After a while I could hear Mark snoring inside the cave, and it made
me sort of mad. Anybody would think he’d been brought up next-door
neighbor to a wild man or whatever kind of a thing it was that went
around leaving marks in the sand a foot long, with the toes turned
toward the side. I crept over to the opening and looked in. All
three of them were asleep, and if I felt lonely and skittish before
I pretty nearly went into a panic now. The fire was going good, but
I threw on more wood just to have something to do and to light up
farther into the woods.
Pretty soon the moon came up, and that made it seem chillier. It was
as if the light was cold—it looked as if it was. I edged closer to
the fire, where the blaze almost scorched my shins, and crouched
there, with my heart beating thump, thump, and my insides feeling as
if they were shriveling together for lack of anything to hold them
out like they ought to be. I looked at my watch, hoping my turn on
guard was over. Only a little more than a half-hour of it was gone!
The moon got higher, and the woods, instead of just being black as
if a curtain was hanging all around me, got shadowy, and the shadows
moved. Give me black darkness any time to the kind where there are
patches of light and patches of shadows that keep shifting and
oozing around; when the woods look that way you feel certain
something is hiding and watching you in the places where the light
isn’t.
I got the hatchet and put it between my knees, but it didn’t make me
feel much better. I tried whittling, but I couldn’t keep my eyes on
it; they wanted to wander around to see if anything was sneaking up
on me. I thought about lots of things, and one of them was that if
ever I got home it would take a lot of persuading to get me camping
out at night again.
Another half an hour went by, and it seemed as if my hours would
never pass. Nothing happened, but sometimes I wished it would. Being
afraid something will happen is worse than the thing itself if it
comes.
I guess it was about half-past ten when the funniest feeling came
over me. It’s hard to tell just what it was, but more than anything
else it felt as if somebody’s eyes were bearing on my back, watching
and watching; and it felt as if the eyes were bright and as if
they’d shine in the dark if I was to turn and look at them. I sat
for more than five minutes before I could get up courage to look.
When I did I couldn’t see a thing, but, all the same, I was as sure
as anything that something had been looking at me.
About fifteen minutes later I heard a noise; it was just as if
somebody had slipped on the hillside and scrambled for a minute
before he could catch his feet. It might have been a stray sheep, or
maybe a coon roaming around in the moonlight, but it didn’t sound
like it to me; it sounded bigger and stronger. It was so very still
afterward that I was more afraid than ever, because if it _had_ been
a sheep I’d have heard him running away, and even a coon would have
made some sort of a racket. No, I says to myself, it’s something
hiding and sneaking around with an eye on us; it’s the thing that
used our pan and stole our potatoes and left that track in the sand.
That was all that happened during my watch, but I was glad when it
came time to wake Mark to take my place. He came out rubbing his
eyes and blinking at the light.
“Talk to me a minute,” he yawned, “till I git awake.”
We talked a spell, but I didn’t say anything about the noise or that
I thought something had been watching me. When he was awake so he
wouldn’t doze off again I went in and snuggled into my blanket. I
was afraid at first I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep, but before I
really got to worrying about it I was gone; and I didn’t dream,
either.
In the morning none of us had much to say about his watch during the
night. By the looks of the others I’m sure they were just as afraid
as I was, but they weren’t letting on and neither was I. Besides, it
seemed sort of foolish with the sunlight shining bright through the
trees and the water glittering and the birds chittering all around.
The woods didn’t look as if there could be anything fearsome or
dangerous in them; wild men seemed a long ways away and nothing to
worry about, anyhow. What would a wild man be doing right outside of
Wicksville? If there was one somebody would have seen it and talked
about it before we got there.
We fished all day and played Indian and fixed up a raft out of a
couple of old logs and poled ourselves around. In the afternoon we
went over on the island and gathered about a bushel of butternuts
apiece, but they weren’t any good, having laid all winter.
“We’ll have h-h-ham for supper,” Mark said. “We kin warm it up, and
it’ll be pretty good with fish.”
We poled the raft across, carrying our nuts, and made for the cave.
Mark went to work building the fire again, Plunk and Binney gathered
wood, while I riffled around inside getting things ready for the
cooking. I found most of the stuff all right, because Mark had put
it away, and he always puts things away careful, but when it came to
the ham I couldn’t put my hand on it to save my life.
“Where did you put that ham?” I sang out to Mark.
“Right in that jar,” he told me, “next to the basket.”
“It ain’t here,” I called, after I had looked again to make sure.
“It’s got to be,” says he, his voice a little excited, “because I
put it there.”
“Well, it ain’t. Come and see for yourself.”
He came in and rummaged around, but not a sign of the ham could he
discover. His face was sober when he looked up at me and says, “Is
anythin’ else m-missin’?”
Together we went over the things. Everything was there till we got
to the bread. All together we had four loaves. We’d used most of
one, and there ought to have been three left, but there wasn’t.
There were only two.
“Did you hear anything last night?” asks Mark, sharp-like.
“Yes,” I says. “Did you?”
“I ain’t sure, but I th-thought so.”
“I felt somethin’ watchin’ me,” I told him. “Seemed like its eyes
was just borin’ into me when my back was turned.”
“Um!” he grunts. “See anythin’?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
“There’s somebody prowlin’ around, that’s sure. That ham didn’t git
tired of stayin’ an’ run off alone.”
Mark grinned. Then he looked solemn again and nodded.
“Don’t seem very dangerous, though—stealin’ ham. Maybe somebody’s
playin’ a joke on us.”
