The Ghost of One Man Coulee

By B. M. Bower

Author of “The Happy Family Stories,” “Lonesome Land,” Etc.

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the January 1, 1913
issue of The Popular Magazine.]


    The reappearance of Olafson, the violinist, who had gone
    out in the blizzard and was lost seeking the north wind
    that he might learn the song it sang, and who, according
    to Happy Jack, returned to earth on moonlight nights to
    play his violin in the doorway of the deserted shack in
    One Man Coulee.


Happy Jack, by some freak of misguided ambition, was emulating
rather heavily the elfish imagination of Andy Green. He was--to put
it baldly and colloquially--throwing a big load into the Native Son
who jingled his gorgeous silver spurs close alongside Happy’s more
soberly accoutered heel.

“That there,” Happy was saying, with ponderous gravity, “is the
shack where the old fiddler went crazy trying to play a tune like
the wind--or some blamed fool thing like that--and killed himself
because he couldn’t make it stick. It’s haunted, that shack is. The
old fellow’s ghost comes around there moonlight nights and plays the
fiddle in the door.”

The Native Son, more properly christened Miguel, turned a languidly
velvet glance toward the cabin and flicked the ashes from his
cigarette daintily. “Have you ever seen the ghost, Happy?” he asked
indulgently.

“Ah--yes, sure! I seen it m’self,” Happy lied boldly.

“And were you scared?”

“Me? Scared? Hunh!” Happy gave a fairly good imitation of dumb
disgust. “Why, I went and--”

Happy’s imagination floundered in the stagnant pool of a
slow-thinking brain.

“I went right in and--”

“Exactly.” Miguel smiled a smile of even, white teeth and ironical
lips. “Some moonlight night we will come back here at midnight, you
and I. I have heard of that man, and I am fond of music. We will
come and listen to him.”

Some of the other boys, ambling up from behind, caught a part of the
speech, and looked at one another, grinning.

“The Native Son’s broke out all over with schoolbook grammar ag’in,”
Big Medicine remarked. “Wonder what Happy’s done? I’ve noticed, by
cripes, that the guilty party better duck, when that there Miguel
begins to talk like a schoolma’am huntin’ a job! Hey, there!” he
bellowed suddenly, so that one might hear him half a mile away.
“What’s this here music talk I hear? Who’s goin’ to play, and where
at, and how much is it a head?”

Miguel turned and looked back at the group, smiling still. “Happy
was telling me about a ghost in that cabin down there.” He flung out
a hand toward the place so suddenly that his horse jumped in fear of
the quirt. “I say we’ll come back some night and listen to the
ghost. Happy says he frequently rides over to hear it play on
moonlight nights, and--”

“Aw, g’wan!” Happy Jack began to look uncomfortable in his mind. “I
said--”

“Happy? If he thought there was a ghost in One Man Coulee, you
couldn’t tie him down and haul him past in a hayrack at noon,” Andy
asserted sharply. “There isn’t any ghost.”

Andy set his lips firmly together, and stared reminiscently down the
hill at the lonely little cabin in the coulee. Memory, the original
moving-picture machine, which can never be equaled by any man-made
contrivance, flashed upon him vividly a picture of the night when he
had sat within that cabin, listening to the man who would play the
north wind, and who wept because it eluded him always; who played
wonderfully--a genius gone mad under the spell of his own music--and
at last rushed out into the blizzard and was lost, seeking the north
wind that he might learn the song it sang. The scene gripped Andy,
even in memory. He wondered fancifully if Olafson was still
wandering with his violin, searching for the home of the north wind.
They had never found him, not even when the snows had gone and the
land lay bare beneath a spring sky. He must have frozen, for the
night had been bitter, and a blizzard raged blindingly. Still, they
had never found a trace of him.

There had been those who, after searching a while in vain, had
accused Andy to his face of building the story to excite his
fellows. He had been known to deceive his friends heartlessly, and
there had been some argument over the real fate of the vanished
Olafson. If Andy had told the truth, asked the doubters, where was
Olafson’s body? And who had ever tried to play the wind? Who, save
Andy Green, would ever think of such a fantastic tale? Happy Jack,
Andy remembered resentfully, had been unusually vociferous in his
unbelief, even for him.

