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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Ghost of One Man Coulee, by B. M. Bower
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: The Ghost of One Man Coulee
-
-Author: B. M. Bower
-
-Release Date: April 12, 2022 [eBook #67822]
-
-Language: English
-
-Produced by: Roger Frank and Sue Clark.
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GHOST OF ONE MAN COULEE ***
-
-
-
-
-
-The Ghost of One Man Coulee
-
-By B. M. Bower
-
-Author of “The Happy Family Stories,” “Lonesome Land,” Etc.
-
-[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the January 1, 1913
-issue of The Popular Magazine.]
-
-
-    The reappearance of Olafson, the violinist, who had gone
-    out in the blizzard and was lost seeking the north wind
-    that he might learn the song it sang, and who, according
-    to Happy Jack, returned to earth on moonlight nights to
-    play his violin in the doorway of the deserted shack in
-    One Man Coulee.
-
-
-Happy Jack, by some freak of misguided ambition, was emulating
-rather heavily the elfish imagination of Andy Green. He was--to put
-it baldly and colloquially--throwing a big load into the Native Son
-who jingled his gorgeous silver spurs close alongside Happy’s more
-soberly accoutered heel.
-
-“That there,” Happy was saying, with ponderous gravity, “is the
-shack where the old fiddler went crazy trying to play a tune like
-the wind--or some blamed fool thing like that--and killed himself
-because he couldn’t make it stick. It’s haunted, that shack is. The
-old fellow’s ghost comes around there moonlight nights and plays the
-fiddle in the door.”
-
-The Native Son, more properly christened Miguel, turned a languidly
-velvet glance toward the cabin and flicked the ashes from his
-cigarette daintily. “Have you ever seen the ghost, Happy?” he asked
-indulgently.
-
-“Ah--yes, sure! I seen it m’self,” Happy lied boldly.
-
-“And were you scared?”
-
-“Me? Scared? Hunh!” Happy gave a fairly good imitation of dumb
-disgust. “Why, I went and--”
-
-Happy’s imagination floundered in the stagnant pool of a
-slow-thinking brain.
-
-“I went right in and--”
-
-“Exactly.” Miguel smiled a smile of even, white teeth and ironical
-lips. “Some moonlight night we will come back here at midnight, you
-and I. I have heard of that man, and I am fond of music. We will
-come and listen to him.”
-
-Some of the other boys, ambling up from behind, caught a part of the
-speech, and looked at one another, grinning.
-
-“The Native Son’s broke out all over with schoolbook grammar ag’in,”
-Big Medicine remarked. “Wonder what Happy’s done? I’ve noticed, by
-cripes, that the guilty party better duck, when that there Miguel
-begins to talk like a schoolma’am huntin’ a job! Hey, there!” he
-bellowed suddenly, so that one might hear him half a mile away.
-“What’s this here music talk I hear? Who’s goin’ to play, and where
-at, and how much is it a head?”
-
-Miguel turned and looked back at the group, smiling still. “Happy
-was telling me about a ghost in that cabin down there.” He flung out
-a hand toward the place so suddenly that his horse jumped in fear of
-the quirt. “I say we’ll come back some night and listen to the
-ghost. Happy says he frequently rides over to hear it play on
-moonlight nights, and--”
-
-“Aw, g’wan!” Happy Jack began to look uncomfortable in his mind. “I
-said--”
-
-“Happy? If he thought there was a ghost in One Man Coulee, you
-couldn’t tie him down and haul him past in a hayrack at noon,” Andy
-asserted sharply. “There isn’t any ghost.”
-
-Andy set his lips firmly together, and stared reminiscently down the
-hill at the lonely little cabin in the coulee. Memory, the original
-moving-picture machine, which can never be equaled by any man-made
-contrivance, flashed upon him vividly a picture of the night when he
-had sat within that cabin, listening to the man who would play the
-north wind, and who wept because it eluded him always; who played
-wonderfully--a genius gone mad under the spell of his own music--and
-at last rushed out into the blizzard and was lost, seeking the north
-wind that he might learn the song it sang. The scene gripped Andy,
-even in memory. He wondered fancifully if Olafson was still
-wandering with his violin, searching for the home of the north wind.
-They had never found him, not even when the snows had gone and the
-land lay bare beneath a spring sky. He must have frozen, for the
-night had been bitter, and a blizzard raged blindingly. Still, they
-had never found a trace of him.
-
-There had been those who, after searching a while in vain, had
-accused Andy to his face of building the story to excite his
-fellows. He had been known to deceive his friends heartlessly, and
-there had been some argument over the real fate of the vanished
-Olafson. If Andy had told the truth, asked the doubters, where was
-Olafson’s body? And who had ever tried to play the wind? Who, save
-Andy Green, would ever think of such a fantastic tale? Happy Jack,
-Andy remembered resentfully, had been unusually vociferous in his
-unbelief, even for him.
