after a while i could hear mark snoring inside the cave, and it made me sort of mad. anybody would think he’d been brought up next-door neighbor to a wild man or whatever kind of a thing it was that went around leaving marks in the sand a foot long, with the toes turned toward the side. i crept over to the opening and looked in. all three of them were asleep, and if i felt lonely and skittish before i pretty nearly went into a panic now. the fire was going good, but i threw on more wood just to have something to do and to light up farther into the woods.
pretty soon the moon came up, and that made it seem chillier. it was as if the light was cold—it looked as if it was. i edged closer to the fire, where the blaze almost scorched my shins, and crouched there, with my heart beating thump, thump, and my insides feeling as if they were shriveling together for lack of anything to hold them out like they ought to be. i looked at my watch, hoping my turn on guard was over. only a little more than a half-hour of it was gone!
the moon got higher, and the woods, instead of just being black as if a curtain was hanging all around me, got shadowy, and the shadows moved. give me black darkness any time to the kind where there are patches of light and patches of shadows that keep shifting and oozing around; when the woods look that way you feel certain something is hiding and watching you in the places where the light isn’t.
i got the hatchet and put it between my knees, but it didn’t make me feel much better. i tried whittling, but i couldn’t keep my eyes on it; they wanted to wander around to see if anything was sneaking up on me. i thought about lots of things, and one of them was that if ever i got home it would take a lot of persuading to get me camping out at night again.
another half an hour went by, and it seemed as if my hours would never pass. nothing happened, but sometimes i wished it would. being afraid something will happen is worse than the thing itself if it comes.
i guess it was about half-past ten when the funniest feeling came over me. it’s hard to tell just what it was, but more than anything else it felt as if somebody’s eyes were bearing on my back, watching and watching; and it felt as if the eyes were bright and as if they’d shine in the dark if i was to turn and look at them. i sat for more than five minutes before i could get up courage to look. when i did i couldn’t see a thing, but, all the same, i was as sure as anything that something had been looking at me.
about fifteen minutes later i heard a noise; it was just as if somebody had slipped on the hillside and scrambled for a minute before he could catch his feet. it might have been a stray sheep, or maybe a coon roaming around in the moonlight, but it didn’t sound like it to me; it sounded bigger and stronger. it was so very still afterward that i was more afraid than ever, because if it had been a sheep i’d have heard him running away, and even a coon would have made some sort of a racket. no, i says to myself, it’s something hiding and sneaking around with an eye on us; it’s the thing that used our pan and stole our potatoes and left that track in the sand.
that was all that happened during my watch, but i was glad when it came time to wake mark to take my place. he came out rubbing his eyes and blinking at the light.
“talk to me a minute,” he yawned, “till i git awake.”
we talked a spell, but i didn’t say anything about the noise or that i thought something had been watching me. when he was awake so he wouldn’t doze off again i went in and snuggled into my blanket. i was afraid at first i wouldn’t be able to get to sleep, but before i really got to worrying about it i was gone; and i didn’t dream, either.
in the morning none of us had much to say about his watch during the night. by the looks of the others i’m sure they were just as afraid as i was, but they weren’t letting on and neither was i. besides, it seemed sort of foolish with the sunlight shining bright through the trees and the water glittering and the birds chittering all around. the woods didn’t look as if there could be anything fearsome or dangerous in them; wild men seemed a long ways away and nothing to worry about, anyhow. what would a wild man be doing right outside of wicksville? if there was one somebody would have seen it and talked about it before we got there.
we fished all day and played indian and fixed up a raft out of a couple of old logs and poled ourselves around. in the afternoon we went over on the island and gathered about a bushel of butternuts apiece, but they weren’t any good, having laid all winter.
“we’ll have h-h-ham for supper,” mark said. “we kin warm it up, and it’ll be pretty good with fish.”
we poled the raft across, carrying our nuts, and made for the cave. mark went to work building the fire again, plunk and binney gathered wood, while i riffled around inside getting things ready for the cooking. i found most of the stuff all right, because mark had put it away, and he always puts things away careful, but when it came to the ham i couldn’t put my hand on it to save my life.
“where did you put that ham?” i sang out to mark.
“right in that jar,” he told me, “next to the basket.”
“it ain’t here,” i called, after i had looked again to make sure.
“it’s got to be,” says he, his voice a little excited, “because i put it there.”
“well, it ain’t. come and see for yourself.”
he came in and rummaged around, but not a sign of the ham could he discover. his face was sober when he looked up at me and says, “is anythin’ else m-missin’?”
together we went over the things. everything was there till we got to the bread. all together we had four loaves. we’d used most of one, and there ought to have been three left, but there wasn’t. there were only two.
“did you hear anything last night?” asks mark, sharp-like.
“yes,” i says. “did you?”
“i ain’t sure, but i th-thought so.”
“i felt somethin’ watchin’ me,” i told him. “seemed like its eyes was just borin’ into me when my back was turned.”
“um!” he grunts. “see anythin’?”
“no.”
“me neither.”
“there’s somebody prowlin’ around, that’s sure. that ham didn’t git tired of stayin’ an’ run off alone.”
mark grinned. then he looked solemn again and nodded.
