“SPOOKS.”
When Merriwell and Clancy reached Tinaja Wells and the Ophir camp, late in the afternoon, it was with the disagreeable feeling that friendly rivalry between the two clubs had received a setback by recent events from which it could never recover. Merry at once sought Handy, captain of the Ophir team, Ballard and Hannibal Bradlaugh—the latter the son of the club’s president—and went into a star-chamber session with them.
All the unpleasant details of the afternoon were gone over, and Ballard, Brad, and Handy listened to them with absorbing interest.
“What can we expect,” burst out Brad indignantly, when the recital was finished, “while such a measly pup as Lenning bosses the Gold Hill crowd? So long as he’s the king-pin over there, you couldn’t foster a friendly spirit between the two clubs in a thousand years.”
“That dynamite cartridge gets my goat,” growled Ballard. “That pleasant habit Lenning has of trying to assassinate the fellows he doesn’t like will put him behind the bars one of these days. Thunder! Why, it doesn’t seem possible he could be such a reckless fool.”
“He’s dangerous,” said Merriwell quietly, “but I don’t think he’s exactly responsible when his temper’s roused.”
“Take it from me,” observed Handy,“there’s something on the fellow’s conscience. Fear of being found out is goading him to desperate things. He can’t go on like this; something has got to be done to stop him before he commits a sure-enough crime.”
“What’s to be done?” asked Frank. “Tell the colonel?”
“The colonel!” exclaimed Ballard. “Why, Chip, Lenning has got the colonel under his thumb. You can’t do a thing with Hawtrey. Just breathe a whisper against Lenning to the colonel and there’ll be fireworks. It beats creation the way Lenning is able to pull the wool over his uncle’s eyes. Darrel, now, is worth a dozen fellows of Lenning’s stripe. I’ve been with Darrel for three days at Dolliver’s place, and I’ve got to know him pretty well. He’s a prince, that’s what he is; and yet that confounded old muttonhead of a colonel won’t have a thing to do with him. When I think about it, sometimes, I get so mad I feel as though I’d explode.”
“We’d better sleep over this, fellows,” suggested Merriwell, “and see if we can’t think out some move that will be right and proper. Things are mighty unsatisfactory, as they are. It’s been a long time since I’ve had anything bump me so hard as what happened this afternoon.”
It was in this way that the important matter was dismissed temporarily. During supper, and for the rest of that evening, the boys tried to forget it. When they crawled into their blankets, at ten o’clock, Merriwell’s mind got busy with the far-reaching subject in spite of himself.
A guard of three was posted every night. Frank heard the guards changed at eleven o’clock. Fritz Gesundheit, the Dutch boy who did the cooking for the camp, was to be one of the midwatch. It took all of ten minutes for one of the lads who was going off duty to get Fritz out of the land of dreams and into a fitting realization of the fact that it was his turn at sentry-go.
Ghost stories had been indulged in around the campfire during the evening. Fritz had listened to the wild yarns with both ears, while washing and putting away the supper dishes. More than once the cold shivers had crept up his backbone, and he had felt the carroty hair rising straight up on his head. When called for guard duty, he was snoring away with his head under the blankets.
Fritz’ post was below the flat, and in a part of the cañon where the moonlight sifted through the trees in wavering silvery patches. Every patch looked like a ghost, and the cañon was filled with them.
Fritz was about as eager to go on duty that night as he would have been to walk into a den of hungry bears. But Silva, the Mexican packer, was also one of the midwatch, and between Fritz and Silva was a feud of several days’ standing. Fritz would have scorned to show the white feather with Silva looking on, and so he armed himself with a stout club and a half a dozen ham sandwiches and waddled feebly down the side of the flat and into the ghostly shadows of the cañon.
Once a picketed horse gave a snort, and Fritz went straight into the air for at least five feet. A little later Uncle Sam, the professor’s mule, let out a “hee haw” that sounded like thunder in the cañon, and Fritz almost went into a swoon. Every little while Fritz imagined a quivering splash of moonlight was a spook, and he would groan to himself and crowd between the rocks, and say his prayers backward, forward, and sideways.
Finally, as nothing came up and grabbed him, he began to feel somewhat reassured. He thought of his sandwiches and started to eat one.
“Shpooks iss nodding, I bed you,” he communed with himself. “Nodding nefer hurt nopody at all, und I vill eat und forged aboudt it. Vat a peacefulness is dernighdt! How calm iss der moon und der leedle shtars! Oh, I lofe der nighdt, you bed my life, und I—himmelblitzen, vat iss dot?”
Fritz jumped, laid down his half-eaten sandwich on a bowlder beside him, and peered wildly around. He could see nothing but the shadowy live stock belonging to the camp, and yet, very distinctly, he had heard apat, pat, patas of something traveling among the bowlders.
“Id vas nodding some more,” he chattered. “Imachination makes some monkey-doodle pitzness mit me. I vill eat der sandvich und forged aboudt it.”
He reached for the sandwich, and a horrifying surprise ran through him. The sandwich was not where he had left it. Nor had it fallen off the rock.
“Br-r-r!” shivered Fritz. “Dere iss a keveerness here, py shiminy Grismus! Iss a shpook hungry dot he comes und takes my sandvich?”
For several minutes Fritz sat in a huddle and wondered what he had better do about it. He would have eased his tense feelings with a yell if Silva hadn’t been around to hear. It wouldn’t do to let the Mexican know he was scared. With trembling hands, Fritz dug down into his rations for another sandwich. Laying the sandwich down for a moment, he bent to twist the mouth of the paper sack in which his lunch was stowed. When he straightened again, and reached for the sandwich, another thrill of horror convulsed him. It was gone.
“Py shimineddy,” Fritz fluttered, “dis iss gedding vorse as I can tell! Vat iss habbening mit me? Iss it a shpook sandvich? Sooch now-you-see-him-und-now-you-don’t pitzness I don’t like.” Fritz, just then, had an illuminating idea which not only calmed his fears but aroused his wrath.“I bed my life id iss dot greaser feller playing some chokes mit me. I set some draps, und ven I catch him, I preak him in doo, so hellup me!”
With another sandwich Fritz baited his trap. Laying the sandwich on the bowlder’s top, he sank down until his eyes were level with it and the rest of his body hidden in gloom; then, lifting his hands ready to make a grab, he waited.
Pat, patcame a mysterious sound from the other side of the bowlder. That must be Silva, Fritz thought, coming up on his hands and knees.
“Now, I bet you someding for nodding,” Fritz chuckled, “I get him!”
Something reared up out of the darkness on the other side of the bowlder. Fritz grabbed, and his hands closed on an object that felt like a buffalo robe and squirmed like an eel. Another moment and Fritz had an armful, for the object plunged straight at him over the bowlder.
“Hellup! hellup!” he howled, as he tumbled backward and began rolling over and over. “Hellup, I say, oder I vas a gone Dutchman!”
Then, for several moments, Fritz was altogether too busy for words. The thing in his arms clawed, and snapped, and snarled. Fritz continued to roll with it, sometimes underneath, sometimes on top. He was too scared to let go, and too scared to hold on; and while he floundered and plunged about among the rocks, the boys began to run out of the tents, wondering what the nation was the matter. At last, locating the excitement in the cañon, they began racing over the edge of the flat. As it happened, Merriwell was in the lead.