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After Enright an' Peets has organised an' gone p'inting out for the ha'nted Bar-B-8 sign-camp to investigate the spook, Dan can't talk of nothin' else. "'Them's mighty dead game gents, Enright an' Doc Peets is! says Dan. 'I wouldn't go searchin' for no sperits more'n I'd write letters to rattlesnakes! I draws the line at intimacies with fiends.
"Well, as dis yer Jeff dat's de lumber-wagon driver's name as dis yer Jeff come up ter dese yer two gentlemen, one of 'em was sayin, 'I'll bet five dollahs dey ain' narry a man in his town would stay in dat ha'nted house all night. Dis yer Jeff, he up 'n sez, sezee, 'Scuse me, suh, but ef you'll 'low me ter speak, suh, I knows a man wat'll stay in dat ole ha'nted house all night."
Tramps nothin'! A tramp wouldn't last a second up in that house. It's been ha'nted fer thirty years an' it gits worse all the time. What air we goin' to do next?" Even the valiant Mr.
"Sho', she's ha'nted!" he proclaimed vigorously after a while during which he had come to have confidence in the new steersman's knowledge and had been intrigued into conversation. "Don't I know? Black folks knows sooner'n white folks about ha'nts, Cap'n. Ain't I heered all the happenin's dat's done been an' gone an' transcribed on dis here deck?
Why, this house has been waiting for us! We were born to come here and make it over: it's our house!" Alicia, has the gay courage of the Irish. The heavy iron knocker on the front door resounded clamorously. "Uncle Adam thinks we've been ha'nted out of existence, and he's hammering to wake the dead," said I. But it wasn't Uncle Adam to whom we opened the door.
"Thunderation, boy, that was thirty year ago!" "Well, nobody's lived in the ha'nted house sence then, has they? Didn't Jim Smith try to sleep there oncet on a bet, an' didn't he hear sech awful noises 'at he liked to went crazy?" insisted Bud. "I do recollect that Jim run two mile past his own house before he could stop, he was in sech a hurry to git away from the place.
He nevuh got de yuther fo' dollahs of co'se, 'ca'se he didn't stay in de ole ha'nted house all night, but he 'lowed he'd sho'ly 'arned de one dollah he'd had a'ready." "Why didn't he want to talk to the black cat, Uncle Peter?" "Why didn' he wan' ter talk ter de black cat? Whoever heared er sich a queshtun! He didn' wan' ter talk wid no black cat, 'ca'se he wuz skeered.
It brings good luck to those who live with it. I remember two children who slept with their mother and sisters and brothers in one small room. In the room was also a ghost. They sold herrings in the Dublin streets, and did not mind the ghost much, because they knew they would always sell their fish easily while they slept in the "ha'nted" room.
Then, as to the chance of being discovered, the place is dreadful lonesome, specially at night they do say as it's ha'nted, though I can't vouch for the truth of the story; but I do know this much, that the last time I was ashore there, I took a stroll out as far as the ruin towards nightfall, and they told me as I don't know what would happen if I went there; nobody ever went a-near the place at nightfall, so they said."
"Which I take it to mean," Hank continued thoughtfully, "that you kinder think them rustlers might be usin' the ha'nted mounting for a hiding place to keep the cows which they run away with? Um! wa'al now, I never thort o' that afore. But stands to reason no Mexicans'd ever have the nerve to go whar white cowmen kept away from."
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