The Spook Hills Mystery/Chapter 6

"Say, fellows, how big is a bear that makes a track that long?" Shelton measured a space with his spread palms and waited for some one to volunteer the information.

"'Bout as big as a good-sized elephant," drawled Spider, after a perceptible pause, holding a lighted match to his cigarette.

"No, but really? You know, I ran across a fresh bear track that was that long. I couldn't find the bear, though. It was in a deep thicket of all kinds of trees and bushes, and I hunted all around—but I never got a glimpse of it. It's strange, too. The track was perfectly fresh—just made, in fact"

"How d'yuh know?" Spooky demanded, looking up.

"Why, it was right in the edge of a little stream of water, and the water hadn't washed any mud into it yet when I first saw it. And at the heel, the grass was just beginning to stand up straight again after being mashed down. I thought that meant the track was fresh and"

"Purty good, f'r a kid," Jim observed dryly, shifting his great wad of tobacco to the other cheek and grinning openly.

Shelton spent a few seconds in eying Jim doubtfully, and then he went on with his story, and told the whole of it, even to the conviction that he had been followed to the edge of the bluff that bordered the Sunbeam coulee.

"Shelton She Sherman shays she shaw a she-bear shelling sea sells on the sheshore," Spider commented gravely, with the little twinkle in his eyes.

"Aw, say, fellows!" Shelton protested—for the thing was fresh and very vivid in his memory. "It's a fact, all of it." He went over the whole story again, adding minute details which he had slurred with generalities in the first telling.

Spider got up, threw his cigarette stub into the fire, and turned upon Spooky. "Say, Spooky, you're to blame for this," he accused sternly. "Shep was a nice, innocent, truthful cuss when he come here. And your dog-goned, baneful influence and example has done this!" He indicated Shelton with his outflung hand. "You've lied to him, and you've lied before him, and you've lied behind his back ever since he come. We can't blame Shelton She Sherman. He is more to be pitied than censured. If Shelton She Sherman shays he shees she-bears shelling sea sells on the seasore, why, it's your fault and his misfortune. If possible, we must keep this from his folks. And if there's anything we can do to remedy the evil before it becomes virulent and the whole outfit gets infectecated, I for one am ready and willing to do my part. But if it turns out fatal, the blame rests upon you, Spooky."

Spooky laughed. So did Shelton, for that matter, and Jim, and Pike. And Shelton protested so earnestly that he was telling the truth, that they consented at last to believe that he had seen a track which may have looked like a bear's track, also the possibility that he had been followed by something.

"But that wasn't a bear," Spooky insisted, with perfect sincerity. "It was that same spook I felt and seen, and I'll bet money on it. You want to keep away from them hills, Shep. I've got a hunch that thing is fixin' to git somebody. Here's four of us been follered now. There ain't a one of us that wouldn't swear to it. Lemme tell you, Shep, them hills ain't safe."

You know what happened, then, the very next morning. Shelton C. Sherman borrowed Spider's big forty-five revolver and cartridge belt and stuffed it with cartridges; borrowed Spooky's skinning knife, and fastened that in the belt; put up lunch enough to last him two meals, dodged Burney and Burney's coldly questioning eyes, and rode back to Spook Hills to hunt for the bear that made so enormous a track that none of the boys would believe him when he told how big it was. Spider had assured him that his six-gun would sure make it unhealthy for any bear in the country, providing Shep pumped enough lead out of it and into the bear. Shelton had also his own thirty-eight, and he had some skill in shooting—witness the rattles he took home with him after that first expedition.

No one worried much about Shelton's personal welfare. They were not the worrying kind, for one thing, and they trusted to Dutch and that providence which is said to watch over children and fools. I don't know just how they tagged Shelton, but they fitted him out and let him go to hunt his bear, and they helped him avoid Burney, who so strongly disapproved of any Spook Hill trips.

First, Shelton rode straight to where he might hope to meet Vida. He wanted to tell her about the bear; and he thought perhaps she might like to join in the hunt, though he doubted the efficiency of her little twenty-two. He meant to lend her his own revolver, if she wanted to come along.

He met her fair, just as he was topping the high ridge that would give him a wide outlook in the direction of her camp. She urged her horse forward, and her eyes were hard and angry when she came close.

"Say, you Sunbeamers are sure straining yourselves to be neighborly, ain't you?" she demanded truculently, without replying to his gay greeting. "I don't mean you, yourself," she added, in the cause of justice, "but it sure makes me sore at the whole pesky outfit. Do you know what Goliath has done now?"

"Nothing but stay at the ranch and act like a hippopotamus with the toothache," Shelton replied cheerfully. "That's all I know of his doing."

"That ain't all he's done," she retorted sharply. "Where was he last night, for instance?"

