CHAPTER IV. SEAWARD BOUND
There were very few people on the seaward-bound train; indeed Miss JaneMoore, Nann and Dories were the only occupants of the chair car. Aftersettling herself comfortably in the chair nearest the front, the oldwoman, with a sweep of her arm toward the back, said almost petulantly:"Sit as far away from me as you can. I may want to sleep, and I knowgirls. They chatter, chatter, chatter, titter, titter, titter all aboutnothing."
Her companions were glad to obey, and when they were seated at the rearend of the car, they kept their heads close together while they visitedthat they might not disturb the elderly woman, who, to all appearances,fell at once into a light doze.
As soon as the train was under way, Dories asked: "Now do tell me howthis perfectly, unbelievably wonderful thing has happened?"
Nann laughed happily. "Maybe your Great-Aunt Jane is a fairy godmother indisguise," she whispered. They both glanced at the far corner, but theblack veiled figure was much more suggestive of a witch than a goodfairy.
"The disguise surely is a complete one," Dories said with a shudder. "My,it gives me the chilly shivers when I think how I might be going to spenda whole month alone with her. But now tell me, just what did happen?"
"Can't you guess? You wrote your aunt a letter, didn't you, telling allabout me and even giving the name of the hotel where Dad and I werestaying?"
Dories nodded, "Yes, that's true. Mother wanted me to write to Aunt Janeand I couldn't think of a thing to tell her about, and so I wrote aboutyou."
"Well," Nann continued to enlighten her friend, "she must have written methat very day inviting me to be her guest at Siquaw Point for the monthof October, but she asked me not to let you know. I sent the last picturepostcard, the one of our hotel, just after I had received her letter, andyou can imagine how wild I was to tell you. I hadn't started going to theBoston High. Dear old Dad said a month later wouldn't matter, and so hereI am." The girls clasped hands and beamed joyfully at each other.
Dories' next glance toward the sleeping old woman was one of gratitude."I'm going to try hard to love her, that is, if she'll let me." Then,after a thoughtful moment, Dories continued: "Great-Aunt Jane must havebeen very different when Dad was a boy, for he cared a lot for her,Mother said." Then with one of her quick changes she exclaimed in a lowvoice, "Nann Sibbett, I have lain awake nights dreading the dismal monthI was to spend at that forsaken summer resort. I just knew there'd beghosts in those boarded-up cottages, but now that you're going to be withme, I almost hope that something exciting will happen."
"So do I!" Nann agreed.
It was four o'clock when the train, which consisted of an engine, twocoaches and a chair-car, stopped in what seemed at first to be but widestretches of meadows and marsh lands, but, peering ahead, the girls saw afew wooden buildings and a platform. "Siquaw Center!" the brakeman openeda door to announce. Miss Jane Moore sat up so suddenly, and when shethrew back her veil she seemed so very wide awake, the girls foundthemselves wondering if she had really been asleep at all. The brakemanassisted the old woman to alight and placed her bags on the platform,then, hardly pausing, the train again was under way. Meadows and marshesstretched in all directions, but about a mile to the east the girls couldsee a wide expanse of gray-blue ocean.
"I guess the name means the center of the marshes," Dori whispered,making a wry face while her aunt was talking to the station-master, atall, lank, red-whiskered man in blue overalls who did not remove his capnor stop chewing what seemed to be a rather large quid.
"Yeah!" the girls heard his reply to the woman's question. "Gib'll fetchthe stage right over. Quare time o' year for yo' to be comin' out, Mis'Moore, ain't it? Yeah! I got your letter this here mornin'. The suppliesar' all ready to tote over to yer cottage."
The girls were wondering who Gib might be when they heard a rumblingbeyond the wooden building and saw a very old stage coach drawn by arather boney old white horse and driven by a tall, lank, red-headed boy.A small girl, with curls of the same color, sat on the high seat at hisside. "Hurry up, thar, you Gib Strait!" the man, who was recognizable asthe boy's father, called to him. "Come tote Mis' Moore's luggage." Thenthe man sauntered off, having not even glanced in the direction of thetwo girls, but the rather ungainly boy who was hurrying toward them waslooking at them with but slightly concealed curiosity.
Miss Moore greeted him with, "How do you do, Gibralter Strait." Uponhearing this astonishing name, the two girls found it hard not to laugh,but the lad, evidently understanding, smiled broadly and nodded awkwardlyas Miss Moore solemnly proceeded to introduce him.
To cover his embarrassment, the lad hastened to say. "Well, Miss Moore,sort o' surprisin' to see yo' hereabouts this time o' year. Be yo' goin'to the Pint?"
