The Spook Hills Mystery/Chapter 5

Of course, since Shelton had been warned to stay away from Spook Hills, he was crazy to go again as soon as possible. Burney might have known that, if he had stopped to consider the matter at all; for he must surely have known a little bit about human nature. There was another reason—the girl. That also might go without saying. It is true she was not pretty; and back home, or anywhere else where there were other girls to choose from, I don't suppose Shelton would have troubled to speak two sentences to her under any circumstances. But she was a girl, and she was the only one in that part of the country. And Shelton really had nothing much to do at the ranch, and had not learned to ride well enough to be trusted out on the range with the men. Burney was particular about not letting him even attempt to ride any horse save Dutch, who was at least eighteen years old and considered absolutely safe.

Well, Shelton went back to the hills, and while he was yet afar off he saw the girl riding slowly down along a brush-fringed gully. He turned and urged old Dutch into a stiff-legged lope that still did not stumble, however rough the ground—and Shelton in his ignorance had no sense at all about galloping a horse over dangerous places. So he came bouncing along through the rocks and sage and buckbrush, showing daylight between himself and the saddle at every jump, and clinging to the horn with one hand, and looking atrociously pleased and satisfied with himself, and plainly expectant of a glowing welcome.

Shakespeare asserted boldly that welcome ever smiles. He was wrong; this welcome did not smile appreciably. Neither did the girl turn her horse one inch from the way she was going, that she might meet him the sooner. Shelton's grin drew itself in at the corners when he was close enough to see the dead composure of her face. She certainly did seem less impressed at his eager approach than a plain girl ought to seem.

"Hello, Shep," she said uninterestedly, when he was almost alongside. "Why this mad haste? The scenery ain't going to run anywhere and hide; and the snakes ain't, either. And," she added, as an afterthought, "I ain't."

Shelton made wrinkles between his eyebrows. He hated to hear a girl say ain't—unless she was so pretty a fellow could forgive anything. And Vida was even plainer than he had remembered her as being.

"Are you wishing the scenery would run away and hide?" he asked, unconsciously adopting the tone he had always employed toward a pretty girl.

"I don't care what it does. I wish I could hide." Her face settled again into a sullen discontent with life, such as comes sometimes to the lonely.

"Well, the hiding looks good around here," Shelton suggested amiably. "By the way, how is our rabbit?"

"It died," she said indifferently. "I told you it would. I packed it all the way home and got all over fleas from the dirty thing, and it went and died before supper was ready. I gave it to the dogs."

Again Shelton wrinkled his eyebrows and wished that she were different. She had no fine sentiments whatever, judging from her attitude toward the rabbit—after he had bandaged it and carried it in his arms and had given it to her as a special favor! Any other girl would have

"That great, overgrown Goliath of yours is going to play hob, ain't he?" she demanded abruptly, looking at Shelton resentfully. He felt that here was the key to her ill humor, and braced himself mentally to meet her latent antagonism. "He's a peach! The great big bully!"

"Why? How has he managed to win your disfavor? He's stayed right at the ranch all the time"

"Yes, he has—not! He came over to our camp yesterday and told poppy we were on his range and he'd thank us to get off it pretty darned sudden. Just as if he owns the whole of Idaho! I was in the wagon washing dishes, and I heard him. He couldn't wait—he got there before poppy had left to go carry some grub to the other camps. We'd just had our breakfast. And he acted like he owned us body and soul. I stuck my head out of the wagon and asked him where he got his license to come bossing us around, and why didn't he let his own business keep him busy, and he wilted right down! But he talked awful to poppy—Uncle Jake was out with the sheep, and didn't hear him, or there would have been something doing right then and there.

"Why, he told poppy to move right away from Piute Hills and keep away! And there's better water and better grass, what there is of it, in these hills than anywhere around. He wanted us to go back toward Pillar Butte with our sheep—but he'll find out he ain't running the Williams outfit yet."

Shelton began to look uneasy, as if he were being held responsible in some way for the arrogance of Burney. He hastened to declare his absolute neutrality, and he ended by apologizing for Burney. "You know, he doesn't seem to me to be unjust or dishonorable, or anything of that sort," he went on. "I think there must be some mistake. Perhaps he felt that you were encroaching"

"He felt that he wanted to hog the range," Vida interrupted hotly. "But he ain't going to make that work, not with us. We've got just as much right here as he has, and we ain't afraid of him just because he's big as all outdoors. Goliath, that's what I call him—and coming around trying to fight with the jawbone of an ass, too! He's a coward. I ain't afraid of him—I'd stand up to forty more just as big as he is."

Shelton laughed. "Vida is the feminine of David, didn't you say? David and Goliath—oh, say, that's rich! I must write that home to the folks. A girl-David at that. Where's your sling-shot?"

