Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Rod Crawford, Dave Morgan
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net








[Frontispiece: _On all sides there were deserted adobe houses in
varying degrees of ruin._]




                              THE PHANTOM
                              TOWN MYSTERY


                            By CAROL NORTON


                              Author _of_

             “The Phantom Yacht,” “Bobs, A Girl Detective,”
                “The Seven Sleuths’ Club,” “The Phantom
                              Town,” Etc.


                    THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY
                        Akron, Ohio    New York

                          Copyright MCMXXXIII
                    The Saalfield Publishing Company
               _Printed in the United States of America_




                                CONTENTS


  I Lucky Loon                                                         7
  II The Ghost Town                                                   15
  III The Missing Friends                                             24
  IV “Desperate Dick”                                                 32
  V Poor Little Bodil                                                 40
  VI The Evil-eye Turquoise                                           48
  VII Middle of the Night                                             56
  VIII Singing Cowboys                                                64
  IX A Vagabond Family                                                72
  X A Lonely Mountain Road                                            80
  XI The Skeleton Stage Coach                                         88
  XII A Narrow Escape                                                 95
  XIII A Sand Storm                                                  103
  XIV “A.’S and N. E.’S.”                                            111
  XV In the Barn Loft                                                119
  XVI Searching For Clues                                            127
  XVII A Wooden Doll                                                 135
  XVIII A Strange Hostess                                            143
  XIX A Gun Shot                                                     151
  XX Introducing an Air Scout                                        160
  XXI A Possible Clue                                                168
  XXII An Interesting Arrival                                        176
  XXIII A Silver Plane                                               184
  XXIV A Long Night Watch                                            192
  XXV A Cry for Help                                                 200
  XXVI Is It a Clue?                                                 208
  XXVII It Was a Clue                                                215
  XXVIII A New Complication                                          222
  XXIX An Old Letter                                                 230
  XXX Secret Entrance to the Rock House                              238
  XXXI A Wonderful Secret Told                                       246




                            THE PHANTOM TOWN
                                MYSTERY




                               CHAPTER I
                               LUCKY LOON


A whirl of gleaming sand and dust on a cross desert road in Arizona. The
four galloping objects turned off the road, horses rearing, riders
laughing; the two Eastern girls flushed, excited; the pale college
student exultant; the cowboy guide enjoying their pleasure. A warm,
sage-scented wind carried the cloud of dust away from them down into the
valley.

“That was glorious sport, wasn’t it, Mary?” Dora Bellman’s olive-tinted
face was glowing joyfully. “Wouldn’t our equestrian teacher back in
Sunnybank Seminary be properly proud of us?”

Lovely Mary Moore, delicately fashioned, fair as her friend was dark,
nodded beamingly, too out of breath for the moment to speak.

Jerry Newcomb in his picturesque cowboy garb, blue handkerchief knotted
about his neck, looked admiringly at the smaller girl.

“I reckon you two’ll want to ride in the rodeo. I never saw Easterners
get saddle-broke on cow ponies as quick as you have.” Then his gray eyes
smiled at the other boy, tall, thin, pale, who was wiping dust from his
shell-rimmed glasses. “Dick Farley, I reckon you’ve ridden before.”

Dick flashed a radiant smile which made his rather plain face momentarily
good-looking. “Some,” he said, “when I was a kid on Granddad’s farm just
out of Boston.”

Jerry, a little ahead, was leading them slowly across soft shimmering
sand toward a narrow entrance in cliff-like rocks.

Dora protested, “Mary _ought_ to know how to ride a cow pony since she
was born right here on the desert while I have always lived on the Hudson
River until two weeks ago.”

“Even so,” Mary retaliated brightly, “but, as you know, I left here when
I was eight to go East to school and since I have _never_ been back, I
haven’t much advantage over you.”

The cowboy turned in his saddle and there was a tender light in his eyes
as he looked at the younger girl. “I’m sure glad something fetched you
back, Mary, though I’m mighty sorry it was your dad’s illness that did
it.”

Dora, glancing at the pretty face of her best friend, saw the frank,
friendly smile she gave the cowboy. To herself she thought,—“Jerry
certainly thinks Mary is the sweetest thing he ever saw, but _she_ only
thinks of him as a nice boy who once, long ago, was her childhood
playmate.”

They had reached the narrow entrance in the wall of rocks. It was a
mysterious looking spot; a giant gateway leading, the girls knew not
where. On the gleaming sand near the entrance lay a half-buried skeleton.
It looked as though it might have been that of a man rather than a beast.
The girls exchanged startled glances, but, as Jerry was riding
unconcernedly through the gateway, they silently followed.

“What a dramatic sort of place!” Dora exclaimed in an awed voice as she
gazed about her.

They were on a floor of sand that was circled about by low mountains,
grim, gray, uninviting. Here and there in crevices a twisted dwarf tree
clung, its roots exposed. There was a death-like silence in the place.
Even the soft rush of wind over the desert outside could not be heard.

Mary shuddered and rode closer to the cowboy. “Jerry,” she said, “_why_
have you brought us here? Is there something that you want to show us?”

The cowboy nodded. “You recollect that Dora was saying how she wished
there was a mystery she could solve—” he began, when he was interrupted.

“Oh, Jerry,” Dora’s dark eyes glowed with anticipation, “is there
_really_ a mystery here—in this awfully bleak place? What? Where? I don’t
see anything at all but those almost straight up and down cliffs and—”

There was an exultant exclamation from Dick Farley. Perhaps his strong
spectacles gave him clearer sight.

“I see a house, honest Injun, I do, or something that looks powerfully
like one.” He turned questioning eyes toward the cowboy.

“Righto! You’re clever, old man!” Jerry Newcomb told him. “Don’t tell
where it is. See if the girls can find it.”

For a long silent moment Mary and Dora sat in their saddles turning their
gaze slowly about the low circling mountains.

Dora’s excited cry told the others that she saw it, and Mary, noting the
direction of her friend’s gaze, saw, high on a narrow ledge, what looked
like a wall made of small rocks with openings that might have been meant
for two windows and a door. The flat roof could not be seen from the
floor of the desert.

“How perfectly thrilling!” Dora cried. “What was it, Jerry, an Indian
cliff dwelling?”

The cowboy shook his head. “Let’s ride up closer,” he said. He led the
way to the very base of the low mountain. The ledge, which had one time
been the front yard of the house, had been cracked by the elements and
leaned outward, leaving a crevice of about twenty feet. There were no
steps leading up to the house. It was, as far as the three Easterners
could see, without a way of approach.

Dick Farley rode about examining the spot from all angles. “Jerry,” he
said at last, “if it isn’t an Indian dwelling, who did live there? Surely
_not_ a white family!”

The cowboy shook his head. “Not a family. Only a man, Danish, but he was
white all right. Sven Pedersen was his name but everyone called him
‘Lucky Loon.’ The name fitted him on two counts. Lucky because he struck
it rich so often, and he certainly was ‘loony’ if that means crazy.”

“What did he do?” Mary asked, her blue eyes wide and a little terrified.

“Sven Pedersen had a secret—Dad said—and that was why he took to hoarding
all the wealth he got out of his gold and turquoise mines. My father was
a boy then. He says he hasn’t any doubt but that old rock house up yonder
is plastered with gold and turquoise.”

Dora asked in amazement, “Doesn’t anybody know? Hasn’t anyone _ever_
climbed up there to see?”

“No one that I’ve heard tell about,” Jerry said. “No one cared to risk
his life doing it, I reckon.” Then, seeming to feel that he had
sufficiently aroused his listeners’ curiosity, the cowboy went on to
explain. “As Sven Pedersen grew old, he got queerer and queerer. He took
a notion that he was going to be killed for his money, so after he’d
built that rock house, he shut himself up in it, and if any intruder so
much as rode through that gateway in the rocks over there, bang would go
his gun and the horse would drop dead. He was sure-shot all right, Sven
Pedersen was.”

Dick Farley’s large eyes glanced from the high house out to the gate in
the wall of rock. “I bet the rider of the dead horse scuttled away mighty
quick,” he said.

“I reckon he did,” Jerry agreed when Dora exclaimed in a tone of horror:
“He must have shot a man once anyway. Mary and I saw the half-buried
skeleton of one out by the gate. We were sure we did.”

“Maybe so,” Jerry went on explaining. “You see no one could tell whether
the Lucky Loon was in his house or out of it; no one ever saw him in the
door or on the ledge, but they found out soon enough when they heard his
gun bang.”

“How did he get his food and water?” Dick asked.

“Maybe there’s a spring on the mountain,” Dora suggested.

“Nary a spring,” the cowboy told them. “These mountains and the desert
around here are bone dry. That’s why there’s so many skeletons of cows
hereabout. Some reckoned that he rode away nights to a town where he
wasn’t known. He might have stayed away for days and got back in the
night without anyone knowing.”

“But, Jerry, what happened to him in the end? Does anybody know? Did he
go away?” Dora and Dick were questioning when Mary cried in sudden alarm,
“Oh, Jerry, he _isn’t_ here _now_, is he?”

It was Dora who replied, “Of course not, Mary. You _know_ Jerry wouldn’t
bring us in here if there was any danger of our being shot.”

“I reckon Sven Pedersen’s been dead this long time back,” the cowboy told
them. “Father was a kid when Lucky Loon was old. Dad says he and some
other kids watched around the gate rocks, taking turns for almost a week.
They reckoned if the old hermit _had_ gone away, they’d like to climb up
there and find the Evil Eye Turquoise Sven had boasted so much about
before he shut himself up.”

“_Did_ they climb up there?”

“_What_ was the eye?”

“One question at a time, please,” Jerry told the eager girls. “No, they
didn’t go. Dad said it was his turn to watch one night. There was a
cutting wind and since it was very dark, he thought he’d just slip inside
of the rock gate where the blowing sand wouldn’t hit him. Dad got sort of
sleepy, after a time, crouched down on the sand, when suddenly he heard a
gun bang. He leaped out of the gate, up on his horse and galloped for
home. He laughs when he tells that story. He reckons now that he’d
dreamed the shot since Sven Pedersen never _was_ seen again and that was
thirty years ago.” The cowboy had looked at his watch. “Jumping Steers!”
he exclaimed. “Most milking time and here I’m fifteen miles from the
ranch. Dick, will you ride home with the girls?”

Jerry had whirled his horse’s head and had started for the gateway, the
others quickly following. Dick, at the end, was just passing through the
gate when they distinctly heard the report of a gun.




                               CHAPTER II
                             THE GHOST TOWN


Safely outside of the wall of rocks, the four young people drew their
restless horses to a standstill. Mary’s nettlesome brown pony was hard to
quiet until Jerry reached out a strong brown hand and patted its head.

Mary lifted startled blue eyes. “Jerry, _what_ do you make of that?” she
asked. “We _couldn’t_ have imagined that gun shot and surely the horses
heard it also.”

Jerry’s smile was reassuring. “’Twas the story that frightened you girls,
I reckon,” he said, glancing about and up and down the road as he spoke.
“It’s hunters out after quail or rabbits, more’n like.”

Then, seeing that Mary still glanced anxiously back at the gate in the
rock wall, Dick said sensibly, “Of course you girls _know_ that Sven
Pedersen _couldn’t_ be in that high house. He _must_ have been dead for
years if he was old when Jerry’s father was a boy.”

“Of course,” Dora, less inclined to be imaginative, replied. Then to the
cowboy she said in her practical matter-of-fact way, “Hurry along home to
your milking, Jerry, and Dick, don’t you bother to come with us. Now that
you’re working on the Newcomb ranch you ought to be there. It’s only a
few miles up over this sunshiny road to Gleeson. We aren’t the least bit
afraid to ride home alone, are we?” She smiled at her friend.

Mary, not wishing to appear foolishly timid, said, in as courageous a
voice as she could muster, “Of course we’re not afraid. Goodbye, boys,
we’ll see you tomorrow.”

Turning the heads of their horses up a gently ascending mountain road,
the girls cantered away. At a bend, Mary glanced back. The boys were
sitting just where they had left them. Jerry’s sombrero and Dick’s cap
waved, then, feeling assured that the girls were all right, the boys went
at a gallop down the road and across the desert valley to the Newcomb
ranch which nestled at the base of the Chiricahua range.

“They’re nice boys, aren’t they?” Mary said. “I’ve always wished I had a
brother and I do believe Jerry is going to be just like one.”

Aloud Dora replied, “I have noticed that sometimes he calls you ‘Little
Sister.’” To herself she thought: “Oh, Mary, how _blind_ you are!”

Dreamily the younger girl was saying—“That’s because we were playmates
when we were little so very long ago.”

“Oh my, how ancient we are!” Dora said teasingly. “Please remember that
you are only one year younger than I am and I refuse to be called
elderly.”

Mary smiled faintly but it was evident that she was still thinking of the
past, when she had been a little girl with golden curls that hung to her
waist; a wonderfully pretty, wistful little girl. When she spoke, she
said, “It’s only natural that Jerry should call me ‘Little Sister.’ Our
mothers were like sisters when they were girl brides. I’ve told you how
they both came from the East just as we have. My mother met Dad in Bisbee
where he was a mining engineer, and Jerry’s mother taught a little desert
school over near the Newcomb ranch. She didn’t teach long though, for
that very first vacation she married Jerry’s cowboy father. After that
Mother and Mrs. Newcomb were good friends, naturally, being brides and
neighbors.”

Dora laughed. “Twenty-five miles apart wouldn’t be called _close_
neighbors in Sunnybank-on-the-Hudson where I come from,” she said.

Mary, not heeding the interruption, kept on. “When Jerry and I were
little, we were playmates. I spent days at the ranch sometimes,” her
sweet face was very sad as she ended with, “until Mother died when I was
eight.”

“Then you came East to boarding-school and became like a sister to me,”
Dora said tenderly. “Oh, Mary, when you came West to be with your dear
sick dad, I wonder if you know what it meant to me to be allowed to come
with you.”

“I know what it means to _me_ to have you, Dodo, so I ’spect it means the
same to you,” was the affectionate reply.

For a time the girls cantered along in thoughtful silence. The rutty road
was leading up toward the tableland on which stood the now nearly
deserted old mining-town of Gleeson.

Far below them the desert valley stretched many miles southward to the
Mexican border. The girls could see a distant blue haze that was the
smoke from the Douglas copper smelters.

The late afternoon sun lay in floods of silver light on the sandy road
ahead of them. It was very still. Not a sound was to be heard. Now and
then a rabbit darted past silently.

“How peaceful this hour is on the desert,” Mary began, glancing at her
friend who was riding so close at her side. Noticing that Dora was deep
in thought, she asked lightly, “Won’t you say it out loud?”

“Why, of course. I was just wondering why Jerry hurried us away so fast
from Lucky Loon’s rock house.”

“Because he had to do the milking,” Mary replied simply.

Dora nodded. “So he _said_.” Then she hastened to add, “Oh, don’t think
I’m inferring that Jerry told an untruth, but you know that some evenings
he has stayed with us for supper and—”

Mary glanced up startled. “Dora Bellman,” she said, “do you think maybe
there _was_ someone up in that rock house watching us all the time we
were there; someone who fired the gun just as we were leaving to warn us
to keep away?”

Dora, seeing her friend’s pale face, was sorry that she had wondered
aloud. “Of course not!” she said brightly. “That’s impossible!” Then to
change the subject, she started another. “Jerry didn’t have time to tell
us about the Evil Eye Turquoise, did he?”

“Dora, do you know what _I_ think?” Mary exclaimed as one who had made an
important discovery. “I don’t believe he will tell us about that. I acted
so like a scare-cat all the time we were there, he won’t ever take us
there again and he probably won’t tell us the story either.”

“Then I’ll find it out some other way,” Dora declared. “I’m crazy about
mysteries as you know, and, if there _really is one_ about that rock
house, I want to try to solve it.”

She said no more about it just then, as they had reached the old ghost
town of Gleeson. They turned up a side street toward mountain peaks that
were about a mile away. On their right was the corner general store and
post office. A crumbling old adobe building it was, with a rotting wooden
porch, on which stood a row of armchairs. In the long ago days when the
town had been teeming with life, picturesque looking miners and ranchers
had sat there tilted back, smoking pipes and swapping yarns. Today the
chairs were empty.

An old man, shriveled, gray-bearded, unkempt, but with kind gray eyes,
deep-sunken under shaggy brows, stood in the open door. He smiled out at
them in a friendly way, then beckoned with a bony finger.

“I do believe Mr. Harvey has a letter for us,” Dora said.

The old man had shuffled into the dark well of his store. A moment later
he reappeared with several letters and a newspaper.

“Good!” Dora exclaimed as she rode close to the porch. “Thanks a lot,”
she called brightly up to the old man who was handing the packet down
over the sagging wooden rail.

His friendly, toothless smile was directed at the smaller girl. “Heerd
tell as how yer pa’s sittin’ up agin, Miss Mary,” he said. “Mis’ Farley,
yer nurse woman, came down ter mail some letters a spell back.” Then,
before Mary could reply, he continued in his shrill, wavering voice,
“That thar pale fellar wi’ specs on is her son, ain’t he?”

“Yes, Mr. Harvey. Dick is Mrs. Farley’s son.” Mary took time, in a
friendly way, to satisfy the old man’s curiosity. “Dick has been going to
the Arizona State University this winter to be near his mother. She’s a
widow and he’s her only son. Her husband was a doctor and they lived back
in Boston before he died.”

“Dew tell!” the old man wagged his head sympathetically. “I seen the
young fellar ridin’ around wi’ Jerry Newcomb.”

“Dick’s working on the Newcomb ranch this summer,” Mary said, as she
started to ride on.

“Ho! Ho!” the old man cackled. “Tenderfoot if ever thar was un. What’s
Jerry reckonin’ that young fellar kin do? Bustin’ broncs?”

Mary smiled in appreciation of the old man’s joke. “No, Jerry won’t
expect Dick to do _that_ right at first. He’s official fence-mender just
at present.”

Dora defended the absent boy. “Mr. Harvey, you wait until Dick has been
on the desert long enough to get a coat of tan; he _may_ surprise you.”

“Wall, mabbe! mabbe!” the old storekeeper chuckled to himself as the
girls, waving back at him, galloped away up the road in the little dead
town.

On either side there were deserted adobe houses in varying degrees of
ruin, some with broken windows and doors, others with sagging roofs and
crumbling walls.

The only sign of life was in three small adobes where poor Mexican
families lived. Broken windows in two of the houses were stuffed with
rags; the door yards were littered with rubbish. Unkempt children played
in front of the middle house. The third adobe was neat and well kept. In
it lived the Lopez family. Carmelita, the wife and mother, had long been
cook for Mary Moore’s father.

A bright, black-eyed Mexican boy of about ten ran out to the road as the
girls approached. “Come on, Emanuel,” Mary sang down to him. “You may put
up our horses and earn a dime.”

The small boy’s white teeth flashed in a delighted grin. His brown feet
raced so fast, that, by the time the girls were dismounting before the
big square two-storied adobe near the mountains, Emanuel was there to
lead their horses around back.

Mary glanced affectionately at the old place with its flower-edged walk,
its broad porch and adobe pillars. Here her mother had come as a bride;
here Mary had been born. Eight happy years they had spent together before
her mother died. After Mary had been taken East to school, her father had
returned, and here he had spent the winters, going back to Sunnybank each
summer to be with his little girl.

Hurrying up the steps, Mary skipped into a pleasant living-room, where,
near a wide window that was letting in a flood of light from the setting
sun, sat her fine-looking father, pale after his long illness, but
growing stronger every day.

“Oh, Daddy dear!” Mary’s voice was vibrant with love. “You’ve waited up
for me, haven’t you?” She dropped to her knees beside the invalid chair
and pressed her flushed face to his gray, drawn cheek.

Then, glancing up at the nurse who had appeared from her father’s
bedroom, she asked eagerly, “May I tell Dad an adventure we’ve had?”

Mrs. Farley, middle-aged, kind-faced, shook her head, smiling down at the
girl. “Not tonight, please. Won’t tomorrow do?”

Mary sprang up, saying brightly, “I reckon it will have to.” Then,
stooping, she kissed her father as she whispered tenderly, “Rest well,
darling. We’re hoping you know all about—” then, little girl fashion, she
clapped her hand on her mouth, mumbling, “Oh, I most disobeyed and _told_
our adventure. See you tomorrow, Daddy.”




                              CHAPTER III
                          THE MISSING FRIENDS


Upstairs, in Mary’s room which was furnished as it had been when she had
been there as a child, curly maple set with blue hangings, the two girls
changed from riding habits to house dresses. Mary wore a softly clinging
blue while Dora donned her favorite and most becoming cherry color.

“One might think that we are expecting company tonight.” Mary was peering
into the oval glass as she spoke, arranging her fascinating golden curls
above small shell-like ears.

“Which, of course, we are _not_.” Dora had brushed her black bob,
boy-fashion, slick to her head. “There being no near neighbors to drop
in.” Then suddenly she exclaimed, “Oh, for goodness sakes alive, I
completely forgot that letter. It’s for both of us from Polly and Patsy.
I’ve been wondering why they didn’t write and tell us where they had
decided to spend their summer vacation.”

Dora sprang up to search for the letter in a pocket of her riding habit.
Mary sat near a window in a curly maple rocker as she said dreamily: “If
we hadn’t come West, we would have been with them—that is, if they went
to Camp Winnichook up in the Adirondacks the way we had planned all
winter.”

Dora, holding the letter unopened, sat near her friend and smiled at her
reminiscently as she said, “We plan and plan and plan for the future,
don’t we, and then we do something exactly different, and _most_
unexpected, but _I_ wouldn’t give up being out here on the desert and
living in a ghost town for all the fun Patsy and Polly may be having—”

Mary laughingly interrupted. “Do read the letter and let’s see if they
really _did_ go there. Perhaps—”

“Yes, they did.” Dora had unfolded a large, boyish-looking sheet of
paper. “Camp Winnichook,” she announced, then she read the rather
indolent scrawl. “Dear Cowgirls,”—it began—

“Patsy has just come in from a swim. She’s drying her bathing suit by
lying on the sand in front of the cabin in the sun. Her red hair, which
_she_ calls ‘a wind blown mop,’ looks, at present, like a mop that has
just finished doing the kitchen floor. Last winter, you recall, she had a
_few_ red freckles on her saucy pug nose, but now she wears them all over
her face and arms and even on her back. She’s a sight to behold!”

There were spatters on the paper that might have been water. The type of
penmanship changed. A jerky, uneven handwriting seemed to ejaculate
indignantly, “Don’t you kids believe a word of it. I’m a dazzling
beauty—as ever! It’s Polly whose looks are ruined—if she ever had any.
She won’t play tennis and she _won’t_ swim and she _will_ eat chocolate
drops—you know the finish, and she wasn’t any too slim last year when she
_had_ to do gym.”

The first penmanship took up the tale. “I had to forcibly push Patsy
away. She’s gone in to dress now, so I’ll hurry and get this letter into
an envelope and sealed before she gets back because I want to tell on
her.

