Those two guards were hanging onto each other, and standing as stiff as fence posts. You’d have thought they were frozen. And then, all of a sudden, Catty turned around his board so the skeleton side faced the men. Well, sir! First one of them let out a yawp, and then the other one let out a better yawp. It was a regular yawp competition. Catty ducked his board out of sight quick.
“D-d-did you see t-that?” says one man.
“I s-s-saw s-something,” says the other, with his teeth chattering.
“It was a s-skeleton.”
“A-wigglin’ his arms and dancin’ and makin’ awful faces,” says the other, which goes to show how easy it is to see things that ain’t.
“M-maybe we jest imagined it.”
“We didn’t imagine them groans.”
At that I set off another groan, and right on top of it Catty gave them a short view of the skeleton again—and then we missed those men. They went away from there. They didn’t go slow, either. If a jackrabbit could have seen the jumps they took he would have curled up and died with envy; and at every jump they turned loose a yell. Well, in about two minutes the whole camp was in a rumpus. Lanterns began to show, and men began to holler to know what was the matter, and there was a regular mess.
“I guess,” says Catty, “we better kind of move away a little—around to the other side.”
“We can’t,” says I.