"You shut up! I ain't in the mood to joke about him. You can stand back and see how funny it is, and write to your folks about us savages fighting among ourselves put here over a pile of barren hills and a few spears of grass and some old water holes. I guess it'll sound funny to them. But it ain't funny to us, Mr. Prettyboy. It means shoes and flour and bacon to us, if you want to know.

"Do you s'pose I don't like pretty clothes and things?" Her eyes blazed at him from under her old felt hat that her father had cast aside. "Do you think I like to live like a squaw, and tie my hair up with a grocery string, and wear" She gave an unexpected little sob, wholly feminine and disarming. "I'm living this way so poppy can get ahead of the game enough to afford something better. I hate it! I hate the sight of sheep and I hate old clothes and living away out here away from everything a girl likes. But sheep's the only thing poppy sees good money in; and this is about the only place that ain't overstocked already. And that great, big, whiny-voiced booby can just leave us alone! We ain't hurting him any.

"Poppy sold out to him two years ago, just to keep from having trouble with him, and tried to go into something else. And he lost about half his money and just had to get back into sheep, because they're the only thing he's sure of making good at. And he ain't going to sell out again to please anybody. And he's going to run his sheep in these hills just as long as he wants to, and you Sunbeamers have just got to stand for it. If you don't like it, why, you can lump it. That's all."

"I do like it," Shelton declared placatingly. "You mustn't say we're all against you and wanting you to leave here, because that isn't true. I'm not against you, and I want you to stay around here just as long as I stay." He felt rather proud of that statement, and he was disappointed because Vida was not immediately cheered by it.

"You're mighty small potatoes when it comes to this range business," she reminded him. "Sounds nice, but when you come right down to cases, what you think and want stacks up about as high as a hole in the ground. When I say you have got to stand for our running sheep here, I mean the outfit you're stopping with; you Sunbeamers. And we're going to stay. We've got to, or get out of the sheep business—and poppy ain't going to do that till he gets outa debt. There's going to be good money in sheep this year. The lamb crop was fine."

So she talked, and Shelton presently became bored with the subject. To him it looked like a big enough country for all the people there were in it, and more. Big enough for all the sheep and all the cattle, too.

Far as he could see, the country lay wide open, with never a fence nor a house anywhere. To be sure, most of it was barren country. But certain slopes showed green in the sheltered places where the sage was not too thick. And certain threadlike gulches were also green with woods. And farther up in Spook Hills he could see that there was timber worthy the name. And there was so much of it! For one lone cattleman and two lone sheep owners to quarrel over this big feeding ground looked foolish.

That day they did not hunt snakes. They rode to the brink of a deep, fearsome-looking cañon, and Vida stopped and stared long all up and down it, looking for caves, she said. She did not seem to care enough about them, however, to go down and explore the rocky walls. She was held fast in the net of circumstances and environment that day, and her mind ran upon the everyday sordidness of her life. She had sent to Pocatello by one of their herders for a pair of shoes, and they didn't fit. She wondered how she was going to manage and exchange—there being no prospect of her getting to town herself for goodness knows when. Meantime, she had to wear her best shoes for every day, which evidently worried her thrifty little soul.

Shelton tried to talk of his home and the things he had seen and done, but Vida kept harking back to the petty details of her own life. The other day she had listened hungrily to his patterings; Shelton could not understand why she should seem so different, so utterly commonplace, to-day. Shelton, you see, had never confronted any of the big problems of life—particularly the big economic problem.

They turned up the cañon, skirting it to the very foot of one of the steeper hills. Shelton was beginning to think of starting home from very boredom—only the Sunbeam Ranch, with its sun-baked area of sand and its little, squalid cabins and no human being on the place, unless Burney were home, spelled a boredom more complete than this.

"This hill's full of caves," Vida informed him apathetically, pointing a grimy hand to a rugged slope. "I used to be around here seven or eight years ago—before Goliath had anything to do with the Sunbeam, or poppy went into sheep. Poppy used to be a prospector, and he prospected all through these hills. It was a claim he sold that put him in the sheep business in the first place. One summer I come with him—the summer after mother died. I could show you all kinds of caves and places, around here."

"Why don't you?" Shelton smiled to make the question more especially adapted to a girl. "Maybe we could land that spook the boys claim is in these hills. Come on—let's do some exploring!"

"I don't feel like it; and we'd need candles, anyway. Some day we can bring some, and I'll take you through the biggest ones—if I can find them again. I've got to go pretty quick; I'm baking bread to-day."

"Oh, stay and help me hunt spooks!" pleaded Shelton, suddenly realizing that he hated to have her ride off and leave him. "Honest, there's a ghost. Spooky saw it, and Spider, and so did Jim. It follows folks at dusk—but maybe we could rout it out in daytime if we try real hard—and if you turn back and try to run it down, it gives a horrible screech and disappears into the bowels of the earth. Come on. Let's you and me go spook-hunting!" In his eagerness to persuade her, his tone might almost have been called loverlike.