“You know Pat has always said she was a boy hater, and the more the boys
from Wales Military Academy rushed her, the more she would shrug her
shoulders and ‘pouff!’ about them, but she’s met her Waterloo. There’s a
flying field near our camp and a boy named Harry Hulbert is there
studying to be a pilot. Pat and I strolled over to the field one day and
ever since she caught sight of that tall, slim chap all done up in his
flying togs, she’s been wild to meet him. I wouldn’t be surprised if
she’s even hoping that his machine will crash some day right in front of
our cabin so that she can bind up his wounds and—”

Once again the jerky, uneven writing seemed to exclaim, “Silly gilly!
_That’s what_ Polly is! It isn’t the flier, it’s the flying that _I’m_
crazy about. I _do_ wish I knew that Harry Hulbert, but not for any
sentimental reasons, believe me. Pouff—for all of ’em! But fly I’m going
to!! In truth, if you girls stay West until the end of vacation, you
_may_ see an airplane landing in your ghost town—me piloting!!!???”

Then came a wide space and when the writing began again, it was dated
three days later and was Polly’s lazy scrawl. “It’s to laugh!” she began.
“But, to explain. If you wish hard enough for anything, it’s _bound_ to
happen. Not that Harry Hulbert’s plane crashed in front of our cabin but
it was forced down when Patsy and I were out in her little green car far
from human habitation. Of course we hadn’t gone riding _just_ because we
_saw_ that particular little silver plane practicing up in the air—oh,
no—not at all!”

Patsy’s jerky scribble interrupted. “She’s a mean, horrid,
misrepresenting person, Polly Perkins is! She knows perfectly well we
_had_ to go to the village to get a pound of butter for our camp mother,
and wasn’t it only _polite_ for us to give that poor stranded boy a lift?
He _is_ a real decent sort, even though the only thing _he’s_ crazy about
is flying, but we _did_ learn something about him. His father has some
sort of a government position in Arizona, where _you_ are, no less. I
mean, in the same state, and when Harry gets his pilot’s license, he is
to be a flying scout, he told us. He said it will be an awfully exciting
life. When there has been a holdup out there on a stage or a train and
the bandits leap on to their horses and flee across the border, Harry is
to pursue them in his little silver plane and see where they go. Then
he’ll circle back to where a posse is waiting, notify them, and so the
bandits will be captured. Won’t that be simply too thrilling for words?
Oh, _why_ wasn’t I born a boy? I could have been Patrick, then, instead
of Patsy. Believe me, when Harry Hulbert gets his license, and it won’t
be long now—he’s _that_ good—don’t I wish I could be a stowaway in his
plane! We’d have to leave Polly here though. She’s so heavy, the plane
wouldn’t be able to get off of the ground.”

The lazy scrawl concluded the epistle. “If Patsy goes West, so do I, but
I’ll go by train. I have no romantic urge to take to the air with slim,
goggle-eyed young men with a purpose in life.

“Our camp mother (nice Mrs. Higgins, Jane’s aunt, came with us this year)
is calling us to lunch, and right after that Pat and I are going to town
to mail this. Pat wants me to say that when _her_ friend Mister Harry
Hulbert _does_ fly West, she’ll give him a letter of introduction to you
two and I calls that right generous of her considering—”

“Pouff!” came a brief interruption. Then “Goodbye. We’re signing off.
Patsy Ordelle and Polly Perkins of the famous Sunnybank Seminary
Quadralettes.”

“What a jolly letter!” Mary said. “Wouldn’t it be fun if the missing
members of our little clan could be here with us. Patsy is as wild about
mystery stories as you are and this ghost town just teems with them.”

A rich, musical voice drifted up from the back porch, “Señoritas!”

“Oh, good! There’s Carmelita calling us to supper, and _am I hungry_?”
Dora tossed the letter on the dresser and slipping an arm about her
friend, she gave her a little impulsive hug.

“I don’t envy Pat and Poll, not the least little mite,” she said as they
went down the broad front stairway together. “It _is_ lovely at Camp
Winnichook as we well know, since we’ve been there with them the past
three summers, but the desert has a lure for me that the little blue lake
in the mountains never did have.”

“I know,” Mary agreed. “Those mountains are more like pretty hills.
There’s nothing grim or grand about them.”

They entered a large, pleasant kitchen, in one corner of which, between
two windows, was a table spread with a red cloth. A good-looking
middle-aged Mexican woman, dressed in bright colors, stood at the stove
preparing to dish up their meal. “_Buenos dias, niñas_,” she said in her
deep, musical voice.

“Good evening, Carmelita,” the girls replied, and then, when they had
been served generous portions of the Americanized Mexican dish which the
girls called “tamale pie,” Dora flashed at the smiling cook a pleased
glance as she said, “_Muchas gracias, Señora_.”

Then to Mary, “It doesn’t take long to use up all the Spanish _I_ know.
Let’s take a vow that when we go back to Sunnybank Seminary next fall we
will add Spanish to—” A wistful expression in her friend’s face caused
Dora to pause and exclaim in real alarm, “Mary Moore, do you think,
because of your dad, that you _won’t_ be able to go back East to school?
You have only one year more before you graduate. You know how we four of
‘The Quadralettes’ have counted on graduating together.”

Mary smiled brightly. “Of course, I expect to go and take Dad with me.”
Her momentary wistful doubting had passed.

They had finished their supper and were rising when Carmelita, who had
been out on the back porch, hurried in and began a rapid chattering in
her own language. The mystified girls could not understand one word. But,
as the Mexican woman kept pointing out toward the road, they felt sure
that someone was coming toward the house, nor were they wrong.




                               CHAPTER IV
                            “DESPERATE DICK”


Skipping to the vine-covered back porch, the two girls peered through the
deepening dusk at the approaching car. In it were two boys.

“One of them resembles Jerry,” Mary said, “but the other one is also a
cowboy, so it can’t be Dick.”

“It is Dick!” Dora exclaimed gleefully. “Jerry must have loaned him some
cowboy togs.”

“Oh, Happy Days!” Mary exulted. “Now we can ask Jerry about that Evil Eye
Turquoise and all the rest of the story about poor Mr. Lucky Loon.”

“If there is any rest to it,” Dora remarked. “Look!” she interrupted
herself to point laughingly at the little car that was rattling toward
them. “Dick is waving his sombrero. He wants us to be sure and take
notice of it!”

“Isn’t he proud though?” Mary chuckled. “His face fairly shines.”

Then, as the small car drew up near the porch, the girls clapped their
hands gaily, and yet quietly, remembering that Mary’s invalid father
might be asleep.

“Oh, Dick,” Dora exclaimed, not trying to hide her admiration, “your
mother must see her to-be-physician son. You make a regular screen-star
cowboy, doesn’t he, Mary?”

Before the other girl could reply, Dick, who had leaped to the ground,
struck a ridiculous pose as he said in a deep, dramatic voice, “Dick, the
Desperate Range Rider.”

Dora’s infectious laugh rang out. “Your big, dark eyes look so solemn
through those shell-rimmed glasses, Mr. Desperate Dick, that somehow you
fail to strike terror into our hearts,” she bantered.

Then Mary smiled up at Jerry, who was standing near her. Half teasingly
she asked, “To what do we owe the honor of this visit? When we parted
this afternoon, you called ‘we’ll see you tomorrow.’”

Jerry glanced at the other boy, mischievous twinkles in his gray eyes.
“You might as well ’fess up, old man. Truth is, Dick couldn’t wait until
tomorrow to let you girls admire him in his cowboy togs.”

“Villain!” Dick tried to glower at his betraying friend, but ended by
beaming upon him with a most friendly grin. “I suppose I _had_ to _rope_
you and drag you over here quite against your will.”

Jerry’s smile at the curly-headed little girl at his side revealed, more
than words, the real reason of his coming. What he said was, “Mom had a
letter she wanted mailed and—er—as long as Dick wanted to show off, I
reckoned—”

“Oh, Jerry,” Mary caught his arm, “it really doesn’t matter in the least
_why_ you came. I was wild to see you—” then, when the tall cowboy began
to glow with pride, Mary quite spoiled her compliment by hurrying to add,
“Oh, it wasn’t _you_ that I wanted to see.” Jerry pretended to be greatly
crestfallen, so she laughingly added, “Of course I’m _always_ glad to see
you, Big Brother, but—”

“Goodness!” Dora rushed to her friend’s rescue. “You’re getting all
tangled up.” Then to Jerry, “Mary and I are wild to know more about that
awfully desolate stone house you showed us this afternoon and about the
Evil Eye Turquoise—”

“Yes, and about poor Mr. Lucky Loon—” Mary put in.

“Rather a contradictory description, isn’t it?” Dick asked. “How can a
man be poor and lucky all in one sentence?”

“I’ll tell you what.” Jerry had a plan to suggest. “Let’s go down to the
store and get old Silas Harvey to tell us all that he knows about Lucky
Loon. I reckon he’d loosen up for you girls, but he never would for me.
He knows more than any other living person about that rock house and the
mystery of Sven Pedersen’s life—”

“Oh, good!” Mary’s animated face was lovely to look upon in the
starlight. Jerry’s eyes would have told her so, had she read them aright,
but her thoughts were not of herself.

“Let’s walk down,” she suggested. “It’s such a lovely night.” Then she
added, “Wait here while Dora and I go up to our room and put on our
sweater coats.”

“You’ll need them!” Dick commented. “Even in June these desert nights are
nippy.”

The girls, hand in hand, fairly danced through the wide lower hall, but
so softly that no sound could penetrate the closed door beyond which
Mary’s father slept.

They did not need to light the kerosene lamp. The two long door-like
windows in Mary’s room were letting in a flood of soft, silvery
starlight. Dora found her flash and her jaunty green sweater coat. “It
looks better with this cherry-colored dress than my pink one,” she
chattered, “and your yellow coat looks too sweet for anything with that
blue dress. Happy Days, but doesn’t Jerry think you’re too pretty to be
real? His eyes almost eat you up—”

“Silly!” Mary retorted. “It’s utterly impossible for Jerry and me to fall
in love with each other. Goodness, didn’t we play together when we were
babies?” Her tone seemed to imply that no more could possibly be said
upon the subject.

“No one is so blind as he who will not see,” Dora sing-songed her trite
quotation, then, fearing that Mary would not like so much teasing, she
slipped a loving arm about her and gave her a little contrite hug. “I’ll
promise to join the blind hereafter, if you think I’m seeing too much,
Mary dear,” she promised.

“I think you’re _imagining_ too much,” was the laughing rejoinder. “Now,
let’s tiptoe downstairs, and oh, I must tap at the sitting-room door and
tell nice Mrs. Farley where we are going.”

Just before Mary tapped, however, the door opened softly and Dick
appeared, his mother closely following, her rather tired brown eyes
adoring him. “Haven’t I the nicest cowboy son?” she asked the girls,
glancing from one to the other impartially.

It was Dora who replied, “We think so, Mrs. Farley.”

“However,” the mother leaned forward to kiss the boy’s pale cheek, “I’ll
not be entirely satisfied until you’re as brown as Jerry.”

“Has Dick told you that we girls are going?—” Mary began.

Mrs. Farley nodded pleasantly. “Down to the post office? Yes, I hope
you’ll find that ancient storekeeper in a garrulous mood. Good night!”

Jerry was seated on the top step of the back porch waiting for them. They
caught a dreamy far-away expression in his gray eyes. He was looking
across the shimmering distance to the Chiricahua Mountains, and thinking
of the time when he would build, on his own five hundred acres, a home
for someone. He glanced up almost guiltily when Mary’s finger tips gave
him a light caress on his sun-tanned cheek.

“Brother Jerry,” she teased, “are you star-dreaming?”

He sprang to his feet. “I reckon I _was_ dreaming, sure enough, Little
Sister,” he confessed.

Mary slipped her slim, white hand under his khaki-covered arm, and,
smiling up at him with frank friendship, she said, “The road down the
hill is so rough and hobbly, I’m going to hang on to you, may I?”

Dora did not hear the cowboy’s low spoken reply, for Dick was speaking to
her, but to herself she thought, “Some day a miracle will be performed
and she who is now blind will see, and great will be the revelation.”
Then, self-rebuking and aloud, “Oh, Dick, forgive me, what were you
saying? I reckon, as Jerry says, that I was thinking of something else.”

“Not very complimentary to your present companion.” Dick pretended to be
quite downcast about it. “I merely asked if I might aid you over the
ruts—”

Dora laughed gleefully. “Dick,” she said in a low voice, “I’m going to
tell you what I was thinking. I was wondering why Mary doesn’t notice
that Jerry likes her extra-special.” Dick’s eyes were wide in the
starlight. “Does he? I hadn’t noticed it.”

Dora laughed and changed the subject. “Oh, Dick, isn’t this the
shudderin’est, spookiest place there ever was?”

They had passed the three small adobe huts that were occupied by Mexican
families and were among the old crumbling houses, which, in the dim
light, looked more haunted than they had in the day.

“I suppose that each one holds memories of sudden riches won, and many of
them have secrets of tragedies,—_murders_ even, maybe.” Dora shuddered
and drew closer to Dick.

“You _are_ imaginative tonight,” he said, smiling at her startled,
olive-tinted face. “It’s quite a leap, though, from romance to gunfights
and—”

Mary turned to call back to them, “Jerry and I have it all planned, just
what we are to do. I’m to ask some innocent question and, Dora, you’re to
help me out, but we mustn’t appear _too_ interested or too prying, Jerry
says, or for some reason, quite unknown, old Mr. Harvey will put on the
clam act. Shh! Here we are! Good, there’s a light. Now Jerry is to speak
his piece first and I am to chime in. Then, Dora, you take your cue from
me.”

Dick whispered close to his companion’s ear, “I evidently haven’t a
speaking part in the tragedy or comedy about to be enacted.”

Dora giggled. “You can be scenery,” she teased, recalling to Dick the
forgotten fact that he was wearing a cowboy outfit for the first time and
feeling rather awkward in it.

Jerry opened the door, a jangling bell rang; then he stepped aside and
let Mary enter first.




                               CHAPTER V
                           POOR LITTLE BODIL


Old Mr. Harvey was dozing in a tilted armchair close to his stove. He sat
up with a start when his discordant-toned bell rang, and blinked into the
half-darkness near the door. The smoked chimney on his hanging kerosene
lamp in the middle of the room and near the ceiling did little to
illumine the place. When he saw who his visitors were, he gave his queer
cackling laugh, “Wall, I’ll be dinged ef I wa’n’t a dreamin’ I was back
in holdup days and that some of them thar bandits was bustin’ in to clean
out my stock.” Then, as he rose, almost creakingly, he said,
disparagingly, as he glanced about at the dust and cobweb-covered
shelves, “Not as how they’d find onythin’ _now_ worth the totin’ away.”

Having, by that time, gone around back of his long counter, he peered
through misty spectacles at Mary. “Is thar suthin’ I could be gettin’ fer
yo’, Little Miss?” he asked.

Jerry stepped forward and placed a half dollar on the counter. “Stamps,
please, Mr. Harvey,” he said. “I reckon that’s all we’re wanting tonight,
thanks.”

The cowboy put the stamps in his pocket, dropped his mother’s letter in a
slot, and turned, as though he were about to leave, but Mary detained him
with:

“Oh, Jerry, you don’t have to hurry away, do you? I thought,” her sweet
appealing smile turned toward the old man, “that perhaps Mr. Harvey might
be willing to tell us a story if we stayed awhile.”

“Sho’ as shootin’!” the unkempt old man seemed pleased indeed to walk
into Mary’s trap. “Yo’ set here, Little Miss.” It was his own chair by
the stove he was offering.

“No, indeed!” Mary protested. “That one just fits you. Jerry and Dick are
bringing some in from the porch.”

The boys sat on the counter. The girls, trying to hide triumphant smiles,
drew their chairs close to the stove. Old Mr. Harvey put in another
stick. Then, chewing on an end of gray whisker, he peered over his
glasses at Mary a moment, before asking, “Was thar anythin’ special yo’
wanted to hear tell about?”

Mary leaned forward, her pretty face animated: “Oh, yes, Mr. Harvey. This
afternoon Dora and I saw that small stone house that’s built so it’s
almost hidden on a cliff of the mountains. Can you tell us anything about
the man who built it; _why_ he did it and what became of him?”

The old man’s shaggy brows drew together thoughtfully. He seemed to
hesitate. Mary glanced at Dora, who said with eager interest, “Oh, _that
would_ be a thrilling story, I’m sure. I’d just love to hear it.”

Wisely the boys, who were not in the line of the old man’s vision, said
nothing. In fact, he seemed to have forgotten their presence.

The storekeeper was silent for so long, staring straight ahead of him at
the stove, that the girls thought they, also, had been forgotten. Then
suddenly he looked up and smiled toothlessly at Mary, nodding his grizzly
head many times before he spoke.

“Wall,” he said at last, almost as though he were speaking to an unseen
presence, “I reckon Sven Pedersen wouldn’t want to hold me to secrecy no
longer—thirty year back ’tis, sence he—” suddenly he paused and held up a
bony, shaky hand. “You didn’t hear no gun shot, did you?”

The girls had heard nothing. They glanced almost fearfully up at the
boys. Jerry shook his head and put a finger to his lips.

The girls understood that he thought it wise that the old man continue to
forget their presence.

“Wall, I reckon the wind’s risin’ an’ suthin’ loose banged. Thar’s plenty
loose, that’s sartin.” Then, turning rather blankly toward Mary, he asked
in a child-like manner, “What was we talkin’ about?”

Mary drew her chair closer and smiled confidingly at him. “You were going
to tell us, Mr. Harvey, _why_ Mr. Pedersen built that rock house and—”

“Sho’! Sho’! So I was. It was forty year last Christmas he come to
Gleeson. A tall, skinny fellar he was, not so very old nor so young
neither. It was an awful blizzardy night an’ thar wa’n’t nobody at all
out in the streets. I was jest reckonin’ as how I’d turn in, when the
door bust open an’ the wind tore things offen the shelves. I had to help
get it shet. Then I looked at what had blown in. He looked like a fellar
that was most starved an’ more’n half crazy. His palish blue eyes was
wild. I sot him down in this here chair by the fire an’ staked him to
some hot grub. I’d seen half-starved critters eat. He snapped at the grub
jest that-a-way. When he’d et till I reckoned as how he’d bust, he sank
down in that chair an’ dod blast it, ef he didn’t start snorin’, an’ he
hadn’t sed nothin’, nohow. Wall, I seen as how he wa’n’t goin’ to wake,
so I lay down on my bunk wi’ my clothes on, sort o’ sleepin’ wi’ one eye
open, not knowin’ what sort of a loon I was givin’ shelter to.

“The blizzard kep’ on all the next day an’ the next. Not a gol-darned
soul come to the store, so me’n’ and him had plenty o’ time to get to
knowin’ each other.

“Arter he’d drunk some hot coffee, he unloosed his tongue, though what he
sed was so half-forrin, I wa’n’t quick to cotch onto his meanin’s.

“The heft o’ his yarn was like this. He an’ his little sister, Bodil, he
named her, had come from Denmark to New York. Thar he’d picked up some o’
Ameriky’s way o’ talking, an’ enuf money to git West. Some Danish fellar
had tol’ him about these here rich-quick mines, so he’d took a stage an’
fetched Bodil.”

The old man paused, and Mary, leaning forward, put her hand on his arm.
“Oh, Mr. Harvey, tell us about that little girl. How old was she and what
happened to her?”

The old man’s head shook sadly. “Bad enuf things happened to her, I
reckon. She must o’ been a purty little critter. Chiny blue eyes, Sven
Pedersen sed she had, an’ hair like yellar cornsilk when it fust comes
out. She was the apple o’ his eye. The only livin’ thing he keered for. I
sho’ was plumb sorry fer him.”

“But _do_ tell us what happened to her?” Mary urged, fearing that the old
man’s thought was wandering.

“Wall, ’pears like the stage was held up on a mount’in road nigh here;
the wust road in the country hereabouts. Thar wa’n’t no passengers but
Sven Pedersen an’ Little Bodil; the long journey bein’ about to an end.
That thar blizzard was a threatenin’ an’ the stage driver was hurryin’
his hosses, hopin’ to get over the mountain afore it struck, when up rode
three men. One of ’em shot the driver, another of ’em dragged out a bag
of gold ore; then they fired over the hosses’ heads. Skeered and rarin’,
them hosses plunged over the cliff, an’ down that stage crashed into the
wust gulch thar is in these here parts.

“Sven saw his little sister throwed out into the road. Then, as the stage
keeled over, he jumped an’ cotched onto some scrub tree growin’ out o’
the cliff. It tuk him a long spell to climb back to the road. He was
loony wild wi’ worryin’ about Little Bodil. He ran to whar he’d seen her
throwed out. _She wa’n’t thar._ He hunted an’ called, but thar wa’n’t no
answer. Then he reckoned as how that thar third bandit had whirled back
an’ carried her off.”

“Oh, Mr. Harvey, how terrible!” There were tears in Mary’s eyes. “Wasn’t
she _ever_ found?”

The old man shook his head sadly. “Sven Pedersen follered them bandits
afoot all night an’ nex’ day but they was a horseback an’ he couldn’t
even get sight o’ them. Then the blizzard struck an’ he staggered in
here, bein’ as he saw my light. Arter that he went prospectin’ all around
these here mount’ins an’ he struck it rich. That cliff, whar he built him
a rock house, was one of his claims.”

“I suppose he never stopped hunting for poor Little Bodil.” Mary’s voice
was tender with sympathy.

“Yo’ reckon right, little gal. Whenever Sven Pedersen heerd tell of a
holdup anywhar in the state, he’d join the posse that was huntin’ ’em but
it warn’t no use, nohow. Bodil was plumb gone. Sven Pedersen never made
no friend but me. His palish blue eyes allays kept that wild look, an’,
as time went on an’ he piled up gold an’ turquoise, he got to be dubbed
‘Lucky Loon.’”

The old man paused and started to nod his shaggy gray head so many times
that Dora, fearing he would nod himself to sleep, asked, “Mr. Harvey,
_what_ was his Evil Eye Turquoise?”

“Hey?” The old man glanced up suspiciously. “So yo’d heerd tell about
_that_.” Then he cackled his queer, cracked laugh. “I heerd about it, but
I’d allays reckoned thar wa’n’t no sech thing. I cal’lated Sven Pedersen
made up that thar yarn to keep folks from climbin’ up ter his rock house
an’ stealin’ his gold an’ turquoise, if be that’s whar he kept it. I
reckon as how that’s the heft o’ _that_ yarn an’ yet, I dunno, I dunno.
Mabbe thar was suthin’ to it. Mabbe thar was.”

“Oh, Mr. Harvey, we’d like awfully well to hear the story whether it’s
true or not, unless,” Mary said solicitously, “unless you’re too sleepy
to tell it.”

The old man sat up and opened his eyes wide. “Sleepy, _me_ sleepy? Never
was waked up more! Wall, this here is the heft of that tale.”




                               CHAPTER VI
                         THE EVIL-EYE TURQUOISE


The old man continued:

“Sven Pedersen hisself never tol’ me nothin’ about that Evil Eye
Turquoise o’ his’n. _That’s_ why I cal’late it was a yarn he used to
skeer off onweloome visitors to his rock house, bein’ as thar was spells
when he was away fer days, huntin’ fer Bodil.

“I heerd it was a big eye-shaped rock with a round center that was more
green than it was blue. Hangers-on in the store here used to spec’late
’bout it. Some reckoned, ef ’twas true that Sven _had_ found a green-blue
turquoise big as a coffee cup, it’d be wurth a lot o’ money, but I dunno,
I dunno!”

Dora recalled Mr. Harvey’s wandering thoughts by asking, “It must have
been very beautiful, but _why_ was it called ‘Evil Eye?’”