-
-“Aw, you stuck to it there was all the makin’s of a ghost,” Happy
-defended awkwardly, and wished that Andy Green had not overheard the
-yarn he told Miguel. “Sure, there’s a ghost!” He fell back a step
-that he might wink at Big Medicine, and so enlist his sledge-hammer
-assistance. “I leave it to Bud if we didn’t hear it, one night---”
-
-“And seen it, too, by cripes!” Big Medicine enlarged readily and
-shamelessly. “Standin’ right in the door, playin’ the fiddle to beat
-a straight flush.” He glared around the little group with his
-protruding eyes until his glance met the curious look of Cal Emmett.
-“You was with us, Cal,” he asserted boldly. “I leave it to you if we
-didn’t see ’im and hear ’im.”
-
-Cal, thus besought to bear false witness, did so with amiable
-alacrity. “We sure did,” he declared.
-
-“Funny you never said a word about it before,” snapped Andy, with
-open disbelief in his tone.
-
-“We thought nobody’d believe us if we did tell it,” Big Medicine
-explained.
-
-“Pity yuh don’t always think as close to the mark as yuh done then,”
-Andy retorted.
-
-“How do yuh know there ain’t a ghost?” Big Medicine demanded with
-some slight rancor, born not of the argument, but of temporary ill
-feeling between the two. “Is it because yuh know, by cripes, that
-yuh lied last winter?”
-
-Andy’s lips tightened. “I’ve heard about enough of that,” he said,
-with a flash of anger. With the cabin in sight, and recalling the
-tragedy of that night, he was not in the mood to wrangle
-good-naturedly about it with any one--least of all with Big
-Medicine. “I didn’t lie. I’m dead willing to back what I said about
-it with my fists, if--”
-
-Big Medicine twitched the reins to ride close, but Miguel’s horse
-sidled suddenly and blocked the move. Also, Miguel smiled
-guilelessly into the angry eyes of Big Medicine.
-
-“Will you fellows come back with me to-night, then, and see the
-ghost?” he asked lightly. “Or don’t you dare tackle it again?”
-
-Big Medicine snorted and forgot his immediate intentions toward
-Andy, just as Miguel, perhaps, intended that he should do.
-
-“You wouldn’t dast come along, if we did,” he glowered. “I’d camp
-there alone for a month, far as I’m concerned, if there was any
-grub, by cripes!”
-
-“That shows how much you know about the place,” put in Pink, siding
-with Andy. “Unless somebody’s packed it away lately, there’s all
-kinds of grub left. Maybe the flour, and bacon, and beans is gone,
-but there’s enough pickles and stuffed olives to last--”
-
-“Olives!” cried the Native Son, and looked back longingly at the
-rugged bluff which marked One Man Coulee. “Say, does anybody belong
-to them olives?”
-
-“Nobody but the ghost,” grinned Pink. “We bought him twelve lovely
-tall bottles, just to please Jimmie; he told us there wasn’t any
-sale for stuffed olives in Dry Lake, and he offered ’em to us at
-cost. We did think uh taking all he had, but we cut it down to
-twelve bottles afterward. And Olafson never ate a darned olive all
-the time he was there!”
-
-“And they’re there yet, you say?” It was plain that Miguel was far
-more interested in the olives than he was in the ghost.
-
-“Sure, they’re there.” Pink was not troubling to warp the truth, as
-Miguel decided, after a sharp glance. “The stuff all belonged to
-Olafson, and the shack belongs to the Old Man. And when Olafson went
-crazy over the wind, and froze to death,” he stipulated distinctly,
-with a challenging glance at Big Medicine, “we all kept thinking at
-first he’d come back, maybe. But he never did--”
-
-“Exceptin’ his ghost, by golly!” put in Slim unexpectedly, with a
-belated snort of amusement at the idea.
-
-“I’d rather,” sighed Miguel, “have a dozen bottles of stuffed olives
-than a dozen kisses from the prettiest girl in the State.”
-
-“Mamma! they’re easier to get, anyway. If you want ’em that bad--”
-
-“That there ghost may have something to say about them olives,”
-Happy Jack warned, sticking stubbornly to his story.
-
-Miguel smiled--and there was that in his smile which sent four
-mendacious cow-punchers hot with resentment.
-
-“Maybe yuh don’t believe in that ghost, by cripes?” Big Medicine
-challenged indignantly, and gave Miguel a pale, pop-eyed stare meant
-to be intimidating.
-
-Miguel smiled again as at some secret joke, and made no reply at
-all.
-
-“Well--don’t yuh b’lieve it?” Big Medicine roared after a minute.
-
-Miguel smiled gently and inspected his cigarette; emotions might
-surge about this Native Son and beat themselves to a white froth
-upon the rock of his absolute, inimitable imperturbability, as the
-Happy Family knew well. Now they rode close-grouped, intensely
-interested in this struggle between bull-bellowing violence and
-languid impassivity.
