CHAPTER V.
WHAT WAS IT?
"What was it this time, Number Six?" asked the scout leader, as Chatz turned quickly toward him, showing considerable alarm.
"Oh! it's gone now. It just seemed to slide away while I was looking. But I could hear it moving all the same; and I tell you, honest Injun, that it was a dreadful squashy sort of sound," and Chatz shrugged his shoulders with what seemed to be a shudder, as he said this.
Elmer hardly knew what to do or to say. Chatz was not above playing a joke, given the opportunity, but this was really a subject on which he felt very deeply, so that it was hard to believe he would be likely to hold it up to scorn.
He seemed to be wide-awake, too, so that there was little chance of its being a dream. Sensible on all other subjects, the superstitious Southern lad had a decided weakness for spooks, and he could imagine uncanny objects prowling around where no one else found the slightest indication of such a thing.
"Where was this?" Elmer asked, cautiously.
"Over there, in that open spot," replied Chatz, cheerfully and without the least sign of hesitation. "You can just make out the deeper shadow of the trees back further. I was looking that way and thinking of something connected with my home when all of a sudden IT loomed up, staring at me in a frightfully ghastly way, and moving its white body slowly up and down, just like it was warning me of some coming danger."
"Sure it wasn't that owl again, are you?" questioned Elmer, dubiously.
"Couldn't have been any such thing, because," triumphantly went on Chatz, "you see, there ain't a single chance for it to roost on anything! That place is bare! I crossed it several times going for wood yesterday afternoon before dark set in. And then besides—"