Outside he had found a well, in which the water seemed good, and a
little shed holding only a broken barrel or two, burlap bags, an empty
jug, and similar trash. Both door and window had been open while he
made his inspection; but he had returned to the bedroom and tossed his
blankets on the mattress, and nothing new was there then. And since
that time he had not been more than ten feet from it.

The fumes of gas struck his nostrils. He lit the match and touched it
to the little nozzle. White and bright, the flame lit up the place. He
strode into the bedroom.

Absolutely nothing new was there. With a self-derisive grin, he stooped
and glanced under the bed. The floor was bare.

“Now are you satisfied, you timid old woman?” he jeered. “What’s the
matter with you, anyhow? Getting nerves?”

His words hollowly mocked him from the outer room. With a disgusted
snort he turned away. Boots thumping defiantly, he clattered back to
the three-legged table, shoved its crippled side against the wall,
kicked the backless chair up to it, and set the lamp on it. To the
little pile in the corner he went, and from it he extracted the dry
remainder of a bread-loaf and a paper-wrapped chunk of cheese. Then he
returned and sat down, hitching around in the chair to get his back
toward a windowless wall.

“All the same,” he meditated, sawing off a slice of bread with his
jack-knife, “if I stay here long I’ll have to make some improvements.
For one thing, that bedroom is too darned handy. Window opens right on
the road. So does the front door. No curtains on any of these windows,
no key for that door. With Snake Sanders and Nat Oaks both thirsting
for my gore and undoubtedly acquainted with the position of that
bed--yes, I reckon I’d better move up-stairs or something. No use in
lying meekly down and inviting a fistful of shot to come in and mess me
up. No sense in sitting here in the light now, either.”

He turned off the gas-flow, set the lamp under the table, and fell to
munching his meagre provender.

“However, I’m safe enough in that room to-night,” he told himself.
“Nobody knows I’m here except Uncle Eb, who isn’t coming back until
to-morrow--and maybe little Miss Marion, who isn’t likely to tell.
There’s nothing in that room but imagination, and imagination won’t
keep me very wide awake. Ho-hum! I’m going to sleep like a log this
night.”

He arose, dipped a cup of well-water from his canvas pail dangling
from a nail in a low ceiling-beam, washed down his food, and reseated
himself.

“Yes, sir,” he informed the loneliness, carving another chunk of
cheese, “this is my night to sleep. Last night I sprawled between two
rocks, and the night before I lost a lot of repose watching those
backwoods detectives prowl around and spy on me from the bushes down
beside the creek. Things have been coming right fast in the last three
days. Before that I’d never been inside that wall of cliffs over
yonder. And now I’ve killed a catamount, assisted at the demise of
three dogs, knocked one eminent citizen stiff and helped send another
to sleep; made two able-bodied enemies and one potential friend--Uncle
Eb--and given love’s young dream a boost along the rocks to a new
hide-out. Oh, yes, and assisted an escaped conv----”

He bit off the last word, suddenly aware that he was talking aloud
and recalling the ancient proverb to the effect that walls sometimes
listen. Gloom now surrounded him, for the slow-dying gas flame had sunk
to a little blue button on its nozzle. Rising again, he tiptoed to the
door and spied around. No lurking form was near.

“Guess that will be about enough talking,” he concluded.

He drew back and shut the door. Stepping across the room, he found
the table, brought it over, and set it against the door so that the
slightest push from outside would tip it over with a warning clatter.
Then he went along the walls, tested the windows and a rear door--all
of which were warped into immovability--and, carrying his gun and the
chair, retired to the gloomy bedroom. There he placed gun and chair
beside the bed, and on the chair he laid matches. After frowning
thoughtfully at the open window he sighed and closed it.

Deliberately he undressed and rolled up in his blankets. For a minute
or two he lay reveling in his freedom from clothing and the yielding
embrace of the crackling but comfortable old mattress. Then the first
grateful feeling of physical comfort passed. He lifted his head from
the rolled-up coat forming his pillow, and turned his dilating eyes
around. Over him was creeping a feeling of oppression, of inability to
obtain air; and, worse yet, a panicky sensation that he was in a trap.

The blankets were snug and warm; yet that queer chill was crawling over
him again. The air was fresh and clean; yet he opened his mouth as if
stifled. Around him lay silence and blackness, intensified rather than
relieved by the deadened chorus of insects outside and the lighter
shade of the window. He turned suddenly on a side. At the loud rustle
of the husks under him he jumped half erect.

A moment he poised; then he flung himself angrily back.

“You idiot!” he muttered. “You miss the stars overhead and the little
night breezes around; that’s all. You’re in a house, and you’ll have to
get used to it. Go to sleep, you fool!”

He shut his eyes and forced himself to breathe regularly. But through
his brain streaked the thought:

“_You’re in a dead man’s bed! You don’t know what killed him! You----_”

“Oh, shut up!” he growled aloud, bouncing over on the other side.
“What’s that to me? I’m going to sleep!”

For a few minutes he stubbornly held his position. But he was lying
now with his back to the open door into the main room, and the creepy
feeling at his shoulder-blades became intolerable. He turned again.
But this time he made the movement deliberately, and at the repeated
crackle of the mattress he grinned. After blinking at the dark a minute
he relaxed, warm once more at the back, his eyes closing naturally.

