The Spook Hills Mystery/Chapter 4

Spooky had been to town, and had returned with the mail, a fresh supply of tobacco, and a quart bottle of a liquid he called pain killer. It had been full when he started for the ranch; and when he arrived it had been a good three-quarters full. This condition the other boys speedily changed so that the bottle was presently thrown into the discard, empty and therefore useless.

So it transpired that by dark the Sunbeam boys were jollier than usual, and quicker to see a joke—when the joke was on the other fellow. When Spooky remembered the mail and took a bundle of letters from his pocket, the number of those addressed to Shelton C. Sherman caught his attention, Spooky had never before seen the full name written down on paper, and he studied it curiously.

"Shelton She Sherman," he said aloud, and stood the letter up on a shelf. "Shelton, She Sherman! C! C, gal ding it! Shelton She—C. Sherman. Say, that's a peach of a name for a man to pack around for folks to stub their tongue on." He fingered another letter, and stood it beside the first. "Shelton She Sherman," he read again.

"You're boozed up, Spooky," Spider accused, coming up behind and resting an arm heavily on Spooky's shoulder. "I'll gamble you had two bottles when you left town—you swine. Why, anybody can read that right off. Anybody that ain't drunk," he amended.

"You try it," Spooky challenged. "Bet you four bits that you can't say it straight." He stood a third letter up, and after that a fourth. "Now read 'em all—just the names—one after another, and see who's drunk!" he urged. "Bet you four bits you can't do it."

"Shelton—C—Sherman. Shelton She—C—Sherman. Shelton She Sher Oh, thunder!" surrendered Spider, laughing ruefully. "Come on, Jim. You try it."

So Jim, showing two-thirds of his teeth in a grin, came up and stood beside them, studied the letters for a moment, and fell over the very first C.

"Bet a dollar Shep can't say it himself," he said, and took a big chew of tobacco. "Nobody could—sober. If Spooky hadn't went and swallered that whole bottle, I could do it."

"What-all yuh talkin' about?" A little old man with bent shoulders and a long, graying mustache came trotting up from a far corner, where he had been reading the last Boise paper by a smoky lamp. "When it comes to readin', they ain't a one of yuh that amounts to anything. Yuh can't hardly read a lookout-fer-the-cyars sign on a railroad crossin'!" He gummed a wad of tobacco and slid his spectacles farther down toward the end of his high, pointed nose. "What is it yuh want read out to yuh?"

"Read the names on them four letters, Pike—and read 'em fast," invited Spider, with a wicked little twinkle in his eyes. "We're trying to see who can read the fastest."

"Why, can't yuh read plain handwriting none of yuh? Shelton She Sher"

Spider gave a howl and swung Pike back into his corner. "Shelton She Sherman shells sea shells by the sheshore," he stated gravely. "I'll bet a dollar there ain't a man in camp can say that straight."

They all tried it. They were in the middle of hilarious attempts when Shelton walked in among them smiling his disarming smile of guileless good nature.

"Hello, Shelton She Sherman, who shall shell she sells on the sheshore," Spider greeted him joyously. "Come right in, my boy. You're wanted."

"That's good. I'd hate awfully to think I wasn't wanted," Shelton retorted. "Supper over, fellows? I'm hungry as a she-bear."

"Shelton She Sherman, the she-bear shays she shall not shell sea sells" yelled Spooky, rolling over on a bed and kicking his heels into the air and laughing so he could not go on.

"Say, what's the matter with you fellows, anyway?" Shelton demanded. "Can't you take something for it? Say, Spooky, get any mail for your little friend?"

"Make Shep say it, or don't give him his letters," suggested Jim, spitting tobacco juice into the wood box so that he could grin.

"Say what?"

Spider went over and stood guard before the shelf. His face was sober except for the lurking little devil of fun in his eyes. "Here's four letters from mamma and Susie and Sister Ann and the little fairy that works in the candy store on the corner," he informed Shelton. "If you can say Shelton She Sherman sells sea shells on the sheshore—say it right, I mean—you can have 'em."

"No, he can't!" interjected Spooky, rising up, recovered from his fit. "He can't have but one for every time he says it "

"He can't have but one try for every letter," put in Jim, coming up.

Shelton took a minute to grasp just what was expected of him. He made Jim repeat the sentence, and he said it over under his breath for practice while Jim muddled the words.

He peered at the envelopes over Spider's shoulder, and his heart swelled with desire.

"Shelton C. Sherman sells sea shells on the sheshore," he recited confidently and reached out his hand for the first letter.

"Sheshore—yuh can't have it. You done lost that one," declared his tormentor. "Try the second one, Shep."