Vida settled her disreputable old hat more firmly on her head because of the wind that had risen, and looked at him unmoved. "What makes you act so silly?" she inquired. "You smiled at me then just the way one of our herders does when he gets about half shot. He always comes around and tries to propose, when he gets about so full, and poppy has to chase him off. The last time, I set old Whimper on him." She turned away to study the bold wall of rocks opposite. "There's lions in these hills—panthers, maybe you'd call 'em—and now and then a black bear; and all kinds of lynx and bobcats and coyotes and things. But there ain't any spooks—I guess it wouldn't take more'n a bobcat to put you Sunbeamers on the run, though! I s'pose maybe they seen a coyote and thought it was a spook."

"After that," sighed Shelton, with exaggerated reproach. "I shall have to leave thee. Farewell, heartless one, until we meet under more auspicious skies."

"There ain't anything the matter with this sky," said Vida. "I wish to goodness you would go, if you've got to be silly. I don't see what's got into you. You was sensible enough the other time." The worst of it was, she meant just what she said; you could not look into her eyes and doubt that.

Shelton considered himself offended, and he turned away and rode back down the cañon wall, with no more adieu than the perfunctory lifting of his hat.

"I'll be up here somewhere day after to-morrow," she called after him when he had ridden fifty yards or so.

"I won't," he retorted, and rode on. After a while he began to wonder if she had heard him. At first he wished that he had spoken louder; later on he was sorry that he spoke so loud.

He found a place where the cañon looked crossable, and rode down into it. Then, the opposite side that had looked almost as if it had a crude trail zigzagging up to the top, showed him a ledge at the bottom that even he knew better than ask Dutch to climb. The way down the cañon was blocked by what must have been a waterfall in the wet times, but was now a sheer jump-off ten feet high. He did not ask Dutch to go down that, either; Shelton was learning a few of the limitations of horses. Perforce, then, he went up the canon toward the hills—though he disliked that route because Vida might see him from the top and think he was hanging around in her vicinity.

The cañon widened until there was a grassy bottom, with a little creek that kept the place green. Then it narrowed abruptly, with black ledges leaning forward, as if they wanted to see how far they could tilt without losing their balance. It got so gloomy dark down there at last that Shelton looked at his watch to see if it were nearly night. He was not riding now, but plodding along afoot with Dutch following patiently after; and the way in which Dutch negotiated the scattered rocks and deep little washouts proved him the best of his kind.

The cañon walls drew in to hold close a huge thicket of chokecherries, service-berry bushes, and buckbrush, mingled in one glorious tangle. Shelton tried to go through it—he was the kind of persistent idiot that would try anything—and after a few attempts gave it up and started around. The ground was soft and black and rich looking where he skirted the thicket, and somewhere near he heard water gurgling like a newly awakened baby talking to its fists. The sound reminded him that he was thirsty.

He left Dutch standing with dropped reins and went forward, parting the branches before him with both hands to make easy passing. In a minute he came to a tiny stream, evidently fed by a hidden spring, bordered with mint and dainty little grass flowers and shaded deep with the thicket. He felt the thrill of discovery. He was sure that Vida did not know of this cold little brook, else she would surely have spoken of it. She had looked into the cañon and had not mentioned that there was water down there. Probably no white man had ever drunk from it before, he thought exultingly as he knelt down on the vivid green margin so sharply contrasting with the black barrenness all around.

He leaned far over to drink, and then drew back, staring at something in the soft, black soil at the very edge. A huge imprint in the ooze; a track so fresh that even Shelton, new to the ways of the wild though he was, could not fail to see that it was but minutes old—perhaps seconds, even. He sat back on his heels and looked at it, puzzling over the manner of beast that could have made it. Almost human it was, and huge—big as the great tracks Burney made when he walked abroad—and yet not human.

Little, trampled blades of grass were rising slowly along the edges to show how lately the thing had passed that way. Like the print of a great, bare foot it was, except that the toes were not the toeprints of a man; nor was the track shaped just like a man's foot. Shelton studied it curiously. Even while he stared at it the water pushed the mud back, smoothing out little details and making the whole a big, long, formless depression in the ooze. Looking at it so, Shelton would have called it a man's track and let it go at that. But it was not a man's track; he was sure of that.

"Must have been a bear," he told himself at last, and bent over again and got his drink. "She said there were bears in the hills—but say, he must be a whopper, to make a track the size of that! Too bad the beggar got off without me seeing it."

He got out his gun and examined it. Pretty small caliber to go hunting the bear that made that track—but Shelton did want to kill a bear, now that he knew there was one about. It would be something to write home to the folks; and a bearskin rug that he had killed himself—say! That would be simply great!