“Aw, you stuck to it there was all the makin’s of a ghost,” Happy
defended awkwardly, and wished that Andy Green had not overheard the
yarn he told Miguel. “Sure, there’s a ghost!” He fell back a step
that he might wink at Big Medicine, and so enlist his sledge-hammer
assistance. “I leave it to Bud if we didn’t hear it, one night---”

“And seen it, too, by cripes!” Big Medicine enlarged readily and
shamelessly. “Standin’ right in the door, playin’ the fiddle to beat
a straight flush.” He glared around the little group with his
protruding eyes until his glance met the curious look of Cal Emmett.
“You was with us, Cal,” he asserted boldly. “I leave it to you if we
didn’t see ’im and hear ’im.”

Cal, thus besought to bear false witness, did so with amiable
alacrity. “We sure did,” he declared.

“Funny you never said a word about it before,” snapped Andy, with
open disbelief in his tone.

“We thought nobody’d believe us if we did tell it,” Big Medicine
explained.

“Pity yuh don’t always think as close to the mark as yuh done then,”
Andy retorted.

“How do yuh know there ain’t a ghost?” Big Medicine demanded with
some slight rancor, born not of the argument, but of temporary ill
feeling between the two. “Is it because yuh know, by cripes, that
yuh lied last winter?”

Andy’s lips tightened. “I’ve heard about enough of that,” he said,
with a flash of anger. With the cabin in sight, and recalling the
tragedy of that night, he was not in the mood to wrangle
good-naturedly about it with any one--least of all with Big
Medicine. “I didn’t lie. I’m dead willing to back what I said about
it with my fists, if--”

Big Medicine twitched the reins to ride close, but Miguel’s horse
sidled suddenly and blocked the move. Also, Miguel smiled
guilelessly into the angry eyes of Big Medicine.

“Will you fellows come back with me to-night, then, and see the
ghost?” he asked lightly. “Or don’t you dare tackle it again?”

Big Medicine snorted and forgot his immediate intentions toward
Andy, just as Miguel, perhaps, intended that he should do.

“You wouldn’t dast come along, if we did,” he glowered. “I’d camp
there alone for a month, far as I’m concerned, if there was any
grub, by cripes!”

“That shows how much you know about the place,” put in Pink, siding
with Andy. “Unless somebody’s packed it away lately, there’s all
kinds of grub left. Maybe the flour, and bacon, and beans is gone,
but there’s enough pickles and stuffed olives to last--”

“Olives!” cried the Native Son, and looked back longingly at the
rugged bluff which marked One Man Coulee. “Say, does anybody belong
to them olives?”

“Nobody but the ghost,” grinned Pink. “We bought him twelve lovely
tall bottles, just to please Jimmie; he told us there wasn’t any
sale for stuffed olives in Dry Lake, and he offered ’em to us at
cost. We did think uh taking all he had, but we cut it down to
twelve bottles afterward. And Olafson never ate a darned olive all
the time he was there!”

“And they’re there yet, you say?” It was plain that Miguel was far
more interested in the olives than he was in the ghost.

“Sure, they’re there.” Pink was not troubling to warp the truth, as
Miguel decided, after a sharp glance. “The stuff all belonged to
Olafson, and the shack belongs to the Old Man. And when Olafson went
crazy over the wind, and froze to death,” he stipulated distinctly,
with a challenging glance at Big Medicine, “we all kept thinking at
first he’d come back, maybe. But he never did--”

“Exceptin’ his ghost, by golly!” put in Slim unexpectedly, with a
belated snort of amusement at the idea.

“I’d rather,” sighed Miguel, “have a dozen bottles of stuffed olives
than a dozen kisses from the prettiest girl in the State.”

“Mamma! they’re easier to get, anyway. If you want ’em that bad--”

“That there ghost may have something to say about them olives,”
Happy Jack warned, sticking stubbornly to his story.

Miguel smiled--and there was that in his smile which sent four
mendacious cow-punchers hot with resentment.

“Maybe yuh don’t believe in that ghost, by cripes?” Big Medicine
challenged indignantly, and gave Miguel a pale, pop-eyed stare meant
to be intimidating.

Miguel smiled again as at some secret joke, and made no reply at
all.

“Well--don’t yuh b’lieve it?” Big Medicine roared after a minute.

Miguel smiled gently and inspected his cigarette; emotions might
surge about this Native Son and beat themselves to a white froth
upon the rock of his absolute, inimitable imperturbability, as the
Happy Family knew well. Now they rode close-grouped, intensely
interested in this struggle between bull-bellowing violence and
languid impassivity.

“You don’t believe it yourself, do you?” Miguel inquired evenly at
last, rousing himself from his abstraction. “Did you expect me to
swallow hook, sinker, and all?”