-
-“You don’t believe it yourself, do you?” Miguel inquired evenly at
-last, rousing himself from his abstraction. “Did you expect me to
-swallow hook, sinker, and all?”
-
-Big Medicine looked positively murderous. “When I say a thing is
-so,” he cried, “I expect, by cripes, that folks will take m’ bare
-word for it. I don’t have to produce no affidavies, nor haul in any
-witnesses. I ain’t like Andy, here. You’re dealin’ now with a man
-that can look truth in the face and never bat an eye.”
-
-Miguel smiled again, this time more humanly amused. “I’ve met men
-before who hadn’t a speaking acquaintance with Dame Truth,” he
-drawled. “They looked her in the face, too--and she never recognized
-’em.”
-
-Big Medicine was at that critical point where make-believe may
-easily become reality. He had been “joshing” and playing he was mad
-before; now his glare hardened perceptibly, so that more than one of
-the boys noticed the difference.
-
-“Aw, if he don’t want to believe it he don’t have to,” Happy Jack
-intercepted Big Medicine’s belligerent speech. “Chances is them
-olives’ll stay where they’re at a good long while, though--if
-Mig-u-ell has to get ’em after dark.”
-
-Miguel smoked while he rode ten rods. “I offered to come and listen
-to the ghost fiddle his fastest,” he observed at last, “and not one
-of you fellows took me up on it. To-night I’ll come alone and get
-those olives. I guess I can carry twelve bottles all right.”
-
-“It’s no use to-night,” Cal Emmett objected. “It’s only on moonlight
-nights--” He looked a question at Big Medicine.
-
-“Moonlight it’s got to be. There ain’t a moon till--”
-
-“I can find stuffed olives any old kind of a night.” Miguel blew the
-ashes from his cigarette. “It’s the olives I want, amigo. I don’t
-give a whoop for your ghost.”
-
-“Aw, I betche yuh dassent come when it’s moonlight, just the same,”
-cried Happy Jack. “I betche ten dollars yuh dassent.”
-
-It would be tiresome to repeat all that was said upon the subject
-thereafter. So slight a thing as Happy Jack’s wrongful desire to lie
-as convincingly as could Andy Green, led the whole Happy Family into
-a profitless and more or less acrimonious argument. Each man,
-according to his nature, and the mood he happened to be in at the
-moment, took up the discussion. And speedily it developed that the
-faction against Miguel, Andy Green, and Pink included every man of
-them save Weary, who would stand by Pink regardless of the issue.
-
-It was nearly noon, and they were hungry, and headed toward camp;
-but despite their haste they argued the foolish question of whether
-the cabin in One Man Coulee was haunted. Six of them maintained
-stubbornly that it was--for Irish began to side with Happy Jack just
-because he did not like the Native Son very well, and that ironical
-smile of Miguel’s irritated him to a degree; and Jack Bates also
-espoused the ghost because he scented an opportunity for excitement.
-The minority, composed of Miguel, Pink, Andy Green, and Weary,
-confined themselves largely to sarcasm--which is the oil which feeds
-fastest the flames of dissension.
-
-It was foolish, to be sure; just as foolish as many other things
-which men drift into doing. But they, nevertheless, reached that
-point where, as in the case of Big Medicine, make-believe crowded
-close upon reality. The four rode together into camp ten paces ahead
-of the six, and they talked in low tones among themselves mostly.
-When they did deign to look at the six, their glances were
-unfriendly, and when they spoke their speech was barbed so that it
-stung the listeners. And the six retaliated vigorously--the more so
-because they had been silly enough in the first place to declare
-their belief in the nonexistent, and had been betrayed into making
-many ridiculous assertions which they were too obstinate to
-withdraw; so that once again the Happy Family belied the name men
-had given it, and became for the time being a bunch of as
-disagreeable cow-punchers as one could find in four days’ ride.
-
-“Aw, say, I sure would like to put it on them fellers good!” Happy
-Jack growled to Cal and Jack Bates on the way to the corralled
-saddle bunch after dinner. Happy Jack was purple with wrath, for a
-caustic sentence or two spoken in Miguel’s most maddening drawl was
-yet stinging his ears. “That there Native Son makes me tired! I
-wisht there was a ghost--I’d sure--”
-
-“Oh, there’s a ghost, all right,” Jack Bates stated meaningly; “all
-yuh got to do is make one.”
-
-“Say, by golly!” Slim, close behind them, gulped excitedly.
-“Wouldn’t it--”
-
-“Say, don’t let them faces get to leaking,” Cal advised bluntly.
-“It’s a whole week till the moon’s good. Shut up!”
