FELLOW TRAVELERS
"Well! this is a pretty pickle!" groaned Tom, at last as much disturbed
as Helen had been. "It's no use, girls. We'll have to stop here till the
storm is over. It is coming."
"Well, that will be fun!" cried Ruth, cheerfully. "Of course we ought to
be storm-bound in a deserted house. That is according to all romantic
precedent."
"Humph! you and your precedent!" grumbled her chum. "I'd rather it was a
nice roadside hotel, or tearoom. That would be something like."
"Come on! we'll take in the hamper, and make tea on the deserted
hearthstone," said Ruth. "Tom can stay out here and repair his old
auto."
"Tom will find a shelter for the machine first, I reckon. There! hear
the thunder? We are going to get it, and I must raise the hood of the
tonneau, too," proclaimed the lad. "Go on with your hamper and wraps. I
see sheds back there, and I'll try to coax the old Juggernaut into that
lane and so to the sheds."
He did as he proposed during the next few minutes, while the girls
approached the deserted dwelling, with the hamper. The lower front
windows were boarded, and the door closed. But the door giving entrance
from the side porch was ajar.
"'Leave all hope behind, ye who enter here,'" quoted Helen, peering into
the dusky interior. "It looks powerful ghostly, Ruthie."
"There are plenty of windows out, so we'll have light enough," returned
the girl of the Red Mill. "Don't be a 'fraid cat,' Helen."
"That's all right," grumbled her chum. "You're only making a bluff
yourself."
Ruth laughed. She was not bothered by fears of the supernatural, no
matter what the old house was, or had been. Now, a good-sized rat might
have made her shriek and run!
Into the house stepped Ruth Fielding, in her very bravest manner. The
hall was dark, but the door into a room at the left--toward the back of
the house--was open and through this doorway she ventured, the old,
rough boards of the floor creaking beneath her feet.
This apartment must have been the dining-room. There was a high, ornate,
altogether ugly mantle and open fireplace at one end of the room. At the
other, there stood, fastened to the wall, or built into it, a china
closet, the doors of which had been removed. These ugly, shallow
caverns gaped at them and promised refuge to spiders and mice. On the
hearth was a heap of crusted gray ashes.
"What a lonesome, eerie sort of a place," shivered Helen. "Wish the old
car had kept running----"
"Through the rain?" suggested Ruth, pointing outside, where the air was
already gray with approaching moisture.
Down from the higher hills the storm was sweeping. They could smell it,
for the wind leaped in at the broken windows and rustled the shreds of
paper still clinging to the walls of the dining-room.
"This isn't a fit place to eat in," grumbled Helen.
"Let's go above stairs. Carry that alcohol stove carefully, dear. We'll
have a nice cup of tea, even if it does----"
"Oh!" shrieked Helen, as a long streak of lightning flew across their
line of vision.
"Yes. Even in spite of _that_," repeated Ruth, smiling, and raising her
voice that she might be heard above the cannonade of thunder.
"I don't like it, I tell you!" declared her chum.
"I can't say that I do myself, but I do not see how we are to help it."
"I wish Tom was inside here, too."
Ruth had glanced through the window and seen that Master Tom had managed
to get the auto under a shed at the back. He was industriously putting
up the curtains to the car, and making all snug against the rain, before
he began to tinker with the machinery.
There was a faint drumming in the air--the sound of rain coming down the
mountain side, beating its "charge" upon the leaves as it came. There
were no other sounds, for the birds and insects had sought shelter
before the wrathful face of the storm.
Yes! there was one other. The girls had not heard it until they began
climbing the stairs out of the side entry. Helen clutched Ruth suddenly
by the skirt.
"Hear that!" she whispered.
"Say it out loud, dear, do!" exclaimed the girl of the Red Mill. "There
is never anything so nerve-shaking as a stage whisper."
"There! you heard it?"
"The wind rustling something," said Ruth, attempting to go on.
"No."
"Something squeaks--mice, I do believe."
"Mice would starve to death here," declared Helen.
"How smart of you! That is right," agreed Ruth. "Come on. Let us see
what it is--if it's upstairs."