"Oh, say, fellows! That one's from the only mother I've got," pleaded Shelton; but the three were obdurate. The second one he lost, and the third. The fourth, which he suspected of being a bill from his dentist, he refused to try for, and went off to get something to eat in the cabin, more than half angry; because that was his first mail from home, and he had been fighting homesickness ever since he landed. Shelton C. Sherman loved a joke, but he considered this performance just plain meanness.

However, he practiced faithfully upon the sentence while he ate cold boiled beef, sour-dough bread, and a dish of fried corn, and emptied the tea-pot of reddish, tannin-charged tea. Burney sat smoking before the fire and said nothing at all. So, fed and feeling more equal to the situation, he hurried back to the bunk house.

"Shelton C. Sherman sells sea shells by the seashore," he recited triumphantly the moment he was inside the door, and grabbed the letter he knew was from his mother. "Aw, I guess you fellows are not so smart," he taunted. "Shelton C. Sherman sells sea shells by the seashore and takes number two—and that's from my best girl, fellers. Shelton C. Sherman continues to sell sea shells by the seashore, and gathers in this tender missive from his big sister. And Shelton C. Sherman doesn't care a hang whether he shall sell sea shells by the seashore at your shervish, because that other letters looks strangely like a gentle reminder of a very painful hour in the torture chamber of one Painless Parks who purports to pull cuspids, bicuspids, or molars without pain to himself or money refunded. Thanks awfully, my dear friends. Anything else before I seat myself to peruse these loving messages from home?"

"No fair greasing your tongue, Shep," Spooky complained. "You ought to be spanked for staying out so late, anyway. Where you been?"

"Hunting spooks. And shooting rattlesnakes and talking to a pretty girl. Don't bother me, fellers."

Spider fidgeted while Shelton seated himself in a chair by the lamp, tilted the chair back comfortably against the wall, and projected himself mentally into the midst of his friends back home. Spider was in the mood to tease some one, and Shelton seemed the logical victim.

"Shooting rattlesnakes, you say?" he inquired banteringly, by way of starting something. He got a grunt of assent from Shelton, and no further notice.

"I used to shoot snakes some myself," Spider observed reminiscently. "It's easy. You see a snake—like it was over there—and you pull your old gat and cut down on him—like this—and bing!" He drew his gun, and, by way of illustration, fired between the feet of Shelton C. Sherman and splintered the chair-round.

"Oh, say! You disturb me!" Shelton reproved mildly, without looking up from the letter.

"And when you see another one—bing!" This time he made a miscalculation and flicked the heel of Shelton's boot.

"Say! Look where you're shooting, why don't you? How do you expect a fellow to read"

"By jinks, there's another one!" Spider shot again, this time being careful to aim at the floor under Shelton's chair.

"And there's one, right by your ear!" Shelton, roused to action, whipped out his own revolver and sent a bullet himming [sic] past Spider's head. "Look out, there's one right behind you!"

Spider's eyes widened perceptibly, and he ducked quite frankly out of range. "Aw, I was only joshing, Shep!" he cried reproachfully. "You don't want to take things too serious. I never meant anything."

"Neither did I," retorted Shelton. "What are you going to do now? Go on playing snakes?"

"Nah." To prove it, Spider broke his gun, emptied the remaining cartridges in his palm, and threw the revolver on his bed. "What are you fellers grinning your heads off about?" he demanded fretfully of Spooky and Jim. "How'd I know the kid could hit where he aimed at? Stands a feller in hand to duck, and duck quick, when a strange hand points a gun at yuh. No telling"

"I didn't duck, did I?" Shelton cut in shrewdly. "And I didn't know how straight you could shoot, either. I took a chance, same as a fellow has to take if he wants to have any pleasure in life. Same as the girl said I took when I went down into the snakes' den to get the rattles off the dead ones."

"Yes, you did—not!" Spider might be momentarily taken aback, but he was not the one to subside permanently.

"Yes, I did, too!" And Shelton produced several rattles with the pinched-off place still showing fresh. "And that's only half. I divvied with the girl, just to show what a nice, generous boy I can be. Besides, she shot a lot of 'em herself."

"What gyurl was that?" Pike, roused again from his reading by the disturbance, peered at Shelton over his spectacles.

"Oh, a girl named Vida. She lives in a sheep wagon over somewhere near Spook Hills. I don't remember her last name; she keeps house for poppy and Uncle Jake—say, fellows, she's an awfully nice little girl"

Pike laid down his paper, took the spectacles from his nose, folded down the bows, and produced a long, metal case while he gummed his wad of tobacco thoughtfully. "Which side of Spook Hills is her folks rangin' sheep on?" He asked, quite as if he were a prosecuting attorney examining a witness for the defense. Pike had that portentous manner when he approached anything pertaining to the welfare of the Sunbeam.

