He did not answer for a moment.
“Well, I can’t say as to that. I jest knowed him from meetin’ him on the round-ups and when I stopped here. I never had no dealin’s with him, but he sure had a reputation for all the meanness there was, and I guess he deserved it. He was good company though, and Lord, how he could play the fiddle.” He was interrupted by a sudden clatter. Mrs. Parker had dropped her spoon and was looking at him as if fascinated. “I liked Mrs. Bohm, but I never had no use for him. I don’t know about the other things, but he sure done Jean La Monte dirt.” He rose from the table and walked toward the door. “Well, I reckon I’d better be movin’ on, I want to get to Bosman’s tonight.” He looked up the valley, “I can see Bohm now, ridin’ that big black horse of his, carryin’ a little cotton-wood switch for a whip, and laughin’ at everything, he was a queer one, sure enough. Well, so long—thank you for my supper,” and he went out into the evening.
“Big black horse! He was always on a big black horse!” That pitiful refrain of Jean La Monte as he had sought the rider of that horse through all those weary years. Again I saw the men waiting in the wagon and that poor half-clad figure stooping to pick up a little cotton-wood switch, and I wondered if across the great divide La Monte had caught up with Bohm at last.
Owen was busy in the office making out contracts for recently purchased land. Mr. Parker and an agent were entertaining some land-buyers, scraps of their conversation “bushels to the acre” and “back in Kansas” reached me from time to time as I walked up and down under the stars.
“Where are you, childy?” Dear Mrs. Parker was always concerned when I was not in sight. “Out there alone?” she asked as she came across the yard to join me. We sat down on the bunk-house steps, glorying in the beauty of the night. We were silent for a few moments and then she spoke.
“Do you know, Mrs. Brook, him talkin’ about Mr. Bohm tonight at supper has made me think of so many things. I never paid much attention to all them stories old Mrs. Morton and other folks told, but some mighty queer things have happened since we’ve been here.”
“What kind of things?” I asked, wondering if she, too, had breathed the air of mystery which surrounded the old ranch.
“Well, I don’t know exactly,” she hesitated, “you’ll think I’m silly, perhaps, but you know sometimes when I’m down there,” she pointed to the house among the trees, “makin’ out my postal reports, sometimes it’s eleven or twelve o’clock before I’m through. It’s awful quiet after everyone’s gone to sleep and I’ve heard all kinds of queer sounds, maybe they might be rats or the wind, but often and often, just as plain as I can hear your voice now, I’ve heard the sound of a violin like somebody was playin’. It give me an awful start when that man spoke of Bohm’s havin’ played the violin.”
“Perhaps somebody is playing,” I ventured, with a well remembered sensation of ice in the region of my spine. “The houses aren’t far away now; you could easily hear someone playing if the wind was in the right direction.”