-
-Slim goggled at him, caught the hazy beginning of an idea, grinned,
-and stepped over the rope into the corral. He was grinning when he
-caught his horse, and he was still grinning widely while he cinched
-the saddle. He caught Andy Green eying him suspiciously, and
-snickered outright. But he did not say a word, and, therefore, went
-his way, believing that he had given no hint of what was in his
-mind.
-
-Slim and Happy Jack were alike in one respect: Their minds worked
-slowly and rather ponderously--and, like other ponderous machinery,
-once in motion they were hard to stop. The others would have left
-the subject alone, after that hour of hot argument, and in time
-would have forgotten it except for an occasional jeer, perhaps; but
-not so Happy Jack and Slim.
-
-The Flying U outfit ate, saddled fresh horses, reloaded the mess
-wagon, and moved on toward Dry Creek, and that night flung weary
-bodies upon the growing grass in the shade of the tents, twenty
-miles and more from One Man Coulee and the little cabin with its
-grim history of genius blotted out in madness. Nevertheless, Slim
-searched ostentatiously with plate, knife, and fork in his hand, at
-supper time, and craned his neck over boxes and cans, until he had
-the attention of his fellows, who were hungry, and elbowed him out
-of their way with scant courtesy.
-
-“Say, Mig-u-ell, where’s them stuffed olives?” he called at last. “I
-thought, by golly, we was goin’ to have some olives for supper?”
-
-“Olives--stuffed olives, are best picked by moonlight, they tell
-me,” Miguel responded unemotionally, glancing up over his cup. “Have
-patience, amigo.”
-
-Slim nudged Happy Jack so that he spilled half his coffee and swore
-because it was hot, caught Big Medicine’s pale-eyed glare upon him,
-and subsided so suddenly that he choked over his next sentence,
-which had nothing at all to do with olives, or ghosts, or insane
-fiddlers.
-
-Men, it would seem, never quite leave their boyhood behind them; at
-least, those men do not who live naturally and individually,
-untainted by the poison of the great money marts where human nature
-is warped and perverted so that nearly all natural instincts are
-subordinated to the lust for gain of one sort and another. In the
-Bear Paw country men labor for gain, it is true; but they also live
-the lives for which nature has created them. There is that in the
-wide reaches of plain and valley, in the clean arch of blue sky and
-drifting clouds overhead, which keeps the best of them boyish till
-their temples are marked with white--yes, and after.
-
-It was that tenacious element which started Irish, Cal Emmett, Jack
-Bates, and Big Medicine to tilting hat brims together when none
-others were near observe them. It was that which sent them off
-riding by themselves--to town, they said before they started--early
-on the first Sunday after the wagons had pulled in to the ranch,
-there to stand until the beef round-up started.
-
-They returned unobtrusively by mid-afternoon, and they looked very
-well satisfied with themselves, and inclined to facetiousness.
-
-“What’s the matter?” Weary asked them pointedly when they dismounted
-at the corral. “Come back after something you forgot?”
-
-“Yeah--sure,” Cal returned, with a flicker of eyelids. “Nothing
-doing in that darned imitation of a town, anyway.”
-
-“Where’s the mail?” Pink demanded expectantly.
-
-“We--plumb forgot that there mail, by cripes!” Big Medicine looked
-up quickly. “Irish was goin’ to git it, but he didn’t.”
-
-Pink said nothing, but he studied the four from under the long,
-curled lashed which he had found very useful in concealing covert
-glances.
-
-“Sorry, Little One--honest to grandma, I am!” Big Medicine clapped
-him patronizingly on the shoulder as he passed him.
-
-“I don’t know as it matters,” said Pink sweetly. “Some of us were
-just about ready to hit the trail. We can get it, I guess. Say!
-Ain’t you got that cayuse caught up yet, Mig?” he called out to the
-Native Son, who was reclining luxuriously against a new stack of
-sweet-smelling bluejoint hay. “Come out of your trance, or we’ll go
-off and leave you!”
-
-“Oh--yuh going to town?” Cal looked over his shoulder with some
-uneasiness in his baby-blue eyes.
-
-“Maybe we are and maybe we ain’t. Maybe we’re going to see our best
-girls. What’s it to you?” Pink turned his back on Cal and looked
-full at Weary. “Come on--the girls will be plumb wild if we don’t
-get a move on,” he said carelessly, and picked up his bridle.
-“Where’s Andy? I thought he said he wanted to go along. Hurry up,
-Mig, if you’re going.”
-
-Nobody knew what he was driving at, but the three were mounted well
-within ten minutes, and flinging back remarks to the four who had
-lately returned. The departing ones were well up on the hogback
-before any one of them ventured to question Pink, who rode with the
-air of one whose destination is fixed, and whose desire outstrips
-his body in the journey.
-
-“Say, Cadwolloper, where are we headed for?” Weary inquired then
-resignedly. “And what’s the rush?”
