The moon was golden now; Si could see its brilliant shafts of light strike aslant upon the smooth surface of the cliff that formed the opposite side of Old Daddy"s Window. He stopped short in the deep shadow of the more rugged crag. The vines and bushes that draped its many jagged ledges dripped with dew. The boughs of an old oak, which grew close by, swayed gently in the breeze. Hidden by its huge hole, Si cast an apprehensive glance toward the house where his elders sat.
Certainly no one was thinking of him now.
"This air my chance fur that young ow_el_--ef ever," he said to himself.
The owl"s nest was in the hollow of the tree. The trunk was far too bulky to admit of climbing, and the lowest branches were well out of the boy"s reach. Some thirty feet from the ground, however, one of the boughs touched the crag. By clambering up its rugged, irregular ledges, making a zigzag across its whole breadth to the right and then a similar zigzag to the left, Si might gain a position which would enable him to clutch this bough of the tree. Thence he could scramble along to the owl"s stronghold.
He hesitated. He knew his elders would disapprove of so reckless an undertaking as climbing about Old Daddy"s Window, for in venturing toward its outer verge, a false step, a crumbling ledge, the snapping of a vine, would fling him down the sheer precipice into the depths below.
His hankering for a pet owl had nevertheless brought him here more than once. It was only yesterday evening--before he had heard of the ghost"s appearance, however--that he had made his last futile attempt.
He looked up doubtfully. "I ain"t ez strong ez--ez some folks," he admitted.
"But then, come ter think of it," he argued astutely, "I don"t weigh nuthin" sca"cely, an" thar ain"t much of me ter hev ter haul up thar."
He flung off his hat, he laid his wiry hands upon the wild grape-vines, he felt with his bare feet for the familiar niches and jagged edges, and up he went, working steadily to the right, across the broad face of the cliff.
Its heavy shadow concealed him from view. Only one ledge, at the extreme verge of the crag, jutted out into the full moonbeams. But this, by reason of the intervening bushes and vines, could not be seen by those who sat in the cabin porch on the slope of the ravine, and he was glad to have light just here, for it was the most perilous point of his enterprise. By deft scrambling, however, he succeeded in getting on the moonlit ledge.
"I clumb like a painter!" he declared triumphantly.
He rested there for a moment before attempting to reach the vines high up on the left hand, which he must grasp in order to draw himself up into the shadowy niche in the rock, and begin his zigzag course back again across the face of the cliff to the projecting bough of the tree.
But suddenly, as he still stood motionless on the ledge in the full radiance of the moon, the clamor of frightened voices sounded at the house. Until now he had forgotten all about the ghost. He turned, horror-stricken.
There was the frightful thing, plainly defined against the smooth surface of the opposite cliff--some thirty feet distant--that formed the other side of Old Daddy"s Window.
And certainly there are mighty few dancers such as that ghost! It lunged actively toward the precipice. It suddenly dashed wildly back--gyrating continually with singularly nimble feet, flinging wiry arms aloft and maintaining a sinister silence, while the frightened clamor at the house grew ever louder and more shrill.
Several minutes elapsed before Si recognized something peculiarly familiar in the ghost"s wiry nimbleness--before he realized that the shadow of the cliff on which he stood reached across the ravine to the base of the opposite cliff, and that the figure which had caused so much alarm was only his own shadow cast upon its perpendicular surface.
He stopped short in those antics which had been induced by mortal terror; of course, his shadow, too, was still instantly. It stood upon the brink of the precipice which seems the sill of Old Daddy"s Window, and showed distinctly on the smooth face of the cliff opposite to him.
He understood, after a moment"s reflection, how it was that as he had climbed up on the ledge in the full moonlight his shadow had seemed to rise gradually from the vague depths below the insurmountable precipice.
He sprang nimbly upward to seize the vines that shielded him from the observation of the ghost-seers on the cabin porch, and as he caught them and swung himself suddenly from the moonlit ledge into the gloomy shade, he noticed that his shadow seemed to fling its arms wildly above its head, and disappeared upward.
"That air jes" what dad seen las" night when I war down hyar afore, a-figurin" ter ketch that thar leetle ow_el_," he said to himself when he had reached the tree and sat in a crotch, panting and excited.
