THE HA'NT OF THE UMCOLCUS
"For even in these days P. I.'s shake
At word of the phantom of Brassua Lake;
And all of us know of the witherlick
That prowls by the shores of the Cup-sup-tic;
Of the side-hill ranger whose eyeballs gleam
In the light of the moon at Abol stream."
--The Ha'nts.
A few days after the men of Enchanted were housed, those who gazed
southeast from the mountain shoulder saw a smear of white on the
horizon. It was the first snow on lofty Katahdin.
Tommy Eye greeted that sight most enthusiastically. Like a good
teamster, he was anxious for "slippin'."
"Bless the saints, old Winter has pitched camp down there, and is mixin'
up a batch of our kind of weather," he said to Wade. "Injun Summer had
better grab up what's left of her flounces and get out from under."
But Winter proceeded about his business with majestic deliberateness. He
patted down the duff under the big trees with beating, sleety rains; and
when the ground was ready for the sowing of the mighty crop, he piled
his banks of clouds up from the south, and, though he gave the coast
folk rain, he brought the men of the north woods what they were longing
for--snow a-plenty; snow that heaped the arms of the spruces, filled
all the air with smothering clouds, and blanketed the ground.
Wade, blinking the big flakes out of his eyes as he breasted the
swirling storm, came across to the main camp from the wangan, his pipe
and tobacco-pouch in hand. He rejoiced in his heart to see the snow
driving so thickly that the camp window was only a blur of yellow light
smudging the whiteness. This first real storm of the winter promised two
feet on a level, and guaranteed the slipping on ram-downs and
twitch-roads.
The cheer of the storm permeated all the camp on Enchanted. The cook
beamed on Wade with floury face. The bare ground had meant bare shelves.
He predicted the first supply-team for the morrow. He had been thriftily
"making a mitten out of a mouse's ear" for several weeks. Tommy Eye,
ploughing back from his good-night visit to the horse-hovel, proclaimed
his general pleasure for two reasons: No more bare-ground dragging for
the bob-sleds; no more too liberal dosing of bread dough with soap to
make the flour "spend" in lighter loaves. "Eats like wind and tastes
like a laundry," Tommy had grumbled.
The boss of the choppers moved along to give Wade the end of the "deacon
seat," and grinned amiably.
"That's a cheerful old song she's singing overhead to-night," he
remarked.
It needed a lumberman's interpretation to give it cheer.
There were far groanings, there were near sighs; there were silences,
when the soft rustle of the snow against the window-glass made all the
sound; there were sudden, tempestuous descents of the wind that rattled
the panes and made the throat of the open stove "whummle" like a
neighing horse.
Wade lighted his pipe with deep content. He enjoyed the rude fraternity
of the big camp. There was but little garrulity. Those who talked did so
in a drawling monotone that was keyed properly to the monotone of the
soughing trees outside--elbows on knees and eyes on the pole floor.
Clamor would not have suited that little patch of light niched in the
black, brooding night of the forest. But there was comfort within. The
blue smoke from pipe bowls curled up and mingled with the shadows
dancing against the low roof. The woollens, hung to dry on the long
poles, draped the dim openings of the bunks. The "spruce feathers"
within were still fresh, and resinous odors struggled against the more
athletic fragrance of the pipes.
Most of the men loafed along the "deacon seat," relaxed in the luxury of
laziness for that precious three hours between supper and nine o'clock.
A few, bending forward to catch the light from the bracket-lamp,
whittled patiently at what lumbermen call "doodahs"--odd little toys
destined for some best girl or admiring youngster at home. "Windy"
McPheters regaled those with an ear for music by cheerful efforts on his
mouth-harp, coming out strong on the tremolo, and jigging the heel of
his moccasined foot for time. And when "Windy" had no more breath left,
"Hitchbiddy" Wagg sang, after protracted persuasion, the only song he
knew--though one song of that character ought to suffice for any man's
musical attainments.
Its length may be understood when it is stated that it detailed all the
campaigns of the first Napoleon, and "Hitchbiddy" sang it doubled
forward, his elbows on his crossed knees, and the toe of his moccasin
flapping for the beat. He came down "the stretch" on the last verse with
vigor and expression:
"Next at Waterloo those Frenchmen fought,
Commanded by brave Bonaparte [pronounced 'paught'],
Assisted by Field Marshal Ney--
He never was bribed by gold.
But when Grouchy let the Prussians in
It broke Napoleon's heart within.