-
-Pink glanced down the hill toward the stable and corrals, decided
-that they were being observed with something very like suspicion,
-and faced to the front again. “We’re going to head for Rogers’,” he
-dimpled, “but we ain’t going to get there. Yuh needn’t look down
-there--but Irish and Cal are saddling up again. They’re afraid we’re
-going to town. They’re going to trail us up and find out for sure.”
-
-“They sure did act like they’d been holding up a train, when they
-rode up,” Weary observed. “I’ve been searching my soul with a
-spyglass trying to find the answer for all that guilt on their
-faces.”
-
-“Happy Jack has been mentioning stuffed olives and moonlight pretty
-often to-day,” the Native Son remarked with apparent irrelevance. “I
-thought he’d pickled that josh, but he’s working things up again.
-Two and two make four; that four.” With the slightest of head tilts
-he indicated those below, and flashed his even, white teeth in a
-smile. “Do you want me to guess where you’re going, Pink?”
-
-“I wish you fellows would guess how we’re going to ditch them two
-pirates, first,” Pink retorted, glancing down again at the stable
-without turning his head. “If we strike straight for Rogers’, maybe
-they’ll turn back, though. They’ll think we’ve gone over there to
-see the girls.”
-
-“If I knew the country a little better--” began the Native Son, and
-stopped with that.
-
-“If they don’t follow us over the ridge,” spoke up Andy, who had
-been thinking deeply, “we can go up Antelope Coulee instead of down,
-and follow along in the edge of the breaks to the head of One Man,
-and down that; that’s where you’re going, isn’t it? It will be five
-or six miles farther.”
-
-Pink threw up his hand impatiently. “Uh course, that’s what I
-intended to do. But if they ride over the ridge they’ll know we
-never kept straight on to Rogers’, and then they’ll know we’re
-dodging.” He urged his horse up the last steep slope, and led the
-way over the brow of the bluff and out of sight of the ranch below.
-“And I’m sure going to find out what that bunch has been making
-themselves so mysterious about, the last couple uh days,” he vowed
-grimly. “I slipped up on ’em yesterday down in the hay corral, and I
-heard Cal say, ‘Sure, we can! There’s one in that Injun grave over
-in Antelope Coulee.’” He stared at the others with purpling eyes.
-“What’s in that grave, Weary? I never was right to it, myself.”
-
-“Nothing, Cadwolloper--except what is left of the old boy they
-tucked under that ledge. There ain’t even a perfume any more. We can
-go by that way and see if they’ve been there.”
-
-With that wordless understanding common among men who have lived
-long together, they left the trail and ambled slowly across the
-prairie in the direction of the Rogers Ranch. And they had not
-traveled more than half a mile when Miguel, looking back very
-cautiously, smiled.
-
-“Don’t look,” he said, and then added melodramatically: “We are
-followed! Hist! The pursuers are in sight. Courage, men!”
-
-Pink risked a glance over his shoulder, and glimpsed two bobbing hat
-crowns just over the brow of Flying U Coulee.
-
-“Now, wouldn’t that jar yuh?” he exclaimed, just as disgustedly as
-if he had not all along suspected that very thing to happen.
-
-The moving specks stopped, remained stationary for a minute or two,
-and then went bobbing back again. The four laughed, pressed spurred
-heels against their horses, and galloped over the ridge and into the
-lower end of Antelope Coulee. At the bottom they swung sharply to
-the right, instead of to the left, rode as hurriedly as the uneven
-ground would permit for a mile or more; crossed the trail to Dry
-Lake, and kept on up the coulee to its very head.
-
-At one point their quick eyes saw where several horsemen had ridden
-down into the coulee, dismounted, and climbed through shale rock to
-the lone Indian grave under a low shelf of sandstone, left there
-betraying imprints of high-heeled boots, returned again to where
-their horses had waited, and ridden on. They also rode on, toward
-One Man Coulee. Before them always lay the trail of shod hoofs,
-where the soil was not too hard to receive an imprint.
-
-Patsy was standing in the door of the mess house beating his fat
-knuckles upon a tin pan for the supper call, when Andy Green and
-Miguel rode leisurely down the grade. The boys were straggling
-toward the sound, and there was the usual bustle around the
-washbasins and roller towels, and in the quiet air hung the enticing
-odor of Patsy’s delectable chicken potpie. The two hurried to the
-stable, unsaddled with the haste of hungry men, and reached the mess
-house just as the clatter of feet had subsided and the potpie was
-making its first round.
-
-Cal looked up from a generous helping. “Hello, where’s the rest of
-the bunch?” he queried.
-
-“Oh, the girls have got them roped and tied,” Andy responded
-carelessly. “Mig and I got cold feet, and broke back on them.”
-
-“Didn’t yuh go to town?” Irish spoke as innocently as if he had not
-watched them well on their way from the shelter of the bluff.
