CHAPTER I
THE MAN WHO WAS AFRAID OF RATS
For an hour before the accommodation train stopped at Pringleton the rain had etched zigzag lines upon the windowpane beside Hiram Strong's seat; so to find the platform aglitter with puddles in the dull lamp light and the water dripping drearily from the station eaves did not surprise him. What was rather astonishing was to find Pringleton such a very lonely place.
As far as he could see, when he had walked around the bungalow-built station the light in the stationmaster's ticket office was the only light visible save the switch-targets and the disappearing green lamps on the end of the train. Hiram, with his heavy bag, was the only passenger who had got off the evening train.
When he came around to the front of the station again he saw the stationmaster humped over his desk in the bay window, with a pen stuck over his ear, looking for all the world like a secretary bird. He peered out of the window at Hiram curiously, and finally pushed up the sash.
"I don't know whether you know it or not, young fellow," the stationmaster said, "but the company charges mileage if you use this platform for a walking track. And you'll make trouble for me if you keep going around, for I never have found out how many laps make a mile, and I sha'n't know what to charge you."
Hiram Strong smiled his approval of this brand of humor, yet his question put in reply was quite serious:
"Have you seen anybody around here, sir, from a place called Sunnyside Farm?"
"There isn't anybody at Sunnyside Farm, as far as I know," said the stationmaster; "and there hasn't been since the house burned down last year."
"Yes, I know," Hiram said quickly. "But I rather expected Mr. Bronson would have somebody over here to meet me."
"Mr. Stephen Bronson?" asked the man. "Him that's just bought the Sunnyside place?"
"Yes. It's quite a walk to the farm, isn't it?"
"It is the longest two miles you ever walked, son," declared the stationmaster. "Were you thinking to walk it to-night?"
"As there is nobody here to meet me, I guess I'll have to," replied the youth cheerfully. "Which way do I head? You'll have to start me right, or else I may wear out your platform walking around and around on it all night."
The stationmaster chuckled. "Well, young fellow," he observed, "it is evidently to my advantage to put you on your way. Turn around, pick up your bag, go right down those steps to the road and walk straight ahead. You are now facing west. When you get into the road you will find it not so dark as it seems."
"Dark enough, I guess," muttered Hiram.
"You can't miss the road even on a dark night, for there is no fork in it till after you pass Sunnyside."
"But," asked the youth, "is there anybody up that way who will lodge me for the night, as the Sunnyside house is burned?"
"You may get taken in at Miss Delia Pringle's, just beyond Sunnyside—first house after you pass the ruins of the burned farmhouse. This station is named after her folks. Don't make the mistake of going to the first house this side of Sunnyside."
He said this last so curiously that Hiram asked him: "Why not?"
"Because that is Yancey Battick's place. He'll likely blow a charge of rock salt into you from his shotgun and then ask what you want afterward."
"Why, what's his idea?" asked Hiram much amazed.
"Says he's afraid of rats—that's all," declared the stationmaster, and immediately slammed down the window to shut out the searching February wind.
The youth hesitated for only a moment longer. He rather thought the stationmaster of Pringleton was quite as odd as the man he called Yancey Battick, who met all visitors with a salt-loaded shotgun and was afraid of rats.
"And this isn't really a night fit for a rat to be out," Hiram muttered, after he had walked for some time along the muddy road leading west from the station.
Occasionally while he was still near the railroad he passed a dwelling; but it was just about supper time, and nearly all the lights were at the backs of the houses. Hardly a ray of cheerful lamp light reached the road.
The houses were situated farther apart as he continued his march. The fine rain was penetrating in the extreme. Hiram desired shelter more than he ever had before, it seemed to him.
And just when it appeared as though nothing about his situation could be worse, the heavens opened. It had been doing this, off and on, all day. But this water fall seemed heavier than any of those that had preceded it.
Hiram Strong saw a light ahead and a little to one side of the road. It was not a very bright light (perhaps it was drowned by the curtain of falling rain) but it must be in a house, he thought. At a time like this, it was any port in a storm.
He set out at a heavy run toward the light. He found a sagging gate in a decrepit fence. Plunging up a muddy path, he reached a tiny porch which might have offered some shelter had not the roof leaked like a sieve.
"Hard luck!" muttered the youth. "If they won't let me in—"
His feet pounding on the rickety steps and the thump of his heavy bag on the porch aroused somebody within. Hiram heard a firm step at the other side of the door.
Suddenly the door opened with an abruptness which was startling. The door opened on a chain, and through the aperture of about eight inches was thrust the brown muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun that, at the moment, looked as big as a cannon to the youth. He stepped back promptly, and a cascade off the roof of the porch went down the back of his neck.
"What are you after?" demanded a harsh voice.
Above the slanted gun-barrel appeared a ferocious black moustache which completely hid the wearer's mouth, a beak-like nose, and a pair of blue eyes that glittered half wildly. Altogether the householder was of most forbidding aspect, and the youth at once identified him as Yancey Battick. He had evidently stopped at the wrong house after all!
"I want nothing, Mr. Battick, but shelter till the rain holds up," Hiram answered.
"Who told you my name?" demanded the man. "I never saw you before, young fellow."
"I guessed it," Hiram replied. "I'm a pretty good Yankee at guessing."
"And you are a Yankee, I imagine," the man said. "You're from the East, aren't you?"
"Yes, sir," replied Hiram, and mentioned the locality from which he had just come in answer to Mr. Stephen Bronson's summons.
The man still presented the gun, and although Hiram had stepped from under the cascade pouring down from the roof, he was anything but comfortable out there on the porch.
"Where are you going?" asked Battick, scowling still.
"To Sunnyside Farm."
"Why, there's nobody there! The house is burned down."
"I expect to work that place this year for Mr. Stephen Bronson. I want to find a place to lodge near the farm, and I was told to apply to—Miss Pringle, I believe the name is."
"What!" gasped the man. "A young fellow like you? Who sent you unwarned into the clutches of that old maid?"
"Why—is she so bad?" Hiram asked.
"There isn't any male too young nor yet too old to be out of danger of that old maid. Come on in," added Mr. Battick, unchaining the door. "I wouldn't let any male creature get into that woman's clutches."
Hiram stepped rather doubtfully into the house. Mr. Yancey Battick certainly was a very odd person. He had been warned that the man with the welcoming shotgun was afraid of rats; it appeared that he was likewise much afraid of spinsters.