“Say, Gene, if you’ve got to sleep at the top of your voice, you better drag your bed down into the orchard,” he growled. “Let up a little, can’t yuh?”
“Ah, shut up and let a fellow sleep!” mumbled Gene, snuggling the covers up to his ears.
“Just what I want you to do. You snore like a sawmill. Darn it, you’ve got to get out of the grove if yuh can’t—”
“Ah-h-ee-ee!” wailed a voice somewhere among the trees, the sound rising weirdly to a subdued crescendo, clinging there until one’s flesh went creepy, and then sliding mournfully down to silence.
“What’s that?” The two jerked themselves to a sitting position, and stared into the blackness of the grove.
“Bobcat,” whispered Clark, in a tone which convinced not even himself.
“In a pig’s ear,” flouted Gene, under his breath. He leaned far over and poked his finger into a muffled form. “D’yuh hear that noise, Grant?”
Grant sat up instantly. “What’s the matter?” he demanded, rather ill-naturedly, if the truth be told.
“Did you hear anything—a funny noise, like—”
The cry itself finished the sentence for him. It came from nowhere, it would seem, since they could see nothing; rose slowly to a subdued shriek, clung there nerve-wrackingly, and then wailed mournfully down to silence. Afterward, while their ears were still strained to the sound, the bobcat squalled an answer from among the rocks.
“Yes, I heard it,” said Grant. “It’s a spook. It’s the wail of a lost spirit, loosed temporarily from the horrors of purgatory. It’s sent as a warning to repent you of your sins, and it’s howling because it hates to go back. What you going to do about it?”
He made his own intention plain beyond any possibility of misunderstanding. He lay down and pulled the blanket over his shoulders, cuddled his pillow under his head, and disposed himself to sleep.
The moon climbed higher, and sent silvery splinters of light quivering down among the trees. A frog crawled out upon a great lily—pad and croaked dismally.
Again came the wailing cry, nearer than before, more subdued, and for that reason more eerily mournful. Grant sat up, muttered to himself, and hastily pulled on some clothes. The frog cut himself short in the middle of a deep-throated arr-rr-umph and dove headlong into the pond; and the splash of his body cleaving the still surface of the water made Gene shiver nervously. Grant reached under his pillow for something, and freed himself stealthily from a blanketfold.
“If that spook don’t talk Indian when it’s at home, I’m very much mistaken,” he whispered to Clark, who was nearest. “You boys stay here.”
Since they had no intention of doing anything else, they obeyed him implicitly and without argument, especially as a flitting white figure appeared briefly and indistinctly in a shadow-flecked patch of moonlight. Crouching low in the shade of a clump of bushes, Grant stole toward the spot.
When he reached the place, the thing was not there. Instead, he glimpsed it farther on, and gave chase, taking what precautions he could against betraying himself. Through the grove and the gate and across the road he followed, in doubt half the time whether it was worth the trouble. Still, if it was what he suspected, a lesson taught now would probably insure against future disturbances of the sort, he thought, and kept stubbornly on. Once more he heard the dismal cry, and fancied it held a mocking note.
“I’ll settle that mighty quick,” he promised grimly, as he jumped a ditch and ran toward the place.
Somewhere among the currant bushes was a sound of eery laughter. He swerved toward the place, saw a white form rise suddenly from the very ground, as it seemed, and lift an arm with a slow, beckoning gesture. Without taking aim, he raised his gun and fired a shot at it. The arm dropped rather suddenly, and the white form vanished. He hurried up to where it had stood, knelt, and felt of the soft earth. Without a doubt there were footprints there—he could feel them. But he hadn’t a match with him, and the place was in deep shade.
He stood up and listened, thought he heard a faint sound farther along, and ran. There was no use now in going quietly; what counted most was speed.
Once more he caught sight of the white form fleeing from him like the very wraith it would have him believe it. Then he lost it again; and when he reached the spot where it disappeared, he fell headlong, his feet tangled in some white stuff. He swore audibly, picked himself up, and held the cloth where the moon shone full upon it. It looked like a sheet, or something of the sort, and near one edge was a moist patch of red. He stared at it dismayed, crumpled the cloth into a compact bundle, tucked it under his arm, and ran on, his ears strained to catch some sound to guide him.
“Well, anyhow, I didn’t kill him,” he muttered uneasily as he crawled through a fence into the orchard. “He’s making a pretty swift get-away for a fellow that’s been shot.”
In the orchard the patches of moonlight were larger, and across one of them he glimpsed a dark object, running wearily. Grant repressed an impulse to shout, and used the breath for an extra burst of speed. The ghost was making for the fence again, as if it would double upon its trail and reach some previously chosen refuge. Grant turned and ran also toward the fence, guessing shrewdly that the fugitive would head for the place where the wire could be spread about, and a beaten trail led from there straight out to the road which passed the house. It was the short cut from the peach orchard; and it occurred to him that this particular spook seemed perfectly familiar with the byways of the ranch. Near the fence he made a discovery that startled him a little.
“It’s a squaw, by Jove!” he cried when he caught an unmistakable flicker of skirts; and the next moment he could have laughed aloud if he had not been winded from the chase. The figure reached the fence before him, and in the dim light he could see it stoop to pass through. Then it seemed as if the barbs had caught in its clothing and held it there. It struggled to free itself; and in the next minute he rushed up and clutched it fast.
“Why don’t you float over the treetops?” he panted ironically. “Ghosts have no business getting their spirit raiment tangled up in a barbed-wire fence.”
It answered with a little exclamation, with a sob following close upon it. There was a sound of tearing cloth, and he held his captive upright, and with a merciless hand turned her face so that the moonlight struck it full. They stared at each other, breathing hard from more than the race they had run.
“Well—I’ll—be—” Grant began, in blank amazement.
She wriggled her chin in his palm, trying to free herself from his pitiless staring. Failing that, she began to sob angrily without any tears in her wide eyes.
“You—shot me, you brute!” she cried accusingly at last. “You—shot me!” And she sobbed again.
Before he answered, he drew backward a step or two, sat down upon the edge of a rock which had rolled out from a stone-heap, and pulled her down beside him, still holding her fast, as if he half believed her capable of soaring away over the treetops, after all.
“I guess I didn’t murder you—from the chase you gave me. Did I hit you at all?”
“Yes, you did! You nearly broke my arm—and you might have killed me, you big brute! Look what you did—and I never harmed you at all!” She pushed up a sleeve, and held out her arm accusingly in the moonlight, disclosing a tiny, red furrow where the skin was broken and still bleeding. “And you shot a big hole right through Aunt Phoebe’s sheet!” she added, with tearful severity.
He caught her arm, bent his head over it—and for a moment he was perilously near to kissing it; an impulse which astonished him considerably, and angered him more. He dropped the arm