CHAPTER XXII

GHOST MEETS GHOST

There was only the faintest stir as the boys followed Buck’s lead in tossing their blankets aside and joined Ted at the bushes. Following the direction which he had indicated, they found that what he had said was the truth. Close beside a tall tree, on the bank of the creek, stood a figure shrouded entirely in white.

The figure was motionless at the time, intently regarding the silent camp before him. From the direction in which his coming lay the boys guessed that he had come up on the far side of Bear Creek and had crossed over the stones at the spot where Ted had previously crossed them. The sight of the almost dead fires and the strange silence of the camp was giving the would-be ghost food for thought, though he must have expected that the boys would be asleep at the time of his coming. For two or three minutes, a space of time which to the boys seemed an age, he stood looking across the cleared space before the tents and then he began to work his way nearer to the empty camp shelters, keeping always close to the trees which skirted them.

What his intentions were they could not guess. He carried nothing in his hands and from all appearances he was about to confine his efforts at simply scaring them.

“Look there!” suddenly gasped Drummer.

They saw that he was looking off in the opposite direction and back of the tents, but for the moment could not make out what he had seen.

“What is it?” Ted whispered.

“Another ghost!” was the answer. “Look, back there in the bushes near the pine grove where the fire was. By golly, there are two ghosts!”

Now they saw what had struck the fat boy’s eyes. It was another figure dressed much in the manner of the one near the front of the tents, and it was crouching in the thicket back of the tents. As they watched it too moved forward.

“That is all right,” Buck said. “We’ve known all along that there have been two of them working together. While we chased one of them, the other set the woods on fire. They are both up to the same trick, and now we’ll have to make up our minds how we’ll capture them.”

“I guess we had better divide into the same squads that we had before,” said Ted. “Buck, suppose your squad tries to catch the one coming from the back of the tent and my squad will try and run down the fellow sneaking along the trees in front. But let’s see what they are up to first.”

“I suppose they think they’re going to appear at the door of a tent and holler ‘Boo!’ to scare us!” grumbled Buck.

Those of the boys who had slipped off their shoes now hastily put them on again, happy and a bit nervous at the prospect of the coming action. All of them still watched the two creeping figures below as they drew nearer the tents.

“I guess they are going to meet in front of the tents and exchange signals,” commented Buck, noting that the two men were drawing together.

And at that moment they did meet, but the boys were surprised by the result.

The ghost from the back of the tents stepped out into the full glow of the moon and they saw that his costume was slightly different than the one which the ghost in the front of the camp wore. There was no hood on the top of the second spirit’s costume, but he had a cloth wound around his head. At the same time the other ghost stepped from the shelter of the last tree and came face to face with the brother apparition.

But there was no exchange of signals, no friendly whispering of details. For a moment the two ghosts stood staring at each other, seeming to shrink within their shrouds and then the ghost from the creek tossed his arms wildly to the sky, and uttering a wild yelp, fled at top speed toward the creek from which it had come. The second ghost stood perfectly still for a moment and then shot forward, hot on the trail of the other one.

While the astonished boys watched with bulging eyes and open mouths the first ghost reached the creek and jumped wildly for the stones upon which he had crossed. He missed the first one and plunged forward on his knees into a half foot of water, to the accompaniment of a tremendous thrashing and splashing. The second ghost reached the edge of the creek just as the first ghost regained his feet and made a sweeping clutch at his shroud. There was a ripping sound and the ghost uniform split from top to bottom, but the ghost himself did not stop going. Without a backward glance he ran across the rocks and took to the woods. His pursuer, disdaining the rocks, waded stormily in the brook and took up the chase on the other side.

And now the boys in the maple grove gave way to peals of laughter which were surely heard by the two running ghosts. For a moment they had been paralyzed by the strange spectacle below them, and then the humor had struck them as the first ghost streaked his way across the camp pursued by the irate second sheeted figure. The fall into the creek and the subsequent splashing chase caused them to laugh so hard that they were weak. In their ghostly readings and thoughts they had regarded spirits, ghosts and goblins as dignified creatures, and the sight of two of them running a frantic race appealed to their senses of humor.

