*CHAPTER XIX*
_*Canlan Hears Voices*_
You should have seen the way in which Canlan approached that solitary,deserted cabin. One might have thought, to see him, that he fullyexpected to find it occupied.
"Hullo, the shack," he cried, leading his horse down from the rocky ribon which we had paused to view the goal of our journey. I noticed howthe horse disapproved of this descent; standing with firm legs itclearly objected to Canlan's leading. The reins were over its head, andCanlan was a little way down the rib hauling on them, half-turned andcursing it vehemently. It could not have been the slope that troubledthe animal, for that was trifling; but there it stood, dumblyrebellious, its neck stretched, but budge a foot it would not.
At last it consented to descend, but very gingerly feeling every stepwith doubtful forefeet, and craned neck still straining against Canlan.Even when he succeeded in coaxing and commanding it to the descent itseemed very doubtful about going out on the hollow toward the shack, andreminded me, in the way it walked there, of a hen as you may see onecoming out of a barn when the rain takes off.
"What in thunder's wrong with you?" cried Canlan. "Come along, willyou? Looks as if there was somebody, sure thing, in the shack. Hullo,the shack! Hullo, the cabin!" he hailed again.
"----the shack! Hullo, the cabin!" cried out the rib beyond, in anecho.
So Canlan advanced on the cabin, his rifle loose on his arm, right up tothe door on which he knocked, and from the sound of the knocking Ideclare I had an idea that the place was tenanted.
He knocked again.
"Sounds as if there was somebody in here," he said, in a low, thickwhisper, so that I thought he was afraid.
He knocked again, rat-tat-tat, and sniffed twice, and piped up in hiswheezy voice: "Good day, sir; here's two pilgrims come for shelter."
It was at his third rap, louder, more forcible on the door, which was avery rough affair, being three tree-stems cleft down the centre andbound together with cross-pieces, as I surmised, on the inside,--just atthe last dull knock of his knuckles that the door fell bodily inward,and a great flutter of dust arose inside the dark cabin.
"Anyone there?" he asked, and then stepped boldly in.
"Nobody here," he said, bringing down his rifle with a clatter. "Onehas to be careful approaching lonesome cabins far away from a settlementat all times."
Then suddenly he turned a puzzled face on me.
"Queer that, eh?"
"What?"
"Why, that there door. Propped up from the inside. If there was anykind of a smell here apart from jest the or'nary smell of a log shanty,I 'd be opining that that there number three o' this here _push_ thatworked the mine---- Say!--" he broke off, "where in thunder is theprospect itself?"
And out he went of the mirk of the cabin, in a perfect twitter ofnerves, and away across to the spur of which I told you.
There I saw him from the door (by which the pack-horse stood quiet now,the reins trailing) kick his foot several times in the earth. Then heturned to see if I observed him, and flicking off his hat waved it roundhis head and came posting back.
"There 's half a dozen logs flung across the shaft they sunk," said he,"and they're covered over with dirt, to hide it like. Let's get infirst and see what's what inside."
There was no flooring to the cabin and at one end was a charred place onthe ground. Canlan looked up at the low roof there and, stretching uphis hands, groped a little and then removed a sort of hatch in the roof.
"This here," said he, "hes bin made fast from the inside too--jest likethe door. Look in them bunks. Three bunks and nothin' but blankets.And over the floor the blankets is layin' too, hauled about."
The light from the hatch above was now streaming in.
"Them blankets is all chawed up," he said.
"Heavens!" I gasped. "Were they driven to that?"
"What devils me," he said, not replying to my remark but looking roundthe place with a kind of anxiety visible on his forehead, "is this herefixin' up from the inside. There's blankets, picks, shovels, all theoutfit, and there's the windlass and tackle for the shaft-head. No," hesaid, recollecting my remark, "them blankets was n't chawed up by them.Rats has been in here--and thick. See all the sign o' them there?"
He pointed to the floor, but it was then that I observed, in a corner,after the fashion of a three-cornered cupboard, a rough shelving thathad been made there. Every shelf, I saw, was heaped up withsomething,--but what? I stepped nearer and scrutinised.
"Look at all the bones here," I said.
Canlan was at my side on the very words.
"That's him!" he said, in a gasp of relief. "That's him. That's numberthree. That's him that stuck up the door and the smoke hole."
I turned on him, the unspoken question in my face, I have no doubt.
All the fear had departed from his face now as he snatched up a bone outof one of the shelves.
These bones, I should say, were all placed as neatly and systematicallyas you could wish, built up in stacks, and all clear and clean as thoughthey had been bleached.
"This here was his forearm," said Canlan, his yellow eyeballs suddenlyafire with a fearsome light; and he rapped me over the knuckles with ahuman elbow.
"Ain't it terrible?" he said.
"It is terrible," said I.
"Ah!" he cried. "But I don't mean what you mean; I mean ain't itterrible to think o' that?" and he pointed to the cupboard, "to think o'comin' to that--bein' picked clean like that--little bits o' you runnin'about all over them almighty hills inside the rats' bellies and yourbones piled away to turn yellow in a spidery cupboard."
I stepped back from his grinning face.
