Cat o' mountain

A long minute dragged by while Douglas stood there, the drone of the crickets gnawing at his nerves. Then he pounced at the lamp and bounded up the stairs. At the top he halted and glared around the attic.

Nothing was there.

The tiny windows at either end, heavily coated with spider-webs, were shut as usual. Not a web was broken. Nowhere, except where one little pane had long been missing, could he see any opening into the barren room. He moved about, and the boards groaned loudly under him. They had not groaned under that ghostly unknown.

He returned down the stairs, and the steps creaked and squeaked as he passed. He slammed the door and went about the room, inspecting every door and window. All was as he had left it on retiring. He even glanced into the little wood-room. That, too, was unchanged.

“H’m!” he muttered. Pausing at the water-bag, he gulped a drink. After once more staring around, he returned to the bedroom.

Back into his tumbled blankets he got. As the strangled flame of his lamp slowly died he reached to his trousers, dug out his watch, and glanced at it. It was now eight minutes after midnight.

“H’m!” he repeated as he lay back.

For some time after the light had expired he lay wide-eyed. No further sound came from stairs or attic. In the solid blackness he discerned nothing. At length he grinned.

“Guess I’ve laid you for the night, Mister Ha’nt,” he whispered.

As if in answer, the bed quivered again. The feeling was as if some man standing beside him had rested a hand on the headboard—a barely perceptible tremor. He had not moved a muscle. Nor, suddenly frozen, did he move one now. He lay absolutely still, only his eyes moving.

Another quiver came. With it came a faint dry rustle. Nerves and straining ears alike flashed the same message: it was the corn-husk mattress now! The movement, the sound, were beside him, almost under him—as if a bodiless man were laying himself down to rest side by side with the live one!

With lightning speed Douglas turned and struck at the Thing. His knuckles crashed against the old cloth and its content of husks. Again he struck, this time into the air. With a dive he launched himself at the chair—clutched matches—scratched them. The yellow blaze showed that the room was empty of all life but his own.

Scrambling out, he lit fresh matches and scanned the floor under the bed. Then he wheeled and looked all about the outer room. All was as before.

The matches burned his fingers, and he dropped them. Again blackness and vacancy engulfed him. Groping, he found the bed and lay down. Then he reached out, found his gun, and laid it beside him. And this time he did not roll up in his blankets. He only draped one of them loosely over him, and kept a hand on the gun.

“Come again, Mister Ha’nt,” he muttered.

Only the monotonous chorus outside answered. For a long time he lay waiting, his nerves gradually relaxing. At length, still loosely holding the weapon, he dozed away into slumber.

He awoke as if struck by a blow. A heavy thump had shocked him awake. Instantly he knew what caused it. The table against the outer door had been pushed over. The damp night air was sweeping in.

His gun leaped up. Its muzzles licked toward the entrance. One barrel vomited flame and lead.

The flare of the explosion lit up the portal. It stood ajar, but not wide enough to admit a man. Nor was any man standing there. Outside was only black, cavernous night.

His ears numbed by the concussion of the shell, he squatted there in the blankets, the other barrel ready for instantaneous use. Presently his stunned auditory nerves regained their acuteness. They told him something that brought a new chill crawling down his back. The song of the insects no longer swung through the night. And out there on the steps sounded a dull, slow drip—drip—drip.

With measured beat that dread sound hammered at his brain. It slowed, as if the first flow of falling fluid were becoming choked—or clotted. Then it ceased.

Shuddering, he moved once more to the edge, groped about until he found his boots, and slipped his legs into them. Feeling again through the dark, he located his matches. But he did not light one. With half a dozen of the little light-sticks in his hand, he stepped stealthily to the front door.

Long he listened, hearing nothing but a weird whisper of night wind among leaves. The air was clammy, and in it was a wet smell. He began to shiver again; but this time the cold was natural—the dank cold of dampness. Feeling about, he found a leg of the overturned table. On it he scratched a match, and out into the uncanny gloom beyond the door he darted the burning sliver.

The stoop was empty. The thing he had dreaded to find slumped against the wall was not there. Nor were the old boards disfigured by any fresh red stain.

Sorely perplexed, he ignited a new match from the expiring stub. As he did so a new thought struck his mind. Perhaps the dead thing was in the room, huddled beside him. He yanked the match inward—and found nothing but the capsized table, its legs wedging the door.

As the light died down a sudden soft sound made him jump. It was a single drop falling on the steps outside.

With a new match flaring he yanked the door open and strode out, angrily determined to find the source of those soul-sickening drops. He had not far to go. After one straight look at the steps he flung down the match and laughed out in savage scorn of himself.

