"Yes, suh." The Wildcat started out through the fog to find the
freckled white sphere. He threshed around in the trees and underbrush
for a while, and then to his mind came a memory of the horrible words
which the Potent Noble had spoken. "This place was a graveyard!" The
Wildcat shuddered extensively and abandoned the search for the golf
ball.
He looked up, and there before him was a tombstone!
"Lawd Gawd, Lady Luck, whah is you?" Automatically his feet began to
work, and they were aided an instant later by his racing legs. He went
away from there through the fog. The next thing he knew, he had made a
forty-foot dive over a sand bank. He rolled for a moment in the
shifting sand before he brought up against a stunted cedar.
"Whah at is I?"
The fog cleared, and the Wildcat saw the sand dunes stretching below
him. At the edge of the slope were the waves of the Golden Gate. Then
the fog closed in again, and everything about him faded out of the
picture. Above his head, out of the drifting fog, a flight of sea gulls
started a little gossip. To the Wildcat's ears came their shrieking
remarks. He stopped his wild shuddering and began to moan.
"'At's dem ghost boys! I know 'em! Lady Luck, take dem boys away. I
ain't talkin' wid no ghosts." He turned and started up the bank. He
began throwing sand out from under his feet like a record-busting
rotary snow plough. His legs ran for ten minutes, but his wind was
crippled, and in the shifting sand he covered a space of less than
twenty feet. Exhausted with his effort, he flopped down on the sloping
bank. "Dey's got me," he moaned, "dey's got me! I knowed it. I knowed
dem graveyard ghosts would git me, once I gits divo'ced f'um dat mascot
goat. Lady Luck, here I is!" The Wildcat curled up and covered his head
with his arms.
He lay in repose for less than ten seconds; for suddenly, out of the
fog in mid channel, came the booming siren whistle of a liner, heading
out of the Golden Gate. "Whoom! Wha-om!"
The Wildcat moaned. "I heahs you, Gabriel, I heahs you! Heah I is,
Lawd--heah I is."
"Whooom! We-ow-oom!"
"It's me. It's ol' Wilecat. What fo' you askin' who? You knows who!
Ghosts got me, Gabriel! Here I is! Lady Luck--Good-bye!"
Then from Fort Miley crashed the report of the evening gun that marked
retreat, and a moment later the clear notes of a bugle floated out of
the fog. For a moment life on earth again claimed the Wildcat, and
instinctively he responded to his army training. He got to his feet and
stood rigidly at attention. Into the fog to an unseen company he yelled
a series of commands. "Come to 'tenshun! Silence in de ranks! Shut up
an' stan' up! 'Tenshun! Lily, come to 'tenshun! Cap'n Jack, suh, de
company is fo'med."
He saluted and made an about-face as perfectly as he could in the
shifting sand beneath his feet.
As he did so he felt his brain rattle. Ten feet above him, tangible as
iron, real as gold, festooned with hair and horns, stood Lily the
mascot goat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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