She took several halting steps outward before responding, Steve trailing silently behind her. At the edge of the cañon she paused and spoke over one shoulder.
“If you’re stayin’, don’t stay here. It’s no place for you. You’ll be better off down below. There’s Jake Dalton’s place, down towards the Clove, where nobody lives any more, and you could go into there and live pretty safe and comf’table if you mind your own business—and if the ha’nt don’t git you.”
“Oho! A haunted house!”
“So folks say. Jake, he got kilt last spring by somethin’—nobody knows what. They found him after he’d been dead a week or so, and they couldn’t look at him right close. But he wasn’t shot or cut or clawed—he was jest swelled up terrible. Two or three fellers stayed into his house since, and they got drove out—somethin’ was there that they didn’t see, but they could hear it and feel it. Some say it’s Jake’s ha’nt. Others say it ain’t Jake but the thing that kilt him. If you want to try livin’ there nobody’s likely to bother you much. It sets on the left of the Clove road, down yonder, with two big pines back of it.
“Now we’re goin’. Oh, and one other thing—you better not come round Nigger Nat’s house. He ain’t sociable. G’by.”
Out through the crack they passed. For a minute or two the blond man sat looking moodily at the exit. Then he arose and followed.
The rocks outside were vacant. The trees and undergrowth showed no sign of life. Even the curious yellowhammers were gone. Nowhere, except on two stones—one scarred by shot, one stained with blood—was anything to show that since the last sunset two young hill-folk had come suddenly into the life of Douglas Hampton and as swiftly vanished from it.
“Well,” he muttered, picking up his gun and turning back, “Steve, you tough young wolf, you don’t know how lucky you are. I only hope you’ll treat her right in the years to come.”
CHAPTER V
CREEPING THINGS
Up on the brink of Dickie Barre, on a triangular outcrop of stone bare of brush but topped by whispering pines, Douglas lounged in luxurious content, basking in the mellow warmth of September sun.