Foolhardily he searched beyond the brook, though the tangle was thick and exceedingly favorable to an ambush. He was not scared—he did not know enough of the danger to be scared; he was anxious and elated and filled with the eager expectancy of the novice. He beat about in the bushes and then came crashing out into the open near the northern wall of the cañon; and he stood baffled and disappointed before the emptiness.

Surely the creature could not have climbed that sheer wall—and yet Shelton had a hazy notion that bears did climb trees and things. He was staring up at it and wondering what possible route the beast could have taken—since it did not seem to be anywhere in the canon—when he noticed the gorgeous purple and crimson of the sky. Sunset so soon? It is astonishing how the hours slide past when one is wholly given up to that primitive emotion, the lust of the chase.

He must start back to the ranch, though he hated the idea of leaving that bear alive. Still he could not hunt a bear in the dark, and he could get lost very easily, and worry the life out of the fellows at the Sunbeam. He went back to where Dutch was waiting impatiently with twitching ears and uneasy tramplings; mounted awkwardly, and started back down the cañon. In the narrowest places the gloom of night was already filling the gorge almost to the brim, and Dutch stepped out briskly wherever the footing was passable.

And then a strange sensation seized Shelton C. Sherman. He looked back without quite knowing why he did so. The cañon yawned stark and empty behind him. Presently he turned again and looked, vaguely expectant. There was nothing. Then it came definitely, the feeling that he was being followed. He stopped Dutch still and waited, watching the gorge behind him. There was no sign of any living thing save himself and a belated bird that flew chirping up to the lighter slopes.

Shelton was not frightened, as the word is commonly understood. He was puzzled, and he felt an eerie prickling of the flesh as the darkness advanced and muffled the farther steps. But mainly he was chagrined because he could not see to shoot—even supposing there was something to shoot at. He thought it would make great stuff to write home to the folks, and he kept all his senses alert for fresh incidents or adventures. On the whole, he rather enjoyed the sensations he got out of it.

Once he heard a rock rattle down and bump somewhere—and the sound was so close behind him that he pulled his six-shooter from its scabbard and turned for a shot at the bear, or whatever it was. But Dutch was pulling hard on the reins and stepping along much faster than was wise, and would not wait till the thing overtook them.

It was Dutch that found the trail up the cañonside, where they had come down. He toiled up through rocks and stunted bushes, stopping when he must to get a breath or two, and listening always for something behind, something that followed them still. Shelton could feel the quivering of the horse's flesh beneath him, and it dawned on him that old Dutch was scared, and that he was climbing the hill faster than he ought to climb if he expected to have any wind left when he reached the top, and that he supposed he really ought to get off and walk. It was a shame, when you think of it, to make good old Dutch carry a great hulk like him up that bluff. Shelton dismounted then, and went ahead.

He wondered if he really felt more comfortable in his mind when Dutch was between him and the bear—or whatever it was. To test his own feeling about the matter, he looped the reins up awkwardly around the saddle horn and let Dutch take the lead for a few rods; but he kept looking back, and he soon decided that Dutch really ought to be led.

At the top he tried to persuade himself that his imagination was playing tricks with him; that there was nothing behind him save the bleak, dark hills and the usual night prowlers abroad on business that concerned him not at all. But there was Dutch, hurrying along with his eyes rolled to watch the trail behind; that did not look like imagination, did it?

Before he had gone a quarter of a mile, Shelton was clinging to the saddle horn while the horse galloped unevenly over the rough ground. It takes a rider with some experience to sit easily in the saddle and ride headlong through the sagebrush country, with a jump here, a quick swerve there, and a longer stride to bridge a cut or avoid one of those bugbears of the range, gopher and badger holes. Shelton had all that to contend with, and he had also the natural roughness of Dutch's gait. So he hung onto the horn and bounded, and more than once was saved from falling by his long legs that instinctively clinched the horse's belly when he jumped sidewise.

Ordinarily the mere feat of riding at a fast gallop was enough to occupy all of Shelton's attention. To-night, however, the weird feeling that he was being followed persisted; increased, even.

Shelton, before he reached the brow of the hill, beneath which winked the welcome lights of the Sunbeam cabins, came as near to being scared as ever he had been in his twenty years of heedless existence. He was riding with his head over his shoulder and his eyes strained into the darkness behind him, the last few miles. For all that, he had not seen anything that need agitate him or goad his imagination into delusions. He would have called it a whim—but there was Dutch, also looking back, and traveling with an unprecedented amount of ambition. Once or twice, from the way Dutch acted, Shelton felt certain that Dutch saw it—whatever it was.

Then, as he dipped over the brow of the bluff, and rode down the trail into the shut-in valley already grown familiar, he heaved a sudden sigh of relief and went on at peace. Whatever it was, the thing was gone; at least he no longer felt its presence, and Dutch settled down to his habitual shamble and went on to the stables as though nothing had ever disturbed his equanimity.