Those two guards were hanging onto each other, and standing as stiff as
fence posts. You’d have thought they were frozen. And then, all of a
sudden, Catty turned around his board so the skeleton side faced the
men. Well, _sir_! First one of them let out a yawp, and then the other
one let out a better yawp. It was a regular yawp competition. Catty
ducked his board out of sight quick.
“D-d-did you see t-that?” says one man.
“I s-s-saw s-something,” says the other, with his teeth chattering.
“It was a s-skeleton.”
“A-wigglin’ his arms and dancin’ and makin’ awful faces,” says the
other, which goes to show how easy it is to see things that _ain’t_.
“M-maybe we jest imagined it.”
“We didn’t imagine them groans.”
At that I set off another groan, and right on top of it Catty gave them
a short view of the skeleton again—and then we missed those men. They
went away from there. They didn’t go slow, either. If a jackrabbit could
have seen the jumps they took he would have curled up and died with
envy; and at every jump they turned loose a yell. Well, in about two
minutes the whole camp was in a rumpus. Lanterns began to show, and men
began to holler to know what was the matter, and there was a regular
mess.
“I guess,” says Catty, “we better kind of move away a little—around to
the other side.”
“We can’t,” says I.
“Why?”
“Because the barbed wire runs right down to the water.”
“That’s right,” says he. “Let’s go hide behind something close by.”
So we went and laid down to listen, and the noise kept up, and we could
hear a man talking loud and mad.
“Hey, what’s all this rumpus about?” says he. “Who’s doin’ all this
dog-gone bellerin’ and hollerin’?”
“We seen a ghost ... a pirate ghost,” says a voice, and we knew it was
one of our sentinel friends.
“You git back to your place,” says the boss, “and don’t leave it again.”
“Not me,” says the man. “Not for a million dollars. I’m all through
bein’ out there in the dark, with dead men under foot and skeletons
a-groanin’ and a-moanin’ all over the place.”
“Be you goin’ to obey orders?”
“Not if I was to hang for it,” says the man. There was a kind of a
silence, and then the boss says, “What was it you seen?”
“A skeleton, all over fire, and a-dancin’ and blubberin’ and a-pointin’
his finger at us.”
“Whereabouts?”
“Right beyond where we was standin’,” says the man.
“Show me.”
“I’ll show nobody. If you want to look, you kin look. It don’t make no
difference to me if you never see no ghost—and if you wait till I show
you one, why, you hain’t apt to see him. Me, I’m a-goin’ to git into my
bunk and kiver my head up with the blanket.”
Then the boss spoke to somebody else.
“Something scared them,” says he. “What d’ye suppose it was?”
“We’d better find out.”
“If somebody’s monkeying around here, Mr. Dunn’ll want to know about
it.”
“Come on, then.”
Catty and I could see them coming closer by the lantern they carried. In
a minute they stopped by the wire and stood looking, but there wasn’t a
thing to see.
“What’ll we do?” says I.
“Wait,” says Catty.
Well, they looked and looked, and listened and listened, but nothing
happened.
“Just got scairt in the dark,” says the boss man. “We better send
somebody else out to keep watch.”
So they went away, and in a couple of minutes some other men came along
to be sentinels. We let them get all set, and then Catty told me to let
loose a groan. I made a dandy. It was the best one I’d done yet. I
suppose the men were kind of nervous anyhow, on account of the other
rumpus, and when they heard me moan, they almost turned a flip-flop.
Then, right on top of it, Catty set up his skeleton and gave them a good
look.
That was the last of them. They went away faster than the other two, and
they yelled almost as loud.
“We’re having lots of fun,” says I, “but I don’t see we’re doing much
good.”
“We’re impairing the morale of the enemy,” says he.
“I can’t see where that pays any wages,” says I.
“It’ll get them so nervous,” says he, “they’ll be careless.”
“And then what?”
“Then,” says Catty, “we can go ahead with our scouting.”
About that time the boss man came back talking loud language, and what
he said was that he was going to stand guard himself for a while and
find out what it was that frightened the daylights out of his men. We
could see him light his pipe and stand leaning against a post.
“Wonder if he’ll scare?” says I.
“Wait a minute, and we’ll find out,” says Catty.
When he thought it was time, he gave me the word to moan, and this time
I really moaned. I’d had practice, and this one was mighty near perfect.
I don’t believe I could do better if I was to live a hundred years.
I’ll bet it was a shivery sound in the dark there, especially after four
other men had been frightened almost out of their shirts. Of course we
couldn’t see exactly what the boss man did, but I’ll bet he almost bit
his Adam’s apple.
“Who’s there?” says he, and his voice didn’t sound so harsh and bossy as
it did.
Catty held his hand over his mouth so his voice would sound hollow and
funny, and then he kind of sang, “Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest.”
Like that. And then he says, “Pieces-of-eight.... Pieces-of-eight....”
like the parrot in Treasure Island.
Then there was a little pause, and all at once he turned his skeleton
around so it faced the boss.