Big Medicine looked positively murderous. “When I say a thing is
so,” he cried, “I expect, by cripes, that folks will take m’ bare
word for it. I don’t have to produce no affidavies, nor haul in any
witnesses. I ain’t like Andy, here. You’re dealin’ now with a man
that can look truth in the face and never bat an eye.”

Miguel smiled again, this time more humanly amused. “I’ve met men
before who hadn’t a speaking acquaintance with Dame Truth,” he
drawled. “They looked her in the face, too--and she never recognized
’em.”

Big Medicine was at that critical point where make-believe may
easily become reality. He had been “joshing” and playing he was mad
before; now his glare hardened perceptibly, so that more than one of
the boys noticed the difference.

“Aw, if he don’t want to believe it he don’t have to,” Happy Jack
intercepted Big Medicine’s belligerent speech. “Chances is them
olives’ll stay where they’re at a good long while, though--if
Mig-u-ell has to get ’em after dark.”

Miguel smoked while he rode ten rods. “I offered to come and listen
to the ghost fiddle his fastest,” he observed at last, “and not one
of you fellows took me up on it. To-night I’ll come alone and get
those olives. I guess I can carry twelve bottles all right.”

“It’s no use to-night,” Cal Emmett objected. “It’s only on moonlight
nights--” He looked a question at Big Medicine.

“Moonlight it’s got to be. There ain’t a moon till--”

“I can find stuffed olives any old kind of a night.” Miguel blew the
ashes from his cigarette. “It’s the olives I want, amigo. I don’t
give a whoop for your ghost.”

“Aw, I betche yuh dassent come when it’s moonlight, just the same,”
cried Happy Jack. “I betche ten dollars yuh dassent.”

It would be tiresome to repeat all that was said upon the subject
thereafter. So slight a thing as Happy Jack’s wrongful desire to lie
as convincingly as could Andy Green, led the whole Happy Family into
a profitless and more or less acrimonious argument. Each man,
according to his nature, and the mood he happened to be in at the
moment, took up the discussion. And speedily it developed that the
faction against Miguel, Andy Green, and Pink included every man of
them save Weary, who would stand by Pink regardless of the issue.

It was nearly noon, and they were hungry, and headed toward camp;
but despite their haste they argued the foolish question of whether
the cabin in One Man Coulee was haunted. Six of them maintained
stubbornly that it was--for Irish began to side with Happy Jack just
because he did not like the Native Son very well, and that ironical
smile of Miguel’s irritated him to a degree; and Jack Bates also
espoused the ghost because he scented an opportunity for excitement.
The minority, composed of Miguel, Pink, Andy Green, and Weary,
confined themselves largely to sarcasm--which is the oil which feeds
fastest the flames of dissension.

It was foolish, to be sure; just as foolish as many other things
which men drift into doing. But they, nevertheless, reached that
point where, as in the case of Big Medicine, make-believe crowded
close upon reality. The four rode together into camp ten paces ahead
of the six, and they talked in low tones among themselves mostly.
When they did deign to look at the six, their glances were
unfriendly, and when they spoke their speech was barbed so that it
stung the listeners. And the six retaliated vigorously--the more so
because they had been silly enough in the first place to declare
their belief in the nonexistent, and had been betrayed into making
many ridiculous assertions which they were too obstinate to
withdraw; so that once again the Happy Family belied the name men
had given it, and became for the time being a bunch of as
disagreeable cow-punchers as one could find in four days’ ride.

“Aw, say, I sure would like to put it on them fellers good!” Happy
Jack growled to Cal and Jack Bates on the way to the corralled
saddle bunch after dinner. Happy Jack was purple with wrath, for a
caustic sentence or two spoken in Miguel’s most maddening drawl was
yet stinging his ears. “That there Native Son makes me tired! I
wisht there was a ghost--I’d sure--”

“Oh, there’s a ghost, all right,” Jack Bates stated meaningly; “all
yuh got to do is make one.”

“Say, by golly!” Slim, close behind them, gulped excitedly.
“Wouldn’t it--”

“Say, don’t let them faces get to leaking,” Cal advised bluntly.
“It’s a whole week till the moon’s good. Shut up!”

Slim goggled at him, caught the hazy beginning of an idea, grinned,
and stepped over the rope into the corral. He was grinning when he
caught his horse, and he was still grinning widely while he cinched
the saddle. He caught Andy Green eying him suspiciously, and
snickered outright. But he did not say a word, and, therefore, went
his way, believing that he had given no hint of what was in his
mind.

