A TRAGEDY IN THE WOODS
We didn’t get done tinkering the machinery till away late in the
afternoon, and so it was so close to sundown when we got home that we
never stopped on our road, but made a break for the sycamores as tight
as we could go, to tell Jake what the delay was, and have him wait till
we could go to Brace’s and find out how things was there. It was
getting pretty dim by the time we turned the corner of the woods,
sweating and panting with that long run, and see the sycamores thirty
yards ahead of us; and just then we see a couple of men run into the
bunch and heard two or three terrible screams for help. “Poor Jake is
killed, sure,” we says. We was scared through and through, and broke
for the tobacker field and hid there, trembling so our clothes would
hardly stay on; and just as we skipped in there, a couple of men went
tearing by, and into the bunch they went, and in a second out jumps
four men and took out up the road as tight as they could go, two
chasing two.
We laid down, kind of weak and sick, and listened for more sounds, but
didn’t hear none for a good while but just our hearts. We was thinking
of that awful thing laying yonder in the sycamores, and it seemed like
being that close to a ghost, and it give me the cold shudders. The moon
come a-swelling up out of the ground, now, powerful big and round and
bright, behind a comb of trees, like a face looking through prison
bars, and the black shadders and white places begun to creep around,
and it was miserable quiet and still and night-breezy and graveyardy
and scary. All of a sudden Tom whispers:
“Look!—what’s that?”
“Don’t!” I says. “Don’t take a person by surprise that way. I’m ’most
ready to die, anyway, without you doing that.”
“Look, I tell you. It’s something coming out of the sycamores.”
“Don’t, Tom!”
“It’s terrible tall!”
“Oh, lordy-lordy! let’s—”
“Keep still—it’s a-coming this way.”
He was so excited he could hardly get breath enough to whisper. I had
to look. I couldn’t help it. So now we was both on our knees with our
chins on a fence rail and gazing—yes, and gasping too. It was coming
down the road—coming in the shadder of the trees, and you couldn’t see
it good; not till it was pretty close to us; then it stepped into a
bright splotch of moonlight and we sunk right down in our tracks—it was
Jake Dunlap’s ghost! That was what we said to ourselves.
[Illustration: It was Jake Dunlap’s ghost.]
We couldn’t stir for a minute or two; then it was gone. We talked about
it in low voices. Tom says:
“They’re mostly dim and smoky, or like they’re made out of fog, but
this one wasn’t.”
“No,” I says; “I seen the goggles and the whiskers perfectly plain.”
“Yes, and the very colors in them loud countrified Sunday clothes—plaid
breeches, green and black—”
“Cotton velvet westcot, fire-red and yaller squares—”
“Leather straps to the bottoms of the breeches legs and one of them
hanging unbottoned—”
“Yes, and that hat—”
“What a hat for a ghost to wear!”
You see it was the first season anybody wore that kind—a black
stiff-brim stove-pipe, very high, and not smooth, with a round top—just
like a sugar-loaf.
“Did you notice if its hair was the same, Huck?”
“No—seems to me I did, then again it seems to me I didn’t.”
“I didn’t either; but it had its bag along, I noticed that.”
“So did I. How can there be a ghost-bag, Tom?”
“Sho! I wouldn’t be as ignorant as that if I was you, Huck Finn.
Whatever a ghost has, turns to ghost-stuff. They’ve got to have their
things, like anybody else. You see, yourself, that its clothes was
turned to ghost-stuff. Well, then, what’s to hender its bag from
turning, too? Of course it done it.”
That was reasonable. I couldn’t find no fault with it. Bill Withers and
his brother Jack come along by, talking, and Jack says:
“What do you reckon he was toting?”
“I dunno; but it was pretty heavy.”
“Yes, all he could lug. Nigger stealing corn from old Parson Silas, I
judged.”
“So did I. And so I allowed I wouldn’t let on to see him.”
“That’s me, too.”
Then they both laughed, and went on out of hearing. It showed how
unpopular old Uncle Silas had got to be now. They wouldn’t ’a’ let a
nigger steal anybody else’s corn and never done anything to him.
We heard some more voices mumbling along towards us and getting louder,
and sometimes a cackle of a laugh. It was Lem Beebe and Jim Lane. Jim
Lane says:
“Who?—Jubiter Dunlap?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I reckon so. I seen him spading up some ground along
about an hour ago, just before sundown—him and the parson. Said he
guessed he wouldn’t go to-night, but we could have his dog if we wanted
him.”
“Too tired, I reckon.”
“Yes—works so hard!”
“Oh, you bet!”
They cackled at that, and went on by. Tom said we better jump out and
tag along after them, because they was going our way and it wouldn’t be
comfortable to run across the ghost all by ourselves. So we done it,
and got home all right.
That night was the second of September—a Saturday. I sha’n’t ever
forget it. You’ll see why, pretty soon.