'Where are my thirty thousand men?
Alas, stranger, for I am sold.'
He led one gallant charge across,
Saying, 'Alas, brave boys, I fear 'tis lost.'
The field was in confusion with dead and dying woes.
When the bunch of roses did advance,
The English entered into France--
The grand Conversation [_sic_] of Napoleon arose."
To signal that the song was done, "Hitchbiddy" dropped the tune on the
last line, and in calm, direct, matter-of-fact recitative announced that
"the grand Conversation of Napoleon arose." In the fifty years during
which that song has been sung in the Maine lumber-camps, no one has ever
displayed the least curiosity as to that last line. Away back,
somewhere, a singer twisted a nice, fat word of the original song, and
it has stayed twisted, and no one has tried to trouble it by idle
questions.
"Hitchbiddy's" most rapt listener was Foolish Abe of the Skeets. The
shaggy giant squatted behind the stove beside the pile of shavings he
was everlastingly whittling for the cook-fire. It was the only task that
Abe's poor wits could master, and he toiled at it unceasingly, paying
thus and by a sort of canine gratitude for the food he received and the
cast-off clothes tossed to him.
A mumbled chorus of commendation followed the song. But the
chopping-boss, his humorous gaze on the witling, remarked:
"I reckon I'll have to rule that song out, after this, 'Hitchbiddy.'"
"What for?" demanded the amazed songster.
"It seems to have a damaging and cavascacious effect on the giant
intellect of Perfessor Skeet," remarked the boss, with irony. "Look at
him!"
Abe was on his knees, stretching up his neck and twitching his head from
side to side with the air of an agitated fowl.
"We'll make it a rule after this to have only common songs, like Larry
Gorman's," continued the boss, with a quizzical glance at the woodsman
poet. "These high operas are too thrillin'."
But those who stared at Abe promptly saw that his attention was not
fixed on matters within, but without.
"He heard something," muttered one of the men. "He's got ears like a
cat, anyway."
If the giant had heard something it was plain that he heard it again,
for he dropped his knife and scrambled to his feet.
"Me go! Yes!" he roared, gutturally; and, obeying some mysterious
summons, his haste showing its authority, he ran out of the camp.
"Catch that fool!" yelled the boss. But the first of those who tumbled
out into the dingle after him were not quick enough. The night and the
swirling storm had swallowed him. A few zealous pursuers ran a little
way, trying to follow his tracks, lost them, and then came back for
lanterns.
"It's no use, Mr. Wade," advised the boss. "He's got the strength of a
mule and the legs of an ostrich. The men will only be takin' chances for
nothin'. He's gone clean out of his head, and there's no tellin' when
he'll stop."
And Wade regretfully gave orders to abandon the chase. He and the others
stood for a time gazing about them into the storm, now sifting thicker
and swirling more wildly. He was oppressed by the happening, as though
he had seen some one leap to death. What else could a human being hope
for in that waste?
"He's as tough as a bull moose, and just as used to bein' out-doors,"
remarked the boss, consolingly. "When he's had his run he'll smell his
way back."
Teamster Tommy Eye was the most persistent pursuer. He came in, stamping
the snow, after all the others had reassembled in the camp to talk the
matter over.
"Did ye hear it?" demanded Tommy. "I did, and I run like a tiger so I
could say that at last I'd seen one. But I didn't see it. I only heard
it."
"What?" asked Wade, amazed.
"The ha'nt," said Tommy. "I've always wanted to see one. I was first
out, and I heard it."
"What did it sound like?" gasped one of the men, his superstition
glowing in his eyes.
"It's bad luck forever to try to make a noise like a ha'nt," said Tommy,
with decision. "Nor will I meddle with its business--no, s'r. 'Twould
come for me. Take a lucivee, an Injun devil, a bob-sled runner on grit,
and the gabble of a loon, mix 'em together, and set 'em, and skim off
the cream of the noise, and it would be something like the loo-hoo of a
ha'nt. It's awful on the nerves. I reckon I'll take a pull at the old T.
D." He rammed his pipe bowl with a finger that trembled visibly.
"I've seen one," declared, positively, the man who had inquired in
regard to the sound. "I've seen one, but I never heard one holler. I
didn't know it was a ha'nt till I'd seen it half a dozen times."
"Good eye!" sneered Tommy. "What! did it have to come up and introduce
itself, and say, 'Please, Mister MacIntosh, I'm a ha'nt'?"