Helen clung close to her and trembled. There was the rustling, squeaking
sound again. Ruth pushed on (secretly feeling rather staggered by the
strange noise), and they entered one of the larger upper chambers.
Immediately she saw an open stovepipe hole in the chimney. "The noise
comes from that," she declared, setting down the basket and pointing.
"But what is it?" wailed her frightened chum.
"The wind?"
"Never!"
The lightning flashed again, and the thunder rolled nearer. Helen
screamed, crouched down upon the floor, and covered her ears, squeezing
her eyelids tight shut too.
"Dreadful! dreadful!" she gasped.
Still the silence outside between the reports of thunder; but the
rustling in the chimney continued. Ruth looked around, found a piece of
broken window-sash on the floor, and approached the open pipe-hole.
"Here's for stirring up Mr. Ghost," she said, in a much braver tone than
she secretly felt.
She always felt her responsibility with Helen. The latter was of a
nervous, imaginary temperament, and it was never well for her to get
herself worked up in this way.
"Oh, Ruth! Don't! Suppose it bites you!" gasped Helen.
At that Ruth _did_ laugh. "Whoever heard of a ghost with teeth?" she
demanded, and instantly thrust the stick into the gaping hole.
There was a stir--a flutter--a squeaking--and out flopped a brown object
about the size of a mouse. Helen shrieked again, and even Ruth darted
back.
"A mouse!" cried Helen.
"Right--_a flittermouse_!" agreed Ruth, suddenly bursting into a laugh.
"The chimney's full of them."
"Oh, let's get out!"
"In this rain?" and Ruth pointed to the window, where now the drops were
falling, big and fast--the vanguard of the storm.
"But if a bat gets into your hair!" moaned Helen, rocking herself on her
knees.
Ruth opened the big hamper, seized a newspaper, and swooped down upon
the blind, fluttering brown bat. Seizing it as she would a spider, she
ran to the window and flung it out, just as the water burst into the
room in a flood.
Then she ran to the pipe-hole and thrust the paper into it, making a
"stopper" which would not easily fall out. She dragged Helen to the
other side of the room, where the floor was dry and they were out of the
draught.
There the two girls cowered for some moments, hugged close together,
Helen hiding her eyes from the intermittent lightning against Ruth's
jacket. The thunder roared overhead, and the rain dashed down in
torrents. For ten minutes it was as hard a storm as the girl of the Red
Mill ever remembered seeing. Such tempests in the hills are not
infrequent.
When the thunder began to roll away into the distance, and the lightning
was less brilliant, the girls could take some notice of what else went
on. The fierce drumming of the rain continued, but there seemed to be a
noise in the lower part of the building.
"Tom has come in," said Helen, with satisfaction.
"He must have gotten awfully wet, then, getting here from that shed,"
Ruth returned. "Hush!"
Somebody sneezed heavily. Helen opened her mouth to cry out, but Ruth
put her palm upon her lips, effectually smothing the cry.
"Sh!" the girl of the Red Mill admonished. "Let him find us."
"Oh! that will be fun," agreed Helen.
Ruth did not look at her. She listened intently. There was a heavy,
scraping foot upon the floor below. To _her_ mind, it did not sound like
Tom at all.
She held Helen warningly by the wrist and they continued to strain their
ears for some minutes. Then an odor reached them which Ruth was sure did
not denote Tom's presence in the room below. It was the smell of strong
tobacco smoked in an ancient pipe!
"What's that?" sniffed Helen, whisperingly.
Uncle Jabez smoked a strong pipe and Ruth could not be mistaken as to
the nature of this one. She remembered the two men who had hidden in the
bushes as the car rolled by, not many miles back on this road.
"Let's shout for Tom and bring him in here," Helen suggested.
"Perhaps get him into trouble? Let's try and find out, first, what sort
of people they are," objected Ruth, for they now heard talking and knew
that there were at least two visitors below.
Rising quietly, Ruth crept on tiptoe to the head of the stair. The
drumming rain helped smother any sound she might have made.
Slowly, stair by stair, Ruth Fielding let herself down until she could
see into the open doorway of the dining room. Two men were squatting on
the hearth, both smoking assiduously.
They were rough looking, unlovely fellows, and the growl of their voices
did not impress Ruth as being of a quality to inspire confidence.