The old man shook his head. “Thar was folks who’d believe onythin’ in
them days,” he said. “I reckon thar still is. Superstitious, yo’d call
it, so, when Sven Pedersen tol’ yarns ’bout that green-blue eye o’ his’n,
thar _was_ them as swallowed ’em whule.”

“Tell us one of the yarns,” Mary urged.

“Wall, Lucky Loon tol’ ’round at the camps, as how he’d put that thar
turquoise eye into the inside wall o’ his house jest whar it could keep
watchin’ the door, an’ ef onyone tried to climb in, that thar eye’d _see_
’em!”

“But what if it did,” Dora laughed. “Was there ever anyone superstitious
enough to believe that the eye could _hurt_ them?”

The old man nodded, looking at her solemnly. “Sven Pedersen tol’ ’round
that ’twas a demon eye, an’ that whatever it looked at, ’ceptin’ hisself,
’d keel over paralyzed. Wall, mabbe it’s hard to believe, but them
miners, bad as some of ’em was, warn’t takin’ no chances till ’long come
a tenderfoot fellar from the East. He heern the yarn, an’ he laffed at
the whule outfit of ’em. He opined as how he’d come West to get rich
quick, an’ he reckoned cleanin’ out that rock house o’ its gold an’
turquoise’d be a sight easier than gettin’ it out o’ the earth wi’ pick
an’ shovel. Yessir, that fellar did a power o’ a lot o’ boastin’, but yo’
kin better believe, ’twa’n’t when Lucky Loon was in hearin’.”

Dora glanced up at the two boys sitting so silently on the counter back
of the old man. She saw that they were both listening with interest. The
story was evidently as new to Jerry as to the others. Dick motioned to
Dora to ask another question as the old man had paused.

“Oh, Mr. Harvey,” she leaned forward to ask, “did that bragging boy
actually try to rob Mr. Pedersen?”

“He sure sartin did,” the storekeeper replied. “He watched over the rocks
o’ nights till he’d seen Lucky Loon ridin’ off, and, jedging by the pack
he was totin’, that fellar cal’lated he was goin’ on one of them long
rides he took, off’n’ on, hunting for Bodil. Wall, arter a time, he
climbed up, draggin’ a bag he’d tuk along to put the gold in. He peered
into the rock house door an’ _thar_ was that eye, jest as Sven had said,
in the wall opposite, an’ it was glarin’ green like a cat’s eye in the
dark.”

The old man stopped talking and swayed his shaggy head back and forth for
a long minute before he satisfied his listeners’ curiosity. Dora found
herself clutching Mary’s hand but neither of them spoke.

“The nex’ day,” the old man continued, “cowboys ridin’ out on the road
heerd screamin’. Then it stopped an’ they couldn’t place it nohow. Arter
a time they heerd it agin. Thinkin’ as how Lucky Loon was hurt mabbe,
they rode in through his gate an’ found that young tenderfoot fellar
writhin’ around at the foot o’ the cliff. He was paralyzed, sure sartin,
an’ arter he’d tol’ about seein’ that thar turquoise eye, he give up the
ghost. _That_ much is true. They fetched the tenderfoot fellar in here to
my store an’ I seen the wild, skeered look in his eyes. Wall, arter that,
Sven Pedersen didn’t have no more need to worry about his house bein’
robbed.”

“Oh-o-o! I should think not.” Mary shuddered, then she glanced at her
wrist watch, thinking that they ought to go. Nine o’clock, and Mr.
Harvey’s store was always dark before that. They were keeping him up, but
before she could suggest leaving, she heard Dora asking still another
question.

“Mr. Harvey, when did poor Mr. Lucky Loon die?”

There was actually a startled expression in the deeply sunken eyes of the
old man. He turned in his chair and looked up at Jerry. After all, he had
_not_ forgotten the boys. In an awed voice he asked: “Jerry, did yo’ ever
hear tell how old Sven Pedersen give up the ghost?”

The tall cowboy shook his head. “No, Mr. Harvey. I’ve asked Dad but he
said it was a mystery that he reckoned never would be solved.”

“It wa’n’t never any mystery to _me_,” the old man told them, “but I’d
been swore to secrecy. Sven Pedersen said he’d come back an’ hant my
store if I ever tol’, but I reckon thar’s no sech thing as hants. Anyhow
I ain’t never _seen a_ ghost, though thar _is_ folks as calls this here
town hanted.”

Mary turned startled eyes around to question Jerry. That boy said
seriously, “Mr. Harvey, we’d like awfully well to know what happened to
Mr. Pedersen, but we wouldn’t want your store to be haunted if you
believe—”

“I _don’_ believe nothin’ o’ the sort.” The old man seemed to scorn the
inference. Turning, he beckoned to the boys. “Stan’ up close, sort o’. I
won’t tell it loud; than mabbe it won’t be heern by nobody but you-uns.”

Jerry stood close back of Mary’s chair. Dick sat on his heels next to
Dora. The wind that had rattled loose boards had gone down. Not a sound
was to be heard. The fire in the stove had burned to ashes. The room was
getting cold but the girls did not notice. With wide, almost startled
eyes they were watching the old man who was again chewing on an end of
his gray beard.

Suddenly he cupped an ear with one palsied hand and seemed to be
listening intently. Mary clutched Dora’s arm. She expected the old man to
ask them if they heard a gun shot, but he didn’t. He dropped his arm and
commenced in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Fer the las’ year o’ his life, Sven Pedersen give up minin’. He reckoned
as how he’d never find his sister an’ he’d jest been pilin’ up wealth to
give to her, he sed. He used to spec’late about poor Bodil a lot. She’d
be a young woman now, he’d say, sad like, _if_ them bandits let her live.
Then thar was times when he’d hope she’d died ruther than be fetched up
by robbers. He didn’t talk much about anythin’ else. Folks never knew
whar he went to do his buyin’; thot as how he’d go off to Bisbee, but
’twa’n’t so. He come here arter midnight so’s not to be seen. He tol’ me
if, chance be, Bodil was alive an’ showed up arter he was dead, he wanted
her to have his gold. He writ a letter in that furrin tongue o’ his an’
give it to me. I got it yit. In it he tol’ Bodil _whar_ he’d got his
fortin hid.” The old man paused and blinked his eyes hard.

Mary asked softly, “But she never came, did she, Mr. Harvey? That poor
Little Bodil with the china-blue eyes and the corn-silk hair.”

“No, she never come, an’ I cal’late she never will. Lucky Loon didn’t
reckon she would, really, but he hung on till he felt death comin’. Then
he tol’ me what he was a plannin’ to do to hisself.” The old man glanced
anxiously at Jerry, who stood with his hands on Mary’s shoulders. “It’s a
mighty gruesome story, the rest o’ it, Jerry lad. Do you reckon it’d
better be tol’?”

It was Dora who replied, “Oh, _please_, Mr. Harvey! We girls aren’t a
mite scary. It’s only a story to us, you know. It all happened so long
ago.”

“Wall, as I was sayin’, Sven Pedersen knew he hadn’t long to live, so one
night thar was a blizzard threatenin’—an’ it turned into as bad a one as
when he furst blowed into my store years back. Whar was I?” He looked
blankly at Mary who prompted with, “So one night when he felt that he was
soon to die—”

“Sven come to me an’ swore me to keep it secret what he was goin’ to do.
He sed that back of his house an’ opening into it, he had a vault. He’d
jest left room for hisself to creep into it. Then he was goin’ to wall it
up, an’ lay hisself down an’ die.”

“Oh, how terrible!” Dora exclaimed. “Surely he didn’t _do_ that?”

The old man sighed. “Fur as I know he did. I seen as how he was white as
a ghost an’ coughin’ suthin’ awful. I tol’ him to stay at the store till
the blizzard blew over. It commonly lasted three days, but out he went
an’ I never seen him sence.”

“Poor Lucky Loon!” Mary said commiseratingly.

“An’ poor Little Bodil,” Dora began, when she glanced at the old man who
had suddenly sat erect, staring into a dark corner.

“Oh, Mr. Harvey,” Mary whispered, “_do_ you see that ghost?”

They all looked and saw a flickering light. Then Jerry, glancing up at
the hanging lamp, saw that the kerosene had burned out. One more flicker
and the store was in darkness. Mary screamed and clung to Jerry, but
Dora, remembering her flash, turned it on.

Dick, matter-of-factly, glanced about, saw the oil can, pulled down the
lamp, refilled it, and relighted it.

“Thank ye! Thank ye!” the old man said. “I reckon that’s about all thar
is to hants anyhow. I never had no reason to believe in ghosts an’ ain’t
a-goin’ to start in now. Wall, must yo’ be goin’? Drop in tomorrer an’ ef
I kin find it, I’ll show yo’ that yellar ol’ letter Lucky Loon left fer
his gal.”




                              CHAPTER VII
                          MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT


It was midnight when Mary Moore awoke with a start and sat up, staring
about her wild-eyed. “Where am I? Where am I?” her terrorized cry, low
though it was, wakened Dora, who, sitting up, caught her friend in a
close embrace.

“Mary,” she whispered reassuringly, “Mary, you’re here with me. We’re in
bed in your very own room. Did you have a nightmare?”

In the dim starlight, Dora saw how pale and startled was the face of her
friend. Mary’s big blue eyes looked about the room wildly as though she
expected to see someone lurking in the dark corners.

“There’s no one here,” Dora assured her. “See, I’ll prove it to you.” She
reached for her flash which she had left on a small table near her head.
The round disc of light danced from corner to corner of the dark room.
The pale blue muslin curtains, waving in the breeze at open windows,
_looked_ like ghosts, perhaps but Mary knew what they were. Still she was
not satisfied.

“Dora,” she whispered, clinging to her friend’s arm, “are you sure the
window at the top of the outside stairway is locked? Terribly sure?”

“Of course. I locked it the last thing, but I’ll get up and see.” Dora
slipped out of bed and crossed the room. The long door-like window was
securely fastened. The other two windows were open at the top only. No
one could possibly have entered that way.

“Try the hall door,” Mary pleaded, “and would you mind, awfully, if I
asked you to look in the clothes closet?”

Dora had no sense of fear as she was convinced that Mary had been
dreaming some wild thing, and she didn’t much wonder, after the gruesome
story they had heard the night before.

“Now, are you satisfied?” Dora climbed back into bed and replaced the
flash on the table.

“I suppose I am.” Mary permitted herself to be covered again with the
downy blue quilt. “But it did seem so terribly real, and yet, now that I
come to think, it didn’t have anything at all to do with this room. We
were in some bleak place I had never seen before. It was the queerest
dream, Dora. In the beginning you and I went out all alone for a
horseback ride. The road looked familiar enough. It was just like the
road from Gleeson down to the Douglas valley highway. We were cantering
along, oh, just as we have lots of times, when suddenly the scene
changed—you know the way it does in dreams—and we were in the wildest
kind of a mountain country. It was terrifyingly lonely. We couldn’t see
anything but bleak, grim mountain ranges rising about us for miles and
miles around. Some of them were so high the peaks were white with snow. I
remember one peak especially. It looked like a huge woman ghost with two
smaller peaks, like children ghosts, clinging to her hands.

“The sand was unearthly white and covered with human skeletons as though
there had been a battle once long ago. We rode around wildly trying to
find an opening so that we could escape. Then a terribly uncanny thing
happened. One of those skeletons rose up right ahead of us and pointed
directly toward that mountain with the three ghost-like snow-covered
peaks. But our horses wouldn’t go that way, they were terrorized when
they saw that hollow-eyed skeleton, waving his bony arms in front of
them. They reared—then whirled around and galloped so fast we were both
of us thrown off and _that’s_ when I woke up.”

“Gracious goodness,” Dora exclaimed with a shudder. “That _was_ a
nightmare! For cricket’s sakes, let’s talk about something pleasant so
that when you go to sleep again, you won’t have another such _awful_
dream. Now, let me see, _what_ shall we talk about?”

“Do you know, Dora,” Mary’s voice was tense with emotion, “I keep
wondering and wondering about that poor Little Bodil. If she were carried
off by a robber, _what_ do you suppose he would do with her?”

“Well, it all depends on what kind of a bandit he was,” Dora said
matter-of-factly. “If he were a good robber like Robin Hood, he would
have sent her away to a boarding-school somewhere to be educated, since
she was only ten years old. Then he would have reformed, and when she was
sixteen and very beautiful with her china-blue eyes and corn-silk-yellow
hair, he would have married her.”

“How I do hope something like that _did_ happen.” Mary’s voice sounded
more natural, the tenseness and terror were gone, so Dora kept on, “I
think they probably bought a ranch in—er—some beautiful valley in Mexico,
or some remote place where Robin Hood wouldn’t be known and lived happily
ever after.”

“I wonder if they had any children.” Mary spoke as though she really
believed that Dora was unraveling the mystery. “If they had a boy and a
girl, suppose, they would be our age since poor Bodil would be about
fifty years old now.”

Dora laughed. “Well, we probably never will know what became of that poor
little Danish girl so we might as well accept my theory as any other.
Let’s try to sleep now.”

Mary was silent for several moments, and Dora was just deciding that her
services as a pacifier were over and that she might try to go to sleep
herself, when Mary whispered, “Dodo, do _you_ believe that story about
the Evil Eye Turquoise?”

Dora sighed softly. Here was another subject with scary possibilities.
“Well, not exactly,” she acknowledged. “I don’t doubt but that the
thieving tenderfoot _did_ fall over the cliff and _was_ paralyzed,
because he hit his head against a rock or something, but I think it was
his own fear of the Evil Eye Turquoise which made him fall and not any
demon power the eye really had.”

“Of course, that _does_ seem sensible,” Mary agreed. Again she was quiet
and this time Dora was really dozing when she heard in a shuddery voice,
“Oh-oo, Dora, I do try awfully hard to keep from thinking of that poor
Sven Pedersen after he’d walled himself into his tomb and lay down to
die. What if he lived a long time. I’ve read about people being buried
alive and—”

“Blue Moons, Mary! What awful things you do think about!” Dora was a bit
provoked. She was really sleepy, and thought she had earned a good rest
for the remaining hours of the night. “Lots of animals creep away into
far corners of dark caves when they know they’re going to die. That’s
better than lying around helpless somewhere, and have wolves tearing you
to pieces or vultures swirling around over you, dropping lower and lower,
waiting for you to take your last breath. For my part, I think Sven
Pedersen did a very sensible thing. In that way he was sure of a decent
burial. Now, Mary dear, much as I love you, if you so much as peep again
tonight, I’m going to take my pillow and go into the spare front bedroom
and leave you all to your lonely.”

“Hark! What was that noise? Didn’t it sound to you like rattling bones?”
Again Mary clutched her friend’s arm.

Dora gave up. “Sort of,” she agreed. “The wind is rising again.” Then she
made one more desperate effort to lead Mary’s thoughts into pleasanter
channels. “Wouldn’t it be great fun if Polly and Patsy could come West
while we’re here?” she began. “I wonder how Jerry and Dick would like
them.”

“How could anyone _help_ liking them? Our red-headed Pat is so pert and
funny, while roly-poly Poll is so altogether lovable.” Mary was actually
smiling as she thought of their far away pals. Then suddenly she
exclaimed, “Dora Bellman, that new friend of Pat’s, Harry Hulbert, you
know; he really and truly is coming West soon, isn’t he?”

“Why, yes!” Dora was recalling what Pat had written. “Oh, Mary,” she
exclaimed with new interest, “when he is a scout, hunting for bandits and
train robbers and—”

Mary sat up and seized her friend’s arm. “I know what you’re going to
say,” she put in gleefully. “This Harry Hulbert _may_ be able to help
solve the mystery of Bodil’s disappearance. But that’s too much to hope.”

Dora laughingly agreed. “How wild one’s imagination is in the middle of
the night,” she said.

“Middle of the night,” Mary repeated as she looked out of the nearest
window. “There’s a dim light in the East and we haven’t had half of our
sleep out yet.”

Long-suffering Dora thought, “That certainly isn’t _my_ fault.” Aloud she
said, “Well, let’s make up for lost time.”

She nestled down and Mary cuddled close. Sleepily she had the last word.
“I hope Harry Hulbert will come, and—and—Pat—”

At seven o’clock Carmelita’s deep, musical voice called, but there was no
answer. The two sound-asleep girls had not heard. At ten o’clock they
were awakened by a low whistling below their open windows.




                              CHAPTER VIII
                            SINGING COWBOYS


“What was that?” Mary sat up in bed, blinked her eyes hard to get them
open, then leaped out, and, keeping hidden, peeped down into the door
yard. Near the back porch stood Jerry Newcomb’s dilapidated old car, gray
with sand. Two cowboys stood beside it, evidently more intent upon an
examination of the machinery under the hood than they were of the house.
Although they were whistling, to attract attention, they pretended to be
patiently waiting. Carmelita had informed Jerry that the girls still
slept.

Mary pirouetted back into the room, her blue eyes dancing. “The boys are
going to take us somewhere, I’m just _ever_ so sure,” she told the girl,
who, sitting on the side of the bed, was sleepily yawning.

“Goodness, _why_ did they come so early?” Dora asked drowsily.

“Early!” Mary laughed at her and pointed at the little blue clock on the
curly maple dresser. “Dora Bellman, did you ever sleep so late before in
all your life?”

“Yeah.” Dora seemed provokingly indifferent to the fact that the boys
waited below, and that, perhaps, oh, ever so much more than likely, they
were going adventuring. “Once, you remember that time after a school
dance when the boys from the Wales Military Academy—”

Mary skipped over to the bedside and pulled her friend to her feet. “Oh,
_please_ do hurry!” she begged. “I feel in my bones that the boys are
going somewhere to try to solve the mystery and that they want to take us
with them.”

Dora’s dark eyes stared stupidly, or tried hard to give that impression.
“What mystery?” she asked, indifferently, as she began to dress.

“I refuse to answer.” Mary was peering into the long oval mirror brushing
her short golden curls. Her lovely face was aglow with eager interest.
“There is only _one_ mystery that we are curious about as you know
perfectly well and that is what became of poor Little Bodil Pedersen.”

Although Mary was looking at it, she was not even conscious of her own
fair reflection. She glanced in the mirror, back at her friend, and saw
her grinning in wicked glee.

Whirling, brush in hand, Mary demanded, “What _is_ so funny, Dora? You
aren’t acting a bit natural this morning. What made you grin that way?”

“I just happened to think of something. Oh, maybe it isn’t so awfully
funny, but it’s sort of uncanny at that. I was thinking that, pretty as
_you_ are on the outside, you’ve got a hollow, staring-eyed skeleton
inside of you and that if I had X-ray eyes—”

Mary, with a horrified glance at her teasing friend, stuffed her fingers
into her ears. “You’re terrible!” She shuddered.

Dora contritely caught Mary’s hands and drew them down.

“Belovedest,” she exclaimed, “I’m just as thrilled as you are at the
prospect of going buggy riding with two nice cowboys whether we find poor
Little lost Bodil (who is probably a fat old woman now) or solve any
other mystery that may be lying around loose.”

Mary was still pouting. “It doesn’t sound a bit like you to pretend—”

Dora rushed in with, “_That’s_ all it is, believe me! There, now I’m
dressed, all but topping off. What do you think we’d better wear?”

“Let’s put on our kimonas until we find out where we’re going, then we’ll
know better _what_ to wear. Jerry may have an errand over in Douglas and,
if so, we’d want to dress up.”

Mary’s Japanese kimona was one of her treasures. It was heavy blue silk
with flowers of gold trailing all over it. Dora’s laughing, olive-tinted
face reflected a glow from her cherry-colored silk kimona with its border
of white chrysanthemums.

Carmelita, who was in the act of reheating the breakfast for the girls,
who she felt sure would soon be coming, stared at them open-eyed and
mouthed when she saw them tripping through the kitchen.

In very uncertain Spanish they called “Good morning” to her, then burst
upon the boys’ astonished vision.

Dick, snatching off his sombrero, held it to his heart while he made a
deep bow. Jerry, bounding forward, caught Mary’s two small hands in his.
Then he held her from him as he looked at her with the same reverent
admiration that he would have given a rarely lovely picture.

“I don’t know a word of Japanese,” Dick despaired, “so how can I make my
meaning clear?” His big, dark eyes smiled at Dora, who gaily retorted,
“We didn’t know that our prize costumes would strike you boys dumb. If we
had, we wouldn’t have worn them, would we, Mary?”

“I’ll say not,” that little maid replied. “We’re wild to know _why_
you’ve come when you _should_ be roping steers or mending fences, if that
is what cowboys do in the middle of the morning.”

“Oh, we’re going to explain our presence all right. We made it up while
we came along—” Dick began, when Jerry interrupted with, “You girls have
heard range-ridin’ songs, I reckon, haven’t you?”

“Oh, no,” they said together.

“That is, not real ones,” Dora explained. “We’ve heard them in the
talkies.”

“Well, this is a real one all right. Just fresh from the—er—” Dick
glanced sideways at Jerry who began in a low sing-song voice:

“Two cowboys in the middle of the night,”

Dick joined in:

  “Did their work and they did it right.
          Come, come, coma,
          Coma, coma, kee.
          Coma, coma, coma,
            Kee, kee, kee.”

“That,” said Dick with a flourish of the hand which still held his
sombrero, “is why we have time to play today.”

The girls had been appreciative listeners. “Oh, isn’t there any more to
it?” Dora cried “I thought cowboy songs went on and on; forty verses or
more.”

“So they do!” Jerry agreed. “But I reckon _this_ one is too new to be
that long, but there is another verse,” he acknowledged.

Then in a rollicking way they sang:

  “Two cowboys who were jolly and gay
  Wished to go adventuring the next day.
          Come, come, coma,
          Coma, coma, kee.
          Coma, coma, coma,
            Kee, kee, kee.”

Then, acting out the words by a little strutting, they sang lustily:

  “Two cowboys who were brave and bold
  Took two girls in a rattletrap old.
          Come, come, coma,
          Coma, coma, kee.
          And that’s _all_ of it
            If you’ll come with me.”

Dick bowed to Dora and Jerry beamed upon Mary.

“Oh, Happy Days! We’re keen to go,” Dora told them, “but _where_?”

The answer was another sing-song:

  “The two cowboys were on mystery bent.
  They went somewhere, but _you’ll_ know where they went
          If you’ll come, come, coma,
          Come in our old ’bus,
          Come, come, coma,
            _Come with us_.”

Carmelita, who had appeared in the kitchen door, started chattering in
Spanish and Jerry laughingly translated, rather freely, and not quite as
the truly deferential cook had intended. “Carmelita asks me to tell you
girls that she has reheated your breakfast for the last time and that if
you don’t come in now and eat it, she’s going to give it to the cat.”

“Oho!” Mary pointed an accusing finger at him. “I _know_ you are making
it up. Carmelita wouldn’t have said that, because there _is_ no cat.”
Then graciously, she added, “Won’t you singing cowboys come in and have a
cup of coffee, if there is any?”

Jerry asked Carmelita if there was enough of a snack for two starved
cowboys who had breakfasted at daybreak and that good-natured Mexican
woman declared that there was batter enough to make stacks more cakes if
Jerry wanted to fry them. _She_ had butter to churn down in the cooling
cellar.

Mary insisted that she be the one to fry the cakes, but Jerry and Dick
insisted equally, that she should not, dressed up like a Japanese
princess.