"I've seen one," insisted the man, sullenly. "I was teamin' for the
Blaisdell Brothers on their Telos operation, and I see it every day for
most a week. It walked ahead of my team close to the bushes, side of the
road, and it was like a man, and it always turned off at the same place
and went into the woods."
"Do you call that a ha'nt--a man walkin' 'longside the road in
daylight--some hump-backed old spruce-gum picker?" demanded Tommy.
"The last time I see it I noticed that it didn't leave any tracks,"
declared the narrator. "It walked right along on the light snow, and
didn't leave any tracks. Funny I didn't notice that before, but I
didn't."
"You sartinly ain't what the dictionary would set down as a hawk-eyed
critter," remarked Tommy, maliciously. "It must have been kind of
discouragin', ha'ntin' you."
"It was a ha'nt," insisted the man, with the same doggedness. "I got
off'n my team right then and there, and got a bill of my time and left,
and the man that took my place got sluiced by the snub-line bustin',
and about three thousand feet of spruce mellered the eternal daylights
out of him. Say what you're a mind to--I saw a thing that walked on
light snow and didn't make tracks, and I left, and that feller got
sluiced--everybody in these woods knows that a feller got killed on
Telos two winters ago."
"Oh, there's ha'nts," agreed Tommy, earnestly. "Mebbe you saw one; only
you got at your story kind of back-ended."
The old teamster had been watching incredulity settle on the face of
Dwight Wade, and this heresy in one to whom his affections had attached
touched his sensitiveness.
"You're probably thinkin' what most of the city folks say out loud to
us, Mr. Wade," he went on, humbly. "They say there ain't any such things
as ha'nts in the woods. It would be easy to say there ain't any bull
moose up here because they ain't also seen walkin' down a city street
and lookin' into store windows. But I'd like to see one of those city
folks try to sleep in the camp that's built over old Jumper Joe's grave
north of Sourdnaheunk."
There was a general mumble of indorsement. It became evident to Wade
that the crew of the Enchanted were pretty stanch adherents of the
supernatural.
"Hitchbiddy" Wagg cleared his throat and sang, for the sake of
verification:
"He rattled underneath, and he rattled overhead;
Never in my life was I ever scared so!
And I did not dast to lay down in that bed
Where they laid out old Joe."
"They can't use that place for anything but a depot-camp now," stated
Tommy; "and it's a wonder to me that they can even get pressed hay to
stay there overnight."
"Well, from what I know of human nature," smiled Wade, "I should think
that hay and provisions would stay better overnight in a haunted camp
than in one without protection."
He rapped out his pipe ashes on the hearth of the stove and rose to go.
"And don't you believe that it was a ha'nt that called out Foolish Abe?"
asked Tommy, eager to make a convert. "You saw that for yourself, Mr.
Wade."
"I am afraid to think of what may have happened to that poor creature,"
replied Wade, earnestly, looking into the black night through the door
that he had opened. He heard the chopping-boss call: "Nine! Turn in!" as
he strove with the storm between the main camp and the wangan, and when
he stamped into his own shelter the yellow smudge winked out behind
him--such is the alacrity of a sleepy woods crew when it has a boss who
blows out the big lamp on the dot of the hour. He shuddered as he shut
out the blackness. He had no superstitions, but the unaccountable flight
of the witling, and the eerie tales offered in explanation and the
mystic night of storm in that wild forest waste unstrung him. He went to
sleep, finding comfort in the dull glow of the lantern that he left
lighted.
Its glimmer in his eyes when the cook called shrilly in the gray dawn,
"Grub on ta-a-abe!" sent his first thoughts to the wretch who had
abandoned himself to the storm. He hoped to find Abe whittling shavings
in the cook-house.
"No, s'r, no sign of him, hide nor hair," said the cook, shaking his
head. "Reckon the ha'nt flew high with him."
The snow still sifted through the trees--a windless storm now. The
forest was trackless.
"For a man to start out in the woods in that storm was like jumpin' into
a hole and pullin' the hole in after him," observed the chopping-boss.
That remark might have served as the obituary of poor Abe Skeet. The
swampers, the choppers, the sled-tenders, the teamsters, trudging away
to their work, had their minds full of their duties and their mouths
full of other topics during the day.
