The War for the Lot

by Sterling Lanier

  Chapter Five

  THE FOLLOWING day, Wednesday, dawned red and cloudy. The weather had changed in the small hours of the morning. A wind had risen from the east and rattled the shutters of the old house, warning of rain to come. It blew into Alec's open window and urged him into wakefulness at the usual seven o'clock time. He stirred sleepily and rolled over, one arm outflung on the pillow, dimly feeling that something needed doing.

  He sat up staring out at the lowering clouds through the window. The gray light and the moan of the wind told him that the day would be a bad one. As the events of the past night came back to him, he shivered with remembered excitement. No one else in the whole world could say that they had a friend who was a raccoon, a woodchuck, an owl or a mouse! Whisperfoot!

  On reaching his bedroom the previous night, Alec had gone over it as carefully as he could in the dark, looking for a safe place for the deermouse to hide while he was out of the room, or even out of the house. He wanted a place that Worthless could not possibly reach, even if the bedroom door got left open through carelessness. The bureau and desk were ruled out. Lou Darden, who kept the house in a spotless condition, might open either to clean or simply inspect.

  It was Whisperfoot herself who spotted a good place. Just above Alec's head, near one curled end of the big sleigh bed's headboard, a large knot some time in the past had popped out of the ancient pine paneling. The mouse had climbed up the bed and simply jumped in. Emerging a moment later, she had sneezed, but said the knothole joined an old and long-unused mouse residence further back in the wall, and aside from a little dust, it was perfectly clean.

  Alec had gone to his bureau and taken one of his stock of seldom-utilized white handkerchiefs and torn a piece of it off. This he had pushed partway into the knothole, and the mouse had dragged it the rest of the way in. She reported that it made an excellent bed and that she was more than comfortable. Alec stuffed the torn handkerchief in his pants, to be discarded later. Then they had wished each other a good rest, and the boy had fallen asleep ...

  Now here Whisperfoot was, calling cheerfully to him from her new nest.

  "I'm right here, Watcher. Right where you put me last night. And look what I found!" There was a brief scratching sound. "Come on out, you! I told you it was perfectly safe. For the tenth time, he won't eat you."

  Alec realized that Whisperfoot was not talking to him but to someone else, and waited expectantly, his eyes fixed on the knothole. The pretty deermouse emerged first, jumped down from the top of the headboard and sat looking up at the hole.

  "Come on," she urged again. "I'm right here sitting next to the human. He doesn't bite."

  Out of the hole peered a small, brown, whiskered face with two round ears. Slowly there followed a fat little body and a longish tail, though still much shorter than Whisperfoot's. Finally a plump, rather scruffy-looking house mouse emerged and sat blinking nervously at the mouth of the hole.

  "I thought you said last night—" began Alec to Whisperfoot, but she cut him off before he could bring up her previously expressed low opinion of house mice.

  "Never mind that," she said quickly. "He's not a bad sort and he wants to be helpful. They all do, as a matter of fact, all of his people, and I think we can use them."

  "Here, you," she continued to the other mouse, who seemed frightened out of his wits. "Tell the human your new name, the one I gave you, and tell him what you told me earlier."

  Alec waited as patiently as he could while the house mouse twitched his whiskers and blinked and stared. Finally the boy was about to speak himself, when a small scared voice in his mind formed a picture of the mouse skulking and creeping about the edge of a wall, flattened to the floor so tightly that he was practically moving on his stomach.

  "I see," said Alec, trying not to laugh. "You called him Creeper, I guess?"

  "Creeper will do," said Whisperfoot. "There, Creeper, aren't you proud? You have a real, human name. Don't you feel braver already?"

  "No," said the house mouse timidly. "I don't. But I don't think I ever will. I never heard of a brave house mouse. It's all very well for you woods people to talk," he went on with a sudden rash of speech. "I'd like to see you living with a cat as a permanent member of the household, mousetraps everywhere, stuff left all over that tastes like good food and kills you dead, humans pouring boiling water down your hole whenever they see you, and all that!"