“Hey,” says the man, “who be you? You can’t fool me with your tricks.
Who be you?” But his voice sounded kind of wobbly. “You better come out
where I kin see you.”
“Walk the plank.... Walk the plank....” says Catty.
Anyhow this man wasn’t any coward. He was scairt, there was no doubt
about it, but he didn’t run.
“Hey, men,” he yelled. “Six of you come here. There’s somethin’ foolin’
around out here. Git a move on.”
“Now’s our chance,” says Catty.
“It looks as if now wasn’t,” says I. “They’ll catch us.”
“Don’t you believe it,” says he.
I guess they figured there was safety in numbers, for a bunch of men
came over together, and we gave them a groan and a peek at the skeleton.
“Over the wire and catch it,” says the boss. “Everybody over. I’m with
you. Nothin’s goin’ to hurt you. Ten dollars to the man that ketches
it.”
So over they came pell-mell, and just as they came, Catty set up the
skeleton in the sand, so it would stand without being held, where they
could see it.
“Come on,” says he, and he grabbed my arm. He didn’t drag me away, but
toward the wire.
“Hey,” I whispered, “you’re going the wrong way.”
“Shut up,” says he, “and come on.”
So I came.
The bunch of men were making a rush for the skeleton, and it was easy to
dodge them. In a minute we touched the wire, and I heard Catty snip, and
snip, and snip. “There,” says he. “We’ve cut their entanglement. Get a
move on you.”
We went through the gap and into the camp, and there we were. Just what
good it was going to do, I couldn’t see, and I don’t know as I see yet.
But it was exciting, and maybe that’s what Catty was after. He loved
excitement.
“They’ve captured the ghost,” says he, and I could hear him chuckle.
“Hope they enjoy it.”
While we talked I could hear his snippers going as he moved down the
fence and cut it in about a dozen places. “That’ll teach them to stick
up wire where they’ve no right to put it.”
“What do we do next?”
“Lay low and listen,” says he.
“For what?”
“To find out if they’ve discovered the treasure yet.”
“Where’ll we hide?”
“That’s what we’ve got to find out.”
There didn’t seem to be a soul in camp, for everybody had run over to
the side where the attack on the skeleton was going on. They seemed to
be looking hard for the folks who stuck it up, and there was a great
running around and hollering. It gave us a fine chance to nose around.
Right in the middle of the camp was a big hole, with trenches running
off from it in all directions. It looked like they intended to dig up
the whole enclosure in their hunt for the treasure, and it did look as
if they hadn’t found it yet. Not far from the hole was a pile of
supplies all covered with a tarpaulin, and we crouched behind it and
listened. It sounded as if the men were making a systematic hunt for us
along the beach. Lanterns were bobbing around and getting farther away.
“They’re going to comb the whole place between here and town,” says I.
“Fine,” says he, “the longer they stay, the better.” And then he slapped
his knee. “Whee!” he says kind of soft, but like he was tickled to
death.
“What’s the idee?” says I.
“Feel that box,” he says, “under the tarpaulin.”
“I feel it,” says I. “What’s in it?”
He scrouched down and got under the cover and, where nobody could see,
lighted his flash.
“It’s a case of sardines,” says he. “Help me haul it out.”
I did.
“Now dump it into this trench,” says he, and we did that, and covered it
with sand—right at the place where they had left off digging.
“There’s a treasure for ’em,” says he. “They’ll be digging there in the
morning, and the first thing, they’ll run onto that. Sardines! Oh, Billy
Patterson’s Mule! Sardines! They’ll think they’ve got the treasure till
they open it! Oh, don’t I wish I could be here to see it!”
You couldn’t beat that, could you? He’d have to play a joke on somebody
if he was just being blown up with dynamite.
“Say,” I says, “let’s do something that will be some good. This monkey
business isn’t helping Mr. Topper or Mr. Browning.”
“Well,” says he, “you take charge. What’ll we do first?”
“How should I know?” says I.
“You don’t want to be the boss?”
“No, but I want to do something.”
“All right. I’ll do whatever you say.” He waited a minute. “But if you
haven’t any ideas, why, leave me alone. We’ve got to trust some to
luck.”
“If we get caught in here,” says I, “we’ll need something besides luck.
What we’ll need will be a two-inch plank inside the seat of our pants.”
And then, so sudden it almost made me jump out of my shoes, a voice out
of the darkness says, “Who’s there?”
We dropped flat and didn’t even breathe. The man came nosing over and
went past us. It was lucky he didn’t have a light.
“I heard somebody, sure’s shooting,” he muttered. “Better git me a
lantern.”
He moved past, and Catty whispered in my ear. “He’ll be back with a
light.”
“Yes,” says I, “and then what’ll happen to us can’t be played on a
flute.”
“Here,” says he, “crawl in under, quick!”
He was holding up the side of the tarpaulin that covered the supplies,
and I crawled under. He came right after me. The canvas hardly dropped
in place before we heard the man coming back, and he had a lantern.