-
-Miguel deigned him one of his heavy-lidded stares. “Why should one
-go to town, when there are three pretty girls at the next ranch?
-Town didn’t hold you fellows very long.”
-
-“I thought sure you’d gone after olives, by golly,” blurted Slim,
-with his mouth half full of dumpling.
-
-“If I’d gone after them, I’d have got them,” Miguel, usually so
-exasperatingly calm, spoke with some feeling.
-
-“Aw, g’wan! I betche yuh dassent go.” Happy Jack grinned arrogantly.
-
-“You wouldn’t bet anything but words,” retorted Miguel. “There are
-several of you fellows that seem to be just that brand of sports.”
-He gave the faint shrug which they all hated.
-
-Big Medicine laid down his knife and fork. “Say, do yuh mind naming
-over them several fellers?” he inquired abruptly in his booming
-voice. “I don’t bet words, by cripes--when I bet--”
-
-Miguel smiled across at him blandly. “We were speaking of olives,”
-he purred “Happy Jack wanted to ‘betche’ I daren’t go after them. He
-didn’t name the stakes, though.”
-
-“It ain’t because I ain’t willin’ to put ’em up,” glowered Happy.
-“I’ll betche five dollars, then--if that suits yuh any better.”
-
-Miguel laughed, which was unusual when he was arguing with any one.
-“Do you mean it? Do you really think that little, weak,
-pretty-pretty ghost story would scare--a--nigger baby?” His voice
-taunted the lot of them.
-
-“Don’t yuh believe there’s a ghost, by cripes?” Big Medicine bawled
-pugnaciously.
-
-“No. Of course I don’t believe it. Neither do you.” Miguel spoke
-with that weary tolerance which is so hard to endure.
-
-“I do,” Cal Emmett declared flatly. “And I’m willing to bet a horse
-against them fancy spurs of yours that you dassent go to-night to
-One Man Coulee and bring away them bottles of stuffed olives.”
-
-“What horse?” asked Miguel, reaching for the chicken platter.
-
-“Well--any darned horse I own!” Cal wore the open-eyed look of
-innocence which had helped him scare out his opponents in many a
-poker game. “I say to-night,” he added apologetically to the others,
-“because it’s going to be clear and lots uh moonlight; and it’s
-Sunday. But I don’t care what night he tries it. I’ll bet he won’t
-bring away no olives.”
-
-“Aren’t they there?” Miguel wanted to know.
-
-“Oh--they’re there, I guess. I’ll change the wordin’ a little. I’ll
-bet yuh dassent go to that shack, and go into it and stay long
-enough to freeze onto twelve bottles uh anything. To-night,” he
-added, “at mid--no, any old time between ten and one. And I’ll bet
-any one uh my four cayuses against your spurs.”
-
-“It’s a go. Does the rest of my riding outfit look good to any of
-you fellows?” Miguel glanced around the table smilingly. “Happy, for
-instance--”
-
-“I got five dollars up,” Happy Jack reminded. “But I’ll put twenty
-with it against your bridle.”
-
-“That bridle’s worth fifty dollars. And my saddle cost two hundred
-and eighty. I’ll put them up, though, if any one wants to cover the
-bet.”
-
-“Say, this is a shame. Honest to grandma, I’d hate to see Miggie
-ridin’ bareback the rest uh the summer--with a rope hackamore, by
-cripes! Don’t go ’n take all his purty-purties away from him like
-that, boys! Haw-haw-haw!” It is unwise to laugh like that with one’s
-mouth full of chicken. Big Medicine choked and retired from the
-conversation and the room.
-
-“Say, you don’t reelize, by golly, what you’re up ag’inst,” Slim
-observed ponderously. “If you did--”
-
-“Are you dead-game sports, or are you a bunch of old women?” drawled
-Miguel. “My outfit is up, if any one has nerve enough to take the
-bets.”
-
-They wrangled more or less amicably over it, as was their habit. But
-they did finally bet a great deal more on the foolish venture than
-they should have done. When, finally, they reached the time and the
-point of departure, Miguel, like the plains Indians during the fever
-of horse-racing, was pledged to his hat and his high-heeled boots;
-while the Happy Family, if they lost, would have plenty of reason to
-repent them of their rashness.
-
-They waited an hour for Pink and Weary to return, and, when they did
-not appear, they rode off without them. They pitied Miguel, and told
-him so. They told of haunted cabins, and of murders and dreams come
-true, and of disasters that were weird.
-
-Andy Green, when half of the ten miles had been covered, roused
-himself from his disapproving silence and told them a fearsome tale
-of two miners murdered mysteriously and thrown into their own mine,
-and of their dog which howled up and down the mountain gulches when
-the moonlight lay soft upon the land; told it so that they rode
-close-huddled that they might catch it all, down to the last
-gruesomely mysterious incident of the murdered master whistling from
-the pit to the dog, and of the animal’s whimpering obedience--long
-years after, when the dog’s bones were bleaching through sun and
-storm above, and the master’s bones were rotting in the darkness
-below.