After a moment, regardless of the coveted owl, he swung down from branch to branch, dropped easily from the lowest upon the ground, picked up his hat, and prepared to skulk along the "short cut," strike the road, and come home by that route as if he had just returned from the settlement.
""Kase," he argued sagely, "ef them skeered-ter-death grown folks war ter find out ez _I_ war the _harnt_--I mean ez the _harnt_ war _me_--ennyhow," he concluded desperately, "I"d KETCH it--sure!"
So impressed was he with this idea that he discreetly held his tongue.
And from that day to this, Jonas Creyshaw and his friends have been unable to solve the mystery of Old Daddy"s Window.
"WAY DOWN IN POOR VALLEY
CHAPTER I
There was the grim Big Injun Mountain to the right, with its bare, beetling sandstone crags. There was the long line of cherty hills to the left, covered by a dark growth of stunted pines. Between lay that melancholy stretch of sterility known as Poor Valley,--the poorest of the several valleys in Tennessee thus piteously denominated, because of the sorry contrast which they present to the rich coves and fertile vales so usual among the mountains of the State.
How poor the soil was, Ike Hooden might bitterly testify; for ever since he could hold a plough he had, year after year, followed the old "bull-tongue" through the furrows of the sandy fields which lay around the log cabin at the base of the mountain. In the intervals of "c.r.a.ppin"" he worked at the forge with his stepfather, for close at hand, in the shadow of a great jutting cliff, lurked a dark little shanty of unhewn logs that was a blacksmith"s shop.
When he first began this labor, he was, perhaps, the youngest striker that ever wielded a sledge. Now, at eighteen, he had become expert at the trade, and his muscles were admirably developed. He was tall and robust, and he had never an ache nor an ill, except in his aching heart.
But his heart was sore, for in the shop he found oaths and harsh treatment, and even at home these pursued him; while outside, desolation was set like a seal on Poor Valley.
One drear autumnal afternoon, when the sky was dull, a dense white mist overspread the valley. As Ike plodded up the steep mountain side, the vapor followed him, creeping silently along the deep ravines and chasms, till at length it overtook and enveloped him. Then only a few feet of the familiar path remained visible.
Suddenly he stopped short and stared. A dim, distorted something was peering at him from over the top of a big boulder. It was moving--it nodded at him. Then he indistinctly recognized it as a tall, conical hat. There seemed a sort of featureless face below it.
A thrill of fear crept through him. His hands grew cold and shook in his pockets. He leaned forward, gazing intently into the thick fog.
An odd distortion crossed the vague, featureless face--like a leer, perhaps. Once more the tall, conical hat nodded fantastically.
"Ef ye do that agin," cried Ike, in sudden anger, all his pluck coming back with a rush, "I"ll gin ye a lick ez will weld yer head an" the boulder together!"
He lifted his clenched fist and shook it.
"Haw! haw! haw!" laughed the man in the mist.
Ike cooled off abruptly. He had been kicked and cuffed half his life, but he had never been laughed at. Ridicule tamed him. He was ashamed, and he remembered that he had been afraid, for he had thought the man was some "roamin" harnt."
"I dunno," said Ike sulkily, "ez ye hev got enny call ter pounce so suddint out"n the fog, an" go ter noddin" that cur"ous way ter folks ez can"t half see ye."
"I never knowed afore," said the man in the mist, with mock apology in his tone and in the fantastic gyrations of his nodding hat, "ez it air you-uns ez owns this mounting." He looked derisively at Ike from head to foot. "Ye air the biggest man in Tennessee, ain"t ye?"
"Naw!" said Ike shortly, feeling painfully awkward, as an overgrown boy is apt to do.
"Waal, from yer height, I mought hev thunk ye war that big Injun that the old folks tells about," and the stranger broke suddenly into a hoa.r.s.e, quavering chant:--
""A red man lived in Tennessee, Mighty big Injun, sure!
He growed ez high ez the tallest tree, An" he sez, sez he, "Big Injun, me!"
Mighty big Injun, sure!""
"Waal, waal," in a pensive voice, "so ye ain"t him? I"m powerful glad ye tole me that, sonny, "kase I mought hev got skeered hyar in the woods by myself with that big Injun."
He laughed boisterously, and began to sing again:--
""Settlers blazed out a road, ye see, Mighty big Injun, sure!
He combed thar hair with a knife. Sez he, "It"s combed fur good! Big Injun, me!"
Mighty big Injun, sure!""