Carefully closing the window, Farmer Slown tiptoed about the house, noiselessly barring doors and even propping things against them. For the first time in his life he had seen something uncanny, had felt that the great woods contained something more cunning, perhaps more powerful, than he. He shivered while listening suspiciously. And at this unfortunate moment, the black and white hound took the notion to feel lonely and to howl at the moon. It was the lonesomest, most woebegone sound imaginable. Perhaps it could not be said that the Farmer ran up the dark stairs, rather might it be said that he flew. Behind the locked door of his room he felt better, but still the weird loneliness of the dark woods came through from the window. With a jerk he pulled down the shade, then jumped into bed, clothes and all.
If he felt shivery that night, at least the wood pussies did not. The mother was now entirely satisfied with their nest, for it was truly a wonderful one. She had found the last two socks somewhat harder to tear down than the others, but had managed to get them by pulling the ends through the fence one at a time and then straining back with all her strength until the wool stretched on the nail and gave way with such suddenness as to roll her over. This stretching and sudden jerk was what caused each sock to vanish through the fence so quickly that the Farmer could not see it go. The moving shadows did the rest. Into them the black wood pussy with her long white stripes fitted in as naturally as if a part of them.
CHAPTER VIII
THE MYSTERY SOLVED
Farmer Slown arose early, milked the goat with nervous speed, breakfasted on one less egg than usual and started for the village in his flat-bottomed boat. His principal errand there was the buying of two huge steel traps guaranteed to hold anything up to a grizzly bear in size. These two traps having long been on exhibit in a hardware store window as curiosities to draw a crowd and to help advertise the store’s wares, their purchase by the Farmer very naturally aroused the curiosity of the shopkeeper and of several village loungers who happened to be witnesses of the sale.
Questions soon drew from the Farmer enough details of the strange doings on Goose Creek to make a very good story. He was buying the huge traps to catch some uncanny creature which visited his farm at night and carried off whole clothes lines. That was enough for the village gossips. They enlarged the story at each telling until it became a regular fairy tale, with the villain a creature nearly as high as the trees, marching about in the woods terrorizing the inhabitants.
So sure did the gossips become of the truth of the story, that they even made Farmer Slown wonder whether it might not be true. He stayed all day in the village repeating his version of it to all the newcomers and so thoroughly enjoying being a hero that he let his own imagination work a little to make the story better. He even described the dreadful creature as he thought it ought to look. Needless to say it did not resemble a little wood pussy.
One of those who took great interest in the affair was the Editor of the little local paper. He saw a great opportunity and made the most of it in a special afternoon edition with the story under black headlines and illustrated with sketches of a creature as large as a house and resembling a cross between a camel and an elephant.
The little paper circulated far and wide and was quoted by papers elsewhere until the story in its exaggerated form, was being discussed in the biggest cities. The general conclusion seemed to be that someone had gone loony or else that a prehistoric mammal had been hiding in the Pine Barrens all these years and had now suddenly been discovered.
In a week Goose Creek was a famous place. Newspapers sent photographers there who poled up and down the stream taking pictures of places wild enough to be the den of the monster and of any holes in the mud which might be taken for its foot prints. And Farmer Slown was still the great hero whom everyone had to visit and listen to and sympathize with.