-
-Happy Jack more than once glanced uneasily toward the shadowy
-hollows as they rode slowly across the prairies through the night
-silence. Slim set his jaw and rode stiffly, staring straight ahead
-of him as if he feared what he might see, if he looked aside. Miguel
-was seen to shiver, though the air was soft and warm.
-
-“Now, this Olafson--” Andy began after a silence which no one
-thought to break. “The boys joshed me a lot about that. But it was
-queer--the queerest thing I ever saw or heard. To see him sitting
-there in the firelight, listening--and while he listened, to hear
-the wind whoo-whoo around the corners and down the chimney--and the
-snow swish-swishing against the walls like grave clothes when the
-ghosts walk--”
-
-“Aw--I thought yuh said there wasn’t any ghosts!” croaked Happy Jack
-uneasily.
-
-“And then Olafson would lift his violin and draw the bow across--”
-
-Andy, the reins dropped upon the saddle horn, held an imaginary
-violin cuddled under his chin, and across the phantom strings drew
-an imaginary bow with slow, sweeping gestures, while his voice went
-on with the tale, and the Happy Family watched, and listened, and
-saw what he meant them to see. “And then would come that lonesome
-whoo-oo of the wind--from the violin. He made me see things. He made
-me see the storm, like it was a white spirit creeping over the
-range. He made me see--”
-
-They had reached One Man Coulee while he talked. The Happy Family
-stared down into the lonely place lying nakedly white under the
-moon, shivered, and rode slowly down the slope. Like one in a trance
-Andy rode in their midst, and compelled them with his voice to see
-the things he would have them see. Compelled them to see Olafson,
-the master musician, striving after the song of the north wind, and
-the prairie, and the wolf; made them see him as he opened the door
-and stood there gazing wildly out, playing--always
-playing--something weird and wonderful, and supernaturally terrible.
-
-“I don’t envy Miguel his job none, by cripes,” Big Medicine said, as
-they drew near the point beyond which the cabin would stand revealed
-to them, and for a wonder he spoke softly.
-
-Andy glanced up at the yellow ball floating serenely over the blue
-ocean of the sky, down the white-lighted coulee, with fringes of
-black shadows here and there, and then at the cabin squatting
-deserted against the green background of willows, with blank,
-staring window and open doorway.
-
-“If such things can be--if the ghost of Olafson can come back, he’ll
-come to-night and try again to play the wind,” he said solemnly.
-“Just a low, even, creepy tone first on open G--”
-
-They rode slowly around to where they faced the door, pulled up
-short fifty feet away from it, and stared.
-
-“There he is!” Andy’s voice was the whisper which carries far. “He’s
-come, boys--to play the wind again! A low, creepy note on open G--”
-
-In the doorway, where the moon shone radiantly in, stood a
-black-clothed figure topped by a grinning, fleshless skull. Cuddled
-under the horrid, bony chin of it was a violin. The right arm was
-upraised and bent, poising the bow above the strings. The staring,
-empty eye sockets were lighted with a pale, phosphorescent glow.
-
-“Well, by golly!” gulped Slim, in an undertone, and backed his horse
-a little involuntarily.
-
-“Aw--” Happy Jack looked at Irish and Cal, grinned sheepishly, and
-was silent.
-
-“Go on, Miggie, and git your olives,” Big Medicine murmured. “Twelve
-bottles. We’ll wait for yuh here.”
-
-Miguel slid off his horse without a word and started forward,
-hesitating a trifle, if the truth were known.
-
-In the doorway the right arm of the figure trembled and moved slowly
-upward, pulling the bow lightly across the strings. Came a low,
-wailing note on open G, which swelled resonantly in the quiet air,
-rose a tone, clung there, and slid eerily down to silence.
-
-Big Medicine started and stared across at Irish, and Cal Emmett, and
-Jack Bates, who met his look incredulously. Miguel stopped short and
-stood a moment in the blank silence which followed. The gaunt, black
-figure bulked huge in the doorway, and the fleshless mouth grinned
-at him sardonically.
-
-Miguel took a step or two forward. Again that ghostly arm lifted and
-swept the bow across the strings. Again the eerie tones came
-vibrantly, sliding up the scale, clinging, and wailing, and falling
-again to silence when Miguel stood still.
-
-Big Medicine turned his horse short around, so that he faced those
-three--Cal, Jack Bates, and Irish.
-
-“Say!--the--the thing’s playin’, by cripes!” he muttered accusingly,
-and edged off fearfully.
-
-“Aw--say!” Happy Jack moved farther away in sudden, unashamed
-terror. “What makes it--play?”