Rapidly his fatigue asserted itself. With the muffled lullaby of the
crickets swinging rhythmically on, he lost himself.

Hours passed. He slept peacefully on, changing his position a little at
intervals, unconscious of his movements or of anything else. Then, all
at once, he found himself up on an elbow, staring wide-eyed into the
dark.

Something had moved. It seemed that the bed itself was quivering
slightly. Yet there was no sound near him--no new sound anywhere----

What was that? There was a sound now--but not in the room. It was
up overhead--up in the empty attic; a sound of muffled footfalls,
deliberately crossing the floor; a sound like that of bare heels going
quietly across the boards. It traveled to and fro, as if an undressed
man were wandering aimlessly. Then it began to come down-stairs.

A bump, and it stopped. Another bump; another pause. Then two soft
bumps telling of a couple more stairs descended. It was the sound of
a man stealing quietly down, halting to listen for any noise below; a
man not deft enough to put his weight on his toes and avoid the bump of
heels. Yet the stairs did not creak as they would under the weight of a
man.

Very quietly, Douglas moved over and found a match. With the same
stealth he opened the gas-valve of his lamp. While he waited for the
acetylene flow he heard the heels reach the lowest step. He listened
for the stealthy turning of the knob and the creak of door-hinges. They
did not come.

Cracking the match on his thumb-nail, he lit the gas and shot its
ray outward. Nothing met his gaze--nothing but the table against the
outer door. Softly he lowered his feet, gripped his gun, and arose.
Reason told him no man could be in that attic; but his ears positively
asserted that a man had come down those stairs.

On his toes he drifted outward. In the main room he saw no living
thing. Quietly he set the lamp on the floor, its beam glaring at the
stair door. With a swift grab he turned the knob and tore the door open.

Then, gun leveled, he stood and gaped.

The stairway was utterly empty.

CHAPTER IX

DALTON’S DEATH

A long minute dragged by while Douglas stood there, the drone of the
crickets gnawing at his nerves. Then he pounced at the lamp and bounded
up the stairs. At the top he halted and glared around the attic.

Nothing was there.

The tiny windows at either end, heavily coated with spider-webs, were
shut as usual. Not a web was broken. Nowhere, except where one little
pane had long been missing, could he see any opening into the barren
room. He moved about, and the boards groaned loudly under him. They had
not groaned under that ghostly unknown.

He returned down the stairs, and the steps creaked and squeaked as he
passed. He slammed the door and went about the room, inspecting every
door and window. All was as he had left it on retiring. He even glanced
into the little wood-room. That, too, was unchanged.

“H’m!” he muttered. Pausing at the water-bag, he gulped a drink. After
once more staring around, he returned to the bedroom.

Back into his tumbled blankets he got. As the strangled flame of his
lamp slowly died he reached to his trousers, dug out his watch, and
glanced at it. It was now eight minutes after midnight.

“H’m!” he repeated as he lay back.

For some time after the light had expired he lay wide-eyed. No further
sound came from stairs or attic. In the solid blackness he discerned
nothing. At length he grinned.

“Guess I’ve laid you for the night, Mister Ha’nt,” he whispered.

As if in answer, the bed quivered again. The feeling was as if some
man standing beside him had rested a hand on the headboard--a barely
perceptible tremor. He had not moved a muscle. Nor, suddenly frozen,
did he move one now. He lay absolutely still, only his eyes moving.

Another quiver came. With it came a faint dry rustle. Nerves and
straining ears alike flashed the same message: it was the corn-husk
mattress now! The movement, the sound, were beside him, almost under
him--as if a bodiless man were laying himself down to rest side by side
with the live one!

With lightning speed Douglas turned and struck at the Thing. His
knuckles crashed against the old cloth and its content of husks. Again
he struck, this time into the air. With a dive he launched himself at
the chair--clutched matches--scratched them. The yellow blaze showed
that the room was empty of all life but his own.

Scrambling out, he lit fresh matches and scanned the floor under the
bed. Then he wheeled and looked all about the outer room. All was as
before.

The matches burned his fingers, and he dropped them. Again blackness
and vacancy engulfed him. Groping, he found the bed and lay down. Then
he reached out, found his gun, and laid it beside him. And this time
he did not roll up in his blankets. He only draped one of them loosely
over him, and kept a hand on the gun.

“Come again, Mister Ha’nt,” he muttered.

Only the monotonous chorus outside answered. For a long time he lay
waiting, his nerves gradually relaxing. At length, still loosely
holding the weapon, he dozed away into slumber.

He awoke as if struck by a blow. A heavy thump had shocked him awake.
Instantly he knew what caused it. The table against the outer door had
been pushed over. The damp night air was sweeping in.

His gun leaped up. Its muzzles licked toward the entrance. One barrel
vomited flame and lead.

The flare of the explosion lit up the portal. It stood ajar, but not
wide enough to admit a man. Nor was any man standing there. Outside was
only black, cavernous night.

