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I didn't see anything but a bottle and a tin cup on the floor by Injun Joe; yes, I saw two barrels and lots more bottles in the room. Don't you see, now, what's the matter with that ha'nted room?" "How?" "Why, it's ha'nted with whiskey! Maybe ALL the Temperance Taverns have got a ha'nted room, hey, Huck?" "Well, I reckon maybe that's so. Who'd 'a' thought such a thing?
We'll tackle the ha'nted house if you say so but I reckon it's taking chances." They had started down the hill by this time. There in the middle of the moonlit valley below them stood the "ha'nted" house, utterly isolated, its fences gone long ago, rank weeds smothering the very doorsteps, the chimney crumbled to ruin, the window-sashes vacant, a corner of the roof caved in.
"Well, it just is. Huck, I don't feel comfortable a bit." "Say, Tom, let's give this place up, and try somewheres else." "All right, I reckon we better." "What'll it be?" Tom considered awhile; and then said: "The ha'nted house. That's it!" "Blame it, I don't like ha'nted houses, Tom. Why, they're a dern sight worse'n dead people.
"We was skatin' in the marsh when we heerd 'em plain as day," said the other boy. "You bet I'm nuvver goin' nigh that house ag'in." "Sho! Bud, they ain't no sech thing as ghosts," said Mr. Crow; "it's tramps." "You know that house is ha'nted," protested Bud. "Wasn't ole Mrs. Rank slew there by her son-in-law? Wasn't she chopped to pieces and buried there right in her own cellar?"
"Well then, how you going to find the marks?" "I don't want any marks. They always bury it under a ha'nted house or on an island, or under a dead tree that's got one limb sticking out. Well, we've tried Jackson's Island a little, and we can try it again some time; and there's the old ha'nted house up the Still-House branch, and there's lots of dead-limb trees dead loads of 'em."
And sez he, "what an extraordenary idiot anybody must be to believe in any sech thing." And ag'in he looked very skernful and high-headed, and once ag'in he shawed. And I kep' pretty middlin' calm and serene and asked the bystander, when the gost ha'nted, and where? And he said, it opened doors and blowed out lights mostly, and trampled up stairs.
He bought the place the year before the war broke out, and there was always some mystery about him and about the life he led never speaking to anybody if he could help it, always keeping himself shut up when he could. He hadn't a good name in these parts, and the house hasn't a good name either, for the darkies say it is ha'nted and that old Mrs.
I wouldn't go lammin' loose at 'em with no guns; it only makes 'em madder. "It's the next day, an' Peets an' Enright is organised in the ha'nted sign-camp of the Bar-B-8. Also, they've been lookin' round. By ridin' along onder the face of the precipice, they comes, one after t'other, on what little is left of the dead steers. What strikes 'em as a heap pecooliar is that thar's no bones or horns.
This was after people had missed seeing the light in Quill's Window for quite a spell. There are some people who still say the cave is ha'nted. When I was a young boy, shortly before the Civil War, a couple of horse thieves were chased up to that cave and ahem!
"Yes, I bet you will; en you won't stop dah, nuther. But I ain't gwine to tell you heah " "Good gracious, no!" "Is you 'feared o' de ha'nted house?" "N-no." "Well, den, you come to de ha'nted house 'bout ten or 'leven tonight, en climb up de ladder, 'ca'se de sta'rsteps is broke down, en you'll find me. I's a-roostin' in de ha'nted house 'ca'se I can't 'ford to roos' nowher's else."
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