"But how do these bones come there?" I said.
"It's the rats," he replied, "them mountain rats always pile away thebones o' everything they eat--make a reg'lar cache o' them; what for Idunno; but they do; that's all."
I stood then looking about the place, thinking of the end of that"number three," all the horror of his last hours in my mind; and as Iwas thus employed, with absent mien, suddenly Canlan laid his hand on myarm.
"What you lookin' that queer, strained ways for?" he whispered, puttinghis face within an inch of mine, so that I stepped back from the nearpresence of him. "That was a mighty queer look in your eyes right now.Say; do you know what you would make? You'd make an easy mark for me tomesmerise. You 'd make a fine medium, you would."
I looked at him more shrewdly now, thinking he was assuredly losing hislast hold on reason; but he flung back a step from me.
"O! You think me mad?" he cried, and verily he looked mad then. "Eh?Not me. You don't think I can mesmerise you? I've mesmerisedheaps--men too, let alone women," and he grinned in a very disgustingfashion. "Say! If we could only see a jack-rabbit from the door o'this shack, I 'd let you see what I could do. I 'd give you an exampleo' my powers. I can bring a jack-rabbit to me, supposin' he's lopin'along a hillside and sees me. I jest looks at him and _wills_ him tostop--and he stops. And then I wills him to come to me--and he comes.Mind once I was tellin' the boys at the Molly Magee about bein' able todo it and they put up the bets I could n't--thought I was jest bluffin''em, and I went right out o' the bunkhouse a little ways and fetched achipmunk clean off a rock where he was settin' lookin' at us,--therewere n't no jack-rabbits there,--fetched him right into my hand. Andthen a queer, mad feelin' come over me--I can't just tell you aboutit--I don't just exactly understand it myself. I closes my hand on thatchipmunk and jest crushed him dead atween my fingers. And suthin'seemed kind o' relieved here then, in the front o' my head, right here.The boys never forgot that. They kind o' lay away off from me afterthat--did n't like it. Yes, I could mesmerise you."
He waved his hands suddenly before my eyes.
"Feel any peculiar sensation at that?" he said.
"Yes," said I.
"What like?" he asked.
"I feel that I
'll not let you do it again," said I.
"Scared like? Feel kind o' slippin' away?"
"No," I said quietly: "not scared one little bit. But I object to yourwaving your hands within an inch of my face. Any man of grit would n'tallow it."
"Well, well, say no more. We 'd better be investigating this yereshack. God! If there was only a drink on the premises. I tell you_they 're_ comin' on again, and when they come on I 'm fearsome--I am."
He looked round the place again and then cried out in a voice of agony:
"Look here! I don't want to lose holt o' myself yet; perhaps a littlebit of grub now might help me. I reckon I might be able to shove somedown my neck as a dooty. You go and make up the fire outside, do."
He spoke this in a beseeching whine. To see the way the creaturechanged and veered about in his manner was interesting.
"We ain't goin' to sleep in here to-night, anyways, not for Jo, wi' themmountain rats comin' in on us. It'll take quite a while o' huntin' toget all their holes filled up. You go and make dinner. I could do aflapjack and a slice o' bacon, I think, with a bit o' a struggle andsome resolution like."
Anything that might prevent me having a madman on my hands in thatwilderness was not to be ignored, so I went out and ran down the slopeto where the bushes climbed, and gathered fuel, a great armful, and socame back again and made up a fire.
Water was not so easy to find, but a muddy and boggy part of the hillled me to a spring, and I set to work on preparing food.
With all this coming and going I must have been busied quite half anhour before even getting the length of mixing the dough. Canlan, bythat time, had got the windlass out and had lugged it across to thecovered shaft beside the spur of outcropping rock that ran down parallelwith the ridge in the lee of which I had lit the fire. He went back tothe cabin and carried out the coil of rope, and had just got that lengthin his employ when I called him over for our meal; our evening meal itwas, for, intent on our labours, we had not noticed how the sun wasdeparting. All the vasty world of hollows below us was brimmed withdarkness. All the peaks and the mountain ridges marching one upon theother into the shadowing east were lit, toward us, with the last lightwhen Canlan sat down to force himself to eat. But I saw he haddifficulty in swallowing. The jerking of face and hands, I alsoperceived, was increasing past ignoring. So too, presently became thefixed stare of his eye upon us as he sat with his hand frozen on asudden half-way to his mouth.
"Listen! Don't you hear nuthin'?" he asked, hoarse and low.
"Nothing," said I.
"Ah! It's jest them fancies," said he, and fell silent.
Then again, with a strange, nervous twitch and truly awful eyes, he saidin a whisper, "Say, tell me true? Did n't you hear suthin' right now?"
"I heard a coyote howl," I said.
"No, no; but somebody whispering?" he said. "Two or three people allhuddling close somewhere and tellin' things about me. By gum! I won'thave it! I dursent have it!" he said in a low scream--which is the bestdescription of his voice then that I can give you.
I shuddered. He was a terrible companion to have here on this bleak,windy hillside, with the thin trees below us marching down in serriedranks to the thicker forest below, and the scarped peaks showing againstthe pale moon that hung in the sky awaiting the sun's going.