The narrow steps were wet, but with nothing more sinister than rain. The dampness of the air, the utter blackness around, the silence of the insects—all told of a recent shower. Even now the crickets were beginning to chirp again. Somehow their sturdy notes, which previously had seemed doleful, now sounded cheerful.

“You doddering imbecile!” he jeered. “It’s as simple as daylight. A little shower just before you woke up—a gust of wind shoving the door open—the drip of the eaves for a minute or so. And you, you hysterical half-wit—you shoot a harmless door and turn into a knot of goose-flesh because of that! Who ever told you you were a grown-up man? You’re nothing but a scared-of-the-dark baby!”

He drank in a deep breath of the sweet air and nodded unseen encouragement to some lusty cricket in the grass near the stoop. But, as he turned again toward the door, he hesitated. Wind and rain could not be blamed for the footsteps on the stairs or the sounds and movements of his bed. Something urged him to take his blankets and lie down outdoors, even though the ground was wet: to sleep surrounded by the honest-voiced crickets, unconfined by walls within which stalked bodiless things.

“No!” he growled. “Back to bed you go, and there you stay. This is a fight to a finish, Mister Ha’nt, and I’ve taken one round out of three, with the other two drawn. I think I’ve got you on the run. Now let’s see if you can come back.”

With that he felt his way in, shut the door, kicked the table negligently against it, and returned to bed.

As he rearranged his blankets, heavy drops thudded overhead. Rapidly the spattering impacts swelled into a drumming roar of new rain.

“Aha,” he nodded. “You’d look sweet out in the grass now, wouldn’t you? By the time you got back in here you’d be well soaked, and it would serve you right. The Lord hates a quitter. Come on, Ha’nt. I’m waiting.”

He continued to wait. Steadily the rain pounded on, varied only by slashing swoops at the window. His eyes closed. His breathing slowed. The tumult of the storm faded out of his consciousness.

By and by he found himself drifting over a murky waste of waters which swashed and hissed and gurgled in sullen enmity. Above was no sun or moon or star—nothing but a dreary void. Around was no life; he was utterly alone in the desolation of plunging waves, a derelict at the mercy of wind and tide. But presently weird shapes took form among the billows—ghastly, gigantic wraiths which mouthed hideous grimaces down at him and reached for him with shadowy fingers. They veered away before they touched him, and a great wind blew them apart into fragments of mist and spume. But they formed again, making more frightful spectres than before, and stalked athwart the waste, half seen through a roaring deluge of rain. They began to yell his name, and with the shouts blended a thunder of hollow blows. He tried to yell back at them——

He was in his bed again. Wan daylight was in his opening eyes. The noise of falling rain was real. So were the loud knocking and the calling of his name. The pounding came from the outer door, and the voice was that of Uncle Eb.

“Hey, Hampton! Hampton! Speak up if ye’re livin’!”

He jumped from bed, shoved the table away from the entrance, and pulled the door open. Uncle Eb, his mustache drooping in a bedraggled wisp and his body gleaming dully in a wet rubber coat, took a sudden backward step.

“Gorry, boy! Ye scairt me, a-snakin’ the door open so sudden. I was about gittin’ ready to go ’long. How be ye?”

“All right, thanks. Come in. Wet morning.”

“Mornin’? It’s ’most noon, son. Ye been sleepin’ all this time? Mebbe—mebbe ye was broke of yer rest, though. That it?”

“That’s it. You were right—there are some funny things around this place.”

The old man nodded quickly, and his eyes swerved to the door. Following his gaze, Douglas saw that the panels were furrowed across by shot, and in the casing beyond was a splintery hole.

“I ain’t a mite s’prised,” was the guarded admission. “But git yer pants on an’ don’t stand here with yer shirt-tail a-flappin’. I got some tobacker an’ so on into the wagon—whoa, Bob! a little more rain won’t hurt ye after what ye come through—I’ll git it right out. Snake on yer clo’es before ye git cold.”

Yawning, Douglas snaked them on. By the time he emerged from his bedroom Uncle Eb had returned with a bulky box which seemed almost dry. Without ceremony he tramped in and dropped the box with a thud.

“Thar she is, right side up with care an’ dry as Nigger Nat—been ridin’ under a rubber blankit all the way. Gorry, ain’t this a rain! It’s the line storm. What say? Oh, four dollars an’ thutty-five cents. Thank ye.”

“Don’t thank me. Peel off your coat and light your pipe while I get breakfast—or luncheon, or whatever you want to call it. Why do you say ‘dry as Nigger Nat’?”

