The Gray Ghost

by Robert F. Schulkers

  Link came running back down the steps, followed by Shadow and Johnny. “Boys,” I said. “From now on, this owl’s my pal. Anybody that treats this bird wrong’s got to answer to me for it.”

  “It’s alright,” said Shadow. “Seems like Harkinson knows, Hawkins. He gave you the old horn to keep.”

  “Yeah, Stoner’s got it, the thief.”

  “And so he wanted you to have his owl. Look how the little beggar sits on Hawkins’s shoulder, fellas. Seems like he knows.”

  I gently lifted the speckled pet and placed it upon the top of the cage in which were the canary birds. Then I told Link what Brother Jim, our teacher, had told us and how we had found black birds in his canary cages.

  “These are his canaries, then?” said Link, pointing to the cage above his head.

  “Without a doubt,” said Shadow Loomis. “The question that’s got me is who put them here.”

  “I think we will find that out, too,” said the Skinny Guy, smiling. “Your old friend Harkinson dug this hole—”

  “Harkinson and Jude—” said Johnny McLaren.

  “And Androfski,” added Shadow. “Please don’t forget the Silent Boy.”

  I said no more. I let them talk, while I went over to the table and took up the book that lay covered with dust upon it. I had hoped that Harkinson had left some written messages; I had hoped he had kept a diary. But no. All that was written upon that book was:

  My name is Wilmer Harkinson.

  I know he intended to write more in that book. I believe he intended to tell the whole story of the Red Runners and how he came to break with Long Tom. But before that could be done, his eyes had gone back on him and he was blind. That’s how I figured it out.

  “It’s time for dinner,” I said. “Link, will you come with me? My ma will be glad to have you.” Link shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “I’m too interested, Hawkins. I got a notion that somebody else has been using this dugout for a headquarters. Not for long, that’s sure, seeing as how everything is covered with dust and nothing changed except the canary birds put in this old cage. This old cage was used for the owl when Harkinson had the place. Don’t you think so?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Becky lived in that cage when Harkinson held out here.”

  “That canary trick,” said Shadow Loomis, “seems like the work of a slick fella. What would you think if I said that maybe Simon Bleaker had a hand in—”

  “Might be so,” I said. “Alright, Link, if you want to stay, I’ll be back this afternoon sometime.”

  “You going to take the owl along with you?”

  “No, Link, if you’ll watch Becky till I come back—”

  “Sure,” he said. “She’s a nice little pal. Lookit her sitting up there, fellas. What you think she’s thinkin’ about?”

  “She’s thinkin’,” said Johnny McLaren, “what an awful place this world is to live in since Harkinson is gone.”

  I shook my head. I walked up to the bird and, reaching up, patted her speckled wing.

  “I’ll treat her just as good,” I said. “For Harkinson’s sake. He gave me the horn. He says to me, the day before he died, he says, ‘I don’t care who forgets, Hawkins, but I want you to remember me always, will you?’ And I says I would. And I know he would want me to take care of his owl, Becky, if he could talk to me this minute. You’ll keep an eye on her, Link, till I get back?”

  “You bet I will,” said the Skinny Guy.

  *  *  *

  I stopped on my way across, and told all the boys in the clubhouse what we had discovered on Burney’s Field. When I returned to the dugout after dinner, the whole crowd was there. I got Dick Ferris, our captain, aside and told him that we would have to get the rest of the boys back to the clubhouse. I wanted to look through this dugout. I didn’t want them to muss things up. I wanted to look through the whole place first and see what I could discover that would tell me something about Harkinson—or maybe about somebody living who was at present using this old deserted dugout for a headquarters.

