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.”