“Wal——” Uncle Eb hesitated, looking toward the stove. “No, I can’t stop. I got to git ’long, or the folks’ll think somebody waylaid me—I’d oughter be to home now. Nat? Oh, that’s jest a sayin’ we’ve got round here—‘dry as Nigger Nat.’ He’s one o’ them misfortunit critters that can’t never drownd his thirst, if ye know what I mean. He warn’t round to visit with ye last night, was he?” He turned toward the shot-scored door.

“Not to my knowledge. Sit down a minute, and I’ll tell you about my visitors. Yes, I had some.”

Duty and curiosity struggled a few seconds in Uncle Eb. Curiosity, of course, won. He accepted the chair and some new tobacco, loaded a disreputable old pipe, puffed as Douglas held a blazing match for him, and looked expectant. Douglas, his own pipe aglow, forthwith enlightened him as to the happenings of the night. He made merry over his various scares; but the older man, his eyes soberly traveling from door to door, did not echo his mirth.

“By mighty, boy, I take off my hat to ye,” he barked. “I ain’t scairt o’ nothin’ that walks or crawls or swims or flies, an’ I ain’t soop’stitious nuther, but I don’t want to live into no house where things walks without no feet an’ jiggles a bed without no hands. No sirree! I guess mebbe ’twas the wind that blowed yer door open—must of been. But them other things——”

He shook his head and spat noisily on the floor.

“I want to tell ye sumpthin’,” he went on. “I thought I wouldn’t tell ye yesterday, so’s ye wouldn’t git scairt beforehand; but after I went ’long I wished I had, so’s ye’d be ready. I been worried ever sence. Thinks I, if anything comes to ye into the night an’ catches ye asleep it’ll be my fault for not tellin’ ye.

“Wal, now, this house was Jake Dalton’s. He warn’t a sociable critter, lived all by hisself, kind o’ growled if ye spoke to him; an’ he used to go ’way for days to a time—had sumpthin’ to do up back, mebbe—I never ast no questions. But I drive up an’ down ’tween here an’ High Falls pretty reg’lar—I git my mail thar an’ so on—an’ I know how everything looks ’long the way. An’ Jake’s door was always shut, whether he was to home or not—’less’n he jest happened to be comin’ out when I went by.

“But one day I see this door a-standin’ a little ways open an’ Jake nowheres round. I didn’t say nothin’—I went ’long an’ come back, an’ ’twas jest the same. I kind o’ figgered about it, but then I thought mebbe Jake was drinkin’ up a new jug inside here an’ didn’t know ’nough to shut his door—he used to git that way. So I went ’long. But about three-four days later on somebody said Jake’s door was open yit, an’—wal, some of us come down here to see what was what.

“Jake was out back. He was the deadest man I ever see. He’d been thar—I dunno how long, but too long anyway. I ain’t a-goin’ to tell ye how he looked—I don’t want to remember it too plain. But we couldn’t see a mark onto him, an’ we dunno yit what kilt him. But he got kilt sometime into the night.

“We know that much, ’cause Jake was undressed—nothin’ onto him but his shirt—an’ we found the rest o’ his clo’es hangin’ on nails beside the bed, an’ his shoes layin’ onto the floor jest where he dropped ’em. He had got up an’ tore open this front door an’ run out back an’ fell down an’ died. He was dyin’ when he run out o’ here, too—he only went a little ways. But what he was runnin’ away from—what had got holt o’ him before he run—nobody knows. Nobody but Jake, an’ he can’t tell.

“That’s all there is to it, ’cept this: two-three fellers tried livin’ here an’ they couldn’t. They heard them same things that was round ye last night, an’ other things too, ’cordin’ to what I’ve heard tell; an’ they felt sumpthin’ that was worse’n what they heard. They jest couldn’t stand it. So they took everything wuth carryin’ an’ got out, an’ sence then nobody’s been here but Dalton’s Death—that’s what folks calls the thing that walks here nights: Dalton’s Death. I dunno if—— Whoa thar, Bob, whoa! Back up!”

He clattered to the door and plunged out. Douglas followed, to find him grabbing the reins and halting the white horse.

“Got to go ’long, boy,” he shouted from the edge of the road. “Bob’s a-gittin’ cranky, an’ mebbe he’s got a right to. ’Tain’t fitten weather for hoss or man. Come on up an’ visit with me any time.”

He clambered in and turned to yell an afterthought.

“Don’t leave yer gun here when ye go out. Ye might lose it. Some folks ain’t scairt o’ Dalton’s Death ’ceptin’ at night. G’by. G’yapalong!”

Blurred by the rain, he rolled away and was gone.