“Grease spatters wouldn’t look well tangled up in that gold vine,” Jerry
told her.

With skill and despatch, Jerry flipped cakes and Dick served them. Then,
while the girls went upstairs to don their hiking suits with the short
divided skirts, the boys ate small mountains of the cakes.

“Verse five!” Dick mumbled with his mouth full.

  “Two cowboys with a big appetite
  They could eat flapjacks all day and all night.
          Come, come, coma,
          Coma, coma, kee.
          Those cowboys, Jerry,
            Are You and me.”

Back of them a laughing voice chanted, “Verse six.”

  “Two cowgirls are ready for a lark.
  Oho-ho, so let us embark.
          Come, come, coma,
          Coma, coma, kee.”

Dick and Jerry sprang up and joined the chorus with:

  “We’ll coma, coma, coma
  With glee, glee, glee.”




                               CHAPTER IX
                           A VAGABOND FAMILY


Jerry assisted Mary up onto the front seat without question, then slipped
in under the wheel. Dora climbed nimbly to her customary place in the
rumble. Dick leaped in beside her. His frank, friendly smile told his
pleasure in her companionship.

Dora’s happy smile, equally frank and friendly, preceded her eager
question, “Where are we going, Dick? I’m bursting with curiosity. Of
course I know it’s some sort of a picnic.” She nodded toward the covered
hamper at their feet. “But, surely there’s more to it than just a lark.
You boys wouldn’t have worked all night, if you really did, that you
might just play today, would you?”

Dick leaned toward his companion and said in a low voice, “Shh! It’s a
dire secret! We are on a mysterious mission bent.”

Dora laughed at his caution. “This car of Jerry’s makes so many rattling
noises, we could shout and not be heard. But do stop ‘nonsensing,’ as my
grandfather used to say, and reveal all.”

Dick sobered at once. “Well,” he began, “it’s this way. Last night, after
we left you girls, Jerry was telling me about a family of poor squatters,
as we’d call them back East. Some months ago they came from no one knows
where, in an old rattletrap wagon drawn by a bony white horse. Jerry was
riding fences near the highway when they passed. He said he never had
seen such a forlorn looking outfit. The wagon was hung all over with pots
and pans, a washtub, and, oh, you know, the absolute necessities of life.
In the wagon, on the front seat, was a woman so thin and pale Jerry knew
she must be almost dead with the white plague. She had a baby girl in her
lap. The father, Jerry said, had a look in his eyes that would haunt the
hardest-hearted criminal. It was a gentle-desperate expression, if you
get what I mean. Two boys about ten sat in the back of the wagon,
hollow-eyed skeletons, covered with sickly yellow skin, while seated on a
low chair in the wagon was an older girl staring straight ahead of her in
a wild sort of a way.”

“The poor things!” Dora exclaimed when Dick paused. “What became of
them?”

“Well, the outfit stopped near where Jerry was riding and the man hailed
him. ‘Friend,’ he called, ‘is there anywhere we could get water for our
horse? It’s most petered out.’

“Jerry told them that about a mile, straight ahead, they would find a
side road leading toward the mountains. If they would turn there, they
would come to a rushing stream. They could have all the water they
wished. And then, Jerry said, feeling so terribly sorry for them, he
added on an impulse, ‘There’s a herder’s shack close by. Stay all night
in it if you want. It’s my father’s land and you’re welcome.’”

Dora turned an eager face toward the speaker. “Dick,” she said, “I
believe I can tell you what happened next. That poor family stayed all
night in that herder’s shack and they _never left_.”

Dick nodded. “Are you a mind reader?” he asked, his big, dark eyes
smiling at her through the shell-rimmed glasses.

“No-o. I don’t believe that I am.” Then eagerly, “But _do_ tell me what
_possible_ connection that poor family can have with this expedition of
ours.”

“Isn’t that like a girl?” Dick teased. “You want to hear the last
chapter, before you know what happened to lead up to it. I’ll return to
the morning after. Jerry said he had thought of the family all the
afternoon, and that night when he got home, he told his mother, who, as
you know, has a heart of gold.”

“Oh, Dick!” Dora interrupted. “Gold may be precious, but it isn’t as
tender and kind, always, as the heart of Jerry’s mother.”

“Be that as it may,” the boy continued, “Mrs. Newcomb packed a
hamper—this very one now reposing at our feet, I suppose—with all manner
of good things and she had Jerry harness up as soon as he’d eaten and
take her to call on their unexpected guests. They found the woman lying
on the one mattress, coughing pitifully, and the others gazing at her,
the little ones frightened, and huddled, the older girl on her knees
rubbing her mother’s hands. The father stood looking down with such
despair in his eyes, Mrs. Newcomb said, as she had never before seen.

“‘There’d ought to be a doctor here,’ she said at once, but the woman on
the mattress smiled up at her feebly and shook her head. ‘I’m going on
now,’ she said in a low voice, ‘and I’d go on gladly,—I’m _so_ tired—if I
knew my children had a roof over their heads and—and—,’ then a fit of
coughing came. When it passed, the woman lay looking up at Jerry’s
mother, her dim eyes pleading, and Mrs. Newcomb knelt beside her and took
her almost lifeless hand and said, ‘Do not worry, dear friend, your
children shall have a roof over their heads and food.’ Then the mother
smiled at her loved ones, closed her eyes and went on.”

There were tears in Dora’s eyes, and she frankly wiped them away with her
handkerchief. Unashamed, Dick said, “That’s just how I felt when Jerry
told me about the Dooleys. That’s their name. Of course, Mrs. Newcomb
kept her word. That little shack is in a lovely spot near the stream with
big cottonwood trees around it. After the funeral, Mr. Newcomb told the
father that he and the boys could cut down some of the small cottonwoods
upstream, leaving every third one, and build another room, so they put up
a lean-to. Then he gave them a cow to milk and the boys started a
vegetable garden. Mr. Dooley does odd jobs on the ranch, though he isn’t
strong enough for hard riding, and the girl Etta mothers the baby and the
little boys.”

“Have we reached that last chapter?” Dora asked. “The one I was trying to
hear before we got to it? In other words, may I now know how this
terribly tragic story links up with our today’s adventuring?”

“You sure may,” Dick said. “It’s this way. The Newcombs, generous as they
have been, can’t afford to keep those children clothed and fed. Moreover
they ought to go to school next fall and between now and then, some money
_must_ be found and so—”

“Oh! Oh! I see!” Dora glowed at him. “Jerry thinks that it is a cruel
shame to have this poor family in desperate need when Mr. Lucky Loon has
a tomb full of gold helping no one.”

Dick smiled. “Now I’m _sure_ you’re a mind reader. Although,” he
corrected, “Jerry didn’t just put it that way. But what he _did_ say was
that if we could find out definitely that Bodil Pedersen is dead and that
there is no one else to claim that buried treasure, perhaps the old
storekeeper, Mr. Silas Harvey, _might_ give us the letter he has, telling
where it is hidden.”

“Did Jerry think the money might be used for that poor family?” Dora
asked.

Dick nodded. “He did, if Mr. Harvey consented. Jerry feels, and so do I,
that if Bodil Pedersen hasn’t turned up in thirty years, she probably
never will. Of course it would be by the merest chance that she would
drift into this isolated mountain town, anyway, even if she _is_ alive,
which Jerry thinks is very doubtful.”

Dora was thoughtful for a moment. “Did Mr. Pedersen advertise in the
papers for his lost sister?”

“We wondered about that and this morning we asked Mr. Newcomb. He said he
distinctly remembered the story in the Douglas paper, and that afterwards
it was copied all over the state.”

“Goodness!” Dora suddenly ejaculated as she glanced about her. “I’ve been
so terribly interested in that poor family, I hardly noticed where we
were going. We’ve crossed the desert road and here we are right at the
mountains.”

“How bleak and grim this range is,” Dick said, then, turning to look back
across the desert valley to a low wooded range in the purple distance, he
added, “_Those_ mountains across there, where the Newcomb ranch is, are
lots more friendly and likeable, aren’t they? They seem to have pleasant
things to tell about their past, but these mountains—” the boy paused.

“Oh, I know.” Dora actually shuddered. “These seem cruel as though they
_wanted_ people who tried to cross over them to die of thirst, or to be
hurled over their precipices, or—” suddenly her tone became one of alarm.
“Dick, did _you_ know we were going up into these _awful_ mountains?”

Her companion nodded, his expression serious. “Yes, I knew it,” he
confessed, “but I also know that Jerry wouldn’t take us up here if he
weren’t sure that we’d be safe.”

“Of course,” Dora agreed, “but wow! isn’t the road narrow and rutty, and
_are_ we going straight up?”

Dick laughed, for the girl, unconsciously, had clutched his khaki-covered
arm. “If those are questions needing answers,” he replied, “I’ll say,
_Believe me_, yes. Ha, here’s a place wide enough for a car to pass.
Jerry’s stopping.”

When the rattling of the little old car was stilled, Jerry and Mary
turned and smiled back at the other two. “Don’t be scared, Dora,” Mary
called. “Jerry says that no one ever crosses this old road now. It’s been
abandoned since the valley highway was built.”

“That’s right!” The cowboy’s cheerful voice assured the two in back that
he was in no way alarmed. “I reckoned we’d let our ‘tin Cayuse’ rest a
bit and get his breath before we do the cliff-climbing stunt that’s
waitin’ us just around this curve.”

Dora thought, “Mary’s just as scared as I am. I _know_ she is. She’s
white as a ghost, but she doesn’t want Jerry to think she doesn’t trust
him to take care of her.”

Dick broke in with, “Say, when does this outfit eat?”

“Fine idea!” Jerry agreed heartily. “Dora, open up the grub box and hand
it around, will you? I reckon we’ll need fortifyin’ for what’s going to
happen next.”




                               CHAPTER X
                         A LONELY MOUNTAIN ROAD


While the four young people ate the delicious chicken sandwiches which
Mrs. Newcomb had prepared for them and drank creamy milk poured into
aluminum cups from a big thermos bottle, they sat gazing silently about
them, awed by the terrific majesty of the scene, the girls not entirely
unafraid. Below them was a sheer drop of hundreds of feet to a desert
floor which was most uneven, having been cut up by torrents, which,
during each heavy rain, were hurled down the mountain sides.

The effect of the desert for miles beyond was that of a little “Grand
Canyon.” Dora, thoughtfully gazing at it, said,—“In a few centuries,
other girls and boys will stand here, perhaps, and by _that_ time those
canyons will be worn deep as the real Grand Canyon is today, won’t they,
Jerry?”

“I reckon that’s right,” the cowboy replied.

Then Mary asked, “Jerry, is this old dangerous mountain road the _very_
same one that the stages used to cross years ago?”

Jerry nodded, but before he could speak, Mary, shining-eyed, rushed on
with, “Oh, Dora, I _know_ why the boys have brought us here! _This_ is
the road where the three bandits held up the stage that Sven Pedersen and
poor Little Bodil were riding in.”

“Of course it is!” Dora generously refrained from telling her friend that
she had been convinced of _that_ fact ever since they began climbing the
grade.

Glowing blue eyes turned toward the cowboy. “Oh, Jerry, have you any idea
where the exact spot was; where the bandits shot the driver, I mean, and
where the horses plunged over the cliff and where that poor little girl
was thrown out into the road?” Excitement had made her breathless.

Jerry’s admiring gray eyes smiled down at the eagerly chattering girl. “I
reckon I know close to the spot. Silas Harvey said it was just at the top
of Devil’s Drop, and—”

Mary interrupted, horror in her tone, “Oh, Jerry, _what_ a dreadful name!
_What_ is it? _Where_ is it?” She was gazing about, her eyes startled.
The road disappeared fifty feet ahead of them around a sharp curve. For
answer Jerry started the motor, then, joltingly and with cautious
slowness, the small car crept toward the curve. Unconsciously the girls
were almost holding their breath as they gazed unblinkingly out of
staring eyes at the wall of rock around which the road was winding.

When they saw “Devil’s Drop,” a bare, granite peak, up the near side of
which the old road climbed at an angle which seemed but slightly off the
perpendicular, Mary, with a little half sob, covered her eyes.

Jerry, terribly self-rebuking, wished sincerely that he and Dick had come
alone. He was sure that the road was safe, for he and his father had
crossed it since the last heavy rain. Mr. Newcomb had a mining claim
which could be reached by no other road. So it was with confidence that
Jerry tried to allay Mary’s fears. “Little Sister,” he said, “please
trust me when I tell you that the grade _looks_ a lot worse than it is.
I’d turn back if I could, but it wouldn’t be safe to try.”

Mary, ashamed of her momentary lack of faith in Jerry’s good judgment,
put down her hands and smiled up into his anxious face.

“Jerry,” she said, “I’m going to shut my eyes tight until we are up top.
You tell me, won’t you, when the worst is over?”

Dora had made no sound, but Dick, glancing at her, saw that she was
staring down at the hamper at her feet as though she saw something there
that fascinated her. He, also, feared that the girls should have been
left at home. Nor was he himself altogether fearless. Having spent his
boyhood in and around Boston, he was unused to perilous mountain rides
and he was glad when the car came to a jolting stop and Jerry’s voice,
relief evident in its tone, sang out, “We’re up top, and all the rest of
our ride will be going down.”

Mary opened her eyes and saw that the road had widened on what seemed to
be a large ledge. Jerry climbed out and put huge stones in front and back
of the wheels, then he held out his hand.

“Here’s where we start hunting for clues,” he said, smiling, but at the
same time scanning his companion’s face hoping that all traces of fear
had vanished.

Dora and Dick went to the outer edge of the road. “Such a view!” Dora
cried, flinging her arms wide to take in the magnitude of it.

“Describe it, who can?”

“I’ll try!” Dick replied. “A bleak, barren, cruel desert lay miles below
them like a naked, bony skeleton of sand and rock.”

Mary, clinging to the cowboy’s arm, joined the others but kept well back
from the edge. “Jerry,” she said in an awed voice, “do you think—was this
the very spot, do you suppose, where the stage was held up?”

“I reckon so,” Jerry replied, “as near as I could figure out from what
Silas Harvey said.”

Dora turned. “Then somewhere along here was where poor Little Bodil was
thrown into the road.”

The cowboy nodded. A saw-tooth peak rose just beyond them.

Dora, gazing at it, speculated aloud: “_Could_ a wild beast have slunk
around the curve there snatched the child and dashed away with it to its
cave?”

“We’ll probably never know,” Dick replied. “That could have happened,
couldn’t it Jerry?”

“I reckon so,” the cowboy began, when Mary caught his arm again. “Oh,
Jerry,” she cried, “_are_ there wild animals now—I mean living here in
these mountains?”

The cowboy glanced at Dick before he replied. “None, Little Sister, that
will hurt _you_. Don’t think about them.”

But Mary persisted. “At least _tell me_ what wild animal lives around
here that might have dragged Little Bodil to its lair.”

Jerry, realizing that there was nothing else to do, said in as
indifferent a tone as he could, “I reckon there _may_ be a mountain lion
or so up here, and a puma perhaps. That’s sort of a big cat, but _it’s_ a
coward all right! Gets away every time if it can.” He hoped that would
satisfy Mary but instead she looked up at the grim peak above them, her
eyes startled, searching. “I saw a picture once, oh, I remember it was in
my biology book, of a huge catlike creature crouched on a ledge. It was
about to spring on a goat that was on the mountain below it. Underneath
the picture was printed, ‘The Puma springs from ledges down upon its
unsuspecting prey.’ I remember it because it both fascinated and
terrorized me.”

“Mary,” the cowboy took both her hands and smiled into her wide blue
eyes, “will it make you feel better about wild animals attacking us if I
tell you that Dick and I are both carrying concealed weapons?”

Mary smiled up at Jerry as she said, “You think I’m a silly, I _know_ you
do, and I don’t blame you. I’m not going to be fearful of anything again
today.” Then, as she glanced down the steep road up which they had come,
she returned the conversation to the subject from which they had so far
digressed. “Jerry, which way do you suppose the three bandits came?”

“I reckon they came around the sharp curve over there. They could hide
and not be seen by the driver of the stage until he was almost upon
them.”

Anxiously Mary asked, “There wouldn’t be any bandits on _this_ road
_these_ days, would there?”

It was Dora who answered, “Mary Moore, you _know_ there wouldn’t be.
Jerry told us that this road is abandoned by practically all travelers.”
Then turning to the cowboy, Dora excitedly exclaimed, “Why, Jerry, if
_this_ is the spot where the stage was held up and where the horses
plunged off the road, don’t you think it’s possible _something_ may be
left of the stage, something that _we_ could find?”

“That’s what I reckoned,” the cowboy said slowly. “Dick and I were
planning to climb down the side of the cliff here and see what we could
unearth, but I reckon we’d better give up and go home. Dick, you and I
can come back some other time—alone.”

“Oh, no!” Dora pleaded. “Mary and I are all over being afraid. We have on
our divided skirts, and, if it’s safe for you to climb down Devil’s Drop,
why, it’s safe for us, isn’t it, Mary?”

“If Jerry says so,” was the trusting reply accompanied by an equally
trusting glance from sweet blue eyes.

Instead of answering, Jerry beckoned Dick over to the edge of the steep
drop. It was not a sheer descent. Every few feet down there was a narrow
ledge, almost like uneven stairs. There were scrubby growths in crevices
to which the girls could cling. About one hundred feet down there was a
wide-flung ledge and then another descent, how perilous that was they
could not discern from where they stood.

“We could get the girls down to that first wide ledge easily enough,”
Dick said, “if you think we ought.”

Jerry spoke in a low voice which, the girls could not hear. “I’m terribly
sorry we brought them. My plan was to have them sit in the car up here in
the road while we went down to hunt for a skeleton of that old stage
coach, but now that Mary’s afraid of a wild animal attacking them, we
just can’t leave them alone. They don’t either of them know how to use a
gun. I reckon what we _ought_ to do is go back home and—”

Dick shook his head. “They won’t let us now,” he said, and he was right,
for the girls, tired of waiting, skipped toward them saying in a
sing-song, “Verse seven!”

  “_Two_ cowgirls whom _nothing_ can stop
  Are now going over the Devil’s Drop.
          Come, come, coma,
          Coma, coma, kee.
          You may come along if
            You’re brave as we.”

“Great!” Dick laughed, applauding.

“Well, only down as far as the wide ledge,” Jerry told them. “That will
be easy going, I reckon, and safe.” He held out his strong brown hand to
Mary, and, leading the way, he began the descent.




                               CHAPTER XI
                        THE SKELETON STAGE COACH


Mary, slender, light of foot, sprang like a gazelle from step to step
feeling safe, since Jerry towered in front of her. The firm clasp of his
big hand on her small white one made her feel protected and cared for and
she was really enjoying the adventure.

Dora, athletic of build and sure-footed, refused Dick’s proffered aid,
depending on the scraggly growths in the crevices for support until they
reached a spot where only prickly-pear cactus grew.

“Now, Miss Independent,” Dick laughingly called up to her, “you would
better put one hand on my shoulder and let me be your human staff.”

This plan proved successful until, in the descent, they came to a spot
where the ledge below was farther than the girls could step. Jerry held
up his arms and lifted Mary down. That was not a difficult feat since she
was but a featherweight. Dora, broad shouldered for a girl and heavily
built, was more of a problem. The boys finally made steps for her, Jerry
offering his shoulders and Dick his bent back.

Dora, flushed, excited, glanced at the ledge above as she exclaimed,
“Getting up again will be even more difficult.”

“We won’t cross bridges until we get to them,” Dick began, then added,
“or climb mountains either. Going down at present requires our entire
attention.”

But the narrow ledge-steps continued to be accommodatingly close for
about fifteen feet; then another sheer descent was covered by repeating
their former tactics.

“There, now we’re on the wide ledge,” Mary said, “and we can’t see a
single thing that’s beneath us.” Then she cried out as a sudden alarming
thought came to her. “Oh, Jerry, _what_ if our weight should cause a
rock-slide, or whatever it’s called, and we all were plunged—”

“Pull in on fancy’s rein, Little Sister!” the cowboy begged. “You may be
sure I examined the formation of this ledge before I lifted you down upon
it.” Then, turning to Dora, he said, “I reckon you and Mary’d better stay
close to the mountain while Dick and I worm ourselves, Indian fashion, to
the very edge where we can see what’s down below.”

“Righto!” Dora slipped an arm about Mary and together they stood and
watched the boys lying face downward and wriggling their long bodies over
the flat, stone ledge.

Dora noticed how slim and frail Dick’s form looked and how sinewy and
strong was Jerry.

The edge reached, the boys gazed down, but almost instantly Jerry had
whirled to an upright position and the watching girls could not tell
whether his expression was more of terror than of exultation. Surely
there was a mingling of both.

Dick, who had backed several feet before sitting upright, was frankly
shocked by what he had seen.

For a moment neither of them spoke. “Boys!” Dora cried. “The stage coach
is down there, isn’t it? But since you expected to find it, _why_ are you
so startled?”

Jerry was the first to reply. “Well, it’s pretty awful to see what’s left
of a tragedy like that. I reckon you girls would better not look.”

“I won’t, if you don’t want me to,” Mary agreed, “but _do_ tell us about
it. After all these years, what _can_ there be left?”

Jerry glanced at Dick, who, always pale, was actually white.

“I’ll confess it rather got me, just at first,” the Eastern boy
acknowledged.

Dora, impatient at the slowness of the revelation, and eager to see for
herself what shocking thing was over the ledge, started to walk toward
the edge, but Dick, realizing her intention, sprang up and caught her
arm. “Let us tell you first what we saw, Dora,” he pleaded, “and then, if
you still want to see it, we won’t prevent you. It won’t be so much of a
shock when you are prepared.”

“Well?” Dora stood waiting.

The boys were on their feet. Jerry began. “When the horses reared and
plunged off the road, they must have rolled with the stage over and
over.”

“That’s right,” Dick excitedly took up the tale, “and when the coach
struck this wide ledge, it bounded, I should say, off into space and was
caught in a wide crevice about twenty-five feet straight down below
here.”

“Oh, Jerry,” Mary cried, “is the driver or the horses—”

The cowboy nodded vehemently. “That’s just it. That’s the terribly
gruesome part. The skeletons of the horses are hanging in the harness and
that poor driver—his skeleton, I mean, still sits in his seat—”

“The uncanny thing about it,” Dick rushed in, “is that his leather suit
is still on his skeleton, and his fur cap, though bedraggled from the
weather, is still on his bony head.”

“But his eyes are the worst!” Jerry shuddered, although seeing skeletons
was no new thing to him. “Those gaping sockets are looking right up
toward this ledge as though he had died gazing up toward the road hoping
help would come to him.”

Suddenly Mary threw her arms about Dora and began to sob. Jerry, again
self-rebuking, cried in alarm, “Oh, Little Sister, I reckon I’m a brute
to shock you that-a-way.”

Dora had noticed that in times of excitement Jerry fell into the lingo of
the cowboy.

Mary straightened and smiled through her tears. “Oh, I’m so sorry for
that poor man, but I must remember that it all happened years ago and
that _now_ we are really bent on a mission of charity.” Then, smiling up
at Jerry, she held out a hand to him as she said, “_That’s_ the big thing
for us to remember, isn’t it? First of all, we want, if possible, to find
out if poor Little Bodil is alive and if we’re sure, oh, just _ever_ so
sure, that she is dead, we want to get the gold and turquoise from Mr.
Pedersen’s rock house for the Dooleys.”

