STORMBOUND ON THE WAY
BOB would not have dismissed his misgivings so contentedly had he been
able to see Betty just at that moment.
When she shook the dust of Bramble Farm from her feet, which she
did literally at the boundary line on the main road, to the great
delight of two curious robins and a puzzled chipmunk, she said firmly
that it was forever. As she tramped along the road she kept looking
back, hoping to hear the rattle of wheels and to see Bob and the
sorrel coming after her. But she reached the crossroads without being
overtaken.
Years ago some thoughtful person had taken the trouble to build a
rude little seat around the four sides of the guidepost where the
road to Laurel Grove and Glenside crossed, and in a nearby field was
a boarded-up spring of ice-cold water, so that travelers, on foot and
in motor-cars and wagons, made it a point to rest for a few minutes
and refresh themselves there. Betty was a trifle embarrassed to find a
group of men loitering about the guide-post when she came up to it.
They were all strangers to her, but with the ready friendliness of the
country, they nodded respectfully.
"Want to sit down a minute, Miss?" asked a gray-haired man civilly,
standing up to make room for her. "Didn't expect to see so many idle
farmers about on a clear morning, did you?"
Betty shook her head, smiling.
"I won't sit down, thank you," she said in her clear girlish voice.
"I'll just get a drink of water and go on; I want to reach Glenside
before noon."
"Glenside road's closed," announced one of the younger men, shortly.
"Closed!" echoed Betty. "Oh, no! I have to get there, I tell you."
Her quick, frightened glance fell on the man who had first spoken to
her, and she appealed to him.
"The road isn't closed, is it?" she asked breathlessly. "That isn't why
you're all here?"
"Now, now, there's nothing to worry your head about," answered the
gray-haired farmer soothingly. "Jerry, here, is always a bit abrupt
with his tongue. As a matter of fact, the road is closed; but if you
don't mind a longer walk, you can make a detour and get to Glenside
easily enough."
Betty gazed at him uncertainly.
"You see," he explained, "King Charles, the prize bull at Greenfields,
the big dairy farm, got out this morning, and we suppose he is roaming
up and down between here and Glenside. He's worth a mint of money,
so they don't want to shoot him, and the dairy has offered a good
reward for his safe return. He's got a famous temper, and no one would
deliberately set out to meet him unarmed; so we're posted here to warn
folks. A few automobiles took a chance and went on, but the horses and
wagons and foot passengers take the road to Laurel Grove. You turn off
to the left at the first road and follow that and it brings you into
Glenside at the north end of town. You'll be all right."
"A girl shouldn't try to make it alone," objected another one of the
group. "You take my advice, Sis, and wait till your father or brother
can take you over in the buggy. Suppose you met a camp of Gypsies?"
"Oh, I'm not afraid," Betty assured him. "That is, not of people. But I
don't know what in the world I should do if I met an angry bull. I'll
take the detour, and everything will be all right. I'm used to walking."
The men repeated the directions again, to make sure she understood
clearly. Then Betty drank a cup of the fresh, cold spring water, and
bravely set off on the new road.
The gray-haired man came running after her.
"If it should storm," he cried, coming up with her, "don't run under
a tree. Better stay out in the rain till you reach a house. You'll be
safe in any farmhouse."
He meant safe as far as the kind of people she would meet were
concerned, but Betty, who had never in her life feared any one, thought
he referred to protection from the elements. She thanked him, and
trudged on.
"I certainly am hungry," she said, after a half hour of tramping. "Now
I know how Bob feels without a cent in his pocket. I'll have to ask
Doctor Guerin for some money. I can't get along without a nickel. Uncle
Dick must be awfully busy, or else he's sick. Otherwise he would surely
let me hear from him."
When she came to an old apple orchard where the trees drooped over a
crumbling stone wall, Betty had no scruples about filling the pockets
and sleeves of her sweater with the apples that lay on the ground. Bob
had told her that portions of trees that grew over the roadside were
public property, and she intended to explain to the farmer, if she met
him, how she had come to carry off some of his fruit. But she met no
one and saw no house, and presently the rumble of distant thunder put
all thoughts of apples out of her mind.
"My goodness!" She looked at the mountain of white clouds piling up
with something like panic. "I haven't even come to the road that turns,
and I just know this will be a hard thunderstorm. Mrs. Peabody said
last week that the August storms are terrors. I'll run, and perhaps
I'll come to a house."
Holding her sweater stuffed with apples in her arms, and jamming
her hat firmly on her head, Betty flew down the road, bouncing over
stones, jumping over, without a shudder, a mashed black-snake flattened
out in the road by some passing car, and, in defiance of all speed
regulations, refusing to slow up at a sharp turn in the road ahead. She
took it at top speed, and as she rounded the curve the first drops of
rain splashed her nose. But her flight was rewarded.
