King Spruce Part 39

"Catch that fool!" yelled the boss. But the first of those who tumbled out into the dingle after him were not quick enough. The night and the swirling storm had swallowed him. A few zealous pursuers ran a little way, trying to follow his tracks, lost them, and then came back for lanterns.

"It's no use, Mr. Wade," advised the boss. "He's got the strength of a mule and the legs of an ostrich. The men will only be takin' chances for nothin'. He's gone clean out of his head, and there's no tellin' when he'll stop."

And Wade regretfully gave orders to abandon the chase. He and the others stood for a time gazing about them into the storm, now sifting thicker and swirling more wildly. He was oppressed by the happening, as though he had seen some one leap to death. What else could a human being hope for in that waste?

"He's as tough as a bull moose, and just as used to bein' out-doors,"

remarked the boss, consolingly. "When he's had his run he'll smell his way back."

Teamster Tommy Eye was the most persistent pursuer. He came in, stamping the snow, after all the others had rea.s.sembled in the camp to talk the matter over.

"Did ye hear it?" demanded Tommy. "I did, and I run like a tiger so I could say that at last I'd seen one. But I didn't see it. I only heard it."

"What?" asked Wade, amazed.

"The ha'nt," said Tommy. "I've always wanted to see one. I was first out, and I heard it."

"What did it sound like?" gasped one of the men, his superst.i.tion glowing in his eyes.

"It's bad luck forever to try to make a noise like a ha'nt," said Tommy, with decision. "Nor will I meddle with its business--no, s'r. 'Twould come for me. Take a lucivee, an Injun devil, a bob-sled runner on grit, and the gabble of a loon, mix 'em together, and set 'em, and skim off the cream of the noise, and it would be something like the loo-hoo of a ha'nt. It's awful on the nerves. I reckon I'll take a pull at the old T.

D." He rammed his pipe bowl with a finger that trembled visibly.

"I've seen one," declared, positively, the man who had inquired in regard to the sound. "I've seen one, but I never heard one holler. I didn't know it was a ha'nt till I'd seen it half a dozen times."

"Good eye!" sneered Tommy. "What! did it have to come up and introduce itself, and say, 'Please, Mister MacIntosh, I'm a ha'nt'?"

"I've seen one," insisted the man, sullenly. "I was teamin' for the Blaisdell Brothers on their Telos operation, and I see it every day for most a week. It walked ahead of my team close to the bushes, side of the road, and it was like a man, and it always turned off at the same place and went into the woods."

"Do you call that a ha'nt--a man walkin' 'longside the road in daylight--some hump-backed old spruce-gum picker?" demanded Tommy.

"The last time I see it I noticed that it didn't leave any tracks,"

declared the narrator. "It walked right along on the light snow, and didn't leave any tracks. Funny I didn't notice that before, but I didn't."

"You sartinly ain't what the dictionary would set down as a hawk-eyed critter," remarked Tommy, maliciously. "It must have been kind of discouragin', ha'ntin' you."

"It was a ha'nt," insisted the man, with the same doggedness. "I got off'n my team right then and there, and got a bill of my time and left, and the man that took my place got sluiced by the snub-line bustin', and about three thousand feet of spruce mellered the eternal daylights out of him. Say what you're a mind to--I saw a thing that walked on light snow and didn't make tracks, and I left, and that feller got sluiced--everybody in these woods knows that a feller got killed on Telos two winters ago."

"Oh, there's ha'nts," agreed Tommy, earnestly. "Mebbe you saw one; only you got at your story kind of back-ended."

The old teamster had been watching incredulity settle on the face of Dwight Wade, and this heresy in one to whom his affections had attached touched his sensitiveness.

"You're probably thinkin' what most of the city folks say out loud to us, Mr. Wade," he went on, humbly. "They say there ain't any such things as ha'nts in the woods. It would be easy to say there ain't any bull moose up here because they ain't also seen walkin' down a city street and lookin' into store windows. But I'd like to see one of those city folks try to sleep in the camp that's built over old Jumper Joe's grave north of Sourdnaheunk."

There was a general mumble of indors.e.m.e.nt. It became evident to Wade that the crew of the Enchanted were pretty stanch adherents of the supernatural.

"Hitchbiddy" Wagg cleared his throat and sang, for the sake of verification:

"He rattled underneath, and he rattled overhead; Never in my life was I ever scared so!

And I did not dast to lay down in that bed Where they laid out old Joe."

"They can't use that place for anything but a depot-camp now," stated Tommy; "and it's a wonder to me that they can even get pressed hay to stay there overnight."

"Well, from what I know of human nature," smiled Wade, "I should think that hay and provisions would stay better overnight in a haunted camp than in one without protection."

