“It’s yours”, said the Negro with a grin, for he was to get half of the proceeds of all sales. He wondered why the uncouth stranger wanted a stuffed gorilla, but of all the animals in the collection, he was most pleased to get rid of that hideous effigy, the man-ape that might come to life some dark cold night and raise ructions with the horses.
Hornbostl offered five dollars more if the Negro would box the monster, and they finally arranged to box it together, and keep it in the stable until he would be let out at Hog Island. Eventually they got it to the freight station, billed to Meiserville.
At the time of the purchase it is doubtful if Hornbostl had any definite idea of what he was going to do with his “find”, all that came later. Hornbostl was glad to return to his mountain home, and sank complacently back in his seat on the 11.30 A. M. train for Selim Grove Junction. It was an uneventful trip, for he was an unimaginative person, taking everything as a matter of course, though he did notice an unusually pretty high school girl with a wonderfully refined face and carriage, who got off the train at Dauphin, and followed her with his eyes as she walked along the street back of the station and across the bridge that spans Stony Creek, until the moving train shut her from view behind Fasig’s Tavern. He thought that he had never seen anything quite so lovely before; if his late sweetheart who had run away had been one quarter as beautiful and elegant she would be worth worrying about.
He reached Meiserville well after dark, for it was almost the shortest day of the year, and put up there for the night. In the morning he inquired at the freight office for his consignment, but hardly expected it that soon. He had to wait three days before it arrived, but when it did, he secured a team which hauled it to his mountain retreat, depositing the crate in front of his door. After the teamster with his pair of heavy horses, decked out with jingling bells, departed, Hornbostl unpacked his treasure, and the huge, grinning man-ape stood before him, seven feet tall. It was set up on a platform with castors, so he ran it into the house, leaving it beside the old-fashioned open fireplace, where he used to sit opposite his mother while they both smoked their pipes in the old days.
LAST RAFT IN THE WEST BRANCH OF SUSQUEHANNA
That night after supper, when the raftered room was dark, save for one small glass kerosene lamp, and the fitful light of the embers, the mountaineer sat and smoked, trying to conjure up the history of the hideous monster facing him across the inglenook. Instead of evolving anything interesting or definite, the evil genius of the man-ape, as the evening progressed, seemed to take complete possession of him. He became filled with vicious, revengeful thoughts; all the hate in his nature was drawn to the surface as the firelight flashed on the glass eyes and grinning teeth of the monstrous jungle king. All at once the maelstrom of nasty thoughts assumed coherent form, and he realized why he had brought the gorilla to Snyder County.
He had heard since going to Philadelphia that the hated Heinie Beery had taken a tie contract on the Blue Knob, the second highest mountain in Pennsylvania, somewhere on the line between Blair and Bedford Counties. He wanted to kill his rival, and now would be a chance to do it and escape detection. He would dress himself up in the hide, and proceed overland to Snyder Township, reconnoitre there, find his victim and choke him to death, which the Negro coachman had told him was the chief pastime of live gorillas in the African wilds.
Suiting the action to the word, he drew his long knife and began cutting the heavy threads which sewed the hide over the manikin. He soon had the hide lying on the deal floor, and a huge white statue of lath and plaster of Paris stood before him, like an archaic ghost. He did not like the looks of the manikin, so pounded it to a pulp with an axe to lime his kitchen garden. The hide was as stiff as a board, but between the heat of the fire and bear’s grease he had it fairly pliable by morning. By the next night it was in still better shape so he donned it and sewed himself in. Physically he was not unlike the man-ape, gross about the abdomen, sloping shouldered and long-armed, while his prognathous jaw and retreating forehead were perfect counterparts of the gorilla’s physiognomy.
Arming himself with a long ironwood staff, he started on his journey towards the Blue Knob country. He had to cross the Christunn Valley in order to get into Jack’s Mountain, which he would follow along the summits to Mount Union. It was a dark, starless night, and all went well until he suddenly came upon the scene of a nocturnal wood chopping operation. The wood-cutter, a railroader, had no other chance to lay in his winter’s fuel supply than after dark, and by the light of a lantern placed on a large stump had already stacked up a goodly lot of cordwood. His son, a boy of fourteen, was ranking the wood. At the moment of the gorilla-man’s appearance in the clearing the man had gone to the house for a cup of hot coffee, leaving the lad alone at his work. The boy heard the heavy footfalls on the chips, and thinking his father was returning, looked up and beheld the most hideous thing that his eyes had ever looked upon. He uttered a shriek of terror, but before he could open his lips a second time the “gorilla” was upon him, slapping his mouth until the blood flowed, with one brawny paw, while he wrenched his arm so severely with the other that he left it limp and broken, hanging by his side. Then the monster, looking back over his shoulder, loped off into the deep forest at the foot of Jack’s Mountain.