Slim and Happy Jack were alike in one respect: Their minds worked
slowly and rather ponderously--and, like other ponderous machinery,
once in motion they were hard to stop. The others would have left
the subject alone, after that hour of hot argument, and in time
would have forgotten it except for an occasional jeer, perhaps; but
not so Happy Jack and Slim.

The Flying U outfit ate, saddled fresh horses, reloaded the mess
wagon, and moved on toward Dry Creek, and that night flung weary
bodies upon the growing grass in the shade of the tents, twenty
miles and more from One Man Coulee and the little cabin with its
grim history of genius blotted out in madness. Nevertheless, Slim
searched ostentatiously with plate, knife, and fork in his hand, at
supper time, and craned his neck over boxes and cans, until he had
the attention of his fellows, who were hungry, and elbowed him out
of their way with scant courtesy.

“Say, Mig-u-ell, where’s them stuffed olives?” he called at last. “I
thought, by golly, we was goin’ to have some olives for supper?”

“Olives--stuffed olives, are best picked by moonlight, they tell
me,” Miguel responded unemotionally, glancing up over his cup. “Have
patience, amigo.”

Slim nudged Happy Jack so that he spilled half his coffee and swore
because it was hot, caught Big Medicine’s pale-eyed glare upon him,
and subsided so suddenly that he choked over his next sentence,
which had nothing at all to do with olives, or ghosts, or insane
fiddlers.

Men, it would seem, never quite leave their boyhood behind them; at
least, those men do not who live naturally and individually,
untainted by the poison of the great money marts where human nature
is warped and perverted so that nearly all natural instincts are
subordinated to the lust for gain of one sort and another. In the
Bear Paw country men labor for gain, it is true; but they also live
the lives for which nature has created them. There is that in the
wide reaches of plain and valley, in the clean arch of blue sky and
drifting clouds overhead, which keeps the best of them boyish till
their temples are marked with white--yes, and after.

It was that tenacious element which started Irish, Cal Emmett, Jack
Bates, and Big Medicine to tilting hat brims together when none
others were near observe them. It was that which sent them off
riding by themselves--to town, they said before they started--early
on the first Sunday after the wagons had pulled in to the ranch,
there to stand until the beef round-up started.

They returned unobtrusively by mid-afternoon, and they looked very
well satisfied with themselves, and inclined to facetiousness.

“What’s the matter?” Weary asked them pointedly when they dismounted
at the corral. “Come back after something you forgot?”

“Yeah--sure,” Cal returned, with a flicker of eyelids. “Nothing
doing in that darned imitation of a town, anyway.”

“Where’s the mail?” Pink demanded expectantly.

“We--plumb forgot that there mail, by cripes!” Big Medicine looked
up quickly. “Irish was goin’ to git it, but he didn’t.”

Pink said nothing, but he studied the four from under the long,
curled lashed which he had found very useful in concealing covert
glances.

“Sorry, Little One--honest to grandma, I am!” Big Medicine clapped
him patronizingly on the shoulder as he passed him.

“I don’t know as it matters,” said Pink sweetly. “Some of us were
just about ready to hit the trail. We can get it, I guess. Say!
Ain’t you got that cayuse caught up yet, Mig?” he called out to the
Native Son, who was reclining luxuriously against a new stack of
sweet-smelling bluejoint hay. “Come out of your trance, or we’ll go
off and leave you!”

“Oh--yuh going to town?” Cal looked over his shoulder with some
uneasiness in his baby-blue eyes.

“Maybe we are and maybe we ain’t. Maybe we’re going to see our best
girls. What’s it to you?” Pink turned his back on Cal and looked
full at Weary. “Come on--the girls will be plumb wild if we don’t
get a move on,” he said carelessly, and picked up his bridle.
“Where’s Andy? I thought he said he wanted to go along. Hurry up,
Mig, if you’re going.”

Nobody knew what he was driving at, but the three were mounted well
within ten minutes, and flinging back remarks to the four who had
lately returned. The departing ones were well up on the hogback
before any one of them ventured to question Pink, who rode with the
air of one whose destination is fixed, and whose desire outstrips
his body in the journey.

“Say, Cadwolloper, where are we headed for?” Weary inquired then
resignedly. “And what’s the rush?”

Pink glanced down the hill toward the stable and corrals, decided
that they were being observed with something very like suspicion,
and faced to the front again. “We’re going to head for Rogers’,” he
dimpled, “but we ain’t going to get there. Yuh needn’t look down
there--but Irish and Cal are saddling up again. They’re afraid we’re
going to town. They’re going to trail us up and find out for sure.”