  The result was that Skinny Link and Shadow and I were left alone in the dugout, the others going back per the orders from our captain. The first thing I did was to go slowly over the whole dugout. It was cleverly made. It had been dug square and true, and the dirt that was dug out must have been carried away, for there was no sign of it. The whole room had been lined with stone taken from the many piles of stone on Burney’s Field, I guess. Harkinson had not done this himself. No. It had been made by the whole bunch of Red Runners as a sort of a resting place. This is where Harkinson and Long Tom and Androfski would disappear to so quickly when we would take out after them. No wonder we never found ’em. Who would ever suspect a place like this? Like a snug, cellar room, this place was walled with stones, floored with stones, and roofed with timbers. On the top of it outside the roof of this dugout looked the same as the rest of Burney’s Field. You would pass right over it and never know there was a hiding hole under your feet. The only way Link found it was by accident, and the Skinny Guy had sent up for us a smoke signal from the little oven which was built in the wall of limestone for cooking meals.

  “Stoner is on to this,” I said.

  “I’ve found no footprints to prove it yet,” said Shadow Loomis.

  “Not likely on this limestone floor,” I said. “But he’s been here, you can bet on that.”

  “Alright,” said Shadow. “Think what you like.”

  All the while we talked, the canary birds twittered and occasionally they let out a song that sent echoes flying right and left. All through it sat Becky the owl without a move, staring with her glassy eyes at one spot as though she knew nothing of what was going on.

  “Well,” said Link. “This is getting tiresome. Suppose we move along, Hawkins?”

  “Alright,” I said. “But we’ve got to take those canaries back to Brother Jim.”

  “Let ’em here,” said Shadow.

  “What for?” I asked. “Don’t they belong to our teacher?”

  Shadow smiled.

  “You want to know how they came here, don’t you?”

  “Hush,” I said.

  For at that moment I caught sight of a moving shadow on the stones that served as steps to this dugout. Link saw it too. He reached up quick as a wink and drew down the lantern and blew it out. Together we crouched as far back as we could in the dugout.

  The shadow on the stairs grew. Then, in the glare of the sun that fell as far as the doorway, there appeared a slow, hesitating figure. It was a boy. He was coming down the flagstone steps, his hands outstretched, feeling his way against either wall till the last step, and then he ran forward to the rough table until he stood under the crude cage that hung above it.

  With the lantern out, the light was too dim to see who this newcomer was. But only for a moment; for he struck a match and, reaching over, drew from the opposite wall another lantern like the one we had put out. And putting the match to the wick, he lit it, and the light flared up—

  It was Androfski the Silent!

  I don’t know why I was surprised at seeing him. I might have suspected that maybe Androfski had stolen Brother Jim’s canaries and put crows in their place. But somehow I never did. No. I never thought it was Androfski who had done that. But when I saw him now, I was sure of it. He stooped quickly and set the lantern on the floor and, reaching in his pocket, took out a bag. The canaries seemed to be trying to beat each other singing. They fairly warbled, and I saw the hand of Androfski let the bag fall as he raised his face—and there was a smile upon his lips—a glad smile as he listened to the beautiful voices of—

  Ah! yes. I had forgotten. Androfski had no voice. As we rushed out of our hiding place to grab him, he turned a look of surprise and dismay at us and began to back away toward the stairs.

  “Androfski,” I said. “It was you who stole these canary birds—”

  His lips were moving. Only a husky whisper came, a whisper we could hardly hear, but I co
uld read his lips—

  “They sing—”

  To this day I don’t know whether his lips formed the words “they sing” or “the song,” but I imagined he said:

  “They sing—they have beautiful voice—look at me, you fellas—listen to this croak of mine—why can’t I make sounds like you—”

  That is all. He turned swiftly—swiftly as always Androfski turned—and was gone up the stone stairway—like a deer—like a true Red Runner, never missing a step, never waiting a moment. He was gone. All three of us knew that we could not catch the Silent One. Yet we flew up the stone steps after him. I was the first one to poke my head above the ground. Androfski was not in sight. I swept my eyes swiftly across the whole plain of Burney’s Field. There was not a living thing upon it.

