Allegheny Episodes / Folk Lore and Legends Collected in Northern and Western Pennsylvania

by Henry W. Shoemaker

His companion did not reply, so the young man repeated his query in still louder tones, but all he heard was the crunching of the horses’ hoofs on the pebbly road.

Daniel Karstetter, master slayer of panthers, bears and wolves, was no coward, though on this occasion he felt uneasy. Yet he disliked picking a quarrel with the silent man at his side, who clearly was not his brother, and he feared to put his horse to a gallop on the steep, uneven roadway. The trip home never before seemed of such interminable length. For the greater part of the distance Daniel made no attempt to converse with his unsociable comrade. Finally, he heaved a sigh of relief when he saw a light gleaming in the horse stable at the home farm. When he reached the barnyard gate he dismounted to let down the bars, while the stranger apparently vanished in the gloom.

Daniel led his mount to the horse stable, where he found his brother Jacob sitting by the old tin lantern, fast asleep. He awakened him and asked him when he had gotten home. Jacob stated that his horse had been feeling good, so he let him canter all the way. He had been sleeping, but judged that he had been home at least half an hour. He had met no horseman on the road.

Daniel was convinced that his companion had been a ghost, or, as they are called in the “Seven Brothers,” a gshpook. But he made no further comment that night.

A year afterwards, in coming back alone from a dance in Stone Valley, he was again joined by the silent horseman, who followed him to his barnyard gate. He gave up going to dances on that account. At least once a year, or as long as he was able to go out at night, he met the ghostly rider. Sometimes, when tramping along on foot after a hunt, or, in later years, coming back from market at Bellefonte in his Jenny Lind, he would find the silent horseman at his side. After the first experience, he never attempted to speak to the night rider, but he became convinced that it meant him no harm.

As his prowess as a hunter became recognized, he had many jealous rivals among the less successful Nimrods. In those old days threats of all kinds were freely made. He heard on several occasions that certain hunters were setting out to “fix” him. But a man who could wrestle with panthers and bears knew no such thing as fear.

One night, while tramping along in Green’s Valley, he was startled by some one in the path ahead of him shouting out in Pennsylvania German, “Hands up!” He was on the point of dropping his rifle, when he heard the rattle of hoof beats back of him. The silent horseman in an instant was by his side, the dark horse pawing the earth with his giant hoofs. There was a crackling of brush in the path ahead, and no more threats of hend uff.

The ghostly rider followed Daniel to his barn yard gate, but was gone before he could utter a word of thanks. As the result of this adventure, he became imbued with the idea that he possessed a charmed life. It gave him added courage in his many encounters with panthers, the fierce red bears and lynxes.

Apart from his love of hunting the more dangerous animals, Daniel enjoyed the sport of deer-stalking. He maintained several licks, one of them in a patch of low ground over the hill from the entrance to the “dry” part of Penn’s Cave. At this spot he constructed a blind, or platform, between the two ancient tupelo trees, about twenty feet from the ground, and many were the huge white-faced stags which fell to his unerring bullets during the rutting season.

One cold night, according to an anecdote frequently related by one of his descendants, while perched in his eyrie overlooking the natural clearing which constituted the lick, and in sight of a path frequented by the fiercer beasts, which led to the opening of the “dry” cave, he saw, about midnight, a huge pantheress, followed by a large male of the same species, come out into the open.