And all day the cook bleated his cheerful little prophecy in the ears of
the cookee: "The tote team will be in by night." That morning, with his
rolling-pin, he had pounded "hungryman's ratty-too" on the bottom of the
last flour-barrel to shake out enough for his batch of biscuits, and he
burned up the barrel, even though the pessimistic cookee predicted that
"the human nail-kags" would eat both kitchen mechanics if the food gave
out.
Dwight Wade, at nightfall, surveyed the bare shelves of the cook camp
with some misgivings.
"Don't you worry," advised the master of that domain. "Rod Ide ain't
waitin' three weeks for good slippin' jest for the sake of settin' in
his store window and singin' 'Beautiful snow'! He sure got a load of
supplies started on that first skim o' snow, and they're due here
to-night--" The cook paused, kicked at the cookee for slamming the
stove-cover at that crucial moment of listening, and shrilled, "There
she blows!"
Wade heard the jangle of bells, and hastened to meet the dim bulk of the
loaded sled. The driver did not reply to his delighted hail, but before
he had time to wonder at that silence some one struggled out of the
folds of a shrouding blanket and sprang from the sled. It was a woman;
and while he stood and stared at her, she ran to him and grasped his
hands and clung to him in pitiful abandonment of grief.
It was Nina Ide. In the dim light Wade could see tears and heart-broken
woe on her face. He had had some experience with the self-poise of the
daughter of Rodburd Ide. This emotion, which checked with sobs the words
in her throat, frightened him.
"It's a terrible thing, and I don't understand it, Mr. Wade," quavered
the driver. He slipped down from the load and came and stood beside
them. "We was in Pogey Notch, and the wind was blowin' pretty hard
there, and I told the young ladies they'd better cover their heads with
the blankets. And I pulled the canvas over me, 'cause the snow stung so,
and I didn't see it when it happened--and I don't understand it."
"When what happened?" Wade gasped.
"They took her--whatever they was," stated the driver, in awed tones. "I
didn't see 'em or hear 'em take her. And I don't know jest where we was
when they took her. I went back and hunted, but it wasn't any use. They
was gone, and her with 'em. They wasn't humans, Mr. Wade. It was black
art, that's what it was."
"Probably," said Tommy Eye, with deep conviction. He had led the group
that came out of the camp to greet the tote team. "There were ha'nts
here last night. They got Foolish Abe."
"They sartinly seem to mean the Skeet family this time," said the
driver. "It was that Skeet girl--the pretty one that's called Kate--that
they got off'n my team."
The men of the camp, surrounding the new arrivals, surveyed Nina Ide
with respectful but eager curiosity.
"If I was a ha'nt," growled the chopping-boss, "and had my pick, I
reckon I'd have shown better judgment." His remark was under his breath,
and the girl did not hear it. She clung to Wade. Her agitation
communicated itself to him. A sense of calamity told him that there was
trouble deeper than the disappearance of the waif of the Skeet tribe.
Her words confirmed his suspicion. "My God, what are we going to do, Mr.
Wade?" she sobbed. "I planned it; I encouraged her. It was wild,
imprudent, reckless. I ought to have realized it. But I knew how you
felt towards her. I wanted to help her and--and you!"
Something in the horror of her wide-open eyes told him plainly now that
this could not be merely the question of the loss of one of the Skeets.
And with that conviction growing out of bewildered doubt, he went with
her when she led him away towards the office camp. A suspicion wild as a
nightmare flashed into his mind. In the wangan she faced him, as
woe-stricken, as piteously afraid, as though she were confessing a crime
against him.
"It was John Barrett's daughter Elva on that team with me," she choked.
"She wanted to come--but I'll be honest with you, Mr. Wade. She wouldn't
have come if I hadn't encouraged her--yes, put the idea into her head
and the means into her hands. I've been a fool, Mr. Wade, but I'll not
be a coward and lie about my responsibility."
He gazed at her, his face ghastly white in the lantern-light.
"She wanted to--she was coming here--she is lost?" he mumbled, as though
trying to fathom a mystery.
Infinite pity replaced the distraction in the girl's face.
"Forgive me, Mr. Wade!" she cried. "Not for my folly--you can't overlook
that. Forgive me for wasting time. But I didn't know how to say it to
you." She put her woman's weakness from her, though the struggle was a
mighty one, and her face showed it. "I won't waste any more words, Mr.
Wade. John Barrett has been at my father's house for weeks. He has been
near death--he is near death now, but the big doctors from the city say
that he will get well. He must have been through some terrible trouble
up here."