I shook my head.
"Sure?" he asked.
"Positive," said I.
He bent toward me and said in a small voice, "Keep your eye on me now.I ain't goin' to ask you another time, for I think when I speak theystop a-whispering; but I'll jest twitch up my thumb like this--see?--fera signal to you when I hear 'em."
He sat hushed again; and then suddenly his eyes started and he raisedhis thumb, turning a face to me that glittered pale like lead.
"Now?" he gasped.
"Nothing," I said: "not a sound."
"Ah, but I spoke there," he said. "I ought n't to have spoken; thatscared 'em; and they quit the whispering when they hear me."
He sat again quiet, his head on the side, listening, and I watching hishand, thinking it best to humour him and to try to convince him out ofthis lunacy.
But my blood ran chill as I sat, and his jaw fell suddenly in horror fora voice quavering and ghastly cried out from somewhere near by, "MikeCanlan! Mike Canlan! I see you, Mike Canlan!"
And a horrible burst of laughter that seemed to come from no earthlythroat broke the silence, died away, and a long gust of wind whisperedpast us on the hill-crest.
It had been evident to me that though Canlan bade me hearken for thewhispering voices that he himself did not actually believe in theirexistence. He had still sufficient sense left to know that thewhispering was in his own fancy, the outcome of drink and of--I need notsay his conscience, but--the knowledge that he had perpetrated somefearsome deeds in his day, deeds that it were better not to hear spokenin the sunlight or whispered in the dusk.
But this cry, out of the growing night, real and weird, so far fromrestoring equanimity to his mind appeared to unhinge his mentalfaculties wholly. His eyeballs started in their sockets; and there camethe cry again:
"Mike Canlan! Mike Canlan! I 'm on your trail, Mike Canlan!"
As for myself, I had no superstitious fears after the first cry, thoughI must confess that at the first demented cry my heart stood still in abrief, savage terror. But I speedily told myself that none but a mortalvoice cried then; though truly the voice was like no mortal voice I hadever heard.
It was otherwise with Canlan. Fear, abject fear, held him now and heturned his head all rigid like an automaton and, in a voice that soundedas though his tongue filled his mouth so that he could hardly speak, hemumbled: "It's him. It's Death!"
Aye, it was death; but not as Canlan imagined.
There was silence now, on the bleak, black hill, and though I hadmastered the terror that gripped me on hearing the voice, the silencethat followed was a thing more terrible, not to be borne without action.
Then suddenly the voice broke out afresh quite close and Canlan turnedhis head stiffly again and I also looked up whence the voice came--andthere was the face of Larry Donoghue looking down on us from the rib ofrocky hill under whose shelter we sat. There was a trickle of blood, ora scar--it was doubtful which--from his temple down his long, spare jawto the corner of the loose mouth; the eyes stared down on us like theeyes of a dead man, blank and wide.
He stretched out his arms and gripped in the declivity of the hill withhis fingers, crooked like talons, and pulled himself forward; but atthat tug he lost his balance, lying on his belly as he was, and camedown the slope, sliding on his face, the kerchief still about his headas I had seen him when I thought he had breathed his last.
In Canlan's mind there was no question but that this was LarryDonoghue's wraith. He tried to cry out and could not, gave one gulpinggasp in his throat, and when Donoghue slid down the bank, as I havedescribed, Canlan leapt to his feet and ran for it--ran without anyintelligence, straight before him.
I have told you that the next rib of rock broke off sheer and went downin a declivity. Thither Canlan's terror took him; and the last I saw ofhim was his legs straddled in the run, out in mid-air, as though to takeanother stride; and then down he went. But it was to Donoghue I turnedand strove to raise him. For one fleeting moment he seemed to know me;our eyes met and then the light of recognition passed out of his and hesank back. It was a dead man I held in my arms, and though I had nevergreatly cared for him, that last glance of his eye was so full ofyearning, so pathetic, so helpless that I felt a lump in my throat and athickness at my heart and as I laid him back again I burst into a floodof tears that shook my whole frame.
A strange, gusty sound in my ear and the feeling of a hot vapour on myneck brought me suddenly round in, if not fear, something akin to it.But I think absolute fear was pretty well a thing I should never knowagain after these occurrences.
It was Canlan's horse standing over me snuffing me; and when I raised myhead he gave a
quiet whinny and muzzled his white nose to me. Perhapsin his mute heart the horse knew that these sounds of mine bespokesuffering, and truly these pack-horses draw very close to men, in thehills.
But though the horse brought me back in a way to manliness and calm itwas a miserable night that I spent there. I sat up and with my chin inmy hands remained gazing vacantly eastwards until the morning broke inmy eyes. And behind me stood the horse thus till morning, ever andagain touching my shoulder with his wet nose, his warm breath puffing onmy cheek.
I was thankful, indeed, more than I can tell you, for thatcompanionship. And now and then I put up my hand and when I did so thebeast's head would come gently down for me to clap his nose, and doingso I felt myself not altogether alone and friendless on that hill ofterror and of death.
The Lost Cabin Mine Page 19