“don’t seem very dangerous, though—stealin’ ham. maybe somebody’s playin’ a joke on us.”
“nobody’d hang around all night and all day for this much joke.”
he admitted that was right. “but ’tain’t no wild man,” he insisted. “there ain’t none.”
“i dunno,” i says.
and then binney and plunk came along with their arms stacked full of wood.
mark and i kept quiet before them, but we arranged that we’d keep watch to-night by twos instead of all alone. “it’ll be more sociable,” i says; and they jumped at the idea.
mark and i were to stand guard the first part of the night, and binney and plunk would be on watch till morning. that was the way it was fixed. about nine o’clock they turned in, and we went out by the fire.
“let’s be sure there’s enough wood,” i said to him. “i’d sort of hate to be left out here in the dark.”
he grunted, but i noticed he looked at the pile pretty careful, and even dragged in some pieces that were lying within reach.
for maybe an hour we got along fine. not a thing happened, and we found lots of things to talk about. we got to figuring about his father’s turbine and what it would do and how much money mr. tidd would make out of it, and it sounded pretty important. some day we were sure there’d be big shops in wicksville where the engines would be manufactured, and mark would be general manager when he got through college, and all the rest of us would have good jobs. i was going to be a mechanical engineer some day, so mark agreed to put me in charge of that department. we figured his father would make maybe four or five thousand dollars in a single year.
“if he m-makes anything,” said mark.
“but he’s goin’ to.”
“he ain’t got it patented yet.”
“what of it?”
“if somebody got holt of his idee, or stole his drawin’s and got it patented f-f-first, he’d never git a thing out of it.”
“not a dollar?”
“not a dollar. there’s always folks tryin’ to steal inventions. most inventors git cheated out of their money or s-some-thin’.”
there, crouching on the brow, was the figure of a man
“your father better be pretty careful, then,” i says.
“careful!” grunts mark. “you know how careful he is—and that feller was in town again.”
“no,” i says, surprised, for i’d never heard of it before.
“he was, but f-father was out of town. he didn’t git no satisfaction.”
“i bet he’s sneakin’ around wicksville just a-tryin’ to gouge that invention out of your father,” i says.
mark didn’t answer, and sat so quiet i turned to look at him to see what was the matter. he was sitting stiff, leaning forward a little and staring at the face of a big rock half-way down the hill. there was a shadow on it, and it was the shadow of a man’s head.
the moon was shining bright and throwing shadows just like it did the night before. i noticed now that a big shadow was right over us, reaching down the hill to the rock, where it ended in the head. it looked big as an elephant. mark sucked in his breath, and we looked at each other. then we both turned slow and looked up the hill. there, crouching on the brow, was the black figure of a man, like he was on his hands and knees staring over at us. his head stood out sharp, and we could see his hair was long and bushy, standing out on all sides just like some kind of south sea island savages that there are pictures of in the geography. there wasn’t any doubt about his being big. it was the whoppingest head i ever saw, and the shoulders matched it for size.
all of a sudden as we looked the man wasn’t there. it seemed like he melted right away under our eyes, and we never heard a sound.
“it was—nothing but a man,” i whispered, trying to persuade myself there wasn’t any danger.
“yes,” mark whispered back, “but what k-kind of a man?”
when we got to thinking about his size and how long and bushy his hair was, and especially about that queer footmark with the toes pointing to one side, we couldn’t make head or tail of him, except that there was something mighty strange, and that it would be a good thing to keep out of his way. i tell you it wasn’t fun sitting there a couple of miles from a house, without a gun, and with a giant of a man like that prowling around watching you and intending to do nobody knew what.
“shall we tell the others?” i asked.
mark thought a minute. “no,” he says. “’twon’t do no good. we’ll keep mum.”
that is what we did. when our watch was over we waked plunk and binney, and they came out to the fire yawning and stretching. we turned in.
i don’t know when it was, but i was woke up by a yelling and hollering outside the cave. mark and i jumped out, and there were plunk and binney screeching as if they were scared to death and throwing blazing chunks of wood out among the trees after a big black figure that ran and leaped and crashed down the hill and out of sight.
“what was it?” i said, shaking binney by the shoulder.
“i—i guess,” he said, shaking like a leaf, “that it was a goriller. he didn’t look like anythin’ else.”
a gorilla! come to think of it, it might be a gorilla, but where in time would one of them come from?
anyhow, there was no more sleep that night. we all sat up together and kept the fire roaring and blazing as bright as we could. we weren’t troubled again.
in the morning binney says, while we were getting breakfast, “i guess we better go home.”
plunk didn’t say anything, and i waited for mark.
“i ain’t goin’ home,” he says. “i’m goin’ to f-find out what it is. will you stay with me, tallow?”
“sure,” i says, but i didn’t want to a bit.
that sort of shamed plunk and binney into staying, so nobody went home.
“and, rem-member,” mark warned us, “this is a secret. we ain’t to say a word to nobody.”
so we were sort of forced to stay by mark to help him find out what was prowling around in the woods. he was a queer fellow, mark was. i know he was as afraid as any of us, but he was curious, and when he got curious to know anything you couldn’t scare him away nohow.
