THE "HANT."
"Now, let me tell you what's a fact," said Dan, after he had taken a
few minutes in which to consider his father's proposition. "I don't
reckon it will be any use for us to go back and try to find that there
letter. I'll bet anything that the hant has found it and carried it
miles away before this time."
"Dannie, what's the use of talking that way?" exclaimed Silas,
impatiently, "Don't you know that hants can't tote nothing away, 'cause
they're sperits? All they can do is to jump up in front of a feller and
frighten him; but they can't do no harm to you. We'll take our guns
along, and if he's fool enough to show himself we'll pepper him good
fashion."
"And never hurt him at all," said Dan. "He'll be just as sassy with his
hide full of bird-shot as he was before. Now, pap, you wait and see if
I ain't right."
Silas did not pay much attention to these words of warning, but
they were afterward recalled to his mind in a manner that was most
unexpected and startling. What he was thinking of just now was the
letter. He was very anxious to find it, for he was afraid that it might
fall into the hands of some one who would use it to his injury. When
he turned about and led the way into the cabin, Dan followed him with
reluctant steps.
"You needn't be no ways skeery about going up the road in broad
daylight," said Silas, encouragingly. "It ain't likely that that there
hant will go away from the cave and roam around the country, scaring
folks, for the fun of the thing. He ain't out there in the woods, and
you never heard him."
"I did, for a fact," protested Dan.
"I don't believe it, all the same," answered Silas, as he took down his
heavy double-barrel and measured the loads in it with the ramrod. "He's
come back to the cave to watch them five hundred pounds of money, and
see that nobody don't carry 'em away; and he'll never leave there."
"Then how are we going to get that fortune?" inquired Dan.
"We'll just walk right in and take it without saying a word to him,"
said Silas boldly. "I've heard my father tell that them hants can't
harm you if you ain't afraid of 'em."
"Well, I'll tell you one thing, and that ain't two," said Dan, as he
shouldered his gun and followed his father from the cabin. "I ain't a
going to run no risk. I'll help you find the cave, but I won't go into
it, I bet you. I don't want to hear something screeching at me through
the dark, and see great eyes of fire--"
"Don't Dannie!" exclaimed Silas, shivering all over, as if some one had
drawn an icicle along his back.
"Well, that's the way them hants do, ain't it?" asked the boy. "I'd as
soon be knocked in the head with a club as to have something scare me
to death. Come on, if you're coming. I ain't going ahead, and that's
all there is about it."
The two brave fellows were by this time fairly in the road, and Silas
was prudently slackening his pace, to allow Dan to get in advance of
him.
The latter's description of the greeting that would be extended to them
by the guardian spectre, when they went into the cave after the money
that was supposed to be concealed there, had taken all his courage away
from him, and, if there was any danger ahead, Silas did not want to be
the first to meet it.
Dan, who was quick to notice this, also slackened his own pace, and the
two walked slower and slower, until they came to a dead stop.
"I see what you're up to, old man," said Dan, shaking his clenched hand
at his sire, "and you might as well know, first as last, that you can't
play no such trick onto me. I'll stick close to you, and face the music
as long as you do; but you shan't shove me in front of you not one
inch."
It was no use for Silas to protest that he had no intention of doing
anything of the kind, for the case was too clear against him; so he
pushed ahead again, and Dan, true to his promise, kept close at his
side. They walked on for a quarter of a mile or more, holding their
guns in readiness for instant use, and never saying a word to each
other, and at last the deep silence that brooded over the surrounding
woods became too much for the ferryman's nerves. He broke it by saying,
in a suppressed whisper:
"You read far enough in that letter to know that there's five hundred
pounds of money into that there cave, didn't you? That's as much as me
and you both can pack away on our backs in one trip, and it beats me
how that feller could have toted it so far. Now where be we going to
hide it? That's what's been a bothering of me. Can't you think up some
good--Laws a massy! what's the matter of you?" exclaimed Silas; for Dan
suddenly seized his father's arm with a grip that made him wonder.
They were just going around the first turn in the road. Instead of
replying to his father's question in words, Dan raised his hand and
pointed silently toward the bushes a short distance away.
Silas looked, and was just in time to catch a glimpse of something
which got out of the range of his vision so quickly that he could not
tell what it was. He turned to Dan for an explanation.
"It's the hant," whispered the latter. "I know it is, for didn't he go
into them evergreens without making the least stir among the branches?"
Silas couldn't say whether he did or not, and neither did he stop to
argue the matter. Forgetting that he had brought his double-barrel
with him on purpose to "pepper" the ghost, in case he saw fit to make
himself visible, Silas faced about and took to his heels; but before
he had taken half a dozen steps, Dan flew past him as if he had been
standing still.