He rapped out his pipe ashes on the hearth of the stove and rose to go.

"And don't you believe that it was a ha'nt that called out Foolish Abe?"

asked Tommy, eager to make a convert. "You saw that for yourself, Mr.

Wade."

"I am afraid to think of what may have happened to that poor creature,"

replied Wade, earnestly, looking into the black night through the door that he had opened. He heard the chopping-boss call: "Nine! Turn in!" as he strove with the storm between the main camp and the w.a.n.gan, and when he stamped into his own shelter the yellow smudge winked out behind him--such is the alacrity of a sleepy woods crew when it has a boss who blows out the big lamp on the dot of the hour. He shuddered as he shut out the blackness. He had no superst.i.tions, but the unaccountable flight of the witling, and the eerie tales offered in explanation and the mystic night of storm in that wild forest waste unstrung him. He went to sleep, finding comfort in the dull glow of the lantern that he left lighted.

Its glimmer in his eyes when the cook called shrilly in the gray dawn, "Grub on ta-a-abe!" sent his first thoughts to the wretch who had abandoned himself to the storm. He hoped to find Abe whittling shavings in the cook-house.

"No, s'r, no sign of him, hide nor hair," said the cook, shaking his head. "Reckon the ha'nt flew high with him."

The snow still sifted through the trees--a windless storm now. The forest was trackless.

"For a man to start out in the woods in that storm was like jumpin' into a hole and pullin' the hole in after him," observed the chopping-boss.

That remark might have served as the obituary of poor Abe Skeet. The swampers, the choppers, the sled-tenders, the teamsters, trudging away to their work, had their minds full of their duties and their mouths full of other topics during the day.

And all day the cook bleated his cheerful little prophecy in the ears of the cookee: "The tote team will be in by night." That morning, with his rolling-pin, he had pounded "hungryman's ratty-too" on the bottom of the last flour-barrel to shake out enough for his batch of biscuits, and he burned up the barrel, even though the pessimistic cookee predicted that "the human nail-kags" would eat both kitchen mechanics if the food gave out.

Dwight Wade, at nightfall, surveyed the bare shelves of the cook camp with some misgivings.

"Don't you worry," advised the master of that domain. "Rod Ide ain't waitin' three weeks for good slippin' jest for the sake of settin' in his store window and singin' 'Beautiful snow'! He sure got a load of supplies started on that first skim o' snow, and they're due here to-night--" The cook paused, kicked at the cookee for slamming the stove-cover at that crucial moment of listening, and shrilled, "There she blows!"

Wade heard the jangle of bells, and hastened to meet the dim bulk of the loaded sled. The driver did not reply to his delighted hail, but before he had time to wonder at that silence some one struggled out of the folds of a shrouding blanket and sprang from the sled. It was a woman; and while he stood and stared at her, she ran to him and grasped his hands and clung to him in pitiful abandonment of grief.

It was Nina Ide. In the dim light Wade could see tears and heart-broken woe on her face. He had had some experience with the self-poise of the daughter of Rodburd Ide. This emotion, which checked with sobs the words in her throat, frightened him.

"It's a terrible thing, and I don't understand it, Mr. Wade," quavered the driver. He slipped down from the load and came and stood beside them. "We was in Pogey Notch, and the wind was blowin' pretty hard there, and I told the young ladies they'd better cover their heads with the blankets. And I pulled the canvas over me, 'cause the snow stung so, and I didn't see it when it happened--and I don't understand it."

"When what happened?" Wade gasped.

"They took her--whatever they was," stated the driver, in awed tones. "I didn't see 'em or hear 'em take her. And I don't know jest where we was when they took her. I went back and hunted, but it wasn't any use. They was gone, and her with 'em. They wasn't humans, Mr. Wade. It was black art, that's what it was."

"Probably," said Tommy Eye, with deep conviction. He had led the group that came out of the camp to greet the tote team. "There were ha'nts here last night. They got Foolish Abe."

"They sartinly seem to mean the Skeet family this time," said the driver. "It was that Skeet girl--the pretty one that's called Kate--that they got off'n my team."

The men of the camp, surrounding the new arrivals, surveyed Nina Ide with respectful but eager curiosity.

"If I was a ha'nt," growled the chopping-boss, "and had my pick, I reckon I'd have shown better judgment." His remark was under his breath, and the girl did not hear it. She clung to Wade. Her agitation communicated itself to him. A sense of calamity told him that there was trouble deeper than the disappearance of the waif of the Skeet tribe.

Her words confirmed his suspicion. "My G.o.d, what are we going to do, Mr.

Wade?" she sobbed. "I planned it; I encouraged her. It was wild, imprudent, reckless. I ought to have realized it. But I knew how you felt towards her. I wanted to help her and--and you!"