"At home, when I got there—and I was late getting in. Smoking in front of the fire till bedtime. Why?"

"Because he wasn't. He was over killin' off about two dozen of our sheep, that's where he was. It couldn't have been anybody but him—the big bully. He twisted their necks like you'd wring the neck of a chicken. Uncle Jake was with that bunch, down there in the foothills behind that butte. He heard the dogs and went out. but it was dark—one of the dogs was killed, too," she added grimly. "Neck twisted just like the sheep. And you know who's the man that done it. You know there ain't any ordinary man could wring a sheep's neck like they was wrung. And the dog musta been just grabbed up and squashed! I seen him this morning, and his ribs are all mashed and his neck broke. It was Laddie, and he wasn't afraid. Uncle Jake says the other dog just crep' under the wagon and whined, when he seen what it was"

"Oh, say, doesn't that sound more as if an animal had been around?" Shelton cut in eagerly. "You know, I went down in that cañon over there, after I left you, and I saw a bear track. A whopper of a track, that the boys wouldn't believe in when I told them how big it was. Why, it was that long!" Shelton measured the space with his spread palms again, and again he saw frank disbelief in the eyes that looked at him. "Honest," he added, when he saw how she doubted.

"But Uncle Jake did see a little bit, just as he was leaving," Vida said positively. "He seen him go over a little rise, and he was big—Uncle Jake would swear it was Goliath. A bear don't go on its hind legs "

"It might—if it was carrying something. Don't you suppose it would carry a sheep away with it? I've read about them doing those things, and they go on their hind feet at such times." Shelton leaned toward her, and his cheeks were pink, like a girl's with earnestness. "I'm positive Burney was not away from the ranch last night," he said, to clinch his argument.

Finally Vida's conviction was shaken a bit. She let her eyes waver from his face, and she saw then how he was armed. She pointed to the sagging gun belt and the weapon that hung at his hip. "Is that for the bear?" she asked, with her first smile.

"It certainly is—and I brought mine along for you, if you'll take a hand in the hunt. Come on. Say, he must be a perfect whale of a bear! I'll take you where I saw his track, and maybe we can find some trail to his den"

Vida threw back her head and laughed musically, but with the unrestrained laughter of one used to wide spaces. "Oh, you're the funniest thing alive!" she told him afterward. "Do you want me to be eaten up? Or do you think you're a match for any bear? What are you driving at? To ask a lady to go bear-hunting with you, and take a chance"

"Oh, I beg your pardon. It never occurred to me that perhaps there might be some risk attached to it," Shelton declared, so convincingly in earnest that she went off into another fit of laughter. "I wouldn't want you to be hurt, and I'm so horribly green at this bear-hunting that perhaps you wouldn't be quite safe with me. Gee! I'd hate to have anything happen to you." He was just as openly sincere in that last statement as he was in the first, but Vida did not laugh. She only looked at him queerly. "I think perhaps I'd better go alone," he added chivalrously. "It certainly must be a whale of a bear."

"Aren't you afraid, yourself?" Vida studied him.

"Afraid? Why, I never thought of being afraid. Would a man be afraid of a bear with a track that long?" For the third time he measured the space.

"Oh, get along with you and bring me his hide, then!" Vida seemed suddenly to have decided that he was making fun of her. "I'll trail along on high ground, where I can kinda keep tab on you. I don't believe I want to sweep out any bear's den and see if he's got sheep bones cached in it, thank you. But you can if you want to."

An hour or more after that, Shelton dismounted from old Dutch at the little stream that led down from the upper cañon. He thought he had discovered another bear track, but he was too ignorant to be sure. In a narrow strip of loose sand which bordered the stream there was a deep imprint of what looked very much like a heel; a bare heel, he thought it, though. A flat rock just even with the surface of the sand had received the rest of the foot, and left no mark to tell exactly what it was.

Shelton blundered about in that immediate neighborhood for a few minutes, and then went on. At the place in the thicket where he had found the track, there was nothing save a faint depression in the mud. And since that was his only clew to the beast he sought, he was patently discouraged. He beat back and forth through the thicket—not knowing the habits of a bear—and finally gave up hovering around the place where it had been once, but might never be again. He went down again to where he had left Dutch, and turned to ride back whence he had come—at least, to where he had seen that mark.

A narrow gorge that he had overlooked before, thinking it a mere rift in the piled bowlders, he thought he would investigate. He was in no hurry to ride back to the upland and report failure to Vida, who would laugh at him for a greenhorn; besides, he had a vague impression that bears were rather fond of rough places. This was rough enough, in all conscience; even when he pulled upon the reins and clucked encouragingly, Dutch did not want to follow him over some of the worst places. He told himself that the sagacity and sure-footedness of the range horse has been greatly overestimated—but if you should see the places where he coaxed Dutch to risk his poor old bones, you would feel a new respect for that sore-tired animal.