“They sure did act like they’d been holding up a train, when they
rode up,” Weary observed. “I’ve been searching my soul with a
spyglass trying to find the answer for all that guilt on their
faces.”

“Happy Jack has been mentioning stuffed olives and moonlight pretty
often to-day,” the Native Son remarked with apparent irrelevance. “I
thought he’d pickled that josh, but he’s working things up again.
Two and two make four; that four.” With the slightest of head tilts
he indicated those below, and flashed his even, white teeth in a
smile. “Do you want me to guess where you’re going, Pink?”

“I wish you fellows would guess how we’re going to ditch them two
pirates, first,” Pink retorted, glancing down again at the stable
without turning his head. “If we strike straight for Rogers’, maybe
they’ll turn back, though. They’ll think we’ve gone over there to
see the girls.”

“If I knew the country a little better--” began the Native Son, and
stopped with that.

“If they don’t follow us over the ridge,” spoke up Andy, who had
been thinking deeply, “we can go up Antelope Coulee instead of down,
and follow along in the edge of the breaks to the head of One Man,
and down that; that’s where you’re going, isn’t it? It will be five
or six miles farther.”

Pink threw up his hand impatiently. “Uh course, that’s what I
intended to do. But if they ride over the ridge they’ll know we
never kept straight on to Rogers’, and then they’ll know we’re
dodging.” He urged his horse up the last steep slope, and led the
way over the brow of the bluff and out of sight of the ranch below.
“And I’m sure going to find out what that bunch has been making
themselves so mysterious about, the last couple uh days,” he vowed
grimly. “I slipped up on ’em yesterday down in the hay corral, and I
heard Cal say, ‘Sure, we can! There’s one in that Injun grave over
in Antelope Coulee.’” He stared at the others with purpling eyes.
“What’s in that grave, Weary? I never was right to it, myself.”

“Nothing, Cadwolloper--except what is left of the old boy they
tucked under that ledge. There ain’t even a perfume any more. We can
go by that way and see if they’ve been there.”

With that wordless understanding common among men who have lived
long together, they left the trail and ambled slowly across the
prairie in the direction of the Rogers Ranch. And they had not
traveled more than half a mile when Miguel, looking back very
cautiously, smiled.

“Don’t look,” he said, and then added melodramatically: “We are
followed! Hist! The pursuers are in sight. Courage, men!”

Pink risked a glance over his shoulder, and glimpsed two bobbing hat
crowns just over the brow of Flying U Coulee.

“Now, wouldn’t that jar yuh?” he exclaimed, just as disgustedly as
if he had not all along suspected that very thing to happen.

The moving specks stopped, remained stationary for a minute or two,
and then went bobbing back again. The four laughed, pressed spurred
heels against their horses, and galloped over the ridge and into the
lower end of Antelope Coulee. At the bottom they swung sharply to
the right, instead of to the left, rode as hurriedly as the uneven
ground would permit for a mile or more; crossed the trail to Dry
Lake, and kept on up the coulee to its very head.

At one point their quick eyes saw where several horsemen had ridden
down into the coulee, dismounted, and climbed through shale rock to
the lone Indian grave under a low shelf of sandstone, left there
betraying imprints of high-heeled boots, returned again to where
their horses had waited, and ridden on. They also rode on, toward
One Man Coulee. Before them always lay the trail of shod hoofs,
where the soil was not too hard to receive an imprint.

Patsy was standing in the door of the mess house beating his fat
knuckles upon a tin pan for the supper call, when Andy Green and
Miguel rode leisurely down the grade. The boys were straggling
toward the sound, and there was the usual bustle around the
washbasins and roller towels, and in the quiet air hung the enticing
odor of Patsy’s delectable chicken potpie. The two hurried to the
stable, unsaddled with the haste of hungry men, and reached the mess
house just as the clatter of feet had subsided and the potpie was
making its first round.

Cal looked up from a generous helping. “Hello, where’s the rest of
the bunch?” he queried.

“Oh, the girls have got them roped and tied,” Andy responded
carelessly. “Mig and I got cold feet, and broke back on them.”

“Didn’t yuh go to town?” Irish spoke as innocently as if he had not
watched them well on their way from the shelter of the bluff.

Miguel deigned him one of his heavy-lidded stares. “Why should one
go to town, when there are three pretty girls at the next ranch?
Town didn’t hold you fellows very long.”