She looked at him with questioning gaze, as though to ask how much he
knew of the strain that had prostrated John Barrett, the stumpage king.
"He was in great danger--and his exposure--" stammered Wade.
But she went on, hurriedly:
"It was fever, and it went to his head, and he talked and raved. His
daughter came from the city and nursed him, and she has heard him
talking, talking, talking, all the time--talking about you, and how you
saved him from the fire; talking about a woman who is dead and a man who
is alive, and a girl--"
"Does Elva Barrett--know?" he demanded, hoarsely.
"It was too plain not to know--after she saw that girl, Mr. Wade. The
girl was there at our house--she is there now. It isn't all clear to us
yet. We have only the ravings of a sick man--and the face of that girl.
Father doesn't understand all of it, either. But he knows that you do,
although you haven't told him." She clutched her trembling hands to hold
them steady. "And he has talked and talked of other things, Mr.
Wade--the sick man has. He has said that you have his reputation, and
his prospects, and the happiness of his family all in your hands, and
that you are waiting to ruin him because he has abused you; and he has
tossed in his bed and begged some one to come to you and promise
you--buy you--coax you--"
"It's a cursed lie--infernal, though a sick man babble it!" Wade cried,
heart-brokenly. "It holds me up as a blackmailer, Miss Nina. It makes me
seem a wretch in Elva's eyes. And yet--was she--was she coming here
thinking I was that kind--coming here to beg for her father?" he
demanded.
"We--I--oh, I don't like to tell you we believed that of you," the girl
sobbed. "No, I didn't believe it. But if you had only heard him lying
there talking, talking! And you were the one that he seemed to fear. And
we thought if you knew of it you wouldn't want him to worry that way.
And if we could carry back some word of comfort from you to him--She
wanted to come to you, Mr. Wade, and I encouraged her and helped her to
come--because--because--" The girl caught her breath in a long sob, and
cried: "She loves you, Mr. Wade! And I've pitied you and her ever since
that day in the train when I found out about it."
It was not a moment to analyze emotions. Nina Ide, in her ingenuous
declaration of Elva Barrett's motives in seeking him, had made his heart
for an instant blaze with joy. For that instant he forgot the shame of
the baseless babblings of the sick man, the awful mystery of Elva
Barrett's disappearance. The blow of it--that Elva Barrett was
gone--that she was somewhere in those woods alone, or worse than alone,
had stunned him at first. Groping out of that misery, striving to
realize what it meant, he had faced first the hideous thought that she
might believe him mean enough to seek revenge. Then came the dazzling
hope that Elva Barrett so loved him that she adventured--imprudently and
recklessly, but none the less bravely--in order to make her love known.
Then over all swept the black bitterness of the calamity.
"But you must have some suspicion--some hint how she was taken or how
she went!" he cried. "In Heaven's name, Miss Nina, think! think! You
heard some outcry! There was some hidden rock or stump to jar the sled!
The man did not search along the road far enough! She must be
lost--lost!" and his voice rose almost to a shriek.
"There was no cry, Mr. Wade. And I went back with the man. We searched;
we called--we even went as far as the place where we covered ourselves
with the blankets. We could find no track, and the snow was driving and
sifting. The man does not know it was Elva Barrett," she added.
He suddenly remembered the driver's statement.
"She came in Kate Arden's clothes," confided the girl. "Those who saw
her ride out of Castonia, Mr. Wade, thought it was Kate Arden. And Kate
Arden, in Elva Barrett's dress, is sitting now beside John Barrett,
holding his hand, and his daughter's face has soothed him. He thinks it
is his daughter beside him. They are so like, Kate and Elva. We waited
until we had made sure. It was my plan. And Kate obeyed me. I don't know
what she is thinking of. She is sullen and silent, but she took the
place by his bed when I told her to. Then it could not be said that John
Barrett's daughter had come seeking Dwight Wade."
Even in this stress he could still feel gratitude for the subterfuge
that checked the tongues of gossip.
"I wish father had more authority over me," sobbed the girl. "He
wouldn't have let us come on such a crazy errand if I hadn't bossed him
into it." The lament was so guilelessly feminine that Wade put aside his
own woe for the moment to think of the girl's distress.
"This will be your home until I can send you back, Miss Nina," he said,
gently. "I will have old Christopher bring in your supper and mend your
fire."
"And about her, Mr. Wade?" she cried.
"I'm going," he said, simply, but with such earnestness that her eyes
flooded again with tears.