-
-Miguel stood longer that time, and the silence rasped the nerves of
-those who waited farther off. When he moved forward again the
-playing began. When he stopped, the ghostly arm was still.
-
-Happy Jack, with an unexpected, inarticulate squawk, kicked his
-horse in the ribs and fled down the coulee. Slim went after him,
-galloping with elbows flapping wildly. Those who waited longer saw
-Miguel walk slowly up to the very threshold, and face the ghost that
-played over and over that one, awful strain. They saw him stop as if
-to gather together his courage, put down his head as if he were
-battling a blizzard, and edge past the unearthly figure.
-
-As he disappeared within, brushing swiftly past the ghost, the
-strings twanged ominously. Came an unearthly screech which was like
-demons howling as howls the gray wolf before a storm. It raised the
-hair on the scalp with that prickling sensation which is so
-extremely unpleasant, and it sent Big Medicine, Cal, Jack Bates, and
-Irish clattering down the coulee in the wake of Slim and Happy Jack.
-
-Andy Green held his horse and Miguel’s back from following, and
-watched them out of sight before he rode closer to the awful thing
-which guarded the door.
-
-“All right, boys--yuh may as well stop the concert; the audience is
-halfway home by this time,” he called out, chuckling as he
-dismounted and went clanking up to the doorway. “Say, by gracious,
-yuh done fine! That last screech was sure a pippin--it like to have
-stampeded me.”
-
-Pink disentangled his fingers from a fine bit of string and grunted.
-“It ought to be. We’ve been practicing that howl, off and on, for
-four hours. How was the fiddling, Andy?”
-
-“Outa sight. Say, yuh better take them strings off the bow, and make
-darned sure you ain’t having any tracks, or anything. Let ’em come
-back and find everything just the way they fixed the plant--and then
-let ’em put in their spare time figuring the thing out, if they can.
-They’ll likely come moseying back up here, pretty soon--all but
-Happy and Slim--so you want to hurry. If you two can beat us home,
-they’ll never get wise in a thousand years of hard thinking.” He
-looked the ghost over critically, gave a snort, and painstakingly
-straightened the bow. “Darned grave robbers,” he exclaimed, looking
-at the skull. “Well, hike boys; I hear ’em coming. Got the olives
-all right, Miguel? Come and get on your horse. We’ll meet ’em down
-the trail a ways if we can. And say,” he called over his shoulder,
-when he was beside his horse again, “you fellows do some going! If
-you ain’t in bed when we get there, the stuff’s off.” Even while he
-looked back, Pink and Weary dodged out and vanished in the gloom of
-the willows.
-
-The Native Son, bearing in a gunny sack twelve bottles of stuffed
-olives, and on his swarthy face an unstudied grin of elation, was
-just making ready to mount when Irish and Big Medicine became
-recognizable in the moonlight below.
-
-“We thought we’d come back and see if you were alive, anyway,” Irish
-announced shamefacedly, with a glance toward the cabin and the
-spectral figure in the doorway. “What did it do to yuh, Mig?”
-
-“Nothing, only caterwaul like the devil all the time I was getting
-the olives. It’s shut up since I came out of the cabin. Seems like
-it hates visitors.”
-
-“Er--did it--did the ghost make all that noise, honest?” Big
-Medicine’s voice had lost some of its blatant assurance. He was
-bewildered, and he showed it.
-
-“You heard him sawing on that fiddle, didn’t you? The screeching
-seemed to come from--just all over the room.” Miguel waved his free
-hand vaguely. “Just all over at once. Kinda got my goat, for a
-minute or two.”
-
-The group rode slowly away, and when Miguel was through speaking
-they went in silence. Halfway up the hill, Irish turned in the
-saddle and stared down at the roof of the little cabin showing black
-under the moon.
-
-“Well--I’ll--be--darned!” he stated slowly and emphatically, and
-rode on with the others, who seemed to be thinking deeply.
-
-Their meditations must have been to some purpose, for, after a hasty
-word or two snatched in private with his fellow conspirators, Irish
-set the pace.
-
-At the stable he did not wait to unsaddle first of all. Instead he
-went hurriedly inside, lighted a match, and held it up while he
-surveyed the wall where the Happy Family were wont to hang their
-saddles--when they hung them anywhere. Two familiar saddles dangled
-there, each hanging upon its accustomed peg by its accustomed right
-stirrup, proclaiming silently and unanswerably the fact of their
-owners’ presence upon the ranch. When the match flickered and went
-out, Irish discovered that Cal, Jack Bates, Big Medicine, and Happy
-Jack were standing behind him, staring also.
-
-“Well--I’ll--be--darned!” said Irish again softly, and dropped the
-stub with a gesture of keen disappointment.
-
-“It wasn’t them, then,” muttered Big Medicine at his shoulder. “And
-the--the thing--it played, by cripes!”
-
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