The Fourth Ghost Story MEGAPACK ®. Sarah Orne Jewett

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СКАЧАТЬ wild, inhuman spirits, whose unholy groans could echo through the deep canyons; for lone, ghostly shapes, floating sadly from their heights at dusk to bring terror and disaster to the surrounding world. Standing there so tall, and plainly outlined in the clear, dry air. I could scarcely believe when told that they were ten miles away, so near they seemed.

      I never believed in fairies. At least, not very much. You can’t if you happen to live in a city with proof on all sides that no such things exist. But I couldn’t help thinking, as I looked at those mountains, that if there were any anywhere you would find them among those red and pink and purple rocks.

      * * * *

      At daybreak the next morning, the hotel furnished me with a fine breakfast, and I was relieved to find that my madness had not affected my appetite. I had not slept very well—a reddish stain on the wall over my head, framed by about a hundred and fifty disconnected red legs, had reminded me of what a man on the train had told me regarding tarantulas and centipedes. But I don’t think I saw any real ones.

      I found my mule team and put my pack in and climbed up on the front seat with the driver. The first part of the drive was very pleasant until the sun discovered us and came a little nearer to see what a man of my make was doing with a prospector’s outfit.

      The desert, which had looked so flat in the distance, was a series of sandy hills partly covered with cactus and what I think was sage (I am not sure that I know what sage is, so it might have been sage), populated by lizards and horned toads and fat little prairie dogs and thousands upon thousands of long-eared rabbits. I understood what the man meant who said that when he got out on the desert, the ground got up and started to run away from him.

      Every now and then we would come upon a bird about as big as a spring chicken, which looked like an over-grown and very unkempt sandpeep, employed in killing a snake or making a tasty breakfast off of centipedes and tarantulas. If I had to live in that country, I would tame one of those birds and keep it with me constantly.

      I tried to learn something of the country from the driver, but without success. He was cheerful enough, but his vocabulary was not much more extensive than that of the girl who had sold me the sleeping-bag. He was evidently used to prospectors of my type, for he made no comment when I asked to be put off just before reaching Organ.

      He waved to me as I entered a deep ravine, and I waved back. Then I passed out of sight among the rocks, and found myself absolutely alone in the wildest country I had ever seen.

      Up and up I climbed, winding in and out through massive boulders and tangles of knotted and twisted trees. I had no idea where I was going, but the something that had brought me this far kept leading me on, and I followed passively.

      Once in a patch of sand I saw tracks as big as my head, with claws; but I was not afraid. The reason that I did not feel worried I attribute to my belief in fate—since my marriage I have been content to take calmly whatever may be in store for me.

      After scrambling over an impossible trail that branched from the main gorge—a thing no man would have done of his own free will—I found myself in a narrow defile between towering cliffs. I followed this until it ended in a circular platform shut in on all sides except the front by steep, unscalable walls of rocks.

      I walked to the edge and peered over—and drew back hastily. There was a sheer drop of about five hundred feet, with ugly looking rocks at the bottom. The only means of access was the narrow defile through which I had entered. I could go no farther.

      “Well, here I am!” I said aloud, perfectly unconsciously.

      “It’s about time,” answered a gruff voice above me.

      I sat down and mopped my brow. To be expected at this place and at this time was a good deal of a shock, even to such a believer in fate as myself.

      “Don’t be alarmed,” said the voice, less gruff this time and with a tone of amusement in it. “It’s a little uncanny at first, but you will get used to it. I did.”

      This gave me courage to look up in the direction from which the voice came. There, some fifty feet directly over my head, sitting calmly on the only projecting piece of rock on that whole smooth surface, his legs swinging idly over the edge, was a man!

      For a few minutes we looked at each other in silence. He was about my size, dressed in a prospector’s outfit similar to my own, and as new. His face was kindly, showing nothing but amused curiosity, and I began to feel more at ease. There was something even familiar about him, and I wondered where I had seen him before.

      “How did you get up there?” I asked, my wonder prompting the question.

      “It’s easy when you are in my condition,” he replied casually. “Are you Mr. Bent?”

      “Benjamin Bent is my name,” I answered “Who are you?”

      “My name is Adams—Jonathan Adams. You have probably heard a great deal about me.”

      I gasped. Jonathan Adams was the name of my wife’s second husband, the one before she married me.

      “Not the Jonathan Adams who married Mrs. Hayes?” I stammered.

      “The same,” he answered. “You, I believe, had the pleasure of marrying her next.”

      “But,” I remonstrated, beginning to feel dizzy, “you were supposed to have died five years ago!”

      “That’s right,” said Mr. Adams. “I did die. I committed suicide by jumping off this very cliff, as Mr. Hayes did before me.”

      “See here,” I said, trying to appear calm. “This is no time to joke. You don’t expect me to believe that you are my wife’s second husband’s ghost!”

      “That’s just what I am,” he answered with a grin. “Aren’t you beginning to see through me.”

      I looked at him closely. To my astonishment, I could follow a crack in the rock behind him through his shoulders. I sat down and pressed my head between my hands, trying to think.

      “There, there!” said the ghost. “Don’t take it so hard. I know just how you feel. I felt the same way when I first saw Mr. Hayes. But, good Heavens, there is nothing to be afraid of. I wouldn’t hurt you if I could. I know what you have been through already. I came down here to help you, the same as Mr. Hayes did for me.”

      He was so reassuring and polite and apologetic that most of my fear left me, and my curiosity got the better of what remained. I looked up again with interest.

      “I never saw a ghost before,” I said, trying to explain my fright. “I suppose you just floated up to that rock?”

      “Sure,” answered Mr. Adams. “I’ll come down to show you.”

      With that he slipped off the ledge and slowly floated to my side. He put out his hand, but drew it away hastily when I reached out to shake it. I recognized him now from his likeness to the big picture in the gilt frame which my wife kept hung in the sitting-room beside the one of Mr. Hayes.

      “I’m sorry,” he said, referring with evident confusion to his action in withdrawing his hand. “but I can’t get over some of those habits. Of course, you couldn’t shake hands with me, for there is nothing there to shake.”

      I saw he was sensitive СКАЧАТЬ