Her listeners were sure that Mary was talking about their good purpose
that she might quiet her nerves. It evidently had the desired effect,
for, quite naturally, she asked, “If there is nothing beneath this ledge
but space, how can you boys get down to the stage coach to search for
clues? That’s what you planned doing, wasn’t it?”

Jerry nodded and gazed thoughtfully into the sweet face uplifted to his,
though hardly seeing it. He was thinking what would be best for them to
do.

“Dick,” he said finally, “you stay here with the girls. I’m going back up
to the car to get my rope. I reckon if you three will hold one end of it,
I can slide down on it to that crevice and—”

“Oh no, no, Jerry, don’t, _please don’t_!” Mary caught his khaki-covered
arm wildly. “You would never get over the shock of being so close to that
ghastly skeleton and if the rope should slip—” she covered her eyes with
her hands. Then, as she heard the boys speaking together in low tones,
she looked at them. “Jerry,” she said contritely, “I’m sorry I go to
pieces so easily today. Of course I know you would not suggest going if
you weren’t sure that it would be absolutely safe. Get the rope if you
want to. I’m going to try hard to be as brave as Dora is.” Then she added
wistfully, “Maybe if you weren’t my Big Brother, I wouldn’t care so
much.”

Sudden joy leaped to Jerry’s eyes. How he had hoped that Mary cared a
little, oh, even a _very_ little, for him, but usually she treated him in
the same frank, friendly way that she did Dick.

Dora, watching, thought, “That settles it. Jerry will not go. The Dooleys
and Little Bodil are nothing to him compared to one second’s anxiety for
his Sister Mary.”

And it did seem for a long moment that Jerry was going to give up the
entire plan. Dick, realizing this, plunged in with, “I say, old man, I
know how to go down a rope. That used to be one of my favorite pastimes
when I was a youngster and lived near a fire station. The good-natured
firemen would let us kids slide down their slippery pole but we had to do
some tall scurrying when the alarm sounded.”

Jerry looked at his friend for several thoughtful seconds before he
spoke. What he said was, “I reckon you’re right, Dick, but my reason is
this. I’m strong-armed and you’re not. Throwing the rope and pulling
cantankerous steers around, gives a fellow an iron muscle. And you’re
lighter too, a lot, so I reckon I’d better be on the end that has to be
held. Now that’s settled, you stay here with the girls while I go up to
the car and get my rope.”




                              CHAPTER XII
                            A NARROW ESCAPE


The long rope with which Jerry had captured many a wild cow was dropped
over the outer edge of the wide ledge. Since the distance was not more
than twenty-five feet, the lariat reached nearly to the crevice. Looking
around, Jerry found a projecting rock about which he wound the upper end
of the rope, but he did not trust it alone. He threw himself face
downward and grasped the knot that was nearest the edge in a firm clasp.
He told the girls he would not need their assistance at first, but that,
if he shouted, they were to both seize the rope near the rock and pull
with all their strength.

Dick, making light of the feat he was about to perform, tossed his
sombrero to one side, and then, with his hand on his heart, he made a
gallant bow to the girls.

Dora and Mary, standing close to the rock around which the rope was
twined, clung to each other nervously. They tried to smile encouragingly
toward the pretending acrobat, but they were too anxious to put much
brightness into the effort.

“Kick off your boots,” Jerry said in a low voice; “you’ll be able to
cling to the knots better in stocking feet.”

“Sort of an anti-climax.” Dick’s large brown eyes laughed through the
shell-rimmed glasses as he removed his boots. “There, _now_ I do the
renowned disappearing act. I’d feel more heroic if I were about to rescue
someone.”

“Dick isn’t the least bit afraid, is he, Jerry?” Mary asked in a
whispered voice as though she did not want the boy who had gone over the
ledge to be conscious of the fear that she felt.

“He’s all right,” Jerry reported a second later. “He’s going down the
rope as nimbly as a monkey.”

“Will there be room on the edge of that crevice for him to stand when he
_does_ get down?” was Mary’s next question.

There was a long moment’s silence, then Jerry turned his head and smiled
reassuringly. “He’s down! Oh, yes, there’s ten feet or more for him to
walk on. He’s got hold of the front wheel of the old coach.” The cowboy’s
voice changed to a warning shout, “I say, Dick, down there! _Don’t try_
to get aboard! The whole thing might crumble and take you to the bottom
of that pit.”

The girls could hear a faint shout from below. Dick evidently had assured
Jerry that he would be cautious.

“I wish we could come over where you are, Jerry,” Dora said. “I’d like to
watch Dick.”

“Stay where you are, please.” The order, without the last word, would
have sounded abrupt. “Er—I may need your help with the rope. Keep alert.”

“I couldn’t be alerter if I tried,” Mary said in a low voice to her
companion. “Every nerve in my whole body is so tense I’m afraid something
will snap or—”

“Great Jumping Jehoshaphat!”

Jerry’s startled ejaculation and sudden leap to his knees caused the
girls to cry in alarm, “Did Dick fall? Oh! Oh! What has happened?”

Jerry turned toward them and shook his head. “Sorry I hollered out that
way. Nothing happened that matters any.”

“But something did, and if you don’t tell us, we’ll come over there and
see for ourselves.” Dora’s tone was so determined that Jerry said, “Sure
I’ll tell you. When Dick took hold of the front wheel of the stage, he
must have jarred the seat, for, all at once, the driver’s skeleton
collapsed and toppled off and down into that deep crevice. Well, that’ll
be more comfortable for an eternal resting place, I reckon, than sitting
upright was, the way he’s been doing this forty years past.” Then he
called, “Hey, down there, _what_ did you say? I didn’t hear. Your voice
is blown off toward the Little Grand Canyon, I reckon.” Jerry sat
intently listening, one big brown hand cupped about his right ear. The
girls could hear Dick’s voice coming faintly from below. Jerry showed
signs of excited interest. The girls exchanged wondering glances but did
not speak until the cowboy turned toward them.

“Dick says there’s a small, child-size trunk under the driver’s seat.
Whizzle! I wish I were down there. Together we might be able to get it
out.” Leaping to his feet, Jerry went to the rock around which the rope
was tied. “_That_ ought to hold all right!” There was a glint of
determination in his gray eyes, but it wavered as he glanced at Mary who
stood watching him, but saying not a word. “There isn’t anything _here_
to frighten you girls, is there?” He seemed to be imploring the smaller
girl to tell him to go. “It’s this-a-way. If there is a child-size box or
trunk in the stage coach still, it was probably Little Bodil’s, and don’t
you see, Mary, how _important_ it is for us to get it. Why, I reckon a
clue would be there all right.”

Mary held out a small white hand. “Go along, Big Brother,” she said, “if
you’re sure the rock will hold the rope with your weight on it.”

“Shall we help the rock by holding onto the rope as well?” It was
practical Dora who asked that question.

“Yes!” Jerry’s expression brightened. “I wish you would.”

Dora thought, “Mr. Cowboy, I know _just_ what _you_ are thinking. You’re
afraid we _might_ go over to the edge and perhaps fall off, but that if
you tell us to hold onto the rope here by the rock, you expect we’ll stay
put, but you’re mistaken. As soon as I know you’re safely down, I’m going
to crawl over the ledge and peer down.”

While Dora was thus planning, she and Mary held to the highest knot in
the rope, and Jerry, having removed his boots, went over the edge without
the grand flourish that Dick had made.

“Oh, I can’t, _can’t_ hold it!” Mary exclaimed, and then Dora realized
that the younger girl had been trying to hold Jerry’s weight.

“Don’t!” she ejaculated. “The rock can hold him. Just keep your hands
lightly on the knot and pull _only_ if the rope starts slipping.”

It seemed but a few moments before the girls heard, as from far below, a
reassuring call, “All’s well!”

At once Dora let go her hold on the rope and dropped face downward as the
boys had done. Mary was not to be left behind. Cautiously, they wormed
their way to the edge of the cliff and peered over, being careful to keep
hidden. Only their hair and eyes were over the edge, and the boys, intent
on examining the skeleton stage coach, did not once glance up.

“Oh-oo!” Mary shuddered. “That black crevice looks as though it went down
into the mountain a mile or more.”

“Maybe it does!” Dora whispered. “Jerry said that it’s more than a mile
from here to the floor of the desert. The crack in the mountain may go
all the way down.”

“Oh, I _do_ wish the boys wouldn’t go so close to the edge of it!” Mary
whispered frantically. “Dora Bellman, if Dick or Jerry slipped into that
awful place—”

Dora’s interrupting voice was impatient. “_Please_ don’t start
_imagining_ terrible things. Those boys value their own lives as much as
we possibly can. Look! See how very cautiously they’re taking hold of the
driver’s seat and testing its strength. Blue Moons!” It was Dora’s turn
to be horrified. “Jerry is lifting Dick. My, aren’t his arms powerful?
Now Dick is resting his left hand on the top of the seat and pulling on
that box with his right.”

Mary clutched Dora’s arms, but neither spoke a word as they watched the
movements of the boys with startled, staring eyes.

“It’s coming slowly.” Dora’s voice was tense. “Hark! Didn’t you hear a
creak as though something about the stage had snapped suddenly?”

“Thanks be!” The words were a shout of relief. “The box is out, but oh,
Mary! _Not a second_ too soon! The skeleton stage coach is collapsing! It
has dropped right down out of sight.”

The two girls sat up with one accord and stared at each other, their
faces white.

Mary was the first to speak. Her tone was reproachful. “And yet _you_
were _so_ sure the boys would do nothing to endanger their lives. If that
crash had happened one minute sooner, they would both have gone down with
it. Dick couldn’t have leaped back in time, and Jerry would have lost his
balance, and you needn’t tell me I’m using my imagination, either, for
you _know_ it’s true.”

There was no denying that the boys had had a most narrow escape and Dora
willingly acknowledged that they had taken a greater risk than she had
supposed they would.

“As though finding that lost Bodil, or even getting money to help the
Dooleys, was worth endangering _their_ lives,” Mary continued with such a
show of indignation that Dora actually laughed. “Since it’s all over,
let’s forget it. I’m terribly thrilled about the box. I feel just as sure
as the boys do that there will be something in it that will be a clue, or
at least, lead to one.”

“Listen,” Mary said. “The boys are calling to us. See, the rope is
swaying.”

Lying flat again, Dora peered over and called, “What do you want?”

Jerry replied, “We’re tying the box to the rope. Can you two girls pull
it up? Don’t stand near the edge to do it.”

“Wait!” Dick called. Then he said something to Jerry that the girls
couldn’t hear. Dora saw the cowboy laugh and pound on his head. “He’s
calling himself a dumb-bell, looks like,” she whispered to Mary. Then
Jerry’s voice, “I’ll take back that order. You stand by the rock, will
you, and grab the rope if it starts to slip. Dick will climb up and help
lift the box. He’s such a light weight, he and the box together won’t be
any heavier than I am.”

The girls went back to the rock and saw that the rope held. They knelt by
it in readiness to seize it if it slipped. They could tell by the
tightening of the rope that Dick was ascending. In another moment, he
sprang over the edge, pulled up the box without asking the girls for
assistance, then dropped the rope down again. Soon they were joined by a
beaming Jerry.




                              CHAPTER XIII
                              A SAND STORM


The return to the car was not without difficulties. At the spot where the
natural steps were not close together, Jerry, finding the merest toe-hold
in the cliff and only the scraggliest growth to which he could cling,
did, however, manage to reach the step above. He then dropped one end of
the rope down and Dick ascended nimbly. Then, Jerry made a swing of the
lariat. Mary, flushed and laughing up at him, sat in it and was slowly
lifted to the ledge above. This, being narrow, could hold no more than
three. So Mary climbed still higher, then turned and watched, while Dora
was lifted in the swing. The girls were told to return to the car while
the boys tied the box on the end of the rope and drew it up over the
sheer place.

From the road, Mary looked out far across the desert. “How queer the air
looks, doesn’t it?” she said, pointing to what seemed to be a huge yellow
cloud of sand which was moving rapidly across the floor of the desert and
shutting out the Little Grand Canyon from their view.

Jerry, with the small trunk on one shoulder joined them; Dick, whirling
the lariat playfully, was not far behind.

Mary again pointed. “What is that far below there, Jerry? Is it a wind
storm?”

“I reckon that’s what it is,” Jerry said. “Carrying enough sand with it
to change things up a little. But more’n like, it will blow itself away
before we get down to the valley road.” He seemed little concerned about
it and the girls, in their curiosity about the small trunk, also forgot
it. Where they stood, in a flood of late warm afternoon sun, there was
not a breath of air stirring.

“What a queer little trunk,” Mary said, touching the battered top of it
with an investigating finger. “What is it made of, Jerry?”

“You’ve got me guessing,” the cowboy replied. “Some kind of a thick
animal skin, I reckon, stretched over a frame. It tightened as it dried.
Shouldn’t you say so, Dick?”

The boy addressed was helping to lash the small box on the running board
of the car. “It looks like a home-made affair to me,” he said. “Probably
they brought it over from Scandinavia.”

Dora was peering around it. “There isn’t a lock,” she observed. “I
suppose whatever it was tied with rotted away long ago.” Then, as another
thought came, “Oh, Jerry, if we had waited, maybe even a week, the stage
coach might have crumbled, don’t you think? It couldn’t have stayed
together much longer.”

“Righto!” the cowboy continued. Then, with a quick glance at Dick, he
said, “Now that it’s over, I’m thankful it has gone,—the stage coach, I
mean. Dick and I might have been tempted to come back and look for more
clues, and believe me, we came within _one_ of going to the bottom, but
Jumping Steers! we didn’t, and it sure was some exciting adventure,
wasn’t it, old man?”

Before Dick could reply, Mary said emphatically, “I wouldn’t have _let_
you come back again, Jerry. You call me ‘Little Sister,’ and brothers
_always_ have to _obey_, don’t they, Dora?”

But her friend laughingly denied, “Not _my_ small brother, believe me,
NO. When I want him to do a thing, I ask the opposite.”

Jerry had seemed to be too intent on tying knots securely to have heard,
but when he turned, his gray eyes smiled at the smaller girl, adoring
her. “_This_ Big Brother is the exception which proves the rule,” he
quoted. “Command, Little Sister, and I will obey.”

“Bravo!” Dora teased. Then, to the other girl, “Please command that we
start for home. I’m wild to get there so that we may look through the
trunk.”

Jerry removed the rocks that held the wheels. Dick was glancing about the
part of the road where the small car stood. “Do you plan turning here,
Jerry?” he asked. “I was wondering, because I heard you say it would be
miles out of our way, if we kept going straight on over the mountain.”

Before answering, Jerry stood, looking, not at the road, but down at the
valley sand storm which had not decreased in density. In fact it had
widened and was hiding the lower part of the mountain on which they
stood.

“How much gas have we, Dick?” Jerry asked, making no comment on the sand
storm.

“About four gallons. And another five in the storage can.”

“Good!” Again Jerry’s gray eyes looked thoughtfully about. They seemed to
be measuring the width of the road between the peak at their right and
the edge of the descent at the left. Dick stepped back and through
narrowed lids, he also estimated the distance.

“A leetle more than twice the width of the car,” he guessed. “Say, old
man,” Dick stepped eagerly toward the cowboy, “let _me_ turn it, will
you? Back East, one of the crazy things we did at school was to have
contests on car turning. I was pretty durn good at it then. Could turn
around on a dime, so to speak.” Still Jerry hesitated. “But you don’t
know _this_ car—” he began, when Dick interrupted swaggeringly, to try to
make the girls think the feat would be less serious than it really would
be. “Why, my dear _vaquero_, a wild car is as docile with me as a wild
broncho would be with you—knows the master’s touch and all that.”

Then, as Jerry still hesitated, Dick leaped up under the wheel and called
to the girls: “Stand back, if you please, and make room for the world
famous—” the engine was starting, the car slowly turning. Dick did not
finish his joking speech. He directed all his thought and skill to the
turning of the car. There was a tense silence broken by Dora.

“Why, there was lots of room after all!” she cried admiringly.

“Gee whizzle!” Jerry had expected Dick to give up. “I reckon you didn’t
rate yourself any too high when you were boasting about your skill.”

He helped Mary up to her seat, then took the place Dick had relinquished
to climb in back with Dora. Slowly the small car started down the road
which they had ascended hours before.

“What thrilling adventures and narrow escapes we have had today!” Dora
exclaimed, loud enough for Jerry to hear.

“I reckon they’re not all over yet,” the cowboy replied,—then wished he
had not spoken.

“What do you suppose Jerry means?” Dora asked in a low voice of Dick.

The boy’s first reply was a shrug of his shoulders. “Nothing, really; at
least I don’t think he does.” Then, as they rounded an outflung curve in
the road and he saw the dull yellow flying cloud far below them, Dick
added, as though suddenly understanding, “Oho, I savvy. Jerry is thinking
of the sand storm.”

“But, of course, it _can’t_ climb the mountain and equally, of course,
Jerry won’t run right out into it,” Dora said. Dick agreed, then asked:

“But _what_ if the sand storm lasted for hours and we had to stay in the
mountain all night, wouldn’t that be another adventure, and if we should
hear pumas prowling around the car wishing to devour us, wouldn’t that be
a narrow escape?”

Dora laughed. “Do you know, Dick, when I first met you, I thought you
were as solemn as an owl. I didn’t dream that you were, I mean, _are_ a
humorist.”

“Thanks for not saying clown.” Dick seemed so ridiculously grateful that
Dora laughed again.

“You remind me of Harold Lloyd,” she said, “and I hope you think that’s a
compliment. He looks through his shell-rimmed glasses just as solemnly as
you do when he’s saying the funniest things.”

Instead of replying, Dick peered curiously ahead. “I reckon the ‘another
adventure or narrow escape’ is about to happen,” he said in a low voice
close to Dora’s ear. “Leastwise our vehicle is slowing to a stop.”

Jerry, making sure that the front wheels were safely wedged against the
mountain, turned and inquired, “Dick, can you and Dora hear a roaring
noise?”

“Now that the car has stopped rattling, I can,” Dick replied.

“It’s the sand storm, isn’t it?” Dora leaned forward to ask.

“Yes.” Jerry glanced back, troubled. “There are two valley roads forking
off just below here. One goes over toward the Chiricahua Mountains where
our ranch is, the other toward Gleeson where we have to go to take the
girls. Now what I want to say is this. Our road is clear, but the Gleeson
road is in the path of the sand storm. Of course, if the wind should
change, it might catch us, but I reckon our best chance is to race across
the open valley to _Bar N_ ranch. You girls would have to stay all night,
but Mother’d like that powerful well. We could telephone to Gleeson so
your dad wouldn’t worry.”

Mary, who had been listening with anxious eyes, now put in, “But, Jerry,
wouldn’t that sand storm cut down the wires? I’d hate to have Dad anxious
if there was any possible way of getting home—”

“I have it,” Dick announced. “If, after we reach the ranch, we find we
can’t communicate with your home, Jerry and I will ride over there on
horseback. The sand storm will surely be blown away by then.” His
questioning glance turned toward Jerry.

“Sure thing,” the cowboy replied. “Now, girls, hold tight! We’re going to
drop down to the cross valley road. It’s smooth and hard and we’re going
to beat the world’s record.”




                              CHAPTER XIV
                          “A.’S AND N. E.’S.”


The girls held tight as they had been commanded, their nerves taut and
tense. Jerry’s prophecy that they might yet have another thrilling
adventure and narrow escape filled them with a sort of startled
expectancy. They could not see the forking valley roads until they had
dropped down the last steep descent of the mountain and were almost upon
them. Jerry unconsciously uttered an exclamation of relief. The road that
went straight as a taut lariat across miles of flat, sandy waste was
glistening in the late afternoon sun. The distant Chiricahua range, at
the foot of which nestled the Newcomb ranch, was hung with a misty lilac
haze. Peace seemed to pervade the scene and yet they could all four
distinctly hear a dull ominous roar.

Before starting to “beat the world’s record,” Jerry stopped the car and
listened. His desert-trained ear could surely discern the direction of
the roaring sound. They were still too close to the mountain to see the
desert on their right or left.

Turning to Dick, he asked, “Is there any water left in the canteen?”

“Yes,” the other boy replied, sensing the seriousness of the request,
“about a gallon, I should say. It’s right here at our feet.”

“Good! Have the top loose so that you can drench our handkerchiefs at a
split second’s notice. Have them ready, girls.”

“Why, Jerry,” Mary’s expression was one of excited animation, “do you
expect the sand storm to overtake us?”

“No, I really don’t.” The cowboy was starting the engine again. “But it’s
always wise to take precautions.” Then, addressing the small car, “Now,
little old ‘tin Cayuse,’ show your stuff.”

The start was so sudden and so violent that Dora was thrown forward. Dick
drew her back and they smiled at each other glowingly.

“Life is a jolly lark today, isn’t it, so full of a.’s and n. e.’s.”

“I suppose you mean adventures and narrow escapes.” Dora straightened her
small hat that had been twisted awry. Then, as they sped away from the
shelter of the grim, gray towering mountain, they all four looked quickly
to the right and left. The desert lay dreaming in the sun. To the far
south of them the air was full of a sinister yellow wall of flying sand
and dust. It was surely headed in the opposite direction. Jerry did not
doubt it and since he did not, the girls and Dick had no sense of fear.
The ominous roaring sound had lessened, although, of course, they could
hear little when that small car was speeding, its own squeaks and rattles
having been increased.

Mary turned a face flushed with excitement and called back to Dora, “Ten
miles! Only ten more to go.”

It was a perfect road, recently completed. There was almost no sand on it
and very few dips.

Dick waved up toward a low circling vulture. “That fellow’s eyes are
popping out in amazement, more than likely,” he shouted to Dora.

She laughed back, holding tight to her hat. “He probably thinks this is
some new kind of a stampede.”

Again Mary’s pretty glowing face appeared in the opening back of the
front seat. “Fifteen miles! Only five more to go.”

Dick’s expression became anxious. He said, close to Dora’s ear, “If Jerry
feels so sure that the sand storm is headed toward Mexico, I don’t think
he ought to race this little machine. He may know a lot more than I do
about busting bronchos, but—”

An explosion interrupted Dick’s remark, then the car zigzagged wildly
from side to side. Jerry turned off the spark and the gas. Dick, without
thought, leaped out onto the running board and put his weight over the
wheel with the blow-out in its tire.

Almost miraculously the car stayed in the road. The girls had been
wonderful. White and terrorized, yet neither had clutched at her
companion, nor hindered his doing what was best for their safety.

When the car stopped, the front right tire was almost off the road. The
girls, quivering with excitement, got out and exclaimed simultaneously,
“Another adventure and narrow escape!”

Dick, knowing better than the girls how truly narrow their escape had
been, stepped forward, his dark eyes serious, and extended a hand to the
cowboy. “Jerry,” he said earnestly, “I won’t say again that I probably
know more about managing cars than you do. If it hadn’t been for your
quick thinking and skill, we would surely have turned turtle in the sand
and if the spark had been on, the car might have gone up in flames.”

But Jerry would not accept the compliment. He shook his head as he
removed his sombrero and wiped beads of moisture from his forehead.
“Dick,” he said, “thanks just the same, but I reckon I was needlessly
reckless. I wasn’t right sure about the sand storm, just at first, but
later when I saw that it was heading south all right, I kept on
speeding.”

