Teamster Tommy Eye was the most persistent pursuer. He came in, stamping the snow, after all the others had reassembled in the camp to talk the matter over.
“Did ye hear it?” demanded Tommy. “I did, and I run like a tiger so I could say that at last I’d seen one. But I didn’t see it. I only heard it.”
“What?” asked Wade, amazed.
“The ha’nt,” said Tommy. “I’ve always wanted to see one. I was first out, and I heard it.”
“What did it sound like?” gasped one of the men, his superstition glowing in his eyes.
“It’s bad luck forever to try to make a noise like a ha’nt,” said Tommy, with decision. “Nor will I meddle with its business—no, s’r. ’Twould come for me. Take a lucivee, an Injun devil, a bob-sled runner on grit, and the gabble of a loon, mix ’em together, and set ’em, and skim off the cream of the noise, and it would be something like the loo-hoo of a ha’nt. It’s awful on the nerves. I reckon I’ll take a pull at the old T. D.” He rammed his pipe bowl with a finger that trembled visibly.
“I’ve seen one,” declared, positively, the man who had inquired in regard to the sound. “I’ve seen one, but I never heard one holler. I didn’t know it was a ha’nt till I’d seen it half a dozen times.”
“Good eye!” sneered Tommy. “What! did it have to come up and introduce itself, and say, ‘Please, Mister MacIntosh, I’m a ha’nt’?”
“I’ve seen one,” insisted the man, sullenly. “I was teamin’ for the Blaisdell Brothers on their Telos operation, and I see it every day for most a week. It walked ahead of my team close to the bushes, side of the road, and it was like a man, and it always turned off at the same place and went into the woods.”
“Do you call that a ha’nt—a man walkin’ ’longside the road in daylight—some hump-backed old spruce-gum picker?” demanded Tommy.