“I might go up to the door and knock,” he muttered. “The regular way when you want to know if any one is at home! But I have precious little desire to become pile of bleached bones number three.”
He lifted his voice and called. A startled squirrel that had been watching him curiously vanished with a sudden whisk of tail, and a big woodpecker upon a distant falling wall cocked a pair of bright eyes at him impertinently. Sheldon waited, turned this way and that, called again. Then again, louder.
“Devil take it,” he grunted in sudden irritation. “There’s got to be an end of this tomfoolery. If I have to do with crazy folk I might as well know it now as any time.”
He went up the two steps to the door and rapped sharply. Still there came no answer. He rapped again and then put his hand to the latch. The door was fastened from within.
“Who’s in there?” he called. “Can’t you answer me?”
His voice died away into silence; the woodpecker went back to his carpentering. A hush lay over the world about him.
He called again, explained that his intentions were friendly, argued with the silence, pleaded and then lost his temper.
“Open!” he shouted, “or by the Lord I’ll beat your old door off its hinges!”
Then, for the first time, he thought that he heard a sound from within, the gentle fall of a foot as some one moved. His head turned a little, listening eagerly, he heard no other sound.
Lifting his rifle, he drove the butt hard against the door. It creaked, rattled, and held. He struck again, harder.