We waited until we thought everybody in the house would be eating dinner, and then we rowed up the shore and turned into the Willis’s cut. Nobody saw us, but we didn’t breathe easy till we were under the high bank and sheltered from the house. Of course, we weren’t safe even then, for if anybody had looked down there and seen a strange boat tied alongside the scow of Mr. Willis’s he naturally would wonder about it and want to know who came in it and where they were. Sammy fixed that part of it up pretty well by shoving the boat out a dozen feet and then throwing a big armful of brush over the bow of it. He ran the rope through the grass and left the end where we could get at it in a hurry and haul the boat in. I went up as far as I dared on the steps, and everything looked safe to me. Unless you were suspicious and looking for something you wouldn’t have noticed the boat at all.
“Tallow,” says Mark, who had been sitting on the bottom step pinching his cheek, “folks that’re scairt are easier to f-f-fool than folks that ain’t.”
“I guess so,” says I.
“They’re worryin’ about themselves, and wonderin’ if anything’s goin’ to hurt ’em, and when a feller gits to fussin’ about himself he ain’t got much t-t-t-time to think about anything else.”
My, how he spluttered!
“That’s right,” I says, remembering well how I’d felt that night at the cave keeping watch all alone and wondering what had made the footprint in the sand with the toes off to one side. “Scare a man good and you got him.”
“What scares a man most—somethin’ he kin see or somethin’ he can’t?”
I saw what he was driving at right off. “Why, somethin’ he can’t see and can’t understand. The more mysterious it is the more scairt he’ll git.”
He nodded. “Then,” says he, “the thing for us to do is scare Batten and the rest of them stiff.”
I knew by the looks of him that he had a scheme; you could always tell by the winking of his eyes and the way he wiggled his left thumb sort of excited-like.
“Go ahead,” says I; “let’s have it.”
“We started it the other day with the dinner-bell. I bet old Willis is shiverin’ about that yet. We kin give ’em some more of it. Then, maybe, Sammy kin help us. Remember his showin’ us how a p-p-panther screamed?”
I should say I did remember. I never heard such a blood-curdling noise in all my life. I was sitting right by Sammy at the cave when he made it, and it was broad daylight, but the little hairs on the back of my neck rose straight up, and I was nervous all the rest of the day. I should say I did remember it.
“We’ll use that, and then they’ll be discoverin’ the disappearance of the d-d-dog. If other things has happened that’ll bother ’em some. Maybe, too, we kin fix it so they’ll see Sammy’s footprint. Oh, I guess we kin s-s-scare ’em, all right.”
I began to think so, too.
“Let’s commence,” I says.
“You go around into the orchard and whang at the bell. Sammy and I’ll stay on the east side and see what we kin do. When I give the whistle make for the boat.”
I made for the orchard and crouched down in a fence corner where I could get a good sight at the bell. I’d filled my pockets chock full of the best stones I could find, nice round fellows about the size of marbles, and there were new rubbers on my sling-shot. I hadn’t taken any chances. When I was all settled I got to my knees and let her fly. The first time I missed, but the second time the old bell went glang. I scrouged down out of sight and waited. In a minute old Mr. Willis stuck his head out of the door, his eyes bulging, and looked all over. He stood there quite awhile, sort of undecided. Then he turned his back, and at that I shot again. Glang went the bell, and he jumped a foot. When he landed he was turned all the way around.
“Hey! Mr. Batten! Mr. Batten!” he yelled.
Batten came running to the door to know what was the matter. Willis was excited and talked loud, so I could hear every word he said. He started in by telling how the bell rang the other day with nobody to ring it, and how the dog had yelped, and how something had slammed the door when he went in. “It ain’t nat’ral,” he squeaked. “I dunno what’s doin’ it, but it ain’t the hand of man. No, siree! And here she’s just rung twice right under my nose.”
“JUST RUNG TWICE RIGHT UNDER MY NOSE”
“Bosh!” says Batten. “You’re nervous and dreaming.”
“Didn’t you hear that there bell ring?”
“I was in the front of the house working; I didn’t notice anything.”