  "Why don't you go live in a hole in a tree?" said Whisperfoot, cleaning her immaculate whiskers as she spoke. "I'll help you find a nice place." There was a twinkle of delicate humor in her mind voice, but although Alec caught it, Creeper was too appalled to notice.

  "Live in the woods! In a tree!" The house mouse's horror and indignation were so strong he actually squeaked out loud. "Out in the open, in a place full of owls and weasels and minks and foxes and skunks and hawks and—" he sputtered for a moment and then went on. "And be cold and wet all winter and be flooded in the spring and afraid to go out in the summer and hungry in the fall?" His whole fat body shook at the very idea.

  "Too bad," said Whisperfoot, suppressing a ladylike yawn. "I had such a nice hole in mind. You could have shared it with two pine mice. It's built in the bottom of a crow's nest." The teasing note in her voice was very apparent to Alec, but not to the house mouse.

  The boy had enjoyed watching the deermouse poking fun at the fat, absurd, little creature, but he now decided enough was enough.

  He said soothingly to Creeper, "I'm sure no one will make you go and live outside. Not if you don't want to. And you can always come up here. I'll keep the door shut and see there are no mousetraps left around the room. Maybe I can find some cheese now and then. How's that?"

  "Very handsome, if and when, and no offense meant," said Creeper. "Smelling is believing, as the saying goes. Not but what I'm sure anyone this lady says is a friend, really is. It's just that talking to a human is something new to me. Usually at the other end of a broom or jumping on chairs yelling, that's the way we see them—we house mice, I mean." He seemed more relaxed at the boy's words, however, and settled back on his fat rump, eyeing them both, his beady eyes no longer so furtive and wary.

  "Now, Whisperfoot," said Alec. "What did you mean when you said Creeper and the other house mice could be useful? How are they of any use to us when they never leave this house?"

  "He found me asleep this morning, early," said the deermouse. "He was checking the old knothole because no one has used this room for a long time and he thought you might have left some food around he could steal when no one was looking. I woke up and asked him what he wanted, and he almost ran away, he was so frightened."

  "Now then," interrupted Creeper. "Not so much of this frightened business. Careful is the word for it, if you please." He was obviously recovering his nerve and was now quite cocky.

  "We got to talking about this and that," resumed the deermouse, "both of us being small, and I told him about you and what we were trying to do out in the wood. He got terribly excited, because he says the other house mice know something about this rat business. He went running off before I could stop him and said he'd be back as quickly as he could. I could see you were still asleep and it wasn't dawn yet, so I just waited for him. He came back a little before you woke up and told me he'd been talking to his friends. But I think he'd better tell you himself."

  Alec could see that the dainty deermouse didn't want to admit that she found that the two kinds of mice had a great deal in common—much more, for instance, than perhaps either might with larger animals.

  "I'd be glad to hear what he has to say," said Alec. "What is it you know, Creeper?"

  The dingy little animal swelled with importance at the question, until he looked like a midget fur balloon with attached ears and whiskers.

  "We know a good deal, we house mice." He preened his whiskers with an air of mystery. "We have our own ways of getting news. We have friends and relatives living in lots of places, even in town where all the houses are. Never been th
ere myself. Too far to go, in my opinion, for a busy mouse with affairs of his own. Why, I have to help find food for a whole family and let me tell you, it takes some "

  "Yes, I'm sure it does," said Alec impatiently. "But we want to know about the rats. What do you know about them, and how do you know it?"

  Eventually, with both Whisperfoot and the boy prodding him and dragging him away from his own troubles every so often, this was how his story came out:

  "Us house mice are just as disturbed about dump rats coming here as any of you woods animals. Brown rats kill us house mice when they can find us. They even go hunting for us when they are feeling mean.

  "We have no way to resist, because we're so much littler. Nothing but the size of our holes and our quickness saves us. But rats are pretty quick, too. Making a small hole bigger is a much easier job than chewing a new one, you know. They even eat us, and they like our little babies."