The old woman looked at him scathingly. "Well, Gibralter, where inheaven's name would I be going? I'm not crazy enough yet to stay long inthe Center. Here, you take my bags; the girls can carry their own."
"Yessum, Miss Moore," the boy flushed up to the roots of his red hair. Heknew that he wasn't making a very good impression on the young ladies. Heglanced at them furtively as they all walked toward the stage; then, whenhe saw them smiling toward him, not critically but in a most friendlyfashion, there was merry response in his warm red-brown eyes. What hesaid was: "If them bags are too hefty, set 'em down an' I'll come backfor 'em."
"O, we can carry them easily," Nann assured him.
The small girl on the high seat was staring down at them with eyes andmouth open. She had on a nondescript dress which very evidently had beenmade over from a garment meant for someone older. When the girls glancedup, she smiled down at them, showing an open space where two front teethwere missing.
"What's your name, little one?" Nann called up to her. The lad was insidethe coach helping Miss Moore to settle among her bags.
The child's grin grew wilder, but she did not reply. Nann turned towardher brother, who was just emerging: "What is your little sister's name?"she asked.
The boy flushed. Nann and Dori decided that he was easily embarrassed orthat he was unused to girls of his own age. But they better understoodthe flush when they heard the answer: "Her name's Behring." Then hehurried on to explain: "I know our names are queer. It was Pa's notion togive us geography names, being as our last is Strait. That's why mine'sGibralter. Yo' kin laugh if yo' want to," he added good-naturedly. "Iwould if 'twasn't my name." Then in a low voice, with a swift glancetoward the station, he confided, "I mean to change my name when I come ofage. I sure sartin do."
The girls felt at once that they would like this boy whose sensitive faceexpressed his every emotion and who had so evident a sense of humor. Theywere about to climb inside of the coach with Miss Moore when a shrill,querulous voice from a general store across from the station attractedtheir attention. A tall, angular woman in a skimp calico dress stoodthere. "Howdy, Miss Moore," she called, then as though not expecting areply to her salutation, she continued: "Behring Strait, you come hereright this minute and mind the baby. What yo' gallavantin' off fer, andme with the supper gettin' to do?" Nann and Dori glanced at each othermerrily, each wondering which strait the baby was named after.
The small girl obeyed quickly. Mrs. Strait impressed the listeners as awoman who demanded instant obedience. As soon as the three passengerswere settled inside, the coach started with a lurch. The sandy road woundthrough the wide, swampy meadows. It was rough and rutty. Miss Moore satwith closed eyes and, as she was wedged in between two heavy bags, shewas not jounced about as much as were the girls. They took itgood-naturedly, but Dories found it hard to imagine how she could haveendured the journey if she had been alone with her queer Aunt Jane. Nanndecided that the old woman feined sleep on all occasions to avoid thenecessity of talking to them.
At last, even above the rattle of the old coach, could be heard thecrashing surf on rocks, and the girls peered eagerly ahead. What they sawwas a wide strip of sand and a row of weather-beaten cottages
, boardedup, as Dori had prophesied, and beyond them white-crested, huge graybreakers rushing and roaring up on the sand.
The boney white horse came to a sudden stop at the edge of the beach, norwould it attempt to go any farther. The boy leaped over a wheel and threwopen the back door. "Guess you'll have to walk a piece along the beach,Miss Moore. The coach gets stuck so often in the sand ol' Methuselahain't takin' no chances at tryin' to haul it out," he informed theoccupants.
The girls were almost surprised to find that the horse hadn't been namedafter a strait. Miss Moore threw back her veil and opened her eyes atonce. Upon hearing what the boy had to say, she leaned forward to gaze atthe largest cottage in the middle of the row. She spoke sharply:"Gibralter, why didn't your father carry out my orders? I wrote himdistinctly to open up the cottage and air it out. Why didn't he do thatwhen he brought over the supplies, that's what I'd like to know? Ideclare to it, even if he is your father, I must say Simon Strait is amost shiftless man."
The boy said at once, as though in an effort to apologize: "Pa's beenreal sick all summer, Miss Moore, and like 'twas he fergot it, but I kinopen up easy, if I kin find suthin' to pry off the boards with. I thinklikely I'll find an axe, anyhow, out in the back shed whar I used to chopwood fer you. I'm most sure I will."
