“You’re mighty lucky to have her,” I observed. He stopped short, quite disregarding my last remark and appeared to be listening. “Yer hear footsteps?” he asked me.
“No,” I laughed; “you know what you said about my ears. Why, did you hear someone?”
It seemed to me that the silence of the woods was as that of a grave. An unseen bird flitted from one limb to another, causing a quick rustling of leaves as if it had been startled. I could hear a drowsy locust humming his monotonous little solo. He ceased just as I began listening, which is an uncanny way they have.
“I guess nobody but you ever comes through here,” I said.
“Mink, he’s like to come back,” he said as he moved on.
“And how long since Mink went away?”
“That’s long ago; he got possessed—him.”
“Yes, tell me about that.”
CHAPTER V—Rattlesnake Gulch
“Mink Havers, me’n him was pardners,” old Buck said.