"Why, I don't know—somewhere around close, I should judge, because it was after five when she said she must go and get supper for poppy." Shelton looked hungrily at his letters, but he was too polite to say that he would like very much to be left in peace while he read them.

Pike was making ready for another truth-compelling question when Burney opened the door and came stooping in, his little eyes fairly boring through the haze of powder smoke that still hung heavy in the low-ceilinged room.

Spider, Spooky, and Jim looked at one another with a trace of uneasiness. The other two met Burney's sharp glances unmoved—Pike because he could only think of one thing at a time, and his mind happened to be occupied now with other matters, and Shelton because the emotion called fear had yet to be born into his mental life. During the complete silence that fell upon the group, Shelton tore open another letter and unfolded the pages, which crackled sharply.

"What's this shootin' about?" Burney's voice might be high and thin and wholly lacking in the timbre one would expect from a man of his size, but the sentence cut deep, like the whip of tyranny.

"Oh—nothin'; I was just—foolin' with my gun, just—to see how she worked." Spider fumbled with his book of cigarette papers, and found it difficult to single out a leaf.

Pike, still ruminating upon the one idea that filled his mind for the time being, unconsciously relieved the pending unpleasantness.

"Say, Burney, them Williams sheep must be acrowdin' up on our range," he piped suddenly. "The boy hyar says he seen a gyurl, that b'longs to a sheep outfit, foolin' around Spook Hills. I know ole Sam Williams has got a gyurl, but I didn't know she ever come out 'n' camped with 'im. Still, she's liable to 'a' done it—if the boy here's tellin' the truth about it."

"She's done it irrespective of my telling the truth," Shelton amended, and went on with his letter.

Burney stood a little stooped forward, because of his hat scraping the log-and-dirt roof, and stared hard at Pike and at Shelton and at the three others, who avoided meeting his sharp little eyes. He reached out a great paw and fumbled for the door latch.

"You want to cut out this shooting around here," he said to Spider, in the tone of the master speaking to his man. "Guns ain't made to play with." He pulled open the door and stood hesitating on the threshold. "Come out here, kid; I want to see yuh," he commanded, and went outside.

Shelton sighed and folded up his letter. The one thing he missed most at the Sunbeam, it seemed to him then, was neither companionship nor the creature comforts of life, but privacy. Waking or sleeping, he was never quite sure of being left undisturbed for five minutes together—and that in a land where isolation is the keynote of life. He went out wondering what Burney could possibly want him to do at this time of night, or what he could want to see him about that could not be spoken of before the others. So far as he had observed the Sunbeam inhabitants, not one of the lot—unless it should be Burney himself—ever had a thought he would not share; nor anything else, for that matter, except his saddle horse and riding gear.

Burney was waiting for him outside, and, without a word, he led the way over to the cabin where he lived and where the men all ate together. He went inside, stooping to pass through the doorway, and Shelton followed him. He hoped that whatever business it was that Burney had with him, it would not take many minutes.

The business puzzled Shelton to the extent that he almost forgot his bunch of unread letters. For Burney asked him question after question in his high, shrill voice about his trip, leaning over the smoldering coals in the rough fire-place, his great hands clasped loosely together, his forearms resting upon his huge knees. Where had Shelton gone? How long did he sit there talking to the girl? Just what part of the Piute Hills—Burney never called them by the other name—was it that he visited? Which way did the girl go when she left him? Did he come back the same way he went? Did he see—anybody? These questions and more did Burney ask, and never once looked toward the boy.

To the last question Shelton gave a queer answer. "I tried to see somebody," he said, and laughed a little. "Once I thought I heard some one coming behind me, and I thought Dutch heard something, too. But I didn't see anything."

Burney rolled his little eyes toward him for a quick glance. "You want to keep away from Piute Hills," he said peevishly. "They's—snakes and things. A man's liable to get bit."

Surprised, Shelton looked at him. It was a poor reason to give a man, he thought. "There aren't as many as there was," he returned amusedly. "The girl and I together killed about sixteen. Here are the rattles of half of them."

Burney never glanced toward Shelton's outstretched palm. "It ain't no place for you, over there," he reiterated vaguely. "You better keep away from them hills."

"Well" Shelton was going to argue the point, to get some better reason from Burney than the one he had given. But Burney turned his back and bent farther over the coals, and gave Shelton to understand by his very posture that the subject was closed. So Shelton went back to the bunk house and read his letters in what one might call peace, since the rambunctious ones were wrangling amicably over a game of solo, and Pike had gone to bed.