THE MAN WHO CAME FROM NOWHERE
“He hadn’t a word for no one, not even for me or Mike,
And whenever we spoke or tried to joke, he growled like a
Chessy tyke.”
Dwight Wade found a lively conference in progress in the main camp.
Tommy Eye was doing most of the talking, and it was plain that his opinions carried weight, for no one presumed to gainsay him.
“And I’ll say to you what I’m tellin’ to them here, Mr. Wade,” continued the teamster. “You saw for yourself what happened here last night. A ha’nt done it. And the ha’nt done this last. They’re pickin’ Skeets right and left.”
“Ha’nt must be in the pay of Pulaski D. Britt,” remarked one rude joker. “He’s been the one most interested in gettin’ the tribe out of this section.”
Dwight Wade, love and awful fear raging in his heart, was in no mood to play dilettante with the supernatural, nor to relish jokes.
“We’ll have done with this foolishness, men!” he cried, harshly. “A girl has been lost in these woods.” He was protecting Elva Barrett’s incognito by a mighty effort of self-repression. The agony of his soul prompted him to leap, shouting, down the tote road, calling her name and crying his love and his despair. “I want this crew to beat the woods and find her.”