“I thought sure you’d gone after olives, by golly,” blurted Slim,
with his mouth half full of dumpling.

“If I’d gone after them, I’d have got them,” Miguel, usually so
exasperatingly calm, spoke with some feeling.

“Aw, g’wan! I betche yuh dassent go.” Happy Jack grinned arrogantly.

“You wouldn’t bet anything but words,” retorted Miguel. “There are
several of you fellows that seem to be just that brand of sports.”
He gave the faint shrug which they all hated.

Big Medicine laid down his knife and fork. “Say, do yuh mind naming
over them several fellers?” he inquired abruptly in his booming
voice. “I don’t bet words, by cripes--when I bet--”

Miguel smiled across at him blandly. “We were speaking of olives,”
he purred “Happy Jack wanted to ‘betche’ I daren’t go after them. He
didn’t name the stakes, though.”

“It ain’t because I ain’t willin’ to put ’em up,” glowered Happy.
“I’ll betche five dollars, then--if that suits yuh any better.”

Miguel laughed, which was unusual when he was arguing with any one.
“Do you mean it? Do you really think that little, weak,
pretty-pretty ghost story would scare--a--nigger baby?” His voice
taunted the lot of them.

“Don’t yuh believe there’s a ghost, by cripes?” Big Medicine bawled
pugnaciously.

“No. Of course I don’t believe it. Neither do you.” Miguel spoke
with that weary tolerance which is so hard to endure.

“I do,” Cal Emmett declared flatly. “And I’m willing to bet a horse
against them fancy spurs of yours that you dassent go to-night to
One Man Coulee and bring away them bottles of stuffed olives.”

“What horse?” asked Miguel, reaching for the chicken platter.

“Well--any darned horse I own!” Cal wore the open-eyed look of
innocence which had helped him scare out his opponents in many a
poker game. “I say to-night,” he added apologetically to the others,
“because it’s going to be clear and lots uh moonlight; and it’s
Sunday. But I don’t care what night he tries it. I’ll bet he won’t
bring away no olives.”

“Aren’t they there?” Miguel wanted to know.

“Oh--they’re there, I guess. I’ll change the wordin’ a little. I’ll
bet yuh dassent go to that shack, and go into it and stay long
enough to freeze onto twelve bottles uh anything. To-night,” he
added, “at mid--no, any old time between ten and one. And I’ll bet
any one uh my four cayuses against your spurs.”

“It’s a go. Does the rest of my riding outfit look good to any of
you fellows?” Miguel glanced around the table smilingly. “Happy, for
instance--”

“I got five dollars up,” Happy Jack reminded. “But I’ll put twenty
with it against your bridle.”

“That bridle’s worth fifty dollars. And my saddle cost two hundred
and eighty. I’ll put them up, though, if any one wants to cover the
bet.”

“Say, this is a shame. Honest to grandma, I’d hate to see Miggie
ridin’ bareback the rest uh the summer--with a rope hackamore, by
cripes! Don’t go ’n take all his purty-purties away from him like
that, boys! Haw-haw-haw!” It is unwise to laugh like that with one’s
mouth full of chicken. Big Medicine choked and retired from the
conversation and the room.

“Say, you don’t reelize, by golly, what you’re up ag’inst,” Slim
observed ponderously. “If you did--”

“Are you dead-game sports, or are you a bunch of old women?” drawled
Miguel. “My outfit is up, if any one has nerve enough to take the
bets.”

They wrangled more or less amicably over it, as was their habit. But
they did finally bet a great deal more on the foolish venture than
they should have done. When, finally, they reached the time and the
point of departure, Miguel, like the plains Indians during the fever
of horse-racing, was pledged to his hat and his high-heeled boots;
while the Happy Family, if they lost, would have plenty of reason to
repent them of their rashness.

They waited an hour for Pink and Weary to return, and, when they did
not appear, they rode off without them. They pitied Miguel, and told
him so. They told of haunted cabins, and of murders and dreams come
true, and of disasters that were weird.

Andy Green, when half of the ten miles had been covered, roused
himself from his disapproving silence and told them a fearsome tale
of two miners murdered mysteriously and thrown into their own mine,
and of their dog which howled up and down the mountain gulches when
the moonlight lay soft upon the land; told it so that they rode
close-huddled that they might catch it all, down to the last
gruesomely mysterious incident of the murdered master whistling from
the pit to the dog, and of the animal’s whimpering obedience--long
years after, when the dog’s bones were bleaching through sun and
storm above, and the master’s bones were rotting in the darkness
below.

