“Thar she is, right side up with care an’ dry as Nigger Nat—been ridin’ under a rubber blankit all the way. Gorry, ain’t this a rain! It’s the line storm. What say? Oh, four dollars an’ thutty-five cents. Thank ye.”
“Don’t thank me. Peel off your coat and light your pipe while I get breakfast—or luncheon, or whatever you want to call it. Why do you say ‘dry as Nigger Nat’?”
“Wal——” Uncle Eb hesitated, looking toward the stove. “No, I can’t stop. I got to git ’long, or the folks’ll think somebody waylaid me—I’d oughter be to home now. Nat? Oh, that’s jest a sayin’ we’ve got round here—‘dry as Nigger Nat.’ He’s one o’ them misfortunit critters that can’t never drownd his thirst, if ye know what I mean. He warn’t round to visit with ye last night, was he?” He turned toward the shot-scored door.
“Not to my knowledge. Sit down a minute, and I’ll tell you about my visitors. Yes, I had some.”
Duty and curiosity struggled a few seconds in Uncle Eb. Curiosity, of course, won. He accepted the chair and some new tobacco, loaded a disreputable old pipe, puffed as Douglas held a blazing match for him, and looked expectant. Douglas, his own pipe aglow, forthwith enlightened him as to the happenings of the night. He made merry over his various scares; but the older man, his eyes soberly traveling from door to door, did not echo his mirth.
“By mighty, boy, I take off my hat to ye,” he barked. “I ain’t scairt o’ nothin’ that walks or crawls or swims or flies, an’ I ain’t soop’stitious nuther, but I don’t want to live into no house where things walks without no feet an’ jiggles a bed without no hands. No sirree! I guess mebbe ’twas the wind that blowed yer door open—must of been. But them other things——”
He shook his head and spat noisily on the floor.
“I want to tell ye sumpthin’,” he went on. “I thought I wouldn’t tell ye yesterday, so’s ye wouldn’t git scairt beforehand; but after I went ’long I wished I had, so’s ye’d be ready. I been worried ever sence. Thinks I, if anything comes to ye into the night an’ catches ye asleep it’ll be my fault for not tellin’ ye.
“Wal, now, this house was Jake Dalton’s. He warn’t a sociable critter, lived all by hisself, kind o’ growled if ye spoke to him; an’ he used to go ’way for days to a time—had sumpthin’ to do up back, mebbe—I never ast no questions. But I drive up an’ down ’tween here an’ High Falls pretty reg’lar—I git my mail thar an’ so on—an’ I know how everything looks ’long the way. An’ Jake’s door was always shut, whether he was to home or not—’less’n he jest happened to be comin’ out when I went by.
“But one day I see this door a-standin’ a little ways open an’ Jake nowheres round. I didn’t say nothin’—I went ’long an’ come back, an’ ’twas jest the same. I kind o’ figgered about it, but then I thought mebbe Jake was drinkin’ up a new jug inside here an’ didn’t know ’nough to shut his door—he used to git that way. So I went ’long. But about three-four days later on somebody said Jake’s door was open yit, an’—wal, some of us come down here to see what was what.