CHAPTER XX
THE HA’NT OF THE UMCOLCUS
“For even in these days P. I.’s shake
At word of the phantom of Brassua Lake;
And all of us know of the witherlick
That prowls by the shores of the Cup-sup-tic;
Of the side-hill ranger whose eyeballs gleam
In the light of the moon at Abol stream.”
—The Ha’nts.
A few days after the men of Enchanted were housed, those who gazed southeast from the mountain shoulder saw a smear of white on the horizon. It was the first snow on lofty Katahdin.
Tommy Eye greeted that sight most enthusiastically. Like a good teamster, he was anxious for “slippin’.”
“Bless the saints, old Winter has pitched camp down there, and is mixin’ up a batch of our kind of weather,” he said to Wade. “Injun Summer had better grab up what’s left of her flounces and get out from under.”