Happy Jack more than once glanced uneasily toward the shadowy
hollows as they rode slowly across the prairies through the night
silence. Slim set his jaw and rode stiffly, staring straight ahead
of him as if he feared what he might see, if he looked aside. Miguel
was seen to shiver, though the air was soft and warm.

“Now, this Olafson--” Andy began after a silence which no one
thought to break. “The boys joshed me a lot about that. But it was
queer--the queerest thing I ever saw or heard. To see him sitting
there in the firelight, listening--and while he listened, to hear
the wind whoo-whoo around the corners and down the chimney--and the
snow swish-swishing against the walls like grave clothes when the
ghosts walk--”

“Aw--I thought yuh said there wasn’t any ghosts!” croaked Happy Jack
uneasily.

“And then Olafson would lift his violin and draw the bow across--”

Andy, the reins dropped upon the saddle horn, held an imaginary
violin cuddled under his chin, and across the phantom strings drew
an imaginary bow with slow, sweeping gestures, while his voice went
on with the tale, and the Happy Family watched, and listened, and
saw what he meant them to see. “And then would come that lonesome
whoo-oo of the wind--from the violin. He made me see things. He made
me see the storm, like it was a white spirit creeping over the
range. He made me see--”

They had reached One Man Coulee while he talked. The Happy Family
stared down into the lonely place lying nakedly white under the
moon, shivered, and rode slowly down the slope. Like one in a trance
Andy rode in their midst, and compelled them with his voice to see
the things he would have them see. Compelled them to see Olafson,
the master musician, striving after the song of the north wind, and
the prairie, and the wolf; made them see him as he opened the door
and stood there gazing wildly out, playing--always
playing--something weird and wonderful, and supernaturally terrible.

“I don’t envy Miguel his job none, by cripes,” Big Medicine said, as
they drew near the point beyond which the cabin would stand revealed
to them, and for a wonder he spoke softly.

Andy glanced up at the yellow ball floating serenely over the blue
ocean of the sky, down the white-lighted coulee, with fringes of
black shadows here and there, and then at the cabin squatting
deserted against the green background of willows, with blank,
staring window and open doorway.

“If such things can be--if the ghost of Olafson can come back, he’ll
come to-night and try again to play the wind,” he said solemnly.
“Just a low, even, creepy tone first on open G--”

They rode slowly around to where they faced the door, pulled up
short fifty feet away from it, and stared.

“There he is!” Andy’s voice was the whisper which carries far. “He’s
come, boys--to play the wind again! A low, creepy note on open G--”

In the doorway, where the moon shone radiantly in, stood a
black-clothed figure topped by a grinning, fleshless skull. Cuddled
under the horrid, bony chin of it was a violin. The right arm was
upraised and bent, poising the bow above the strings. The staring,
empty eye sockets were lighted with a pale, phosphorescent glow.

“Well, by golly!” gulped Slim, in an undertone, and backed his horse
a little involuntarily.

“Aw--” Happy Jack looked at Irish and Cal, grinned sheepishly, and
was silent.

“Go on, Miggie, and git your olives,” Big Medicine murmured. “Twelve
bottles. We’ll wait for yuh here.”

Miguel slid off his horse without a word and started forward,
hesitating a trifle, if the truth were known.

In the doorway the right arm of the figure trembled and moved slowly
upward, pulling the bow lightly across the strings. Came a low,
wailing note on open G, which swelled resonantly in the quiet air,
rose a tone, clung there, and slid eerily down to silence.

Big Medicine started and stared across at Irish, and Cal Emmett, and
Jack Bates, who met his look incredulously. Miguel stopped short and
stood a moment in the blank silence which followed. The gaunt, black
figure bulked huge in the doorway, and the fleshless mouth grinned
at him sardonically.

Miguel took a step or two forward. Again that ghostly arm lifted and
swept the bow across the strings. Again the eerie tones came
vibrantly, sliding up the scale, clinging, and wailing, and falling
again to silence when Miguel stood still.

Big Medicine turned his horse short around, so that he faced those
three--Cal, Jack Bates, and Irish.

“Say!--the--the thing’s playin’, by cripes!” he muttered accusingly,
and edged off fearfully.

“Aw--say!” Happy Jack moved farther away in sudden, unashamed
terror. “What makes it--play?”