His ears numbed by the concussion of the shell, he squatted there in
the blankets, the other barrel ready for instantaneous use. Presently
his stunned auditory nerves regained their acuteness. They told him
something that brought a new chill crawling down his back. The song of
the insects no longer swung through the night. And out there on the
steps sounded a dull, slow _drip_--_drip_--_drip_.

With measured beat that dread sound hammered at his brain. It slowed,
as if the first flow of falling fluid were becoming choked--or clotted.
Then it ceased.

Shuddering, he moved once more to the edge, groped about until he found
his boots, and slipped his legs into them. Feeling again through the
dark, he located his matches. But he did not light one. With half a
dozen of the little light-sticks in his hand, he stepped stealthily to
the front door.

Long he listened, hearing nothing but a weird whisper of night wind
among leaves. The air was clammy, and in it was a wet smell. He began
to shiver again; but this time the cold was natural--the dank cold of
dampness. Feeling about, he found a leg of the overturned table. On it
he scratched a match, and out into the uncanny gloom beyond the door he
darted the burning sliver.

The stoop was empty. The thing he had dreaded to find slumped against
the wall was not there. Nor were the old boards disfigured by any fresh
red stain.

Sorely perplexed, he ignited a new match from the expiring stub. As he
did so a new thought struck his mind. Perhaps the dead thing was in the
room, huddled beside him. He yanked the match inward--and found nothing
but the capsized table, its legs wedging the door.

As the light died down a sudden soft sound made him jump. It was a
single drop falling on the steps outside.

With a new match flaring he yanked the door open and strode out,
angrily determined to find the source of those soul-sickening drops.
He had not far to go. After one straight look at the steps he flung
down the match and laughed out in savage scorn of himself.

The narrow steps were wet, but with nothing more sinister than rain.
The dampness of the air, the utter blackness around, the silence of
the insects--all told of a recent shower. Even now the crickets were
beginning to chirp again. Somehow their sturdy notes, which previously
had seemed doleful, now sounded cheerful.

“You doddering imbecile!” he jeered. “It’s as simple as daylight. A
little shower just before you woke up--a gust of wind shoving the door
open--the drip of the eaves for a minute or so. And you, you hysterical
half-wit--you shoot a harmless door and turn into a knot of goose-flesh
because of that! Who ever told you you were a grown-up man? You’re
nothing but a scared-of-the-dark baby!”

He drank in a deep breath of the sweet air and nodded unseen
encouragement to some lusty cricket in the grass near the stoop.
But, as he turned again toward the door, he hesitated. Wind and rain
could not be blamed for the footsteps on the stairs or the sounds and
movements of his bed. Something urged him to take his blankets and lie
down outdoors, even though the ground was wet: to sleep surrounded by
the honest-voiced crickets, unconfined by walls within which stalked
bodiless things.

“No!” he growled. “Back to bed you go, and there you stay. This is a
fight to a finish, Mister Ha’nt, and I’ve taken one round out of three,
with the other two drawn. I think I’ve got you on the run. Now let’s
see if you can come back.”

With that he felt his way in, shut the door, kicked the table
negligently against it, and returned to bed.

As he rearranged his blankets, heavy drops thudded overhead. Rapidly
the spattering impacts swelled into a drumming roar of new rain.

“Aha,” he nodded. “You’d look sweet out in the grass now, wouldn’t you?
By the time you got back in here you’d be well soaked, and it would
serve you right. The Lord hates a quitter. Come on, Ha’nt. I’m waiting.”

He continued to wait. Steadily the rain pounded on, varied only by
slashing swoops at the window. His eyes closed. His breathing slowed.
The tumult of the storm faded out of his consciousness.

By and by he found himself drifting over a murky waste of waters
which swashed and hissed and gurgled in sullen enmity. Above was no
sun or moon or star--nothing but a dreary void. Around was no life;
he was utterly alone in the desolation of plunging waves, a derelict
at the mercy of wind and tide. But presently weird shapes took form
among the billows--ghastly, gigantic wraiths which mouthed hideous
grimaces down at him and reached for him with shadowy fingers. They
veered away before they touched him, and a great wind blew them apart
into fragments of mist and spume. But they formed again, making more
frightful spectres than before, and stalked athwart the waste, half
seen through a roaring deluge of rain. They began to yell his name, and
with the shouts blended a thunder of hollow blows. He tried to yell
back at them----

He was in his bed again. Wan daylight was in his opening eyes. The
noise of falling rain was real. So were the loud knocking and the
calling of his name. The pounding came from the outer door, and the
voice was that of Uncle Eb.

“Hey, Hampton! Hampton! Speak up if ye’re livin’!”

He jumped from bed, shoved the table away from the entrance, and pulled
the door open. Uncle Eb, his mustache drooping in a bedraggled wisp and
his body gleaming dully in a wet rubber coat, took a sudden backward
step.

“Gorry, boy! Ye scairt me, a-snakin’ the door open so sudden. I was
about gittin’ ready to go ’long. How be ye?”

“All right, thanks. Come in. Wet morning.”

“Mornin’? It’s ’most noon, son. Ye been sleepin’ all this time?
Mebbe--mebbe ye was broke of yer rest, though. That it?”