“No doors?”
“Yes. And so there can’t be a door-imp. When it’s getting a little dark,” she spoke low now, and very fast, as though she were afraid if she didn’t hurry she wouldn’t have the courage to tell it all, “when it’s getting a little dark in the house, and they send you into another room to get something, the Skulking Door-imp watches for you. He comes out and looks around the door; then his head is the thing that you think is a knob. You see, he’s invisible to every one but me.”
“Truck like that,” said Uncle Hank, putting the pipe back into his mouth and drawing his arm around Hilda, “is enough to scare a little girl.”
“It does scare me, Uncle Hank,” she confirmed gravely. “And those aren’t all. There’s ghosts. And there’s the Barrel-tops—queer kind of creatures that just roll after you. I most scream right out sometimes when the Barrel-tops come down the dark hall chasing me.”
“Well, I’ll bet you four cents,” and he shook her gently with his arm, “that they don’t never come down no hall out here in Texas. I’ll be willin’ to just bet. Them things can’t live in this high-and-dry Texas plains climate. Where on earth did you ever get such notions, anyhow? Did some one tell it to you, or did it come out of a fool book?”
“No,” said Hilda evasively, “nobody told me, nor read it to me. I—er—I just knew it myself.”
“Well, then, you must’ve made it up, child. I wouldn’t do it if I’s you. I wouldn’t have no such critters.”
“I try not to, Uncle Hank. I don’t want to have them. They—oh! what’s that?” as a long, jingling, chiming whimper came from somewhere in the surrounding dusk. She flung both arms around the old man’s neck and burrowed her head on his breast. He held her tight, and laughed gently.
“Nothing but a little old coyote, honey,” he told her. “They don’t ever hurt anybody. He smells our bacon rinds. You must go to bed now, child. If any whiffenpoofs or suchlike cattle trouble you in the night, you come out to Uncle Hank—hear? Uncle Hank’s death on all them kind o’ varmints.”
He saw her to the ambulance, then turned and replenished the fire and, filling his pipe, sat down to await Van Brunt’s return. An hour later the two men were asleep, wrapped in their blankets. There was no sound save the wind in the cottonwoods and the occasional, far, coyote cry, the nearer chirp or stir of a bird. During the earlier part of the night Van Brunt groaned, turned and turned again; roused, sighed, rose to feed the dying fire, sat a while beside it, and went back to his blankets. Then he slept heavily, and for a long time the camp was silent under the moon and stars. In the dark hour just before dawn the old man wakened suddenly and opened his eyes to see Hilda crouching beside him, her hand on his shoulder.