His father made a desperate effort to catch him as he went by, but Dan
sprang out of his reach and bounded onward with increased speed, never
stopping to take breath or to look behind him, until he found himself
safe in the cabin. When his father stepped across the threshold, a few
minutes later, Dan made all haste to close and lock the door.
"You're a purty son, you be, to run off and leave your poor old pap to
face the danger alone," said the ferryman, sinking into the nearest
chair and fairly gasping for breath. "I won't give you none of my
fortune when I get it, just to pay you for that mean piece of business."
"I don't care," answered Dan, doggedly. "You run first, and I wasn't
going to stay behind with that thing there in the bushes. I reckon
you're willing to believe now that he was a chasing of me a while ago,
ain't you? I tell you, pap, he follers the letter, and he'll never
leave off pestering the man that's got it. I'm glad it's lost."
"So be I," said Silas, who had not thought of this before. "He bothered
his pardner, who was the only one who knew that there was a fortune
in the cave, and his pardner had to jump into the lake to get shet of
him. It stands to reason, then, that he'll show himself to every one
who finds out about that money. I 'most wish that that letter hadn't
been put in my wood-pile, 'cause I can't rest easy while that hant is
loafing about here."
"Now I'll tell you this for a fact," added Dan. "You'd best let the
whole thing drop right where it is. The hant will be sure to foller
the money wherever it goes, and as often as you step out to your
hiding-place to get a dollar or two, you will find him there waiting
for you."
"Dannie," said Silas, slowly, "I'll bet you have hit centre the first
time trying. But it 'pears to me that if he wanted to keep the secret
of that cave hid from everybody, he ought by rights to have scared me
away when he saw me taking the letter out of my wood-pile."
"You can't never get the money, and that's all there is about it," said
Dan, confidently.
"Yes, we can!" exclaimed Silas, jumping up to put his gun back in its
place. "I've just thought of something, and I want you to tell me if
you don't think it about the cutest trick that was ever played on a
hant or anything else. He'll stay around where that letter is till some
one finds it, won't he?"
Dan thought it very likely.
"Then he'll go with the feller, to keep track of the letter, won't he?"
Dan was sure he would.
"And if it ain't found right away, he'll hang around so's to keep an
eye on it and see where it goes to. Don't you think he will?"
Dan replied that he did.
"Well, now, that's what I am going to work on," continued Silas,
gleefully. "The hant is out of the cave now--we're sure of that, for we
both seen him when he went into them bushes--and we must work things
so's to keep him out."
"You keep saying 'we' all the time," interrupted Dan, "and I tell you,
once for all, that I ain't going to have nothing to do with it. You can
have all the money, for I won't go nigh the cave."
"I don't ask you to," Silas hastened to assure him. "That's the trick I
was telling you about. All I want you to do is to walk up and down the
road to-morrow--it's getting too late to do anything to-day--and make
the hant believe that you're looking for the letter you lost."
"Well, I won't do it," said Dan, promptly.
"That'll keep him away from the cave," continued the ferryman, paying
no attention to the interruption, "and while he is watching you, I'll
slip up and gobble that fortune without asking any other help from you.
And I'll give you half, the minute I get my hands on to it--the very
minute."
"Well, I won't do it," said Dan, again. "Why don't you stay and watch
the hant, and let me go after the money?"
This proposition almost took the ferryman's breath away. He wouldn't
have agreed to it if the robber's treasure had been twice twelve
thousand dollars.
"Why, you don't know where the cave is," he managed to articulate.
"No more do you," retorted Dan.
"Yes, I do, 'cause I looked at the map. I can go right to it on the
darkest of nights."
"Here comes mam and that Joe of our'n, and so you'd best hush up," said
Dan, in a hurried whisper. "I ain't a going to play 'Hi-spy' all alone
with that there hant, and that's all there is about it. But I do hate
to give up my good clothes, and breech-loader and j'inted fish-pole,"
he added, after thinking a moment, "and mebbe I'll go with you up to
the cave to-morrow, and make him keep his distance while you go in and
bring out the money. Who knows but what the smell of powder and the
whistle of shot about his ears will scare him so't he will go away and
never come back?"
Silas caught the idea at once, and felt greatly encouraged by it; but
before he could say anything the door, which Dan had unlocked while he
was talking, was thrown open, and Mrs. Morgan and Joe came in.
The latter looked cheerful and happy, but it was plain that his mother
was worried and anxious. She knew that there would be trouble in that
house in just one month from that day.