Turning to the smaller girl who stood very still; seemingly calm, though
her lips quivered when she tried to smile, the cowboy said contritely,
“Little Sister, if you won’t stop trusting me, I’ll swear to never again
take any such needless risks.”

Dora, watching the two, thought, “It matters such a terrible lot to Jerry
what Mary thinks about him. Some day she’s going to wake up and realize
that he loves her.”

Dick was removing his coat, and Jerry, evidently satisfied with Mary’s
low-spoken reply, turned to get tools out from under the front seat.

Half an hour later the small car was again on its way. The sun was
setting behind the mountains where so recently they had been.

Mary looked back at them. Grim and dark and forbidding they were, deep in
shadow, but the peaks were aglow with flame color. The floor of the
desert valley about them was like a sea of shimmering golden water; the
ripples and dunes of sand were like glistening waves.

“Such a gloriousness!” Dora exclaimed, turning a radiant face toward her
companion.

“I can see the color of it in your eyes,” the boy told her, and a sudden
admiration in his own dark eyes caused Dora to think that Dick was really
seeing her for the first time.

It was lilac dusk when the small car drove along the lane of cottonwood
trees and stopped at one side of the _Bar N_ ranch house.

Mrs. Newcomb’s round pleasant face looked out of a kitchen window, then
her apron-covered person appeared in the open side door. Her arms were
held out to welcome Mary.

“My dear, my dear,” she said tenderly, “how glad I am that you blew over
to _Bar N_.”

“We almost literally _did_ blow over,” Mary laughingly replied. “That is,
we were running away from a sand storm.” Then, suddenly serious, she
asked, “Oh, Aunt Molly, may I use your telephone at once? Dad doesn’t
know that I’m here and he will be expecting us back for supper.”

“Of course, dear. You know where it is, in the living-room.” Then, when
Mary had skipped away, Dora following her, Mrs. Newcomb asked, “Has there
been a sand storm in the valley? I hadn’t heard about it.”

Jerry was about to drive the small car around to the old barn and so Dick
replied, “Yes, Mrs. Newcomb. That’s what Jerry called it. We first saw it
on the other side of the range back of Gleeson. Later we saw it far away
to the south. It didn’t cross this part of the valley at all, but Jerry
thought we’d better not try the Gleeson road.”

“He was wise. I hope the wires aren’t down.”

The good woman’s anxiety was quickly ended by the reappearance of the
girls. “All’s well!” Mary announced. Then to Dick, “Your mother answered
the phone. She said that they had heard the roaring and had seen some
dust in the air but that the storm had passed around our tableland.”

“Well, you girls had quite an adventure and perhaps a narrow escape as
well.” Little did Mrs. Newcomb realize that she was repeating the phrase
they had so often used that day. “Now, Mary, you take your friend to the
spare room and get ready for supper. Your Uncle Henry will be in from
riding the range pronto, and starved as a lean wolf, no doubt. He’s been
gone since sun-up and he won’t take along what he ought for his
mid-lunch.”

The girls were about to leave the kitchen when Jerry called to Dick and
away he went into the gathering darkness.

“The boys sleep in the bunk house out by the corral,” Mrs. Newcomb
explained. “They’ll be back, I reckon, soon as you’re ready.”

The spare room was large, square, with a small fireplace in it. The bed
was an old-fashioned four-poster and looked luxuriously comfortable.

A table, a dresser, two chairs of dark wood and a bright rag rug
completed the furnishings.

“How quiet it is,” Mary said. “There isn’t a neighbor nearer than those
Dooleys and Jerry said they are way over in the canyon.”

Dora, wondering if Mary could be contented if she became Jerry’s wife,
some day in the future, asked, “Would _you_ like to live on a ranch, do
you think?”

Innocently, Mary replied as she lighted the kerosene lamp on the bureau,
“Why, yes, I’m sure I would, if Dad could be with me.”

Dora sighed as she thought, “Poor Jerry. She’s still blind and I _did_
think today that her eyes were opened.”




                               CHAPTER XV
                            IN THE BARN LOFT


“Jerry, what did you do with the box?” Mary managed to whisper as the
cowboy drew out a chair for her at the supper table.

“In the old barn loft, snug and safe,” he replied. Then he sat beside
her. Dora and Dick, on the opposite side of the long table, beamed
across, eager anticipation in their eyes. Although they had not heard the
few words their friends had spoken, they felt sure that they had been
about Little Bodil’s box.

“We won’t wait for your father, Jerry,” Mrs. Newcomb had said. “He may
have gone in somewhere for shelter if he happened to be riding in the
path of the storm.”

The kerosene lamp hanging above the middle of the table had a
cherry-colored shade and cast a cheerful glow over the simple meal of
warmed-over chicken, baked potatoes, corn bread, sage honey and creamy
milk, big pitchers of it, one at each end of the table. For dessert there
was apple sauce and chocolate layer cake.

Mr. Newcomb came in before they were through, tall, sinewy, his kind
brown face deeply furrowed by wind and sun. His eyes brightened with real
pleasure when he saw the guests. Dora, he had met before, and Mary he had
known since she was a little girl.

He shook hands with both of them. “Wall, wall, if that sand storm sent
you girls this-a-way, I figger it did some good after all.”

Jerry glanced at his father anxiously when he was seated at the end of
the table opposite his wife.

“Dad, do you reckon any of our cattle were hit by it?” he asked.

The older man helped himself to the food Mary passed him, before he
replied, “No-o, I reckon not. I was riding the high pasture when I heerd
the roaring. I went out on Lookout Point and stood there watching, till
the dust got so thick I had to make for the canyon.”

It was Dick who spoke. “There aren’t many cows pastured down on the floor
of the valley, anyway, are there, Mr. Newcomb? There’s so much sand and
only an occasional clump of grass, it surely isn’t good pasture.”

“You’re right,” the cowman agreed, “but there’s a few poor men struggling
along, tryin’ to eke out an existence down thar. I reckon they was hit
hard. I knew a man, once, who had a well and was tryin’ to raise a
garden. One of them sand storms swooped over it, and, after it was gone,
he couldn’t find nary a vegetable. Either they’d been pulled up by the
roots and blown away or else they was buried so deep, he couldn’t dig
down to them.”

“Oh, Uncle Henry,” Mary smiled toward him brightly, “I see a twinkle in
your eye. Now confess, isn’t that a sand-story?”

“No, it’s true enough,” the cowman replied, when Jerry exclaimed: “Dad, I
know a bigger one than that. You remember that man from the East,
tenderfoot if ever there was one, who started to build him a house on the
Neal crossroad? He heard the storm coming so he jumped on his horse and
rode into Neal as though demons were after him. When the wind stopped
blowing, he went back to look for his house and there, where it had been,
stood the beginning of a sand hill. The adobe walls of his unfinished
house had caught so much sand, they were completely covered. That was
years ago. Now there’s a good-sized sand hill on that very spot with
yucca growing on it.”

“Poor man, it was the burial of his dreams,” Dora said sympathetically.

“He left for the East the next day,” Jerry finished his tale, “and—”

“Lived happily ever after, I hope,” Mary put in.

Mrs. Newcomb said pleasantly, “If you young people have finished your
meal, don’t wait for us. Jerry told me you’re going out to the loft in
the old barn for a secret meeting about something.”

“We’d like to help you, Aunt Mollie, if—”

“No ‘ifs’ to it, Mary dear.” The older woman gazed lovingly at the girl.
“Your Uncle Henry and I visit quite a long spell evenings over our tea.
It’s the only leisure time that we have together.”

Jerry lighted a couple of lanterns, and the girls, after having gone to
their room for their sweater coats, joined the boys on the wide, back,
screened-in porch.

“I’ll go ahead,” Jerry said, “and Dick will bring up the rear. We’ll be
the lantern bearers. Now, don’t you girls leave the path.”

“Why all the precautions?” Dora asked gaily, but Mary knew.

“Rattlesnakes may be abroad.” She shuddered. “Have you seen one yet this
summer, Jerry?”

“Yes, this morning, and a mighty ugly one too; coiled up asleep in the
chicken yard. I shot it, all right, but didn’t kill it. Before I could
fire again, it had crawled under the old barn.”

“Oh-oo gracious! That’s where we’re going, isn’t it?” Dora peered into
the darkness on either side of the path.

“I suppose it had a mate equally big and ugly under the barn?” Mary’s
statement was also a question.

Dick replied, “Undoubtedly, but if they stay _under_ the barn and don’t
try to climb up to the loft, they won’t trouble us any.”

Mary, glancing up at the sky that was like soft, dark blue velvet studded
with luminous stars, exclaimed, “How wonderfully clear the air is, and
how still. You never would dream that a sand storm had—”

She stopped suddenly, for Dora had gripped her arm from the back.
“Listen! Didn’t you hear a—”

“Gun shot?” Dick supplied gaily. “Now that we’re about to open up Little
Bodil’s box, I certainly expect to hear one. You know we heard a gun
fired, or thought we did, when we passed through the gate in front of
Lucky Loon’s rock house, and again when old Silas Harvey was telling us
the story. Was that what you thought you heard, Dora?”

“No, it was not,” that maiden replied indignantly. “I thought I heard a
rattle.” She had stopped still in the path to listen, but, as Jerry and
Mary had continued walking toward the old barn, Dora decided that she had
been mistaken and skipped along to catch up. Dick, sorry that he had
teased her, evidently at an inopportune time, ran after her with the
lantern. “Please forgive me,” he pleaded, “and don’t rush along that way
where the path is dark.”

Jerry turned to call, “We’re going in the side door, Dick.” Then
anxiously, “You girls can climb a wall ladder, can’t you?”

“Of course we can,” Dora replied spiritedly. “We’re regular acrobats in
our gym at school.”

Having reached the barn, Dick opened a low door, then holding the lantern
high, that the girls might see the step, he assisted them both over the
sill and followed closely.

Mary was standing in the small leather-scented harness-room, looking
about the old wooden floor with an anxious expression.

“I was wondering,” she explained when the light from a lantern flashed in
her face, “if there are any holes in the floor large enough for those
rattlers to crawl through.”

“I’m sorry I mentioned that ugly old fellow,” Jerry said contritely, “and
yet we do have to be constantly on the watch, but we’re safe enough now.
Here’s the wall ladder and the little loft storeroom is just above us.
The only hard part is at the top where one of the cross bars is missing.”

Dick suggested, “We boys can go up first and reach a hand down to the
girls when they come to that step.”

“Righto,” Jerry said. “I’ll leave my lantern on the floor here. You take
yours up, old man. Then we’ll have illumination in both places.”

The girls had worn their knickers under their short skirts as they always
did when they went on a hike or a mountain climb and so they went up the
rough wall ladder as nimbly as the boys had done. The last step was more
difficult, but, with the help of strong arms they soon stood on the floor
of the low loft room. All manner of discarded tools, harness and boxes
were piled about the walls.

Dora was curious. “Jerry, _why_ did you select this out-of-the-way place
for Bodil’s trunk?”

“Because I reckoned no one would disturb us. The Dooley twins overrun the
old barn sometimes but they can’t climb up here with the top board
missing.”

The battered leather box lay in the middle of the room and the two girls
looking down at it had a strangely uncanny feeling. Jerry evidently had
not, for he was about to lift the lid when Mary caught his arm,
exclaiming, “Big Brother, _what_ was it Silas Harvey said about a ghost?
I mean, didn’t Mr. Pedersen threaten to haunt——”

The interruption was the crackling report of a gun that was very close to
them.

“Great heavens, _what_ was that?” Mary screamed and clung to Jerry
terrified.

“It wasn’t a ghost who fired that shot,” the cowboy told them. “It was
someone just outside the barn. Don’t be frightened, girls. It can’t be
anyone who wants to harm us. Wait, I’ll call out the window here.”

Jerry pulled open a wooden blind and shouted, “_Who’s_ there?”

His father’s voice replied, “Lucky I happened along when I did. An ugly
rattler was wriggling, half dead from a wound, right along the path here
and its mate was coiled in a sage bush watching it.”

Dora seized Dick’s arm. “I heard it!” she cried excitedly. “_That’s_ what
I heard when you began to—”

“Aw, I say, Dora,” Dick was truly remorseful, “I’m terribly sorry. I just
didn’t want you to be using your imagination and frightening yourself
needlessly.”

Mary sank down on a dusty old box. “I’m absolutely limp,” she said. “Now,
if a ghost appears when we open that trunk, I’ll simply collapse.”




                              CHAPTER XVI
                          SEARCHING FOR CLUES


The four young people in the loft listened as Mr. Newcomb closed the gate
to the hen-yard, then, when they heard him leaving, Jerry said, “I reckon
we’re alone now, so let’s get ahead with the box opening ceremony.”

“Oh, Big Brother,” Mary, quite recovered from her recent fright,
exclaimed. “Let’s make a _real ceremony_ of it, shall we? Let’s kneel on
the floor; you boys at the sides and we girls at the ends. There now,
let’s all lift at once and together.”

“Wait!” Dora cried, detaining them. “Just to add to the suspense, let’s
each tell what we expect to find in the box.”

Mary looked across at her friend vaguely. “Why, I’m sure I don’t know.
What do _you_ hope that we’ll find, Jerry?”

“I reckon what we _want_ to find is something that will help us locate
Little Bodil,” the cowboy replied.

“And yet,” Dick put in wisely, “since Little Bodil was thrown from the
stage coach forty years ago, how can _anything_ that was already _in_ her
trunk prove to us whether she was devoured by wild animals or carried
away by bandits?”

“Oh-oo!” Mary shuddered. “I don’t know _which_ would be worse.”

Dora was agreeing with Dick. “You’re right of course,” she said
thoughtfully, “but, nevertheless I’ve a hunch that we’ll find something
that will, in some roundabout way, prove to us whether Little Bodil is
dead or alive.”

“Now, if _that’s_ settled, let the ceremony proceed,” Jerry announced. In
the dim lantern light Mary’s fair face and Dora’s olive-tinted glowed
with excited animation as they took hold of the trunk ends.

The top, however, did not come off as readily as they had anticipated.
The many winter storms and the burning summer heat to which the box had
been exposed had warped the cover, binding it tight. Jerry, glancing
about the room, found a broken tool which he could use as a wedge. With
it he loosened the cover. Then it was easily removed.

The first emotion was one of disappointment. The small trunk contained
little, nothing at all, the young people decided, that could be
considered as a clue. There was a plaid woolen dress for a child of about
eight or ten and the coarsest of home-made underwear, knit stockings and
a small pair of carpet slippers with patched soles.

A hand-carved wooden doll, in a plaid dress, which evidently had been
made by the child, had been lovingly wrapped in a small red shawl.
Lastly, tied up in a quilted blue bonnet with the strings, was a carved
wooden bowl and spoon.

In the flickering lantern light, the expression on the four faces changed
from eager excitement to genuine disappointment.

“Not a clue among them,” Dora announced dramatically.

“Not a line of writing of any kind, is there?” Mary was confident that
she knew the answer to her question before she asked it.

Dick was closely scrutinizing the empty leather box. “Usually in mystery
stories,” he looked up from his inspection to say, “there’s a lining in
the trunk and the lost will, or, what have you, is safely reposing under
it, but unfortunately Little Bodil’s trunk has no lining nor hide-it-away
places of any kind.”

Mary was holding the small doll near to the lantern and the others saw
tears in her pitying blue eyes. Suddenly she held the doll comfortingly
close as she said, a sob in her voice, “Poor little old wooden dollie,
all these long years you’ve been waiting, wondering, perhaps, why Little
Bodil didn’t take you out and mother you.”

“Like Eugene Fields’ ‘Little Toy Dog,’” Dora said, looking lovingly at
her friend. Then, “Mary, you can write the sweetest verses. Someday when
we’re back at school, write about Little Bodil’s wooden doll. It may make
you famous.” Then she modified, “At least it will help you fill space in
‘The Sunnybank Say-So.’”

“Promise to send me a copy if she does,” Jerry said.

Dick, who had not been listening, had at last given up hope of finding a
scrap of writing. He had felt in the small pocket of the plaid dress and
had closely examined the quilted hood.

“Well,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone, “since there isn’t a clue to be
found, shall we put the things back into the trunk and go in?”

“I reckon we might as well,” Jerry acquiesced. “We’ll have to be up early
tomorrow so that we can drive the girls over to Gleeson along about
noon.”

Dora was examining the hand-carved wooden bowl and long wooden spoon. “I
wonder if Little Bodil’s father made this leaf pattern on the handle,”
she said, then began, jokingly, “If I were a trance medium, I would say,
as I hold this article, I feel the presence of someone who, when alive in
the flesh, dearly loved the child, Little Bodil. This someone, this
spirit presence that we cannot see with our outward eyes, wishes very
much to help us find a clue.” Dora’s voice had become mysteriously low.

Lifting her eyes slowly from the wooden bowl, she gazed intently at a
dark corner where junk was piled.

Mary’s gaze followed. “Goodness, Dora!” she implored nervously, “don’t
stare that way into space. Anyone would think that you saw someone and—”

“I’m not sure but that I do see something.” Dora’s tone had changed to
one of startled seriousness. “Jerry,” she continued, pointing toward the
dark corner, “don’t _you_ see a palely luminous object over there?”

“I reckon I do,” the cowboy agreed. “But one thing I’m sure is, it can’t
be a ghost since there isn’t any such thing.”

“How do we know that—” Dora began when Mary, clutching her friend’s arm,
whispered excitedly, “I see it now! Oh, Jerry, if it isn’t a ghost,
_what_ is it?”

“We’ll soon know.” There was no fear in the cowboy’s voice as he leaped
to his feet and walked toward the corner. The girls watched breathlessly
expecting to see the apparition fade into darkness, but, if anything, it
seemed clearer, as Jerry approached it.

His hearty laugh dispelled their fears before he explained, “The moon is
rising. That’s moonlight coming in through a long crack in the wall.”
Then, with a shrug which told his disbelief in _all_ things supernatural,
he dismissed the subject with, “I reckon _that’s_ as near being a ghost
as anything ever is.”

Mary was tenderly placing the coarse little undergarments back into the
small trunk. Dora less sentimental than her friend, nevertheless felt a
pitying sadness in her heart as she refolded the little plaid dress and
laid it on top. Before closing the box, Mary, still on her knees, looked
up at Jerry, her eyes luminous. “Big Brother,” she said, “do _you_ think
Little Bodil would mind if I kept her doll? It’s a funny, homely little
thing with only a wooden heart, but I can’t get over feeling that it’s
lonesome and needs comforting.”

Jerry’s gray eyes were very gentle as he looked down at the girl. His
voice was a bit husky as he replied, “I reckon Little Bodil would be
grateful to you if she knew. She probably set a store by that doll baby.”

He held out a strong brown hand to help her to rise and there was a
tenderness in the clasp.

Dora had not packed the wooden bowl and spoon. “I would so like to keep
these,” she said, adding hastily, “Of course, if Little Bodil is found,
I’ll give them back to her. Don’t you think it would be all right?”

“Sure thing!” Dick replied. Stooping, he picked up the worn little carpet
slippers, saying, “You overlooked these, girls, while you were packing.”

“Oh, so we did.” Dora reached up a hand to take them, then she hesitated,
inquiring, “Why don’t you and Jerry each take one for a keepsake, or
don’t boys care for such things?” Dick took one of the slippers and
dropped it, unconcernedly, into a deep leather pocket. The other slipper
he handed to Jerry who stowed it away. The boys replaced the cover of the
box, not without difficulty, and then they all four stood for a silent
moment looking down at it with varying emotions. Mary spoke in a small
awed voice. “What shall we do with the little box?”

“I reckoned we’d leave it here,” Jerry began, then asked, “What were
_you_ thinking about it?”

“I was wondering,” Mary said, looking from one to another with large
star-like eyes, “if it wouldn’t be a good plan to take the box up to the
rock house and leave it _there_.”

“Why, Mary Moore,” Dora was frankly amazed, “you wouldn’t _dare_ climb up
there and be looked at by that Evil Eye Turquoise, would you?”

Before Mary could reply, Jerry said, “The plan is a good one, all right,
but we’d better leave it here, I reckon, till we know if there’s any way
to get up to the rock house. The cliff that broke off in front of it used
to be Mr. Pedersen’s stairway.”

Mary agreed and so they ascended the wall ladder. As they stood in the
harness-room below, Mary said in a low voice, “Although we have _not_
found a clue, that trunk has done one thing; it has made me feel in my
heart that Little Bodil was a _real_ child. Before, it seemed to me more
like a fanciful story. Now, more than ever, I hope that _somewhere_ we
will find a clue that will someday prove to us that no harm came to the
little girl.”

Jerry had picked up the second lantern and, taking Mary’s arm, he led her
through the low door and along the dark path. Neither spoke. Dora and
Dick followed, walking single file. Dora, remembering the dead snakes,
glanced about, but Mr. Newcomb had thoughtfully buried them, not wishing
the girls to be needlessly startled.

At the kitchen door, the boys said good night and returned to their bunk
house out near the corral.




                              CHAPTER XVII
                             A WOODEN DOLL


The girls, with the lantern Jerry had given them, tip-toed through the
darkened hall to their bedroom. Mary placed the lantern on the table,
and, after having kissed the little wooden doll good night, she put it to
bed on a cushioned chair. She smiled wistfully up at Dora. “What is there
about even a poor forlorn homely wooden doll that stirs in one’s heart a
sort of mother love?”

“I guess you’ve answered your own question,” Dora replied in her
matter-of-fact tone. “I never felt that way about dolls. In fact, I never
owned one after the cradle-age.” Then, fearing that Mary would think that
she was critical of her sentiment, she hurried on to say, “I always
wanted tom-boy, noisy toys that I could romp around with.” Then, gazing
lovingly at Mary, she added, “Someday you’ll make a wonderful mother. I
hope you’ll want to name one of your little girls after me. How would
Dorabelle do?”

“Fine!” Mary smiled her approval of the name. “There must be four girls
so that the oldest may have my mother’s name and the other three be
called Dorabelle, Patsy and Polly. What’s more, I hope each one will grow
up to be just like her name-mother, if there is any such thing.”

A few moments later, when they were nestled in the soft bed, Dora asked
in a low voice, “What kind of a man would you like to marry?”

Mary’s thoughts had again wandered back to Little Bodil and so she
replied indifferently, “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve never thought that far. I
_do_ want a home and children, someday, of course, but first, for a
_long_ time, I hope, I’m going to keep house for Daddy.”

Dora was more than ever convinced that Mary thought of the cowboy merely
as the Big Brother, which so frequently she called him. However, before
entirely giving up, she asked, “If you have little boys, what will you
name _them_?”

Mary laughed, not at all suspecting her friend’s real reason for all the
questioning. “That’s an easy one to answer,” she said artlessly. “The
oldest, of course, will be named after Dad. The other two—if—why, Dick
and Jerry will do as well as any, and yet,” she paused and seemed to
think a bit, then merrily she said, “Dora, let’s postpone all this
christening for ten years at least. The fond father of the brood may want
to have a finger in the pie.”

Dora thought, “Mary’s voice sounds amused. Maybe she’s wise to my
scheming. I’d better soft pedal it, if I’m ever going to get at the
truth.”

Aloud she said with elaborate indifference—yawning to add to the effect,
“Oh, well, it really doesn’t matter. After all I had quite forgotten our
agreement to both remain old maids, me to teach school and you to keep
house for me.” Again she yawned, saying sleepily, “Good night and
pleasant dreams.”