  “Where did he go?” asked Shadow.

  “Answer your own questions,” I said, for I was sore that a fellow should give us the slip so quickly. Yet, what did we know of the ways of the Red Runners? What if all the other Red Runners were rounded up and in the Judge’s school? Wasn’t Androfski one of the old timers? Could anybody expect me to know—

  “It was him,” said Link. “I could see it in his face. Androfski stole the canaries. What do you think, Hawkins?”

  I didn’t answer. I was thinking about that poor kid with his voice as misty as an old gate hinge and him yearning for a voice that would make him sing like a bird—

  “I’m going back,” I said. “I’ve had enough of this bird business. Give me my owl—old Harkinson’s owl—and I’ll take care of it—”

  Even as I reached for Becky—before I had time to put my hand upon her speckled wing—there came the sound of an old familiar instrument—

  Yeah. You guessed it. The sound of the old brass horn. The horn that Harkinson had given to me to keep—to remember him by—but which Stoner’s Boy had stolen from me. Slowly, its brassy notes floated faintly from afar and into the stone-walled dugout in which we stood—slowly came the sound—

  And the speckled owl, pricking up its tufted ears, silently left its perch, drifted with lazy flapping wings to the cellarway and wafted out into the sunlight, in answer to the call of the old horn—that old brassy trumpet that once belonged to its master—

  “Catch it, Hawkins,” yelled Link. “It can’t see—you can throw your cap over it!”

  “It’s gone,” I said. “Let it go.”

  We all ran up the steps onto Burney’s Field. The owl, zigzagging from one side to the other, was slowly making its way for the trees on the edge of the field toward the river. Maybe it couldn’t see in the sunlight—but it could hear, and it followed the sound of the horn.

  “Too bad,” said Link. “Well, that’s all there is to that. What now, Hawkins?”

  “Go down and get the canaries,” I said, for I was tired. “We’ve got to bring those yellow singers back to our teacher before somebody gets them away from us, too.”

  Slowly, we went back down into the dugout. Link leaped upon the table and reached up to the cage. He lifted his hand—and then I heard him give a cry of surprise—

  “What’s a matter, Link?” I asked.

  “It’s empty!” he shouted. “The canaries are gone!”

  For a minute I stood stockstill, struck stupid by this latest mystery.

  “Come on,” yelled Shadow Loomis. “There’s something mighty funny going on here—let’s go back to the clubhouse and talk it over.”

  Which we did.

  CHAPTER 18

  A Cry in the Night

  ANOTHER week has passed since I stood with my pals in the dark, deserted dugout on Burney’s Field and watched Androfski the Silent disappear and the canary birds with him. We went back over there on Monday, but nothing doing. The riddle was too much for us. We gave it up. We told Brother Jim we were awfully sorry but that we couldn’t get his canary birds back for him. We had ’em there for a while, yeah. But—

  And now what started us to go over there again was the Pelham fellows, who kept on coming over to our side of the river, telling us all the time that there was some unearthly thing hiding on Burney’s Field, waiting to jump at anybody who tried to cross the field by night.

  “I wish I knew,” said our captain, Dick Ferris, “just what it is that scares the Pelhams.”

  “It’s that old owl,” said Jerry Moore. “That dern night bird that used to belong to Harkinson and his gang.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Shadow Loomis. “Because that little pet owl couldn’t scare anybody.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said the Skinny Guy. “Don’t you remember how it scared Hawkins down in the dugout the day it flew over his head?”

  “Sure,” I spoke up. “And I bet it scared you, too, Link, when you first went into that underground place. What did I know was flying over my head? Maybe it was a bat, I thought. And anything I hate is a bat. Ugh! If one of those things slaps you in the face in the dark—”

  “You’re right there,” said Robby Hood. “We saw enough of bats I think—remember the big one Stoner’s Boy turned loose that time in his hiding place, up there in the cliff cave?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “And ever since the time I saw that ugly thing wrap its leather wings around Stoner’s Boy’s head, I’ve had a terrible fear of bats—even the small ones that fly around the street lamps at night.”