They were facing each other and not looking toward the bell at all, so I let her have another one. Glang she went, and I thought Willis was going to fall off the steps. “There!” he yelled, shaking his skinny hand in Batten’s face. “There, maybe you heard that, eh? Maybe I was dreaming then. Now, tell me what made that. Who rung it? No human bein’ rung it, I say. Something’s gone wrong with this place, it has! It’s ghosts, that’s what it is; and I’m a-goin’ to pack and git for town.”
“Ghosts!” snorts Batten. “Bosh!” But he didn’t look easy in his mind, and was watching the bell uncomfortable-like. “There ain’t no such thing,” he says.
“No sich thing! Why, my father he—”
He’d got Batten looking at him instead of the bell, so I banged it again. This time Batten jumped most as high as Willis.
“Bill!” he yelled; “come here, Bill!”
A big young fellow in his shirt-sleeves, with a pencil in his hand, came to the door. I judged he was the drawing-man that was taking off the design of the engine. They palavered quite a spell, and I didn’t get a chance to shoot; besides, I didn’t want it to get too common. Even a ghost that hangs around too much will get to be a habit; folks will get used to it, and it won’t scare them any more. I let them talk.
“Where’s the dog?” says Batten, all of a sudden, and commenced to whistle and call. Of course the dog didn’t come, and you could see that worried them.
“He never goes off,” said Willis, and he tried whistling; but the dog was a long ways away, and the rope that tied him to his tree was good and stout.
“This,” says Batten, “is getting to look kind of funny.” He was one of those middle-sized men with too much under their vests, and a sticky-looking complexion, and eyes that always seemed as if somebody’d just spilled a mite of water into them. He wasn’t handsome at any time, but now he got kind of yellow mixed with green, and his fingers began to shut and open. By all signs he was pretty average uncomfortable.
Well, just then Sammy let out an awful screech like a panther that’s been shot. It went up high and came down low and went into your ear like it was trying to bore a hole through your head. I’d been expecting it, and I knew what it was, but that didn’t make a bit of difference; I was about as scared as Batten and Willis. They got white; I could see it way where I was. The color seemed just to pop out of their faces. It seemed like I ought to have heard it make a noise like when you pull a cork out of a bottle.
“What’s that?” says Batten, and grabs a hold on Willis.
Willis he didn’t say a word, but just sagged against the door, and the fellow they called Bill ducked inside and then poked his head out and glared all around with his eyes almost laying on his cheeks. I took another crack at the bell.
Every one of them jumped into the house and slammed the door. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to do anything more just then, but to sort of let what we had done sink in. So I sat still, watching the house. All at once I heard a sound close behind me, and, being pretty excited anyhow and all on edge, I liked to have jumped up and hollered, but I didn’t, which was lucky, for it wasn’t anybody but Sammy, grinning away and plumb tickled to death with himself. He motioned with his finger for me to follow him.
“Fat boy says come,” he whispered, and then giggled. “They jump, eh? Ding goes bell; they jump. Ding goes bell; they jump some more. Sammy laugh and fat boy laugh. Then Sammy make panther screech. So. Everybody jump. I guess bad men scairt, eh?”
“They looked scared to me,” I says. “But scared is as scared does. Wait till we see.”
We all laid up among the trees a couple of fields east of Willis’s and had some sandwiches and one thing and another which I had been wanting quite a while. It was way past noon, and I hate to have meal-time go by without paying some kind of attention to it. After we ate we took it easy. Sammy went to sleep and Mark dozed. I never can do much sleeping when it’s daytime—seems like such a waste of time—so I started cutting my initials into a big elm tree. While I was whittling I got to thinking; I guess there isn’t a better way to think than to whittle. Just get your knife going good, and your head seems to go at the same time. I bet if I could whittle all the time in school I’d stand up at the head of the class. Things don’t puzzle you so. You just sit and think, lazy-like, and the first thing you know you see it just as plain. Well, I began figuring out what we were doing without intending to think about it at all, and all of a sudden we began to look pretty foolish to me. Yes, sir. Mark and I looked foolish, and Sammy was foolish, anyhow, so there we were. I reached over and kicked Mark.
“Wake up!” says I.
“What’s m-m-matter?”
“I been thinkin’.”
“That ain’t no reason for wakin’ me up.”
“This is a silly thing we’re a-doin’,” I says.
That made him sit up sudden, for if there was anything he hated it was to look silly, or to do anything foolish and get caught at it. I don’t know what he wouldn&rsquo............