It was daybreak when the girls woke up. Already there were sounds of
activity within and without. Barnyard fowls were clamoring, each in its
own way, for the breakfast which Dick was carrying to them.

Jerry—in the cow corral—was milking under difficulties as a long-legged
calf was noisily demanding a share.

From the kitchen came faintly the clatter of dishes, a sizzling sound and
a most appetizing fragrance of coffee, bacon and frying potatoes.

“Let’s get up and surprise the boys,” Mary whispered.

This they did and were in time to help pleased Mrs. Newcomb carry in the
hot viands.

Jerry and Dick welcomed them with delighted grins and Mr. Newcomb gave
them each a fatherly pat as he passed.

“How will you girls spend the morning?” Jerry inquired. “Dick and I have
branding to do and I reckon you wouldn’t care to ‘spectate’ as an old
cowboy we once had used to say.”

Mary shuddered. “I _certainly do not_,” she declared. “I hope branding
doesn’t hurt the poor calf half as much as it would hurt _me_ to watch
it.”

“The thing that gets me,” Dick, still a tenderfoot, commented, “is the
smell of burning hair and flesh. I can’t get used to it.” Then, glancing
half apologetically toward Mrs. Newcomb, he said, “Not a very nice
breakfast subject, is it?”

Placidly that good woman replied, “On a ranch one gets used to
unappetizing subjects—sort of like nurses do in hospitals, I suppose.
During meals is about all the time cowmen have to talk over what they’ve
been doing and make plans.”

“You haven’t told us yet what you’d like to do this morning,” Jerry said,
as he glanced fondly at the curly, sun-gold head close to his shoulder.

Mary replied, with a quick eager glance at the older woman, “Aunt Mollie,
can’t you make use of two very capable young women? We can sweep and dust
and—”

“No need to!” was the laughing reply. “Yesterday was clean-up day.”

“I can do some wicked churning,” Dora assured their hostess.

“No sour cream ready, dearie.” Then, realizing that the girls truly
wished to be of assistance, Mrs. Newcomb turned brightly toward her son.
“Jerry, I wish you’d saddle a couple of horses before you go. I’d like to
send a parcel over to Etta Dooley. What’s more, I’d like Mary and Dora to
meet Etta. She’s about your age, dear.” She had turned toward Mary. “A
fine girl, we think, but a mighty lonesome one, yet _never_ a word of
complaint. She has four to cook for—five counting herself—and beside
that, there’s the patching and the cleaning. Then in between times she’s
studying to try to pass the Douglas high school examinations, hoping
someday to be a teacher. You’ll both like Etta. Don’t you think they
will, Jerry?”

“Why, I reckon she’s likeable,” the cowboy said indifferently. He was
thinking how much more enthusiasm he could have put into that reply if
his mother had asked, “Etta will like Mary, won’t she, Jerry?” Rising, he
smiled down at the girl of whom he was thinking. “I’ll go and saddle
Dusky for you,” he told her. “She’s as easy riding as a rocking horse and
as pretty a creature as we ever had on _Bar N_.”

When the boys were gone, the girls insisted on washing the breakfast
dishes. Then they made their beds. As they expected, they found the
saddled ponies waiting for them near the side door.

Mrs. Newcomb gave Mary a flat, soft parcel. “Slip it over your saddle
horn, dear,” she suggested, “and tell Etta that the flannel in the parcel
is for her to make into nighties for Baby Bess.”

Dusky was as beautiful a horse as Jerry had said. Graceful,
slender-limbed, with a coat of soft gray-black velvet—the color of dusk.
Dora’s mount was named “Old Reliable.” Mrs. Newcomb smoothed its near
flank lovingly. “I used to ride this one all over the range, and even
into town, when we were both younger,” she told them.

The girls cantered leisurely down the cottonwood shaded lane and then
turned, not toward the right which led to the highway, but toward the
left on a rough canyon road that ascended gradually up a low tree-covered
mountain.

Brambly bushes grew along the trail showing that the ground was not
entirely dry. A curve in the road revealed the reason. A wide, stony
creek-bed was ahead of them, and, in the middle of it, was a
crystal-clear, rushing stream.

The horses waded through the water spatteringly. Old Reliable seemed not
to notice the little whirlpools at his feet, but Dusky put back his ears
and did a bit of side stepping. Mary, unafraid, spoke gently and patted
his glossy neck. With a graceful leap, the bank was reached. There was a
steep scramble for both horses; loose rock rattled down to the brook bed.

When they were on the rutty, climbing road again, Dora laughingly
remarked, “Dusky already knows the voice of his mistress.” If there was a
hidden meaning in Dora’s remark, Mary did not notice it, for what she
said was, “Dora, who would ever expect a cowboy to be poetic, but Jerry
surely was when he named this horse, don’t you think so?”

“Yeah!” Dora replied inelegantly. To herself she thought, “That may be a
hopeful sign, thinking Jerry is a poet in cowboy guise.”

“It’s lovely up this canyon road, isn’t it?” All unconsciously Mary was
gazing about her, contentedly drinking in the beauty of the cool,
shadowy, rocky places on either side. Aspen, ash and cottonwood trees
grew tall, their long roots drawing moisture from the tumbling brook.

Half a mile up the canyon there was a clearing, and in it stood a very
old log hut with adobe-filled cracks. A lean-to on one side had recently
been put up. In a small, fenced-in yard were a dozen hens, and down
nearer the brook was a garden patch. Two small, red-headed boys in
overalls were there busily weeding. Near them, on a grassy plot, a
spotted cow was tethered. Back of the house, hanging on a line, was a
rather nondescript wash, but, nevertheless, it was clean.

The front door stood open but no one was in sight. Mary and Dora, leaving
the road, turned their horses toward the small house.

“I feel sort of queer,” Mary said, “sort of story-bookish—coming to call
on a strange girl in this romantic canyon and—”

“Sh-ss!” Dora warned. “Someone’s coming to the door.”




                             CHAPTER XVIII
                           A STRANGE HOSTESS


Etta Dooley, evidently unused to receiving calls, stood in the open door,
her rather sad mouth and her fine hazel eyes unsmiling. Her plain brown
cloth dress hid the graceful lines of her young form. She was wondering
and waiting.

Mary and Dora dismounted, and, as the red-headed, ten-year-old twins had
come pell-mell from the garden, Mary, smiling down at them in her
captivating way, asked them not to let the horses wander far from the
house. Then, with the same irresistible smile, she approached the still
silent, solemn girl.

“Good morning, Etta,” Mary said brightly, pretending not to notice the
other girl’s rather disconcerting gaze. “We are friends of Mrs. Newcomb,
and she wanted us to become acquainted with you. I am Mary Moore. I live
in Gleeson across the valley and Dora Bellman is my best friend from the
East.”

Etta’s serious face lighted for a brief moment with a rather melancholy
smile as she acknowledged the introduction.

Dora thought, “Poor girl, if _that’s_ the best she can do, how cruel life
must have been to her, yet she isn’t any older than we are, I am sure. I
wish we could make her forget for a moment. I’d like to see her really
smile.”

Etta had stepped to one side and was saying in her grave, musical voice,
“Won’t you come in?” Then a dark red flush suffused her tanned face as
she added, not without embarrassment, “Though there aren’t two safe
chairs for you to sit on. The children made them, such as they are, out
of boxes.”

Mary, ever able to blithely cope with any situation, exclaimed sincerely,
“Oh, Etta, it’s so gloriously lovely outdoors today, let’s sit here. I’ll
take the stump and you two may have the fallen tree.”

Then, as Etta glanced back into the room, half hesitating, Mary asked,
“Were you busy about something?”

“Nothing special,” Etta replied. “I wanted to see if we had wakened Baby
Bess. She sleeps late and I like to have her.” Again the hazel eyes were
sad. The reason was given. “She hasn’t been well since Mother died.”
There was a sudden fierce tenderness in her voice as she added, “I can’t
lose Baby Bess. She’s so like our mother.”

Then, as though amazed at her own unusual show of feeling before
strangers, Etta sank down on the log and shut herself away from them
behind a wall of reserve.

But Mary, baffled though she momentarily was, knew that Aunt Mollie was
counting on the good their friendship would do Etta, and so, glancing
about, she exclaimed, “I love that rushing brook! It seems so happy,
sparkling in the sun and singing all the time.”

Dora helped out with, “This surely is a beauty spot here under the trees.
It’s the prettiest place I’ve seen since I’ve been in Arizona.”

“I like it,” Etta said, then with unexpected tenseness she added, “I’d
love it, oh, _how_ I’d love it, if it were our own and not _charity_.”

Dora thought, “Now we’re getting at the down-deepness of things. Poor,
but so proud! I wonder who in the world these Dooleys are. The name
doesn’t suggest nobility.” But aloud she asked no questions. One just
didn’t ask Etta about her personal affairs.

Dora groped for something that she could say that would start the
conversational ball rolling, but, for once, she had a most unusual dearth
of ideas.

Luckily there came a welcome break in the silence which was becoming
embarrassing to the kindly intentioned visitors.

A sweet trilling baby-voice called, “Etta, I’se ’wake.”

Instantly their strange hostess was on her feet, her eyes love-lighted,
her voice eager. “I’ll bring her out. It’s warm here in the sunshine.”

While Etta was gone, Mary and Dora exchanged despairing glances which
seemed to say, “We’ve come to a hurdle that we can’t jump over.” Aloud
they said nothing, for, almost at once Etta reappeared. In her arms was a
two-year-old; a pretty child with sleep-flushed cheeks, corn-flower blue
eyes and tousled hair as yellow as cornsilk. Etta’s expression told her
love and pride in her little darling.

Baby Bess gazed unsmilingly at Dora as though she knew that here was
someone who did not care for dolls, then she turned to look at Mary.
Instantly she leaned toward her and held out both chubby arms, her sudden
smile sweet and trusting.

Dora, watching Etta, saw a fleeting change of expression. What was it?
Could Etta be jealous? But no, it wasn’t that, for she gave Mary her
first real smile of friendship.

“Baby Bess likes you,” she said. “That means you must be _very_ nice.
Would you like to hold her?”

“Humph!” Dora thought as she watched Mary reseating herself on the stump
and gathering the small child into her arms, “I reckon then I’m _not_
nice.”

After that, with the child contentedly nestling in Mary’s arms, the ice
melted in the conversational stream. Of her own accord Etta spoke of
school. She asked how far along the girls were and astonished them by
telling what she was doing, subjects far in advance of them.

Then came the surprising information that her father and mother had both
been college graduates and had taught her. She had never attended a
school. She in turn taught the twins. Then, in a burst of confidence
which Dora rightly guessed was very foreign to her reserved nature, Etta
said, “My father lost a fortune four years ago. He made very unwise
investments. After that Mother’s health failed and we came West. Dad did
not know how to earn money. He grew old very suddenly,” then, once again,
despair made her face far older than her years. She threw her arms wide.
“All this tells the rest of our story.”

Mary’s blue eyes held tears of sympathy which she hid in the child’s
yellow curls. Etta would not want sympathy.

Luckily at that moment there came a welcome interruption. A gay hallooing
lower down the road announced the approach of Dick and Jerry.

Dora could see Etta rebuilding her wall of reserve. She acknowledged the
introduction to Dick with a formal, unsmiling bow. Baby Bess kept the
situation from becoming awkward by welcoming Jerry with delighted crows
and leaps. The tall cowboy, his sombrero pushed back on his head, took
her in his strong hands and lifted her high. The child’s gurgling excited
laughter was like the rippling laughter of the mountain brook. After a
few moments Jerry gave the baby to Etta. The twins came around a clump of
cottonwood trees leading the horses, their freckled faces bright with
wide grins, their Irish blue eyes laughing. Not for them the anxiety and
sorrow that so crushed their big sister.

Jerry tossed them coins to pay them for the care they had taken of the
ponies. Dora, glancing quickly at Etta, saw that the troubled expression
was again brooding in her eyes.

Later, when Mary and Dora had said goodbye to their new friend and were
riding away up the canyon road, Dora said, “Jerry, doesn’t it seem queer
to you that the boys are so different from their sister? I should almost
think that _she_ belonged to an entirely different family.”

“A changeling, perhaps,” Dick suggested.

“Me no sabe,” the cowboy replied lightly. He was thinking of a very
pleasant dream of his own just then.

Mary said with fervor, “Anyway, _whoever_ she is, I think she is a
darling girl and the baby is adorable. I wish that we lived nearer that
we might see her oftener, Dora.” Then, before her friend could reply,
Mary added brightly, “Oh, Jerry, I know where you are taking us. You want
to show Dick your own five hundred acres, don’t you? It’s the loveliest
spot in all the country round, I think.”

Jerry’s gray eyes brightened. “That’s what I _hoped_ you would think,
Little Sister,” he said in a low voice, which the other two, following,
could not hear.

They had gone about half a mile up the winding, slowly climbing road when
Jerry stopped. The mountain had flattened out in a wide grass-covered
tableland moistened by many underground springs.

Jerry waved his left hand. “This all was blue and yellow with wild
flowers after the spring rains,” he told them. Mary turned her horse off
the road and went to the edge of the hurrying brook.

“See, Dick,” she called, “this is where Jerry is going to build him a
house some day. His granddad willed it to him. It takes in the part of
the canyon where the Dooleys are, doesn’t it?”

“Close to it,” Jerry replied. “Their garden is on my line, but Dad and I
will never put up fences.”

“Of course not!” Dora exclaimed. “Since you are the only child, it will
all be yours.”

“There’s a jolly fine view from here,” Dick said admiringly as he sat on
his horse gazing across the valley to the far range beyond Gleeson.

As they rode back down the valley Dora was thinking, “How can Mary help
knowing that Jerry hopes that _she_ will be the one to live in the house
he plans building?” Then, with a little shrug, her thought ended with,
“Oh well, and oh well, the future will reveal all.”

Down the road Mary was saying, “Jerry, I didn’t give that flannel to
Etta. I just couldn’t. I was afraid she would think that we had come
_only_ for charitable reasons. Of course we did in the beginning, but,
afterwards, I was _so_ glad something had given me a chance to meet her.”

A solution was offered by the sudden appearance of the twins by the
roadside.

Jerry, slipping the parcel from Mary’s saddle horn, tossed it down,
calling, “This is for Baby Bess, tell Sister Etta.”

Mary flashed him a bright, relieved smile as they went on down the canyon
road.




                              CHAPTER XIX
                               A GUN SHOT


Early that afternoon Jerry and Dick drove the small car around to the
side door of the ranch house and hallooed for the girls, who appeared,
one on either side of a beaming Aunt Mollie.

“We’ve had a wonderful time, you dear.” Mary kissed the older woman’s
tanned cheek lovingly.

“Spiffy-fine!” Dora’s dark glowing eyes seconded the enthusiasm of the
remark. “Please ask us again.”

“Any time, no one _could_ be more welcome, and make it soon.” After the
girls had run down to the car, Mrs. Newcomb turned back into the kitchen
where she was keeping Mr. Newcomb’s mid-day meal warm as he had not yet
returned from riding the range.

The boys leaped out and Jerry opened the front door with a flourish. He
glanced at Mary suspiciously. “You girls look as though you were plotting
mischief.”

“Not that,” Mary denied. “We’ve just been composing Verse Eight for our
Cowboy Song. You know they have to be forty verses long. Ready, Dora?”

Then together they laughingly sang—

  “Two jolly girls and cowboys twain
  Start out adventuring once again.
          Come, come, coma,
          Coma, coma, kee.
          Come, come, coma,
            Come with we.”

“Not so hot!” Dick commented. “Wait till I’ve had time to cook up one.
Jerry, we’ll do Verse Nine after awhile.”

“Drive fast enough to cool us, won’t you, Jerry, for it surely _is_
torrid today,” Dora urged as she sprang nimbly into the rumble followed
by Dick. “You two have your heads sheltered but we poor exposed pussons
are likely to have frizzled brains.”

Dick, sinking down as comfortably as possible in the rather cramped
quarters, grinned at his companion affably. “Luckily for us Jerry didn’t
hear that or he would have sprung that old one, ‘what makes you think you
have any?’”

Dora turned toward him rather blankly. “Any what?” she questioned, then
added quickly, “Oh, of course, brains. I was wondering what those cows,
that are watching us so intently, think that we are.”

“Some four-headed, square-bodied fierce animal that rattles all its bones
when it runs, I suspect, and if they could hear Jerry’s horn, they’d take
to the high timber up around the Dooleys’ clearing.”

Suddenly Dora became serious. “Dick,” she said, “isn’t that Etta a
strange, interesting girl? Would you call her beautiful?”

“I wouldn’t call her at all,” Dick said sententiously; “I’m quite
satisfied with my present companion.”

Ignoring his facetiousness, Dora continued, “Etta told us that her father
lost a fortune four years ago. He evidently had inherited it. He couldn’t
have made it himself, because, when it was lost, he was simply helpless.
He didn’t know how to work and earn more. That implies that he belonged
to a rich family, doesn’t it?”

“Possibly. In fact probably,” Dick agreed, looking with mock solemnity
through his shell-rimmed glasses at the interested, olive-tinted face of
his companion. “Is all this leading somewhere? Do you think that there
_may_ be rich relatives who ought to be notified of the Dooleys’ plight?”

Dora laughed as she acknowledged that she hadn’t thought that far.
“Aren’t you afraid we’ll get sort of mixed up if we try to solve two
mysteries at once?” Dick continued. “You know we’re already hot on the
trail of a clue that will unravel the Lucky Loon—Little Bodil mystery.”

Dora turned brightly toward him. “Dick Farley,” she announced, as one who
had made an important discovery, “here _is_ something! Little Bodil is
described as having had deep blue eyes and cornsilk yellow hair.”

“Sure thing, what of it? Etta’s hair is dark brown.”

“I’m talking about that Baby Bess, silly!” Dora told him. “Surely you
noticed that she had—”

“Hair and eyes? Sure thing!” Dick finished her sentence jokingly, “but,
according to my rather limited observation of the infant terrible, it
usually starts life with blue eyes and yellow hair. Now are you going to
tell me that this baby and Little Bodil have another similarity?”

Dora had turned and was looking out over the desert valley, which, for
the past half hour, they had been crossing. Dick thought she was offended
by his good-natured raillery, but, if she had been, she thought better of
it and replied, “I had not noticed any other similarity.”

“Well, neither had I,” Dick, wishing to mollify her, confessed, “except
that both of their names start with B.”

The small car had turned on the cross road which led toward Gleeson. As
they neared the high cliff-like gate which was the entrance to the
box-shaped sandy front yard of Mr. Pedergen’s rock house and tomb, Dick
leaned forward and called, “Hi there, Jerry! Dora suggests that we stop
and visit Lucky Loon’s estate. We aren’t in any particular hurry, are
we?”

The rattling of the car was stilled as Jerry drew to one side of the road
and stopped. He got out and glanced up at the sun. It still was high in a
gleaming blue sky. “It’s hours yet before milking time,” he replied. Then
to Mary, “What is _your_ wish, Little Sister?”

Dora thought, “_Never_ a brother in all this world puts so much
tenderness into _that_ name. Leastwise _mine_ don’t!”

Mary had evidently replied that she would like to revisit the rock house,
for Jerry was assisting her from the car. Dick had learned from past
experience that Dora scorned assistance. Two girls could _not_ be more
unlike.

Before they entered the rock gate, Dick implored with pretended
earnestness, “For Pete’s sake, don’t any of you imagine you hear a gun
shot, will you?”

“Not unless we really _do_ hear one,” Mary said.

Dora, to be impish, declared, “I’m prophesying that we _will_ hear a gun
fired before we leave this enclosure.”

The sand was deep and the walking was hard. Jerry, with a hand under
Mary’s right elbow, helped her along, but Dora ploughed alone, with Dick,
making no better headway, at her side.

“When we first visited this place,” Dora began, “I felt that there was
sort of a deathlike atmosphere about it. It’s so terribly still and with
bleached skeletons lying around. Now that I _know_ it is Lucky Loon’s
tomb,” she glanced up at the rock house and shuddered, “it seems more
uncanny than ever.”

Dick, having left the others, wandered along the base of the cliff on
which stood the rock house. The front of it had broken away leaving a
wide gap at the top.

“Here’s where Lucky Loon went up, I suppose.” Dick pointed to irregular
steps that seemed to have been hewn out of the leaning rock. “We _could_
go up these stairs to the top of this rock, but nothing short of a
mountain goat could leap that chasm.”

“I reckon you’re right,” Jerry agreed.

Dick was regarding the gap speculatively. “If a fellow could throw a rope
from the top of this leaning rock over to the house and make it secure
somehow—”

Dora teasingly interrupted, “I didn’t know, Doctor Dick, that _you_ could
walk a tight rope.”

“Oh sure, I can do anything I set out to!” was the joking reply.
“However, I meant to walk across it with my hands.”

“It can’t be done.” The cowboy shook his head.

“Anyhow,” Dick declared, “you all wait here while I see how far up these
old stairs I can climb. From the top I can better estimate how big a goat
will be required to carry me over.”

“Dick,” Mary laughed, “I never knew you to be so nonsensical.”

Dora tried to detain him, saying, “If you succeed in climbing up to the
top of this leaning rock, you _might_ be directly opposite the open door
of the rock house.”

“Well, what of it!” Dick was puzzled, for Dora’s expression was serious
and almost fearful.

“That Evil Eye Turquoise _might_ look right out at you!”

“Surely _you_ don’t believe _that_ yarn!” Dick smiled down at her from
the first step, for he had started to climb. He reached up to catch at a
higher step with one hand when he uttered a terrorized scream and fairly
dropped back to the ground, his arm held out. Clinging to his coat
sleeve, perilously close to his wrist, was a huge lizard, a Gila Monster,
thick-bodied, hideously mottled, dull-yellow, orange-red, dead-black. It
had a blunt head and short legs that were clawing the air. The girls
echoed Dick’s scream. Jerry, leaping forward, gave a warning cry. “_Don’t
drop your arm!_” Then the quick command, “_Girls, get back of me!_”
Whipping out his gun, he fired. The ugly reptile dropped to the sand, its
muscles convulsing.

Dora ran to Dick and pulled back his sleeve. “Thank heavens,” she cried,
“he didn’t touch your wrist.”

“I reckon you’ve had a narrow escape all right, old man,” Jerry declared,
his tone one of great relief. Then, self-rebukingly, “I ought to have
warned you. _Never_ put your feet or your hands _anywhere_ that you can’t
see.”

“Do you suppose there’s any poison in my coat sleeve?” Dick asked
anxiously.

“No, I reckon not,” the cowboy said. “A Gila Monster packs his poison in
his lower jaw and he has to turn over on his back before he can get it
into a wound he makes.” Then, glancing at Mary and seeing that she still
looked white and was trembling, he exclaimed, “Come, let’s go. I reckon
it’s too hot in here at this hour.”

Dora, hardly knowing that she did so, clung to Dick’s arm as they waded
through the sand to the gate.

“Oh, how I do hope we’ll never, _never_ have to come to this awful place
again,” Mary said. “To think that Dick might have lost his life here.”

“Well, I didn’t!” Dick replied. Then, with an effort at levity, he added,
“Dora, _you won_! We _did_ hear a gun shot.”




                               CHAPTER XX
                        INTRODUCING AN AIR SCOUT


As they were nearing Gleeson, Dick leaned forward and called, “Jerry,
Dora and I were wondering if we ought to tell old Silas Harvey that we
have found Little Bodil’s trunk?”