  It seemed that Creeper and his friends and relatives were in constant communication with all the other house mice who lived in nearby houses, and these in turn with still others, closer to Mill Run, and these finally with mice who actually lived in the town itself. Despite their fear of the outside world, house mice do go out on occasion, usually at night, to pay visits and look for new homes. This is when they meet and exchange news.

  And now, the town mice of Mill Run had some recent news. A certain few of them were actually allowed to live near the village dump by the rats, and were not molested. Occasionally the rats even gave them food. In exchange, the mice were expected to furnish the rats with any news they might have of happenings of interest in and around the town. It was they who had passed on the recent information about the rats.

  For some time now, the rats had been asking their mouse informants everything they could think of about all the country surrounding Mill Run village. Recently, however, their questions had been only about one area, The Lot. The mice had told them as little as possible, pleading ignorance about a place so far away and wild, but they hastened to pass on the question and its meaning to their cousins in the country. "Look out," they had said, "we think the rats might be coming your way."

  This was Creeper's information. "When considered," said Alec to Whisperfoot, "it tells us pretty much what we already knew, that the dump rats are planning some kind of attack."

  But then something else occurred to him. He and the local animals had to know much, much more about the plans of the rats. And the house mice might help.

  He quickly shared the thought with the two mice.

  "Look," he said to Creeper, "you house mice don't want rats out here any more than the woods animals or us humans do. So you'll have to help. Can you arrange to have news of what the rats are doing brought every night from one house mouse to another, until it gets to me?"

  Creeper looked dubious for a moment, and scratched one ear while he thought. "We don't go out every night, you know, not right outside. Very dangerous, that is, and not done often."

  "Well, it will just have to be done," said Alec sternly. "You have just as much of an interest in keeping those rats out of here as we do. Besides," he added, "you could take turns, couldn't you? There must be a lot of you."

  "I don't know," said Creeper. "It will have to be thought about. I'll have to talk to the others. Us house mice aren't much for wars and danger and things like that. The others may not like the idea. But I'll talk to them."

  "Be sure you do," said the deermouse, bristling with indignation. "If the rats come to The Lot, what do you think will happen to you?" But Creeper had already vanished into the knothole and was gone.

  "You really let him have it," said Alec admiringly to his small ally. "Do you think he'll try to help?"

  "I can't be sure," said Whisperfoot. "They're not a bad sort, these little dirty things, but what cowards they are! One of my own people, or even a meadow mouse, would be worth fifty of them. House mice never stop thinking about hiding for a minute!"

  "Just a moment," said Alec. "You've given me an idea! Why couldn't we get the house mice in the dump to pass information to the meadow mice? I saw some in the Council Glade the other night."

  "Why, that would probably work quite well," said Whisperfoot, sitting up on the bedstead. "I'll go and talk to them about it right now." She darted over to the open window and shot down the vine out of sight before Alec could say another word.

  He dressed himself, remembering to tie his shoes, and went down the front stairs to breakfast. His grandfather was not yet up, and so he went into the kitchen, where he found Lou washing dishes.

  "Just a second, honey, and I'll get you some breakfast," she said. "You'll look a little less bouncy than yesterday. Weather got you down?"

  "No," said Alec, thinking quickly. "It just seems like a sleepy sort of a day, that's all." He looked out at the cloudy sky and the wind-tossed trees, visible through the kitchen window. "It's going to rain, isn't it?"

  "Yep," she answered, "sure is, from the look of things. A northeast wind does bring rain at this season. Maybe you can stay in today and watch TV instead of going outside and getting all wet. Darden has to go to town for supplies in a little while now. Like to ride in with him?" As she spoke, she had been moving about the kitchen, and in no time at all, cereal, milk, and orange juice were planked down on the kitchen table.

  Alec nodded as he began to eat. "Yes, I would like to go," he said. "I've never had a really good look at Mill Run."

  "Not so much of a town," said Lou. "Still, I was born there so I expect I favor it. It is pretty in summer and not so cluttered as some, nor so full of tourists and nasty little stores and such, either. Soon as they get rid of that dirty town dump, the way they're fixing to this year, the place will look real nice, the way it did when I was a girl. I just hope that new shopping center the village selectmen voted for ain't going to be ugly, and Land's sakes, what's the matter, boy?"