Presently the gorge widened until it was possible to ride instead of scramble over rocks afoot. And then, just as he was coming into another grassy bottom, he saw before him, faintly defined, it is true, but unmistakable, the print of that great foot that still looked weirdly human to his town-trained eyes.

Shelton C. Sherman gave a suppressed whoop and went forward eagerly, triumphantly even. So little did he know of the wild that he fully expected to ride home joyously with the hide of the biggest bear in all Idaho rolled neatly behind the cantle. Later it occurred to him that he should have measured that track, so that he might confound Spooky and Spider, chief doubters at the Sunbeam, with actual figures—a diagram, perhaps, or a sketch. But he was too far up the canon before he thought of it, so he did not turn back.

Shelton went on and on—a mile, he guessed it afterward, though in rough country such as that, distance is difficult to estimate correctly. At any rate, he eventually came out upon a crude amphitheater formed by the converging hills. On one side the ascent was almost sheer, with loose shale that made it impossible to climb, even for a bear. Shelton was sure of that after he had tried to go up, and after Dutch had planted both front feet stiffly before him and refused to attempt it even. He turned his attention, then, to the left wall; for in front of him was a cliff straight and smooth and high.

Here, on the left, were overhanging ledges bordered with bushes evidently watered from some hidden spring. Shelton surveyed the prospect from a little distance, saw deep shadow under one ledge where should be sunlight, and rode over there. It was the first place he had seen that looked as if it might be the den of a bear.

It really did look like a cave of some sort, even when he came close. Though he stood within fifty yards of the spot, and though the sun shone hotly upon that side of the cañon, beneath that jagged., jutting ledge was black shadow. Shelton got down, dropped the reins so that Dutch would stand, and clambered over the loose rocks that had rolled down the slope during the centuries past.

He stopped just where the sunlight stopped also, and stared at the wide mouth that yawned at him blackly. He could look into it for a little way, and see how rough were the walls, with little excrescences of what he took to be stalactites clinging like barnacles to the rock. The floor, once it left the outer edge, was moist sand. Shelton looked down at it, and saw tracks—a good many of them. Some of them were long and uncannily human, and yet not human—the tracks of the bear; and there were tracks also of a man's boots—big boots, that could belong to no one save Burney, of the Sunbeam. Shelton's jaw dropped a little when he saw those, and he stared and stared before he ever thought of going on.

Finally he turned his head and looked back, blinking from gazing long upon the blackness. Dutch stood where he had been left, his ears flopping lazily in the sunlight, the rest of him hidden by the steep declivity up which his rider had climbed. In the open beyond Dutch a hawk was circling slowly with head dropped forward, watching for unwary gophers, perhaps. It was all very quiet and very reassuring—and Shelton, whether he realized it or not, at that moment needed something stolidly matter-of-fact to steady his reeling fancies.

For Burney was at home, he felt certain. And yet these tracks looked fresh—as fresh as the track he had seen in the edge of the little stream. And those other tracks, the huge impression of feet not quite human, they were fresh also; or so he believed, being ignorant of the fact that in moist sand that is sheltered from the weather a track will remain fresh looking for a long while.

He had come prepared to explore a cave if he found one; that is, he had purloined a candle end that he found in the bunk house, and he had matches. He pulled the bit of candle from his pocket, lighted it, and went into the dark, like the foolhardy fellow he was. He did show a little caution, I must confess; for he carried the light in his left hand, and in his right he held, tight-gripped, the big forty-five six-shooter Spider had loaned him. Afraid? No, but tingling with excitement, his senses atiptoe with enthusiasm for the adventure.

He stooped a little at first, and even then his hat crown scraped upon the rough-rock ceiling. He thought that Burney, if he really did come in here, must have bent almost double. Just a long tunnel straight into the hill, it seemed; an ancient, subterranean outlet for water or lava or something, he did not quite know what. When he held the light down, he still saw the tracks of the beast and of the man; he did not see any coming out, which did not occur to him as being significant until he had proceeded two hundred feet or so. Then he took a fresh grip on the revolver and went more cautiously. He was not afraid of Burney—though he knew that he had left Burney at the ranch, and therefore could not imagine him as being inside the cave. But the beast—well, he thought it wise to be ready, because a bear of such size might be a pretty nifty proposition if a man failed to kill him with the first shot or two.

So he went on and on. Once or twice his candle failed to reach the rock wall upon one side or the other, and he began to wonder if there might not be branches running in other directions. That made him more cautious still, though it could not dampen his enthusiasm or dull his eager expectancy. He tried to keep always going where the tracks led, which became somewhat difficult, since the floor varied its moist sand covering with a shale rock that left no mark. Still he kept on going.