A long, low, comfortable-looking farmhouse sat back in an overgrown
garden on one side of the road.
"D. Smith," read Betty on the mail box at the gate. "Well, Mrs. D.
Smith, I hope you're at home, and I hope you'll ask me to come in and
rest till the storm's over. Shall I knock at the back or the front
door?"
A vivid flash of lightning sent her scurrying across the road and up
the garden path. As she lifted the black iron knocker on the front door
a peal of thunder rattled the loose casements of the windows.
Betty lifted the knocker and let it fall three times before she decided
that either Mrs. D. Smith did not welcome callers at the front of her
house, or else she could not hear the knocker from where she was. But a
prolonged rat-a-tat-tat on the back door produced no further results.
"She may be out getting the poultry in," said Betty to herself,
recalling how hard Mrs. Peabody worked every time a storm came up.
"Wonder where the poultry yard is?"
The rain was driving now, and the thunder irritatingly incessant. Betty
walked to the end of the back porch and stood on her tiptoes trying to
see the outbuildings. Then, for the first time, she noticed what she
would surely have seen in one glance at a less exciting time.
There were no outbuildings, only burned and blackened holes in the
ground! A few loose bricks marked the site of masonry-work, and a
charred beam or two fallen across the gaps showed only too plainly what
had been the fate of barns and crib houses.
Betty ran impulsively to a window, and, holding up her hands to shut
out the light, peered in. Cobwebs, dust and dirt and a few empty tins
in the sink were the only furniture of the kitchen.
"It's empty!" gasped Betty. "No one lives here! Oh, gracious!"
A great fork of lightning shot across the sky, followed at once by a
deafening crash of thunder. Far across the field, on the other side of
the road, Betty saw a tall oak split and fall.
"I'm going in out of this," she decided, "if I have to break a window
or a lock!"
She leaned her sturdy weight against the wooden door, automatically
turning the knob without thought of result. The door swung easily
open--there had been nothing to hinder her walking in--and she tumbled
in so suddenly that she had difficulty in keeping her feet.
Betty closed the door and looked about her.
The storm shut out, she immediately felt a sense of security, though
a hasty survey of the three rooms on one side of the hall failed
to reveal any materials for a fire or a meal, two comforts she was
beginning to crave. She took an apple from her sweater pocket, and,
munching that, set out to explore the rooms on the other side of the
hall.
A curious, yet familiar, noise drew her attention to the front room,
probably in happier days the parlor of the farmhouse. Peering in
through the partly open folding doors, Betty saw seven crates of
chickens!
"Why--how funny!" She was puzzled. "Where could they have come from?
And what are they doing here? Even if they saved them from the fire,
they wouldn't be left after all the furniture was moved out."
She went up to the crates and examined them more closely.
"That black rooster is the living image of Mrs. Peabody's," she
thought, "And the White Leghorns look like hers, too. But, then, I
suppose all chickens look alike. I never could see how their hen
mothers told them apart."
Still carrying her sweater with the apples, she wandered upstairs,
trying to people the vacant, dusty rooms and wondering what had
happened to those who had dwelt here and where they had gone.
"I wonder if the fire was at night and whether they were terribly
frightened," she mused. "I should say they were mighty lucky to save
the house, though perhaps the barns are the most necessary buildings on
a farm. Why didn't they build them up again, instead of moving out? I
would."
She was standing in one of the back rooms, and from the window she
could look down and see what had once been the garden. The drenched
rosebushes still showed a late blossom or two, and there was a faint
outline of orderly paths and a tangle of brilliant color where flowers,
self-sown, struggled to force their way through the choking weeds.
The drip, drip of the rain sounded dolefully on the tin roof, and a
cascade ran off at one corner of the house showing where a leader was
broken. Toward the west the clouds were lifting, though the thunder
still grumbled angrily.
Betty went through the rather narrow hall and entered a pleasant,
prettily papered room where a low white rocking chair and a pink sock
on the floor spoke mutely of the baby whose kingdom had been bounded by
the wide bay window.
"They forgot the rocker," said Betty, drawing it up to the window and
resting her elbows on the narrow window ledge. "I hope he was a fat,
pretty baby," she went on, picking up the sock and holding it in her
hand. "Is that some one coming down the road?"
It was--two people in fact; and as they drew nearer Betty's eyes almost
popped out with astonishment. The pair talking together so earnestly,
completely oblivious of the rain, were Lieson and Wapley, the two men
who had worked for Mr Peabody! And they were turning in at the path
guarded by the mail box inscribed "D. Smith."
Betty flew to the door of the room where she sat and drew the bolt.