“Nobody’d hang around all night and all day for this much joke.”
He admitted that was right. “But ’tain’t no wild man,” he insisted.
“There ain’t none.”
“I dunno,” I says.
And then Binney and Plunk came along with their arms stacked full of
wood.
Mark and I kept quiet before them, but we arranged that we’d keep
watch to-night by twos instead of all alone. “It’ll be more
sociable,” I says; and they jumped at the idea.
Mark and I were to stand guard the first part of the night, and
Binney and Plunk would be on watch till morning. That was the way it
was fixed. About nine o’clock they turned in, and we went out by the
fire.
“Let’s be sure there’s enough wood,” I said to him. “I’d sort of
hate to be left out here in the dark.”
He grunted, but I noticed he looked at the pile pretty careful, and
even dragged in some pieces that were lying within reach.
For maybe an hour we got along fine. Not a thing happened, and we
found lots of things to talk about. We got to figuring about his
father’s turbine and what it would do and how much money Mr. Tidd
would make out of it, and it sounded pretty important. Some day we
were sure there’d be big shops in Wicksville where the engines would
be manufactured, and Mark would be general manager when he got
through college, and all the rest of us would have good jobs. I was
going to be a mechanical engineer some day, so Mark agreed to put me
in charge of that department. We figured his father would make maybe
four or five thousand dollars in a single year.
“If he m-makes anything,” said Mark.
“But he’s goin’ to.”
“He ain’t got it patented yet.”
“What of it?”
“If somebody got holt of his idee, or stole his drawin’s and got it
patented f-f-first, he’d never git a thing out of it.”
“Not a dollar?”
“Not a dollar. There’s always folks tryin’ to steal inventions. Most
inventors git cheated out of their money or s-some-thin’.”
[Illustration: THERE, CROUCHING ON THE BROW, WAS THE FIGURE OF A
MAN]
“Your father better be pretty careful, then,” I says.
“Careful!” grunts Mark. “You know how careful he is—and that feller
was in town again.”
“No,” I says, surprised, for I’d never heard of it before.
“He was, but f-father was out of town. He didn’t git no
satisfaction.”
“I bet he’s sneakin’ around Wicksville just a-tryin’ to gouge that
invention out of your father,” I says.
Mark didn’t answer, and sat so quiet I turned to look at him to see
what was the matter. He was sitting stiff, leaning forward a little
and staring at the face of a big rock half-way down the hill. There
was a shadow on it, and it was the shadow of a man’s head.
The moon was shining bright and throwing shadows just like it did
the night before. I noticed now that a big shadow was right over us,
reaching down the hill to the rock, where it ended in the head. It
looked big as an elephant. Mark sucked in his breath, and we looked
at each other. Then we both turned slow and looked up the hill.
There, crouching on the brow, was the black figure of a man, like he
was on his hands and knees staring over at us. His head stood out
sharp, and we could see his hair was long and bushy, standing out on
all sides just like some kind of South Sea Island savages that there
are pictures of in the geography. There wasn’t any doubt about his
being big. It was the whoppingest head I ever saw, and the shoulders
matched it for size.
All of a sudden as we looked the man wasn’t there. It seemed like he
melted right away under our eyes, and we never heard a sound.
“It was—nothing but a man,” I whispered, trying to persuade myself
there wasn’t any danger.
“Yes,” Mark whispered back, “but what k-kind of a man?”
When we got to thinking about his size and how long and bushy his
hair was, and especially about that queer footmark with the toes
pointing to one side, we couldn’t make head or tail of him, except
that there was something mighty strange, and that it would be a good
thing to keep out of his way. I tell you it wasn’t fun sitting there
a couple of miles from a house, without a gun, and with a giant of a
man like that prowling around watching you and intending to do
nobody knew what.
“Shall we tell the others?” I asked.
Mark thought a minute. “No,” he says. “’Twon’t do no good. We’ll
keep mum.”
That is what we did. When our watch was over we waked Plunk and
Binney, and they came out to the fire yawning and stretching. We
turned in.
I don’t know when it was, but I was woke up by a yelling and
hollering outside the cave. Mark and I jumped out, and there were
Plunk and Binney screeching as if they were scared to death and
throwing blazing chunks of wood out among the trees after a big
black figure that ran and leaped and crashed down the hill and out
of sight.
“What was it?” I said, shaking Binney by the shoulder.
“I—I guess,” he said, shaking like a leaf, “that it was a goriller.
He didn’t look like anythin’ else.”
A gorilla! Come to think of it, it _might_ be a gorilla, but where
in time would one of them come from?
Anyhow, there was no more sleep that night. We all sat up together
and kept the fire roaring and blazing as bright as we could. We
weren’t troubled again.
In the morning Binney says, while we were getting breakfast, “I
guess we better go home.”
Plunk didn’t say anything, and I waited for Mark.
“I ain’t goin’ home,” he says. “I’m goin’ to f-find out what it is.
Will you stay with me, Tallow?”
“Sure,” I says, but I didn’t want to a bit.
That sort of shamed Plunk and Binney into staying, so nobody went
home.
“And, rem-member,” Mark warned us, “this is a secret. We ain’t to
say a word to nobody.”
So we were sort of forced to stay by Mark to help him find out what
was prowling around in the woods. He was a queer fellow, Mark was. I
know he was as afraid as any of us, but he was curious, and when he
got curious to know anything you couldn’t scare him away nohow.