It was in this same clannishness, however, that he found the key to their more friendly attitude. Though not much given to analyzing the motives of others, he naturally meditated on the change in their manner; and the solution came in a name which he never mentioned to them and which never was spoken in his hearing—Steve.
Though nothing ever was said about the refugee, he felt that the whole Traps clan knew Steve was here. And, since the thaw in the previous frigidity of the Trapsmen had come about since the afternoon when he had hoisted the desperate youth to the roof and badgered his pursuers into leaving the Wilham place empty-handed, it was not hard to deduce that the hill-dwellers also knew of what he had done that day. If so, they must know that he was neither detective nor criminal; for in the one case he would have worked with the officers, while in the other he would hardly have dared face them down. Therefore they now must regard him as what he actually was: a transient dweller here who had shown himself disposed to stand with them in protecting their own, but who presently would go back to his own world—and who, consequently, need not be trusted with information concerning any of them.
Very well: he could be as taciturn as any of them. And he was. He gave no information regarding himself, sought none about others—with one exception. And to that one exception the reply also was an exception, for it came readily, with a little grin of understanding.
“Heard anything of a couple of strangers?” was his occasional question. To which came the prompt response: “Hearn they was still round here.”
No man ever admitted that he had seen those strangers, or vouchsafed any additional details of what he had “hearn.” But with that answer Douglas was content, for it showed that Ward and Bill had not run down their prey. Of Uncle Eb he saw nothing, for he spent little time at his own house and did not visit that of the old man. He felt, however, that the refugee was safely hidden somewhere among the ledges and faithfully fed, that Eb could take care of Eb very well, and that the less he himself knew about either of them at present the better all around.
Of others who had entered his life recently he also saw nothing in his daily rambles. Whatever Snake Sanders and Nigger Nat Oaks might be doing, they seemed to be avoiding his vicinity for the present. Each evening on returning to his haunted house he narrowly inspected both it and its clearing before entering, and afterward he looked into every room before preparing his night meal. Invariably he found all as he had left it. And when, healthily tired by his miles of tramping, he sought early slumber, even the ghostly Dalton’s Death failed to disturb him.
Not that the “ha’nt” was laid. It still walked about overhead, still stole down-stairs on its heels, still rustled the mattress of dead Jake Dalton and moved his bedstead. Perhaps, in the silent watches of the night, it did other things as well. If so, its restlessness meant nothing to the new tenant, who slept the sleep of a tired body and a clear conscience, awaking only at long intervals to hear some unaccountable sound and then, with a drowsy smile, drifting away again into dreamland.
Much of his easy rest, however, may have been due to the fact that he had changed beds. After the “line storm” cleared up he had acted on his decision to move out of reach of that too-convenient front window and door. He had cleaned out the little room where wood was piled, and on its floor he had built up a quieter, more fragrant couch of his own: a foot-thick layer of hemlock and spruce tips gleaned from the trees behind the house. On this real camper’s bed he now slept, leaving Dalton’s bedstead and noisy mattress just as he had first found them. Each morning before leaving the house, though, he carried his blankets to that front bedroom and tossed them on the corn-husks. Thus, if any one came spying in his absence, the curtainless bedroom window would tell that spy that he habitually slept where he was supposed to sleep. A childishly simple ruse, perhaps, this was. Yet life or death sometimes hangs on the simplest things.
And so, as has been said, the days brought their lights and shadows, the nights their stars and dreams; and within the ken of Hammerless Hampton nothing at all happened. Yet, unseen, the fingers of Destiny were steadily writing upon the pages of her future-book certain records which no mere mortal now could glimpse or guess.
Then, one lazy afternoon when he happened to be at his bare little home, there recurred to him the tale of Lou Brackett concerning the lost mine of the legendary Ninety-Nine.