“Some other fellows came, and you missed them. They didn’t happen to come near you in the night, or you had caught a rat and were sleeping it off in your hole. And then I came. And you’re the thing that rustled the mattress beside me that night, and made the rickety old bed tremble—you’re the thing I felt in the air, there in the room beside me. When I looked under the bed you weren’t in sight: you had stopped when you felt me move. But you came out later, all right, and you’d have killed me if I’d stepped near you without my boots. And every night since then you’ve been sneaking around ready to get me. Lucky I changed beds, and never came out here barefoot for a drink in the night, and kept my door shut. Maybe Uncle Eb’s right, and there’s a good angel watching over me. Looks like it.
“And then Nigger Nat came, and you got him. I owe you one for that, perhaps. But he was only a tool. If you’d nailed Snake Sanders, now, I’d be right obliged to you. But you’d never touch him, of course, even if he stepped on you. He’s your brother.”
For awhile he smoked in thoughtful silence. The buttonless tail now lay inert. Within the house the only movement was that of his own puffing, the only sound the stutter of his wet-stemmed pipe.
“I wonder,” he resumed at length, “I wonder whether your brother Snake knows anything about how you lost your rattle. I wonder if he had a grudge against Jake Dalton. If I ever get him in a corner I’ll ask him about that. Yes, sir, I will.”
His pipe stuttered more loudly and went out. A long yawn stretched his face. Reaching to the lamp, he shut off the gas-flow and stood up.
“Yes, sir,” he repeated, “I’ll give Snake a third-degree on that point sometime. And until then I’ll just keep my mouth shut about your demise. I’ll throw you two folks back into the woods to-morrow, and I’ll let folks think the ha’nt is still ha’nting. And now, with your kind permission, I’m going back to bed. Good-night, Mister Ha’nt—good-night forever.”
CHAPTER XXIV
CROSS TRAILS
November marshaled her gray hosts and marched them across the Shawangunks.
Out of the west they came, a slow, silent, grim array of clouds, drifting steadily above the puny barrier of the mountains, covering the sky from rim to rim—a vast army which alternately smeared out the sun and allowed it to break through the gaps between their brigades. At times they closed into mass formation and drizzled cold scorn down on the impotent hills and the insignificant dwellers therein. Then they drew apart and resumed their indifferent, disorderly route-step across the heavens, perhaps to spit again on the New England mountains farther east and then swing northward to merge into the fogs and snows of bleak Labrador. Even when they passed in straggling groups instead of a long battle-line, they gave the sun scant opportunity to light up the whole countryside at once, as he recently had done. Ever their chill shadows were creeping along the ground, darkening long belts of hill and dale while other strips were agleam with light. Only at night, it seemed, did they draw off into bivouac, leaving the sky clean and clear. Then across the land sped their night-flying ally, Jack Frost.
And with the recurrence of that biting chill the silence of approaching winter fell on the depths of the Traps. At last the katydids were still. So, too, were the crickets. By night, when the music of hammer and drill was hushed and the cheery voices of roosters and hens were silenced by slumber, the stillness would have been painful but for the gentle murmur of Coxing Kill, singing softly to itself as it crept past the humble homes of the hillmen and on into the north. Only a few weeks more, and even the friendly little stream would lose its voice under the merciless grip of winter ice. Then indeed stark silence would hold the great bowl at night—desolate, bitter silence broken only by the sough of wind-beaten evergreens and the groans of cold-tortured hardwoods.