  “Could you imagine a bat flying around Burney’s Field, scaring those Pelhams?” laughed Link.

  “It’s not a bat,” said Shadow Loomis.

  “What is it?” asked Jerry Moore. “If you know so much, what is it?”

  “I don’t know what it is,” said Shadow. “I know what it isn’t—it isn’t a bat.”

  “Well, then, suppose you go over and see,” said Jerry. “I’m game—I’ll go with you tonight.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the kind,” I said. “First thing you know, old Judge Granbery will be hearing about this underground place over on Burney’s Field and the stories Pelham fellows are telling about a thing that scares them at night. And what will old Judge Granbery do? What will he do, I ask you?”

  “He’ll forbid any of us to go over there, for one thing,” said Johnny McLaren.

  “Yes, and he’ll most likely tell the sheriff to chase us out of this clubhouse and have it torn down,” said our captain. “No, you boys better stay here until you get orders from Hawkins or me.”

  “Time for baseball practice,” said Bill Darby.

  “I say,” broke in a voice that had for a long time been very quiet among us boys. It was the silvery voice of dear old Lew Hunter. “How is this, Hawkins, that since the Darby fellow has started a ball team, none of the boys come to my singing practice anymore? That isn’t right, is it?”

  “Lew,” I said, in a nice tone. “It ain’t that they are careless about singin’ and it ain’t that they don’t like to hear you play the old organ. But it’s summertime, that’s all, and it’s just natural for boys to reach for a baseball bat and skip off to some place where houses don’t hide the sunshine, and—”

  “Yeah,” says Lew. “It’s fine sport, but don’t you think they ought to practice singin’ sometimes?”

  The boys didn’t wait to listen to what else Lew said. They were off for the hollow with Bill Darby in the lead. I never saw baseball take such a hold on our boys as it did this year.

  *  *  *

  But what I wanted to write about was Friday night. There being no school on the next day, most always we had a meeting in the clubhouse on Friday night, when Lew Hunter would play the organ, or the boys would play games or talk until it was time to go home. Stoner’s Boy and the other disturbers from Watertown had not shown up often of late, and Shadow Loomis and Robby Hood had not met with any trouble on their way down the river, usually coming in Robby’s homemade launch. Now this Friday night, we were to have singing practice, and every boy promised to come.

  I started down the river path all by myself with a bottle of ink and a new box of writing paper beca
use I had got a letter from Harold, one of the twins who are at a fancy school in Massachusetts, and Harold had written to me that he and his brother Oliver would be home again next week, and I wanted to write back and say that we would be waiting for them at the depot when they come home, just as we’ve been doing these many years. Oliver and Harold are fine fellows. They are two of the most important fellows in our club, only they don’t belong to it more than the two months—summer vacation time.

  So I say, I started all by myself down the river path, when all of a sudden, I was scared out of my wits by hearing somebody’s footsteps following me. I turned quick as a wink and drew my flashlight.

  “I beg your pardon, Hawkins,” said a voice, and my flashlight showed it to be the face of Perry Stokes.

  “For the love of Mike, Perry,” I said. “Why don’t you say something when you follow a fellow like that? How’d I know but what it was Stoner’s Boy or Androfski or Simon Bleaker or somebody? Don’t ever do that again, Perry, will you?”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “But I meant well. You see, I never let you go anywhere on a dark night by yourself, sir—”

  “What!”

  “I mean, sir, that since the boy Jude took a dislike to you and said he would pay you back for something you never did, I always like to hang around, sir. Maybe I might be of help to you, Hawkins. It would be just such a night as this and such a place, for him to—”

  “Good old Perry,” I said, laughing. “It’s sure kind of you, boy. But say, you walk in front of me, will you? I can’t stand footsteps in back of me.”