Miss Moore sank back. "Well, hurry up about it, then. I'll stay in thecoach till you get the windows uncovered." When the boy was gone, thewoman turned toward her niece. "Open up that small black bag, Dories; theone near you, and get out the back-door key. There's a hammer just insideon the kitchen table, if it's where I left it." She continued herdirections: "Give it to Gibralter and tell him, when he gets the boardsoff the windows, to carry in some wood and make a fire. A fog is comingin this minute and it's as wet as rain."
The key having been found, the girls ran gleefully around the cabin insearch of the boy. They found him emerging from a shed carrying ahatchet. He grinned at them as though they were old friends. "Somecheerful place, this!" he commented as he began ripping off the boardsfrom one of the kitchen windows. "You girls must o' needed sea air a lotto come to this place out o' season like this with a--a--wall, with a oldlady like Miss Moore is." Dories felt sure that the boy was thinkingsomething quite different, but was not saying it because it was arelative of hers about whom he was talking. What she replied was: "Ican't understand it myself. I mean why Great-Aunt Jane wanted to come tothis dismal place after everyone else has gone."
They were up on the back porch and, as she looked out across the swampymeadows over which a heavy fog was settling, then she continued, more toNann than to the boy: "I promised Mother I wouldn't be afraid of ghosts,but honestly I never saw a spookier place."
The boy had been making so much noise ripping off boards that he had onlyheard the last two words. "Spooks war yo' speakin' of?" he inquired."Well, I guess yo'll think thar's spooks enough along about the middle ofthe night when the fog horn's a moanin' an' the surf's a crashin' out onthe pint o' rocks, an' what's more, thar _is_ folks at Siquaw Center assays thar's a sure enough spook livin' over in the ruins that used to beol' Colonel Wadbury's place."
The girls shuddered and Dories cast a "Didn't I tell you so" glance ather friend, but Nann, less fearful by nature, was interested and curious,and after looking about in vain for the "ruin", she inquired itswhereabouts.
Gibralter enlightened them. "O, 'tisn't in sight," he said, "that is, notfrom here. It's over beyant the rocky pint. From the highest rock tharyou kin see it plain."
Then as he went on around the cottage taking off boards, the girlsfollowed to hear more of the interesting subject. "Fine house it used tobe when my Pa was a kid, but now thar's nothing but stone walls astandin'. A human bein' couldn't live in that ol' shell, nohow. But--"the boy could not resist the temptation to elaborate the theme when hesaw the wide eyes of his listeners, "'long about midnight folks at theCenter do say as how they've seen a light movin' about in the old ruin.Nobody's dared to go near 'nuf to find out what 'tis. The swamps allabout are like quicksand. If you step in 'em, wall, golly gee, it'sgood-bye fer yo'. Leastwise that's what ol'-timers say, an' so the spook,if thar is one over thar, is safe 'nuf from introosion."
While the boy had been talking, he had removed all of the wooden blinds,his listeners having followed him about the cabin. Dories had been sointerested that she had quite forgotten about the huge key that she hadbeen carrying. "O my!" she exclaimed, suddenly noticing it. "But then youdidn't need the hammer after all. Now I'll skip around and open the backdoor, and, Gibralter, will you bring in some wood, Aunt Jane said, tobuild us a fire?"
While the boy was gone, Nann confided merrily, "There now, Dories Moore,you've been wishing for an adventure, and here is one all ready made andwaiting. Pray, what could be more thrilling than an old ruin surroundedby an uncrossable swamp and a mysterious light which appears atmidnight?"
The boy returned with an armful of logs left over from the supply of aprevious summer. "Gib," Nann addressed him in her friendliest fashion,"may we call you that? Gibralter is _so_ long. I'd like to visit yourruin and inspect the ghost in his lair. Really and truly, isn't there anyway to reach the place?"
The boy looked as though he had a secret which he did not care to reveal."Well, maybe there is, and maybe there isn't," he said uncommittedly.Then, with a brightening expression in his red-brown eyes, "Anyway, I'llshow you the old ruin if yo'll meet me at sun-up tomorrow mornin' out atthe pint o' rocks."
"I'm game," Nann said gleefully. "It sounds interesting to me all right.How about you, Dori?"
"O, I'm quite willing to see the place from a distance," the otherreplied, "but nothing could induce me to go very near it." Neither of thegirls thought of asking the advice of their elderly hostess, who, at thatvery moment, appeared around a corner of the cabin to inquire why it wastaking such an endless time to open up the cottage. Luckily Gib hadstarted a fire in the kitchen stove, which partly mollified the woman'swrath. After bringing in the bags and supplies, the boy took hisdeparture, and they could hear him whistling as he drove away through thefog.