Hoofbeats on the Turnpike Part 18

"What deed do you mean?" Penny asked, perplexed.

"Why, the deed to this house and my land! I've always kept it under the mattress o' my bed. Now it's gone!"

"Isn't the deed recorded?"

"No, it ain't. I always calculated on havin' it done, but I wanted to save the fee long as I could. Figured to have the property put in my son's name jes' before I up and died. He's married and livin' in Omaha.

Now see what a mess I'm in."

"If the deed is lost and not recorded, you are in difficulties," Penny agreed.

"Perhaps it isn't lost," said Louise, encouragingly. "Did you search everywhere, Mrs. Lear?"

"I pulled the bed half to pieces."

"We'll help you look for it," Penny offered. "It must be here somewhere."

"This is the fust time in twenty years that anyone ever stole anything off me," the old lady wailed as she led the way down the dark hall. "But I kinda knowed somethin' like this was goin' to happen."

Mrs. Lear's bedroom was in great disorder. Blankets had been strewn over the floor and the limp mattress lay doubled up on the springs.

"You see!" the old lady cried. "The deed's gone! I've looked everywhere."

Penny and Louise carefully folded all the blankets. They straightened the mattress and searched carefully along the springs. They looked beneath the bed. The missing paper was not to be found.

"Are you sure you didn't hide it somewhere else?" Penny asked.

"Fer ten years I've kept that deed under the bed mattress!" the old lady snapped. "Oh, it's been stole all right. An' there's the tracks o' the thievin' rascal that did it too!"

Mrs. Lear lowered the oil lamp closer to the floor. Plainly visible were the muddy heelprints of a woman's shoe. The marks had left smudges on the rag rugs which dotted the room; they crisscrossed the bare floor to the door, the window and the bed. Penny and Louise followed the trail down the hallway to the stairs. They picked it up again in the kitchen and there lost it.

"You don't need to follow them tracks no further," Mrs. Lear advised grimly. "I know who it was that stole the deed. There ain't n.o.body could o' done it but Mrs. Burmaster!"

"Mrs. Burmaster!" Louise echoed, rather stunned by the accusation.

"She'd move Heaven and Earth to git me off this here bit o' land. She hates me, and I hate her."

"But how could Mrs. Burmaster know you had the deed?" Penny asked. "You never told her, did you?"

"Seems to me like onest in an argument I did say somethin' about having it here in the house," Mrs. Lear admitted. "We was goin' it hot and heavy one day, an' I don't remember jest what I did tell her. Too much, I reckon."

The old lady sat down heavily in a chair by the stove. She looked sick and beaten.

"Don't take it so hard," Penny advised kindly. "You can't be sure that Mrs. Burmaster stole the deed."

"Who else would want it?"

"Some other person might have done it for spite."

Mrs. Lear shook her head. "So far's I know, I ain't got another enemy in the whole world. Oh, Mrs. Burmaster done it all right."

"But what can she hope to gain?" asked Penny.

"She aims to put me off this land."

"Mr. Burmaster seems like a fairly reasonable man. I doubt he'd make any use of the deed even if his wife turned it over to him."

"Maybe not," Mrs. Lear agreed, "but Mrs. Burmaster ain't likely to give it to her husband. She'll find some other way to git at me. You see!"

Nothing Penny or Louise could say cheered the old lady.

"Don't you worry none about me," she told them. "I'll brew a cup o' tea and take some aspirin. Then maybe I kin think up a way to git that deed back. I ain't through yet--not by a long shot!"

Long after Penny and Louise had gone back to bed the old lady remained in the kitchen. It was nearly three o'clock before they heard her tiptoe upstairs to her room. But at seven the next morning she was abroad as usual and had breakfast waiting for them.

"I've thought things through," she told Penny as she poured coffee from a blackened pot. "It won't do no good to go to Mrs. Burmaster and try to make her give up that deed. I'll jes wait and see what she does fust."

"And in the meantime, the deed may show up," Penny replied. "Even though you think Mrs. Burmaster took it, there's always a chance that it was only misplaced."

"Foot tracks don't lie," the old lady retorted. "I was out lookin' around early this morning. Them prints lead from my door straight toward the Burmasters!"

Deeply as were the girls interested in Mrs. Lear's problem, they knew that they could be of no help to her. Already they had lingered in Red Valley far longer than their original plan. They shuddered to think what their parents would say if and when they returned to Riverview.

"Lou, we have to start for Hobostein right away!" Penny announced. "We'll be lucky if we get there in time to catch a train home."

Mrs. Lear urged her young guests to remain another day, but to her kind invitation they turned deaf ears. In vain they pressed money upon her.

She refused to accept anything so Penny was compelled to hide a bill in the teapot where it would be found later.

"You'll come again?" the old lady asked almost plaintively as she bade them goodbye.

"We'll try to," Penny promised, mounting Bones. "But if we do it will be by train."

"I got a feeling I ain't goin' to be here much longer," Mrs. Lear said sadly.

"Don't worry about the deed," Penny tried to cheer her. "Even if Mrs.

Burmaster should have it, she may be afraid to try to make trouble for you."

"It ain't just that biddy I'm worried about. It's somethin' deeper." Mrs.

Lear's clear gaze swept toward the blue-rimmed hills.

Penny and Louise waited for her to go on. After a moment she did.

"Seen a rain crow a settin' on the fence this morning. There'll be rain an' a lot of it. Maybe the dam will hold, an' again, maybe it won't."

"Shouldn't you move to the hills?" Penny asked anxiously.

Mrs. Lear's answer was a tight smile, hard as granite.

"Nothin' on Earth kin move me off this land. Nothin'. If the flood takes my house it'll take me with it!"