Both ghosts had disappeared from sight as they hurried down into the camp and went as far as the creek, chatting and laughing over the unexpected turn of events. The rate of speed employed by both night prowlers made them forget any thought that they may have had in regard to chasing after them and they simply hastened to the brook to see if they could hear or see anything more of the two ghosts who had generously provided them with an evening’s entertainment, but all was profoundly quiet.

“Oh, boy, that was the best thing I’ve seen in a long time!” laughed Ted, brushing the tears out of his eyes. “The way that first ghost lit out for the woods was a sight I wouldn’t have wanted to miss!”

“And the other fellow snatching his night shirt off of him was another high spot!” chuckled Buck. “But that little drama knocks our theory into a cocked hat.”

“You mean about these fellows working together?” questioned Ted.

“Sure. We thought that they were partners, but each one of them must have something in mind and they have been working alternately on us. Certainly if they knew each other they wouldn’t have acted like that when their ghosts met each other!”

“They certainly did shrink up at the first sight of each other!” grinned Drummer.

“I guess you are right about the fact that they don’t know each other,” Ted agreed. “But if that second fellow ever gets his hands on the first ghost they’ll know each other!”

“That was a case of professional jealousy!” said Buck. “I have a feeling that we’ll never be bothered with them again.”

“That is hard to tell,” was Ted’s opinion. “We’ll have to await events and see.”

They watched the woods for a long time, hoping to see some trace of the figures in white, but they were unrewarded. Long after their usual hour they remained around the replenished fires, talking and laughing over the ghost chase.

“Well, we’re still a long way from knowing what they are hanging around here for,” Buck said as they finally turned in.

On the following day Buck and Ted again left the camp in charge of the older boys and went for a hike over the mountains. They wanted to see if there was any trace of the flight and also to pay a visit to the hut in Hogs’ Hollow and question Jerry Jackson point blank.

“For all the fun we had out of them, they still have got to take the responsibility for firing the woods,” Ted said.

“Yes, but now we don’t know which one of ’em did it! The first thing we have to do is to find out who did what.”

“The quickest way to do that is to locate this Jerry Jackson and see what he knows about it all,” said Ted.

“Sure. I’m pretty sure that the ghost who crossed the creek was Jerry Jackson.”

“So am I, because he fled in the direction of the hollow. We’ll soon find out.”

But in this Ted was mistaken. When they reached the crude hut of the swamp dweller one glance inside the place showed them that he had abandoned his home, probably for good. Everything except the bare furniture was out of the shack and it looked bleak and forlorn.

“Skipped out!” cried Buck, looking around.

“Yes, gone completely, and I guess we’ll never find him again. I’ll bet he is making for new country right now. Well, that means that we are rid of one ghost and all we have to do is to keep a sharp watch out for the other.”

There was nothing more to be learned at the shack in Hogs’ Hollow, so the two boys left the place and returned to the top of the mountain. Here they wandered along looking for any signs which might be clues to the doings of the past few weeks, and they passed above and beyond the camp. They kept up their exploration until the sun began to set and dusk crept in from the east.

“We might as well go back,” suggested Ted. “We’ve seen a lot of mountain country but we haven’t learned anything.”

“All right. By the way, there is the cabin of that unsociable gentleman down there.”

Buck pointed to the cabin with the barbed wire fence and as they glanced down at it the front door of the cabin was opened and the tall man who resided there came out. To their astonishment he took a board which was lying beside the door, and placing it across the door, drove several nails into it. For the first time they noticed that the boards were on the windows and that the cabin was being closed up.

“Hello, he is leaving us!” muttered Ted.

“Seems so. He has on a long coat and a cap. Guess he doesn’t intend to come back this season.”

The man went to the small shed in the rear of the yard and opened the doors, leading out a black horse. He then pulled from the other side of the shed a small two-seater carriage and proceeded to harness the horse to it. When this was done he nailed a board across the door of the shed and then carelessly threw the hammer over the fence into the woods.

“Pretty free with his hardware!” said Buck.

The man climbed into the seat of the carriage, spoke sharply to the horse and then rolled out of the yard as the horse started off. He turned the horse’s head toward the cities and they gathered speed as they went. Ted grasped Buck’s arm.

“Take particular notice of that horse!” he cried. “It’s a black one!”