Miguel stood longer that time, and the silence rasped the nerves of
those who waited farther off. When he moved forward again the
playing began. When he stopped, the ghostly arm was still.

Happy Jack, with an unexpected, inarticulate squawk, kicked his
horse in the ribs and fled down the coulee. Slim went after him,
galloping with elbows flapping wildly. Those who waited longer saw
Miguel walk slowly up to the very threshold, and face the ghost that
played over and over that one, awful strain. They saw him stop as if
to gather together his courage, put down his head as if he were
battling a blizzard, and edge past the unearthly figure.

As he disappeared within, brushing swiftly past the ghost, the
strings twanged ominously. Came an unearthly screech which was like
demons howling as howls the gray wolf before a storm. It raised the
hair on the scalp with that prickling sensation which is so
extremely unpleasant, and it sent Big Medicine, Cal, Jack Bates, and
Irish clattering down the coulee in the wake of Slim and Happy Jack.

Andy Green held his horse and Miguel’s back from following, and
watched them out of sight before he rode closer to the awful thing
which guarded the door.

“All right, boys--yuh may as well stop the concert; the audience is
halfway home by this time,” he called out, chuckling as he
dismounted and went clanking up to the doorway. “Say, by gracious,
yuh done fine! That last screech was sure a pippin--it like to have
stampeded me.”

Pink disentangled his fingers from a fine bit of string and grunted.
“It ought to be. We’ve been practicing that howl, off and on, for
four hours. How was the fiddling, Andy?”

“Outa sight. Say, yuh better take them strings off the bow, and make
darned sure you ain’t having any tracks, or anything. Let ’em come
back and find everything just the way they fixed the plant--and then
let ’em put in their spare time figuring the thing out, if they can.
They’ll likely come moseying back up here, pretty soon--all but
Happy and Slim--so you want to hurry. If you two can beat us home,
they’ll never get wise in a thousand years of hard thinking.” He
looked the ghost over critically, gave a snort, and painstakingly
straightened the bow. “Darned grave robbers,” he exclaimed, looking
at the skull. “Well, hike boys; I hear ’em coming. Got the olives
all right, Miguel? Come and get on your horse. We’ll meet ’em down
the trail a ways if we can. And say,” he called over his shoulder,
when he was beside his horse again, “you fellows do some going! If
you ain’t in bed when we get there, the stuff’s off.” Even while he
looked back, Pink and Weary dodged out and vanished in the gloom of
the willows.

The Native Son, bearing in a gunny sack twelve bottles of stuffed
olives, and on his swarthy face an unstudied grin of elation, was
just making ready to mount when Irish and Big Medicine became
recognizable in the moonlight below.

“We thought we’d come back and see if you were alive, anyway,” Irish
announced shamefacedly, with a glance toward the cabin and the
spectral figure in the doorway. “What did it do to yuh, Mig?”

“Nothing, only caterwaul like the devil all the time I was getting
the olives. It’s shut up since I came out of the cabin. Seems like
it hates visitors.”

“Er--did it--did the ghost make all that noise, honest?” Big
Medicine’s voice had lost some of its blatant assurance. He was
bewildered, and he showed it.

“You heard him sawing on that fiddle, didn’t you? The screeching
seemed to come from--just all over the room.” Miguel waved his free
hand vaguely. “Just all over at once. Kinda got my goat, for a
minute or two.”

The group rode slowly away, and when Miguel was through speaking
they went in silence. Halfway up the hill, Irish turned in the
saddle and stared down at the roof of the little cabin showing black
under the moon.

“Well--I’ll--be--darned!” he stated slowly and emphatically, and
rode on with the others, who seemed to be thinking deeply.

Their meditations must have been to some purpose, for, after a hasty
word or two snatched in private with his fellow conspirators, Irish
set the pace.

At the stable he did not wait to unsaddle first of all. Instead he
went hurriedly inside, lighted a match, and held it up while he
surveyed the wall where the Happy Family were wont to hang their
saddles--when they hung them anywhere. Two familiar saddles dangled
there, each hanging upon its accustomed peg by its accustomed right
stirrup, proclaiming silently and unanswerably the fact of their
owners’ presence upon the ranch. When the match flickered and went
out, Irish discovered that Cal, Jack Bates, Big Medicine, and Happy
Jack were standing behind him, staring also.

“Well--I’ll--be--darned!” said Irish again softly, and dropped the
stub with a gesture of keen disappointment.

“It wasn’t them, then,” muttered Big Medicine at his shoulder. “And
the--the thing--it played, by cripes!”