Fritz’ post was below the flat, and in a part of the cañon where the moonlight sifted through the trees in wavering silvery patches. Every patch looked like a ghost, and the cañon was filled with them.
Fritz was about as eager to go on duty that night as he would have been to walk into a den of hungry bears. But Silva, the Mexican packer, was also one of the midwatch, and between Fritz and Silva was a feud of several days’ standing. Fritz would have scorned to show the white feather with Silva looking on, and so he armed himself with a stout club and a half a dozen ham sandwiches and waddled feebly down the side of the flat and into the ghostly shadows of the cañon.
Once a picketed horse gave a snort, and Fritz went straight into the air for at least five feet. A little later Uncle Sam, the professor’s mule, let out a “hee haw” that sounded like thunder in the cañon, and Fritz almost went into a swoon. Every little while Fritz imagined a quivering splash of moonlight was a spook, and he would groan to himself and crowd between the rocks, and say his prayers backward, forward, and sideways.
Finally, as nothing came up and grabbed him, he began to feel somewhat reassured. He thought of his sandwiches and started to eat one.
“Shpooks iss nodding, I bed you,” he communed with himself. “Nodding nefer hurt nopody at all, und I vill eat und forged aboudt it. Vat a peacefulness is der nighdt! How calm iss der moon und der leedle shtars! Oh, I lofe der nighdt, you bed my life, und I—himmelblitzen, vat iss dot?”
Fritz jumped, laid down his half-eaten sandwich on a bowlder beside him, and peered wildly around. He could see nothing but the shadowy live stock belonging to the camp, and yet, very distinctly, he had heard a pat, pat, pat as of something traveling among the bowlders.
“Id vas nodding some more,” he chattered. “Imachination makes some monkey-doodle pitzness mit me. I vill eat der sandvich und forged aboudt it.”
He reached for the sandwich, and a horrifying surprise ran through him. The sandwich was not where he had left it. Nor had it fallen off the rock.
“Br-r-r!” shivered Fritz. “Dere iss a keveerness here, py shiminy Grismus! Iss a shpook hungry dot he comes und takes my sandvich?”
For several minutes Fritz sat in a huddle and wondered what he had better do about it. He would have eased his tense feelings with a yell if Silva hadn’t been around to hear. It wouldn’t do to let the Mexican know he was scared. With trembling hands, Fritz dug down into his rations for another sandwich. Laying the sandwich down for a moment, he bent to twist the mouth of the paper sack in which his lunch was stowed. When he straightened again, and reached for the sandwich, another thrill of horror convulsed him. It was gone.