SEEIN' THINGS
Stop-blue-car-five-o-seven-nine-two-eagle-on-front.
Out of the solemn darkness, someone, somewhere, had called to Peter
Piper of Piper's Crossroads; had stolen like a silent ghost to his
little window and bidden him watch.
Far away that arresting voice may have been, away off in the big world,
and none could say how far or near, or where or how it spoke, calling in
the endless wilderness of night. But it spoke to Peter Piper, of Piper's
Crossroads, to Peter Piper, pioneer scout.
And Peter Piper, with the aid of the only scout companion that he had,
read it and was _prepared_, as it is the way of a scout to be.
He did not dare to hope that he was being drawn into the actual circle
of scouting; he would not know how to act among those natty strangers.
Wonderful as they were, with their pathfinding and all that, they could
hardly penetrate to his humble, sequestered little home. Peter Piper of
Piper's Crossroads was not going to allow himself to dream any
extravagantly impossible dreams. The nickel flashlight and a
correspondence with some unknown "brother," that was as far as his hopes
carried.
He had still a lingering and persistent feeling that this whole amazing
business was unreal; that he had been dreaming it or at least reading a
meaning where there was none. He knew that he could see trees and the
stars in Hawley's pond when there were none there. Might not this be the
same? He had expected sometime or other to make a signal fire and give
this scout voice a try-out with some simple word. He had not expected to
be aroused and called to service by its spectral, mysterious command.
What should he do? Set it down to his own deceiving fancy and go back to
his handbook? Return to the wholesome realities of stalking and trailing
which filled those engrossing pages? Poor Peter Piper felt that he had
made a sort of bold excursion from Piper's Crossroads into the realm of
miracles and that he had better not let that weird apparition over
beyond the graveyard dupe and mock him. Perhaps he had been "seein'
things." Yet there were the long and short flashes and they had spelled
that warning message, or else he had gone out of his senses or been
dreaming. He hardly knew what to think, now that he had time to think.
His credulity soon gained the upper hand, he began to doubt his own
eyes, and he was just a bit ashamed of what he was resolved to do. At
all events he would have the delight of doing it, and no one would know.
He would act just as a _real_ scout would _really_ act if the message
was _real_ and _true_.
Stealing down the creaky, boxed-in stairs, he got a lantern from the
kitchen and lighted it. The actual performance of this practical act
made his experience of the last few minutes seem fanciful, unreal. He
was no longer under the spell of that ghostly column and he was not so
sure that he believed in it. To bestir himself upon the authority of
such an uncanny warning seemed rather foolish. He almost found it
easier, now, to believe that he had seen some spectral thing in the
graveyard.
As he emerged from the house the familiar things about him seemed to
mock his vision of a warning message in the sky. The startled chickens
in the little hen-house resettled themselves comfortably on their
perches as if not to be disturbed by such nonsense. The calf resting at
the end of his pegged rope arose, looked about him and lay down again as
if he would not be a party to poor Peter's absurd nocturnal enterprise.
The darkness and the vastness of the wooded country seemed to chill
Peter's hopes. Now that the gripping spell was over he hardly knew what
to think....
With his jack-knife he cut a piece from the rope which held the calf and
moved the peg nearer to the animal which looked curiously on at this
unexpected abridgment of its sphere of freedom. It almost seemed to
Peter that the calf was laughing at him.
This piece of rope he stretched across the road, fastening one end to
the rotten gate-post, long deserted by its gate, the other to a tree.
Then he hung the lantern midway of this line. This seemed as much as his
waning hope justified, but on second thought he stole into the house,
took a black tomato crate marker from the kitchen shelf and on a paper
flour-bag printed the words DANGER ROAD CLOSED. This he hung upon the
rope near the lantern. Then he sat down on the old carriage block where
they used to stand the milk cans and waited. He felt rather foolish
waiting there and he wondered what he should do if a big car with the
number 50792 and an eagle on it should really come along....
The night was pitch dark; somewhere in the lonely woods hard by the
screech owl was still calling, and the brisk autumn wind, freshening as
the night advanced into the wee hours, conjured up strange noises in the
loose hanging sticks of the old ramshackle fence along the roadside.
Dried leaves, driven by the fitful gusts of wind, sounded like someone,
or some _thing_, hurrying by.
Now, indeed, Peter's fine hopes melted away as he waited there in the
darkness. To be sure, this was a main road, as likely a route as any
thereabouts for autos, and in the daytime many passed there. But as he
waited now in the deep, enveloping night, and heard no sound save the
haunting voices caused by the wind and the low, monotonous singing of
the forest life, it seemed unthinkable that any thrilling sequel of his
singular experience in his little room could occur. Everything was the
same as usual, the crickets chirping, the owl calling, the little
graveyard down the road wrapped in darkness.... Glory was not going to
knock on the humble door of Peter Piper of Piper's Crossroads....
Peter glanced down the dark road toward the graveyard; he had always
hurried past that spot when coming home from the crossroads at night.
Once he had seen a ghostly figure on the stone wall, which, on more
careful inspection the next morning, proved to be the sexton's shovel
with his hat on top of it. The little church was around the bend of the
road, within the hallowed acre.
Suddenly, as Peter glanced in the direction where the old leaning
gravestones were wrapped in darkness, he saw something which harrowed
his very soul and made his blood run cold. One of those stones was
bathed in a dim, shadowy light. It was startling to see just one stone
and no others. It was not a light so much as an area of gossamer
brightness that enveloped it, a kind of gauze shroud. Peter gazed,
unable to stir, his breaths coming short and fast. Then this dim shroud
left the tombstone and glided slowly through the graveyard, shedding its
hovering brightness upon a small area of the stone wall as it crossed,
and came steadily, steadily over toward Peter Piper.