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The Hairy Man
by
“Did you chaps see that snake?”
“Yes,” and so it was all right. Then they put a match to the boughs, and stood round with long sticks till the snake came out.
They went back to the hut, and managed a cup of coffee. Presently they got on to ghost and Hairy Man yarns again.
“That was God’s truth,” said Jack, “that yarn I told you about what happened to me going up Dead Man’s Pass. It was just as I told you. I was driving slowly up in that little old spring cart of mine, when something—I don’t know what it was—made me look behind, and there was a woman walking along behind the cart with her hands on the tail-board. It was just above the spot where the hawker’s wife was murdered. She was dressed in black, and had black hair, and her face was dead white. At first I thought that it was some woman who wanted a lift, or a chap in woman’s clothes playing the ghost, so I pulled up. And when I looked round again she was gone. I thought she’d crouched under the cart, so I whipped up the horse and then looked round again, but there was nothing there. Then I reckon I drove home as fast as Andy’s uncle did. You needn’t believe me unless you like. ”
“Thunderstorm coming,” said Dave, sniffing and looking round the corner to the east. “I thought this weather would bring something. ”
“My oath,” said Jim, “a regular old-man storm, too. ”
The big, blue-black bank of storm cloud rose bodily from the east, and was right overhead and sweeping down the sunset in a very few minutes. Then the lightning blazed out, and swallowed up daylight as well as darkness. But it was not a rain storm—it was the biggest hail storm ever experienced in that district. Orchards and vineyards were stripped, and many were ruined. Some said there were stones as big as hen’s eggs; some said the storm lasted over an hour, and some said more—but the time was probably half or three-quarters of an hour. Hail lay feet deep in the old diggers’ holes for a fortnight after. The mates half expected the hail to come through the roof of the hut.
Just as the storm began to hold up a little, they heard a louder pattering outside, and a bang at the door. The door was of hardwood boards with wide cracks; Andy rose to open it, but squinted through a crack first. Then he snatched the big crowbar from the corner, dug the foot of it into the earth floor, and jammed the pointed head under a cross piece of the door; he did the same with a smaller crowbar, and looked wildly round for more material for a barricade.
“What are you doing? Who is it, Andy?” wildly cried the others.
“It’s the Hairy Man!” gasped Andy.
They quickly got to the door and squinted through the cracks. One squint was sufficient. It was the Hairy Man right enough. He was about as tall as an ordinary man, but seemed twice as broad across the shoulders. He had long arms, and was covered with hair, face and all. He had a big, ugly mouth, and wild, bloodshot eyes. So they helped Andy to barricade the door.
There was another bang at the door. A cart rattled past, a woman screamed, and the cart went on at an increased pace. There was a shot-gun hanging on the wall, loaded—Andy had left it loaded to save ammunition the last time he’d been out kangaroo shooting. Andy, like most slow-thinking men, often did desperate things in a crisis. He snatched down the gun, stepped back a pace or two, aimed at the door low down, and fired. He doesn’t know why he aimed low down—except that it “was too much like shooting at a man. ” They heard a howl, and the thing, whatever it was, running off. Then they barricaded the door some more ere they scanned the door planking and found that about half the charge had gone through.