Gary shivered a little and shook his head. The three deep creases stood between his eyebrows, and his lips were pressed together so that the deep lines showed more distinctly beside his mouth. “Didn’t yuh--_honest_?” James Blaine Hawkins whispered again. Again Gary shook his head. He got up and began clearing the table, his hands not quite steady. He lifted the dented teakettle, saw that it needed water and picked up the bucket. He hesitated for an instant on the doorstep before he started to the creek. He heard a scrape of feet behind him on the rough floor and looked back. James Blaine Hawkins was following him like a frightened child. They returned to the cabin, and Gary washed the dishes and swept the floor. James Blaine Hawkins sat with his back against the wall and smoked one cigarette after another, his eyes roving here and there. They did not talk at all until Gary had finished his work and seated himself on the bunk to roll a cigarette. “What’s the matter with this damn place, anyway?” James Blaine Hawkins demanded abruptly in that tone of resentment with which a man tacitly acknowledges himself completely baffled. Gary shrugged his shoulders expressively and lifted his eyebrows. “What would you say was the matter with it?” he countered. “I know that one man disappeared here very mysteriously. An Indian, so they tell me, heard a Voice calling, up on the bluff. He died soon afterwards. And I know Waddell was in a fair way to go crazy from staying here alone. But as to what ails the place--one man’s guess is as good as another man’s.” He lighted his cigarette. “I’ve quit guessing,” he added grimly. “You think the cabin’s haunted?” James Blaine Hawkins asked him reluctantly. Again Gary shrugged. “If the cabin’s haunted, the whole darn cañon is in the same fix,” he stated evenly. “You can’t drag an Indian in here with a rope.” “It’s all damn nonsense!” James Blaine Hawkins asserted blusteringly. Gary made no reply, but smoked imperturbably, staring abstractedly at the floor. “Wherever there’s a spook there’s a man at the back of it,” declared James Blaine Hawkins, gathering courage from the continued calm. “That was a man I seen standin’ by the bunk. Felt slippers, likely as not--so he wouldn’t make no noise walkin’. He likely come in when I wasn’t looking. And yuh needn’t try to tell _me_,” he added defiantly, “that wasn’t no cat!” Gary turned his head slowly and looked at James Blaine Hawkins. “If there was a cat,” he argued, “why the heck didn’t I see it? There’s nothing wrong with _my_ eyes.” “I dunno why you never seen it,” James Blaine Hawkins retorted pettishly. “_I_ seen it, plain as I see you this minute. Funny you never seen it. I s’pose you’ll say next yuh never seen that man standin’ there by the bunk! He went outside, and the cat follered him.”