He found a rock and held it ready to throw at the dog that was certain to come snapping at him as he tiptoed through the clearing. His wet legs smarted with cold. The fact that he was trespassing made him feel more forlornly lost than ever. But he stumbled up to the one-room shack that was now shaping itself against the sky. It was a house that, he believed, he had never seen before. When he reached it he stood for fully a minute, afraid to move. But from across the creek whimpered Gertie's call:
"Carl, oh, Carl, where are you?"
He had to hurry. He crept along the side of the shack to the window. It was too high in the wall for him to peer through. He felt for something to stand upon, and found a short board, which he wedged against the side of the shack.
He looked through the dusty window for a second. He sprang from the board.
Alone in the shack was the one person about Joralemon more feared, more fabulous than the Black Dutchman—"Bone" Stillman, the man who didn't believe in God.
Bone Stillman read Robert G. Ingersoll, and said what he thought. Otherwise he was not dangerous to the public peace; a lone old bachelor farmer. It was said that he had been a sailor or a policeman, a college professor or a priest, a forger or an embezzler. Nothing positive was known except that three years ago he had appeared and bought this farm. He was a grizzled man of fifty-five, with a long, tobacco-stained, gray mustache and an open-necked blue-flannel shirt. To Carl, beside the shack, Bone Stillman was all that was demoniac.
Gertie was calling again. Carl climbed upon his board and resumed his inspection, seeking a course of action.
The one-room shack was lined with tar-paper, on which were pinned lithographs of Robert G. Ingersoll, Karl Marx, and Napoleon. Under a gun-rack made of deer antlers was a cupboard half filled with dingy books, shotgun shells, and fishing tackle. Bone was reading by a pine table still littered with supper-dishes. Before him lay a clean-limbed English setter. The dog was asleep. In the shack was absolute stillness and loneliness intimidating.
While Carl watched, Bone dropped his book and said, "Here, Bob, what d'you think of single-tax, heh?"
Carl gazed apprehensively.... No one but Bone was in the shack.... It was said that the devil himself sometimes visited here.... On Carl was the chill of a nightmare.