Finally the tunnel forked, plainly and unmistakably. He could stand before a wedge of sweating rock and look down both fearsome passages, and he hesitated there, flaring the light into one tunnel and then into the other, looking eagerly for some sign of his quarry.

And then, while he stood there undecided, the skin began to creep and prickle at the back of his neck—where the hair of our cave-dwelling ancestors used to rise, perhaps, at the first warning of danger. Shelton did not quite know what ailed him, for the sensation was absolutely new to him. He glanced around involuntarily for some hiding place—and he did not know why. Something was watching him, out there in the blackness beyond the farthest candle gleam. It was like the sense of being followed, the night before, except that this feeling agitated him and alarmed him. Without reasoning the thing out, he dodged precipitately into the left-hand passage, and ran forward a few steps before he pulled himself together.

He stopped then and listened, his eyes straining into the darkness out of which he had come. He heard the rapid thump, thump, thump of his own heart, and he heard that muffled beating punctuated by the thin sound of water dripping somewhere. That was all. The rest was dead, impenetrable blackness like a wall, and silence that was like a curtain hung before that black wall. And yet

Shelton C. Sherman stood backed against the wall and knew that he was afraid; and that his fear was a blind, unreasoning fear, born perhaps of tricky nerves rebelling against that dark journey into the middle of a mountain. He saw the candle flaring and fading because his hand shook so; he felt his heart beating faster and faster, until it almost choked him. And yet

The terrible silence was split suddenly by a scream. Human, it sounded, and yet not human, but beastly—horrible. Shelton dropped the candle and clung to the rock beside him. His heart, he thought, stopped absolutely. His very knees buckled under him while he stood there. And then he heard something running, somewhere, even while the cave was playing horribly with the echoes of that scream. Running down that other passage with long leaps, it seemed to him, and the beat of four padded feet upon the rock floor. Then it must have struck the sand, because the sounds became suddenly muffled and scarcely distinguishable. Indeed, had he not been standing in such a horribly still place, he probably would have heard nothing.

Weak, shaking, scared so that the tremor reached the middle of his bones, Shelton pressed his back against the uneven wall behind him and waited; and listened; and glared into the blackness, half expecting to see some terrifying thing take shape before him. He wanted light—and he was afraid to stoop and grope for the candle, afraid to light a match and look for it, afraid to move. There was a quick, suffocating beat, beat, beat in his throat. There was a heavy pounding in his chest, and in his brain was a numbness so that he could not think of anything very clearly. He only knew that he was scared—in mortal, agonizing terror.

Shelton said afterward that it took him at least an hour to pull himself together so that he had the nerve to find his stub of candle and light it. But he did find it, and he lighted it, with furtive glances behind him when the blaze flamed up and drove the heavy darkness back so that it did not seem to be pressing the very life out of him. Finally he made his way back toward the entrance—slowly, furtively, with one side of him scraping the wall so that he could set his back against it at the first alarm. Instincts he had inherited from the centuries behind him took the initiative and drove Shelton toward the light of day.

He was panting when he came out into the sunlight, though he had not run except the last few rods when he saw the light glimmer ahead of him. He sat down where the sun shone hotly upon the yellow soil just out from the ledge, and thanked God for the bright light of day. In a minute he remembered Dutch—and Dutch was gone.

Shelton stood up and searched the whole cañon bottom with his eyes. A horse could scarcely hide there, unless he climbed the almost perpendicular sides so as to get behind the bowlders that jutted out everywhere. Dutch must have gone down the cañon, scared by the thing that came out of the cave. The thought served to hearten Shelton appreciably. There was no shame in being afraid of anything that could scare old Dutch, he told himself. And there was another point: It could not have been Burney, then, that came out of the cave; though Shelton, in spite of the evidence of the fresh boot tracks, had not convinced himself that Burney was ever in that cave. It was queer—the whole thing was almighty queer, he told himself when his pulse became normal and the fear ceased to cloud his intellect. There were a lot of things which he would certainly never have believed if any one had told him about them; Spider, for instance, or Spooky. He wished they were both with him now, so that he could prove a few things which, on the face of them, seemed incredible.

It occurred to Shelton that the tracks coming out of the cave would prove whether it was Burney or the bear—if it really was a bear, which Shelton was beginning to doubt. He had never heard or read of a bear screaming like that. A panther might, perhaps—but a bear? It had been a shriek—a half-human scream that fairly melted one's bones. No, after that scream he was beginning to lose faith in the bear.

He had forgotten to blow out his candle, but when he looked at it he saw that the wind had attended to that for him. He glanced behind him at the wide grin of the cave mouth, debated within himself, and, with a hunch of his shoulders, felt in his pocket for a match.