  Alec had suddenly choked on his milk and his face had turned bright red. Of course! That was why the rats had to move! That was why they were scouting The Lot. They wanted to make it their new home.

  Lou pounded Alec's back and mopped the milk off his face with her apron.

  "Now pay attention to what you're doing, Alec. Finish your breakfast and I'll give a yell for Darden. Your grandpa felt tired this morning, I guess. He works too hard on his books for an old man, if you want my opinion. Seems as if no one in this world will ever do what's good for them. I'll take the Professor his breakfast up on a tray. That riles him worse than anything I know. He'll get up so fast you won't even see him go, he gets that angry when I pretend I think he's ailing." She winked at Alec and made him laugh.

  As Lou bustled about the kitchen, the boy looked out at the gray sky, now even more ill-omened than when he had awakened. As he watched, the first patter of rain sounded on the roof and big drops began to hit the window panes. It soon settled down to a steady, hard downpour, and the muffled roar of water pouring off the tin rainspouts and the high peaked roofs maintained itself as a constant noise in the background.

  Alec drank the last of his milk, his thoughts gloomy. Would the animals still expect him to come out to the woods this afternoon, in this weather? He decided, on consideration, that they probably would. Rain almost certainly didn't mean much to wild animals. They probably figured that he was capable of getting out in any weather, so long as it was daytime. He owned a yellow slicker, a matching rain hat and boots, all of which had been carefully packed by his mother and were now upstairs. Why shouldn't he use them? He decided to try a test shot.

  "There's no reason for Grandpa not to let me out in the rain so long as I have my rain things on, is there, Lou?" he asked innocently.

  Lou cocked a wise blue eye at him. "Grandpa, nothing, Mr. Smarty. It's me that says who goes out and in what. Why, Professor March probably wouldn't take notice if you ran out in your bare skin! I see what you're about, trying to get around me like that!" She considered, still looking at him, then glanced outside at the weather.
>
  "It's still coming down pretty hard. Go to town with Darden and maybe it will let up some. If you still want to go out later, we'll see."

  "Okay," said Alec. He knew when he had won a partial victory and decided not to push his luck.

  "I'll go get my stuff and then look for John. Thanks for breakfast."

  "You do that. Have a good time in town, now, and don't let Darden get into trouble." Alec couldn't imagine John getting into trouble, and decided the last comment was not meant to be serious.

  Alec put on his rain gear and went outside to see his turtle. He felt that he had neglected the poor animal and wished he had thought of him earlier. But who could think of a pet turtle with all the other things that had happened?

  The box turtle seemed delighted with the rain, which had brightened his black and yellow shell. While Alec watched from a perch on the rail of the back porch, the turtle dug up and ate several large earthworms from the dirt floor of his pen. John was not in sight and Alec had a sudden thought. Could turtles talk? He directed his thoughts as hard as he could, but there was no response at all. Then he tried "listening" with his mind, to see if the beast could or would send him any message in return. To his amazement, he did pick up a dim mental picture. Not surprisingly, however, it contained only a blurred view of earthworms, lots and lots of earthworms, and a feeling of hunger as well. Alec tried again to send a message of his own, even thinking of himself digging earthworms and giving them to the turtle. But no sensible answer came back, only the dim thoughts of food and appetite. Discouraged, he decided turtles were simply not "tuned in", at least not to him.

  He got up from the rail and went around the corner of the house. John had pulled the car out of the barn and was just getting in when Alec appeared.

  "John, Lou said you were going to town and I could come," he said as he climbed into the car.

  "I was only ready this second. Glad you could make it," said John amiably. His sole concession to the weather was a battered hunter's cap of leather and a thin denim jacket which matched his blue pants. On looking around, Alec saw that several flats of flowers, young plants and bunches of cut flowers, were carefully arranged on the back seats, and with them were some bags of new asparagus and boxes of strawberries.