A Girl of the Plains Country

								

fingers, made it light his pipe, and flipped it off again. “What
would you be afraid of, sister?”
“Well,” slowly, and watching his face, “I don’t think there would be
whiffenpoofs here.” He didn’t smile—she had been afraid he might. So
she added the explanation, “You see, they mostly stay in dark halls
and on stairways, whiffenpoofs do, and they grab you from behind.”
“No,” Uncle Hank shook his head decisively, “no whiffenpoofs here—if
there is anywhere—which I doubt.”
“Oh, yes, they’re in houses.” Hilda was pretty firm about it. “And—”
She hesitated, looked away from him, then shot him one of her shy
glances before she went on haltingly—“And another reason I thought I
wouldn’t be afraid here is that there aren’t any doors.”
He took the pipe out of his mouth, looked at it, then at her, and
asked blankly:
“No doors?”
“Yes. And so there can’t be a door-imp. When it’s getting a little
dark,” she spoke low now, and very fast, as though she were afraid
if she didn’t hurry she wouldn’t have the courage to tell it all,
“when it’s getting a little dark in the house, and they send you
into another room to get something, the Skulking Door-imp watches
for you. He comes out and looks around the door; then his head is
the thing that you think is a knob. You see, he’s invisible to every
one but me.”
“Truck like that,” said Uncle Hank, putting the pipe back into his
mouth and drawing his arm around Hilda, “is enough to scare a little
girl.”
“It does scare me, Uncle Hank,” she confirmed gravely. “And those
aren’t all. There’s ghosts. And there’s the Barrel-tops—queer kind
of creatures that just roll after you. I most scream right out
sometimes when the Barrel-tops come down the dark hall chasing me.”
“Well, I’ll bet you four cents,” and he shook her gently with his
arm, “that they don’t never come down no hall out here in Texas.
I’ll be willin’ to just bet. Them things can’t live in this
high-and-dry Texas plains climate. Where on earth did you ever get
such notions, anyhow? Did some one tell it to you, or did it come
out of a fool book?”
“No,” said Hilda evasively, “nobody told me, nor read it to me.
I—er—I just knew it myself.”
“Well, then, you must’ve made it up, child. I wouldn’t do it if I’s
you. I wouldn’t have no such critters.”
“I try not to, Uncle Hank. I don’t want to have them. They—oh!
what’s that?” as a long, jingling, chiming whimper came from
somewhere in the surrounding dusk. She flung both arms around the
old man’s neck and burrowed her head on his breast. He held her
tight, and laughed gently.
“Nothing but a little old coyote, honey,” he told her. “They don’t
ever hurt anybody. He smells our bacon rinds. You must go to bed
now, child. If any whiffenpoofs or suchlike cattle trouble you in