Tregarvon said “Yes,” and began to grope for a weapon. A man, hatless and with a handkerchief bound about his head, was edging his way cautiously out of the undergrowth. In the hollow of his left arm he carried a gun, and his advance was like that of the deer-stalking hunter. With the derrick frame intervening it was to be inferred that he did not see the negro.
“Somebody pot-hunting for us, this time?” queried Carfax, under his breath; but Tregarvon pressed his arm for silence. The cautious approach was not in the direction of the tool shanty; it was toward the engine of the drilling installation.
“That is the fellow we want to surround,” Tregarvon whispered. “If he had a hat on, I’d swear he was the man I saw kneeling under the derrick—before he made his drop-out and left Hartridge to throw dust for him! By Jove! he acts as if he were scared!”
The exclamation was not unwarranted. The man with the gun was creeping toward the portable engine, watchful and alert, starting at every whisper of the night air in the pines and exhibiting all the outward signs of an inward tension which was ready to snap and recoil in panic.
When he passed out of sight behind the derrick, Carfax would have led the charge; but Tregarvon restrained him. “Hold on,” he advised. “We may as well wait and find out what he means to do.”
The man was creeping on hands and knees when he came in sight again, and the gun had been left behind. When he stood up he was at the smoke-stack end of the engine-boiler; and a moment further along the two watchers made out that he was unscrewing the fastenings of the iron door which gave access to the smoke-box and the flues. They waited until he had the door unfastened; saw him swing it open by slow inchings; saw him thrust an arm into the sooty depths of the smoke-box.
“Now!” Tregarvon commanded, setting the pace for the charge; but panic was before them. Just as the man was withdrawing his arm a deep groan shuddered upon the stillness. With a cry that was like the snarl of a cornered animal, the man leaped up and flung out his arms as if to ward a blow. At that the huddled figure kneeling among the sunken graves groaned again, following the groan with a terrified, “Oh, my Lordy!” when he saw the man at the boiler head.
That was sufficient. At the spot where the man with a handkerchief about his head had stood clutching the air there was a sudden void, and the noise of his crashing retreat through the undergrowth had died away before Tregarvon and Carfax could give chase.
They captured the “ghost doctor,” however, and were not greatly surprised when the old negro turned out to be Uncle William. His night wandering to the mountain top was sufficiently explained when he pointed to the sunken grave ringed about with bits of broken china.
“Dah’s whah my ol’ ’ooman is, marstehs; yas, suh; right dah’s whah dey bury huh. Dat triflin’ niggah, Sam, from de ol’ place, come erlong down de mounting day befo’ yistidday, an’ he say you-all gemman is a-trompin’ ’round an’ mashin’ up t’ings in de ol’ buryin’-ground. I know dat ain’ so, but I says to mahse’f, ‘Willyum, yo’ gwine right up dah and put dem li’l grabestones you been a-savin’ ’round Mammy Ann; den Marsteh Tregarbin ain’ gwine ’sturb nuffin’ belongin’ ter you.’”