He got out of bed very cautiously, took a stick of firewood in his hand, sneaked up to the door, and snatched it open. There was no one there. Dave took the candle and went into the next room, but couldn’t see the cat. He came back and sat down by the fire and meowed, and presently the cat answered him and came in from somewhere—she’d been outside the window, I suppose; he kept on meowing and she sidled up and rubbed against his hairy shin. Dave could generally bring a cat that way. He had a weakness for cats. I’d seen him kick a dog, and hammer a horse—brutally, I thought—but I never saw him hurt a cat or let any one else do it. Dave was good to cats: if a cat had a family where Dave was round, he’d see her all right and comfortable, and only drown a fair surplus. He said once to me, ‘I can understand a man kicking a dog, or hammering a horse when it plays up, but I can’t understand a man hurting a cat.’
He gave this cat something to eat. Then he went and held the light close to the lock of the door, but could see nothing wrong with it. He found a key on the mantel-shelf and locked the door. He got into bed again, and the cat jumped up and curled down at the foot and started her old drum going, like shot in a sieve. Dave bent down and patted her, to tell her he’d meant no harm when he stretched out his legs, and then he settled down again.
We had some books of the ‘Deadwood Dick’ school. Dave was reading ‘The Grisly Ghost of the Haunted Gulch’, and I had ‘The Dismembered Hand’, or ‘The Disembowelled Corpse’, or some such names. They were first-class preparation for a ghost.
I was reading away, and getting drowsy, when I noticed a movement and saw Dave’s frightened head rising, with the terrified shadow of it on the wall. He was staring at the door, over his book, with both eyes. And that door was opening again—slowly—and Dave had locked it! I never felt anything so creepy: the foot of my bunk was behind the door, and I drew up my feet as it came open; it opened wide, and stood so. We waited, for five minutes it seemed, hearing each other breathe, watching for the door to close; then Dave got out, very gingerly, and up on one end, and went to the door like a cat on wet bricks.
‘You shot the bolt OUTSIDE the catch,’ I said, as he caught hold of the door—like one grabs a craw-fish.
‘I’ll swear I didn’t,’ said Dave. But he’d already turned the key a couple of times, so he couldn’t be sure. He shut and locked the door again. ‘Now, get out and see for yourself,’ he said.
I got out, and tried the door a couple of times and found it all right. Then we both tried, and agreed that it was locked.
I got back into bed, and Dave was about half in when a thought struck him. He got the heaviest piece of firewood and stood it against the door.
‘What are you doing that for?’ I asked.
‘If there’s a broken-down burglar camped round here, and trying any of his funny business, we’ll hear him if he tries to come in while we’re asleep,’ says Dave. Then he got back into bed. We composed our nerves with the ‘Haunted Gulch’ and ‘The Disembowelled Corpse’, and after a while I heard Dave snore, and was just dropping off when the stick fell from the door against my big toe and then to the ground with tremendous clatter. I snatched up my feet and sat up with a jerk, and so did Dave—the cat went over the partition. That door opened, only a little way this time, paused, and shut suddenly. Dave got out, grabbed a stick, skipped to the door, and clutched at the knob as if it were a nettle, and the door wouldn’t come!—it was fast and locked! Then Dave’s face began to look as frightened as his hair. He lit his candle at the fire, and asked me to come with him; he unlocked the door and we went into the other room, Dave shading his candle very carefully and feeling his way slow with his feet. The room was empty; we tried the outer door and found it locked.