Not until the small car had climbed the last ascending stretch of road to
the tableland and had stopped in front of the ancient corner store did he
receive a reply. Then, jumping out, Jerry said in a low voice, “Mary and
I have been talking it over and we reckon that we’d better wait awhile
before telling.” Then to the girl on the front seat, “Shall I get your
mail?”

“And mine! And mine!” a chorus from the rumble.

There were letters and papers but one that especially pleased the girls.

“Another bulgy-budget from Polly and Patsy,” Dora exulted.

“They’re our two best friends back East at Sunnybank-on-the-Hudson where
I live.” This she explained to Dick as the little car started to rattle
up the hill road through the deserted ghost town.

“I can tell you the rest,” Dick recited. “Polly is fat and jolly and eats
chocolates by the box. Patsy is clever, red-headed and a boy-hater. Have
I got it right? Anyway I’m sure that’s what you said the first time you
told me about them. Oh, yes—all together you call yourselves ‘The
Quadralettes.’”

“Righto. Go to the head of the class. Although you did draw one minus.
Patsy is no longer a boy-hater. She’s met her conqueror. Or at least so
their last letter reported. I’m wild to get home so that we may read
this.” Then leaning forward, she called through the opening in the old
top which covered the front seat, “Jerry, can’t you boys stay awhile? I’d
like to share this letter with you and Dick.”

“Oh, yes, please do,” Mary seconded brightly. “I’m sure it isn’t time yet
to milk that cow.” This was teasingly added, remembering what Jerry had
said soon after the noon hour.

“You don’t have to plead, Little Sister,” Jerry smiled down into the
eager, upturned face that looked so fair to him; “if it was time to milk
the cow, I reckon I’d let the calf do it. We only need milk enough for
the family and this morning Bossie was extra generous.”

When the Moore house was reached, Mary, anxious to see her dad, hurried
indoors and went directly to his room. He had just awakened from his nap
and looked so much better that Mary exclaimed gladly, “Dad, you’ll be
sitting out on the porch next week. I’m just ever so sure that you will.”
Then, to the nurse who had entered, “Oh, Mrs. Farley, isn’t Dad
wonderfully improved? Don’t you think he’ll be well enough to go back
East with me in October when school opens?”

“I’m sure of it!” the kind woman replied, then, dismissing the girl, she
added, “It’s time for the alcohol rub, dearie. Come back at four and you
may read to your dad until supper time.”

“Oh, I surely will.” For a long moment Mary’s rosebud cheek pressed the
thin wan one she so loved, then she slipped away.

Dick had spoken with his mother a brief moment when Mary had first gone
in and she had been pleased to see the deepening tan on his face. The boy
had not told her of his recent narrow escape, as Jerry had called it when
the Gila Monster had set its cruel jaws on his coat sleeve. Brave as he
was, Dick could not recall the terror of that moment without experiencing
it all over again. He was sure he would have nightmares about it for a
long time to come.

When Dora tripped down from upstairs where she had been to tidy up, she
found Dick waiting for her in the lower hall.

“Where are the two Erries?” she asked, then laughed as he looked
mystified. “Mary and Jerry. Of course if it were spelled Merry, it would
be better.”

“In the kitchen,” Dick replied. “I was told to guide you thence.”

They heard spoons rattling in glasses. “Oh, good!” Dora exclaimed. “That
sounds like a nice, cool drink.”

Nor was she wrong. There at the table in the shady corner of the kitchen
stood Mary mixing fruit juices she had poured from cans which Jerry had
opened.

“Yum! Yum!” Dora exclaimed in high appreciation. “What is better than
pineapple and strawberry juice and cold water from the spring cellar?”

“Sounds good to me,” Dick said, smacking his lips with anticipatory
relish.

Mary called over her shoulder, “Dora, fetch some of Carmelita’s cookie
snaps.” Then, as she placed the four tall glasses around the table, she
added, “Sit wherever you want to. When the party is over, we’ll read the
letter.” The refreshment lived up to its name and tasted even better than
it looked. Dick, being on the outside, cleared away the things and Dora
opened the letter.

The languid scrawl which so fitted Polly’s indolent personality was first
in evidence, “Dear Absent Ones,” Dora read aloud—

“Greetings from Camp Winnichook in the Adirondacks—(so cool that we have
to wear our sweater coats)—to the sizzling sands of desert Arizona.”

Then Patsy’s quick, jerky penmanship interrupted. “Crickets, just reading
that made me wipe my freckled brow. Ain’t it awful? Those reddish brown
dots that were so piquant on my pert pug nose have soared to my brow,
spread to my ears, and dived to my chin. But, even with my beauty thus
blemished, H. H. thinks I’m—”

Big sprawling words cut in with, “It must be a case of love them and
leave them then, for his winged lordship is about to fly away.” There was
a blot of ink at that point as though there had been a struggle over the
pen. Evidently Patsy had won, as her small scratchy penmanship followed.
“Since H. H. is _my_ friend, I consider it my sacred right to reveal all.
Harry Hulbert, surely you remember all about him and his perfectly spiffy
silver plane, which honestly looks like a big seagull. Oh, misery! I’m
getting all tangled up. What I’m trying to say is that we had told you
that he’s studying to be a pilot and that when he got his papers, he was
to fly West and be an air scout. Well, he’s had ’em and he’s done gone!
The whole object of this epistle is to introduce you to Harry before he
drops down upon you. Heavens, I hope he won’t do it literally. Wouldn’t
it be awful to have an airplane crash through your roof?”

Dora paused and looked glowingly across at Mary. “This flying Apollo is
coming to Gleeson, I judge.”

Mary replied, “I’m terribly disappointed. Of course I knew it _couldn’t_
happen, but I _did_ wish, if _he_ came, he could bring Patsy and Polly
along with him.”

Jerry asked, “What’s this flying seagull going to do when he gets here?”

“He’s going to be attached to the border patrol,” Mary replied. “When
there’s been a holdup, of a train or a stage, I suppose, Harry Hulbert is
to fly over that region and watch for the escaping bandits.”

“Jolly!” Dick ejaculated. “That sounds like a great kind of an adventure
to me. Jerry, let’s welcome him like a long lost brother; then, at least,
he’ll take us up in his Seagull.”

Before the cowboy could reply Dora had continued reading, “Polly has told
you that I’m goofy about H. H. but don’t you believe a word of it. I
picked him out for _you_, Mary, so take him and be grateful.”

Dora wanted to look up at Jerry, but was afraid it would be too pointed,
so she turned a page and exclaimed with interest, “Aha, _here_ we have
him in person. The Seagull’s photograph no less.”

It was an amusing snapshot. Under it was written, “Patsy Ordelle
introducing Harry Hulbert to Mary Moore and Dora Bellman—also the ship.”

A pert, pretty girl with windblown hair and laughing eyes was pointing
toward the youth at her side, who, dressed in flying togs, stood by his
ship. He was making a bow, evidently to acknowledge the introduction, and
so his face was not fully revealed. This was remedied by another snapshot
of the boy alone standing with one hand on his graceful silver plane.
Although not good looking, really, he had a fine, sensitive face, was
slenderly built and had keen alert eyes.

“Now I’ll turn the mike over to Polly,” the pert handwriting ended. The
languid scrawl took up the tale.

“Guess I was wrong about Pat’s being dippy about the silver aviator. He’s
been gone two days and she’s been canoeing with ‘The Poet’ from
‘Crow’s-Nest-Camp’ up in the hills from dawn till dark and even by
moonlight. For a once-was boy-hater, she’s going some.

“Well, say hello to Harry for us. He really is a decent kid. Write us the
minute he lands. Wish I’d thought to send you a batch of fudge I’d made.
Nuts are just crowded in it. Oh, well, up so near the sun it would
probably have melted. Tra-la for now.

                                                     From Poll and Pat.”

Mary looked thoughtfully at, Jerry. “If Harry Hulbert left the Atlantic
coast two days before this letter started, he must be in Arizona by now.”

“I reckon so. A mail pilot makes it in less than three days.”

Dora thought, “Poor Jerry, I ‘reckon’ _he_ didn’t like that part about H.
H. being donated to his Mary, but he isn’t going to say so, not Jerry!”

A small clock on the kitchen shelf back of the big stove made four little
tingling noises. Mary sprang up. Holding out her hand to the cowboy, she
said, “Stay for supper if you think the calf can milk the cow. I’m going
to read to Dad for an hour. Then I’ll be back again.”




                              CHAPTER XXI
                            A POSSIBLE CLUE


At five, which was the invalid’s supper hour, Mary emerged from the
living-room and heard excited voices from behind the closed door of her
father’s study across the hall.

Dora, who had been listening for her friend’s footsteps, threw the door
wide. Her olive-tinted face told Mary that something had happened even
before Jerry exclaimed: “Little Sister, come here and see what Dick has
found. We think it’s a clue.”

“A clue about Little Bodil _here_ in Dad’s study?” Mary’s voice was
amazed and doubting.

“Oh, it’s something Dick himself brought into the house. Don’t tell,”
Dora implored the boys. “See if Mary can guess.”

The fair girl gazed thoughtfully at the other three. Dick, beaming upon
her, was holding something behind his back.

“Hmm. Let me see.” Mary put one slim white finger against her head, as
though trying to think deeply. Then she laughed merrily. “I’d like to
seem terribly dumb and drag out the suspense for you all, but, of course,
it’s as plain as the sun on a clear day. Dick only kept _one_ thing from
the trunk, and that one thing was a small carpet slipper. But I don’t see
how _that_ could possibly be a clue.”

“Very well, my dear young lady, we will show you.” Dick handed the
slipper to her. “First, thrust your dainty fingers into its toe. Do you
find a clue there?”

“No, I do not.” Mary was frankly curious.

“Now, turn the slipper over. What do you see?”

Mary turned the small worn slipper wonderingly and reported, “A loose
patch.” Then, gleefully, “Oh, I know, Dick, that patch is some kind of
coarse paper and on the inside of it, there’s writing. Is that it? Have I
guessed right?”

“Well,” Dick confessed, “you know now as much as we do. We were just
about to remove the patch when you came in. Jerry, let me take your
knife. I left mine on a fence post over at _Bar N_.”

The four young people stood close to one of the long windows while Dick
cut the coarse thread that held the patch.

“Oh, do hurry!” Dora begged. “Your fingers are all thumbs. Here, let me
do that.” But Dick shook his head, saying boyishly, “It’s my slipper,
isn’t it?”

“One more stitch and we shall know all,” Jerry said, then, smiling across
at Mary, he asked, “What do _you_ reckon that we will know?”

“I can’t guess what’s _in_ the letter, of course,” that little maid
replied, “but it _can’t_ be anything that will tell us whether the child
was eaten up by wild animals or carried off by bandits.”

The ragged piece of brown paper, which had evidently been torn from a
package wrapping, was removed and opened. Although there had been writing
on it at one time, it was so blurred that it was hard to decipher. Mary
found a magnifying glass in her father’s desk. Dora, Dick and Jerry stood
with their heads together back of the younger girl’s chair, and when they
thought they had figured a word out correctly, Mary, seated at the desk,
wrote it down. After half an hour, they had made out only two words of
the message and had guessed at the blurred signature.

                                            “lonesome—write—Miss Burger,
                                                            Gray Bluffs,
                                                            New Mexico.”

There were several other words which they could not make out.

Mary took the letter, spread it on the desk before her and gazed intently
at it through the magnifying glass. Then, smiling up at the others, a
twinkle in her eyes, she said, “This is it—perhaps.

  ‘Dear Little Bodil,

  When you reach the strange place where you are going, you may be
  lonesome. If you are, do write often to your good friend,

                                                          Miss Burger.’”

“Well, I reckon that’ll do pretty nigh as well as anything else,” Jerry
said. Then, glancing out of the window at the late afternoon sun, he
grinningly announced that since the calf, by that time, had milked the
cow, he and Dick would accept Mary’s previously given invitation and stay
for supper.

“Oh, Jerry!” Mary stood up and caught hold of the cowboy’s arm. “I know
by the gleam in your eyes that you think this bit of paper _may_ be a
clue worth following up.”

“Yes, I sure do,” was the earnest reply. “I reckon this Miss Burger, if
we got the name right, was a friend to the little girl somewhere,
sometime.”

“Shall we write to her now?” Mary dropped back into the desk chair. “If
she’s living, she will surely answer.”

“But,” Dick was not yet convinced that it was a helpful clue, “_how_ can
Miss Burger know—”

“Stupid!” Dora interrupted. “Of course Miss Burger _won’t_ know whether
Little Bodil was eaten by wild animals or carried off by bandits, but
_if_ the child lived, it’s more than likely, isn’t it, that she _did_
write and tell this friend.”

“True enough!” Dick agreed. “But, Lady Sleuth, if Bodil wrote Miss Burger
telling where _she_ was, isn’t it likely that Mr. Pedersen also wrote the
same woman telling where _he_ was, and presto, his long search would be
over. He would have found his child.”

“Oh, of course, Dick! You weren’t stupid after all.” Dora was properly
apologetic. Then, she added ruefully, “Since this clue isn’t any good, we
got thrilled up over it for nothing at all.”

Jerry spoke in his slow drawl. “I cain’t be sure the clue is no good
until we’ve heard from this Miss Burger.”

“Well spoken, old man,” Dick commended. “If we could send a night-letter,
we _might_ have an answer at once, if—”

“That ‘if’ looms large,” Dora commented dubiously. “There isn’t a
telegraph office in _this_ ghost town, and, moreover, Miss Burger may not
be alive and if she is, wouldn’t she be _awfully_ ancient?”

“Not necessarily,” Mary replied, glancing up at the others thoughtfully.
“If Little Bodil _is_ alive, she will be about fifty. This Miss Burger
may have been a very young woman.”

“About that night telegram,” Jerry said. “We can have one sent out of
Tombstone up to nine o’clock. What, say that we ride over there as soon
as we’ve had supper.”

“Great!” Dick ejaculated. “There’ll be a full moon to light us home
again.”

Mary sprang up and clapped her hands gleefully. “It will be jolly fun
anyway. And it _may_ be a good clue. Come on now, let’s storm the kitchen
and help Carmelita. We ought to start as soon as we can.”

                            * * * * * * * *

It was early twilight when the faithful little car (that always seemed
just about to fall apart but which never did) drew up in front of the
combination blacksmith shop-oil station on the edge of Gleeson.

Seth Tully, one of the grizzled, leathery old-timers, hobbled out of a
small, crumbling adobe building. It was evident that he was much excited
about something and eager to have someone to talk to.

“Howdy, folks,” he began in his high, uncertain, falsetto voice, “I
reckon as you-all heerd how a freight train was held up last night over
in Dead Hoss Gulch.” Then, seeing the boys’ amazement and the girls’
dismay, he went on exultingly, “Yes, siree! Thar was bags of rich ore in
one o’ them cars—the hindmost one, an’, time take it, if them thar
bandits wa’n’t wise to it. The train allays goes durn slow along that
steep grade climbing up out o’ the gulch. Well, sir, _what_ did them
bandits do?” The old man was becoming dramatic in his delight at having
such thrilled listeners. “Dum blast it, if a parcel of ’em didn’t hold up
the engineer and another parcel of ’em cut loose that hind car. _Crash_
it went back’ards down that thar grade, jumped the track and smashed to
smithers.”

“Oh, Mr. Tully,” Mary cried, “_was_ anyone killed?”

The old man shook his head. “Nope, the guard wa’n’t kilt, but them
bandits reckoned as how he was, ’totherwise they’d have plugged him. He
come to, but they’d cleared out, the whule pack of ’em, an’ they’d tuk
the ore with ’em.”

Dora, watching the old man’s glittering, pale-blue eyes that were
deep-sunken under shaggy brows, thought that he seemed actually pleased
about it all, nor was she wrong as his next remark showed.

“Say, Jerry-kid, that thar holdup smacks o’ old times. It was gettin’ too
gol-darned quiet around these here parts. Needed suthin’ like this to
sort o’ liven us up.” He ended with a cackling laugh that made Mary
shudder.

When they were again rattling along the lonely, rutty road which led to
Tombstone, the nearest town of any size, Mary, nestling close to Jerry,
asked, “Big Brother, is Dead Horse Gulch near here?”

“No, Little Sister, it isn’t, and, as for the bandits, they’re over the
border in Mexico by now, I reckon. Don’t you go to worrying about
_them_!”

In the rumble seat, a glowing-eyed Dora was saying: “Dick Farley, _what_
if this should be the _same_ robber gang—oh, I’m trying to say—”

“I get you!” Dick put in. “You’re wondering if the three bandits who held
up the stage and may have kidnapped Little Bodil are _in_ this gang. I
doubt it. They’d be _old_ fellows by now. It takes young blood to do
deeds of daring.”

Dora’s eyes were still glowing. “Dick,” she said prophetically, “I have a
hunch that _this_ robbery is going to do a lot to help us solve the
mystery about Little Bodil. I _may_ be wrong, but, _you_ may be
surprised.”




                              CHAPTER XXII
                         AN INTERESTING ARRIVAL


The road to Tombstone was narrow, rutty and lonesome. Every now and then
it dipped down into a gravelly wash, arroyos in the making, that were,
year after year, being deepened by the torrents that rushed down the
not-distant mountain sides after a cloudburst. Along the banks of these
dry creek-beds grew low cottonwood trees, making shelters behind which
bandits _might_ lurk if they were so inclined. But the girls, having been
assured by Jerry that the train robbers had long since crossed the
Mexican border, were not really fearful. For once, even Mary was not
using her imagination to a frightening extent.

“Big Brother,” she said, “I was just thinking about that aviator friend
of Patsy’s. Don’t you think it must be wonderful to be flying at night up
under those lovely white stars? They look so close to the earth here in
Arizona as though Harry Hulbert might almost have to weave his way among
them.”

Jerry, evidently more desirous of talking of stars than of the aviator of
the “Seagull,” stated matter-of-factly, “It’s the clear air here that
makes the stars look so large and close—sort of like lanterns hung in a
blue-black roof over our heads.”

Just then a huge star shot across the heavens leaving a trail of fire.
Mary whirled to call back, “Oh, Dora, did you wish on that shooting
star?”

“Nope! Didn’t see it!” was the laconic reply.

“Did you?” Jerry asked in a low voice. How he hoped Mary had echoed _his_
wish, but what she said was, “Yes, I hoped the Seagull would make a safe
landing. It must be terribly dangerous landing among so many mountain
peaks, or, one might even be forced down in the middle of a barren
stretch of desert, oh, miles from water or anyone!”

If Jerry were disappointed, he made no comment. Dora leaned forward to
call, “From the top of the next little hill we’d ought to be able to see
the lights of Tombstone, hadn’t we, Jerry?”

“I reckon we will, lest be the power plant’s out of commission.”

The rather feeble lights of the rattly old car did little to illumine the
well of darkness in which they were riding. The wash they were crossing
was wide and deep and the girls were both glad when they climbed that
last little hill and were nearer the stars again. From the top, they
could see the black wall of mountains to the distant right of them, which
Jerry had called “The Dragoons.” A desert valley at its foot stretched
away for many miles shimmering in the starlight. Not far ahead of them
was a cluster of sand hills—“the silver hills”—on which stood the small
mining-town of Tombstone. The power plant was in order, as was evidenced
by the twinkling of lights. A friendly group of them marked the main
street, and scattered lights, farther and farther apart, were shining
from the windows of homes. Down the little hill the car dropped, then
began the last long climb up to the town.

On the main street there were unshaven, roughly dressed men, some from
the range, others from the mines, loitering about in front of a lighted
pool hall. They were talking, some of them excitedly, about the recent
train robbery. Jerry drew his car to the curb and leaped out. Three young
cowboys called a greeting to him. He replied in a friendly way, but
turned at once to assist Mary. Dick and Dora followed the other two into
a low adobe building labeled “Post Office.” A light was burning in a
small back room. Jerry opened the door and entered. A middle-aged man,
whose gauntness suggested that he had come there to be cured of the
“white plague,” smiled affably. “Evening, Jerry-boy,” he said. “Wait till
I get this message. The wires are keeping hot tonight along of that train
robbery.”

The uneven clicking of the instrument ended; the man scribbled a few
words, called a lounging boy from a dark corner and dispatched him to
Sheriff Goode. Jerry introduced his companions to Mr. Hale, then
explained the object of their visit.

Mr. Hale shook his head. “Well, that’s just too bad,” he said. “I happen
to know that Gray Bluffs country well. Stopped off when I first came
West, health-hunting, but it didn’t agree with me there; nothing like
this Tombstone shine and air to make sick lungs well.”

His tanned face and bright eyes told his enthusiasm, but he added
quickly, “_That_ won’t interest you any. What I started to say is that
Gray Bluffs isn’t a real town, that is not _now_. It was, of course, when
they first found gold in the bluffs, but it petered out, the post office
moved to another place and so did the folks who’d lived there.”

“Did you ever hear of a woman named Burger over there?” Jerry asked.

“Sure! That was the name of the postmistress, Miss Kate Burger. She died,
though, along about five years ago.”

Just then the instrument began an excited clicking. The operator turned
his attention to it. “Say, that’s great!” he ejaculated as though
addressing whoever was sending the message.

“Oh, Mr. Hale, _have_ they caught the robbers?” Mary asked eagerly.

“No, not that.” The man was scribbling rapidly. “Say, hasn’t that kid—oh,
here you are, Trombone. Take this back to the Deputy Sheriff’s office.
Dep’s been loco all day.” Then to the interested listeners, he explained,
“He’d been promised the help of an air scout from the East; thought maybe
he’d had a smashup; was due this morning early. Well, that last message
was from the head office of the border patrol. The air scout will be
along any time now.”

“Oh, Mr. Hale, is his name Harry Hulbert?” Mary, her pretty cheeks
flushed, listened eagerly for the answer.

“Don’t know! Haven’t heard! Say, Jerry.” The man looked up quickly, and
Dora thought she’d never seen such keen, eagle-like eyes. “You boys had
better drop out the back way if you can. Dep Goode is rounding up all the
able-bodied fellows he can find for the next posse that’s to start as
soon as this air pilot does a little scouting.”

Mary, suddenly panicky at the idea, caught the cowboy’s arm. “Oh, Big
Brother,” she cried, forgetting that the name would sound strange to a
man who knew that Jerry had no sisters, “can’t we get away somehow before
we’re seen?”

Jerry looked at her tenderly, but shook his head. “No, I cain’t dodge my
duty. I _must_ volunteer!” Then, to the other boy, “Dick, you drive the
girls back to Gleeson, will you? I reckon the Deputy Sheriff’ll let you
off. He isn’t after tenderfoot help, meaning no harm, they’d be more of a
hindrance.”

Dick flushed, but knowing that Jerry always meant whatever he said in the
kindest way, he expressed his disappointment. “Oh, I say, Jerry, can’t I
come back after I’ve taken the girls home? I’d like awfully well to hang
around and watch what happens. I’ll promise not to get underfoot or be in
the way.”

Before Jerry could reply, Mary caught his coat sleeve and exclaimed, her
eyes like stars, “Hark, don’t you hear an airplane?”

They all listened and heard distinctly from above the hum of a motor.
Dick sprang toward the door. “Come on, everyone, let’s be among those
present on the reception committee,” he said. Then, remembering his
manners, he stepped back and held the door open for the girls to pass
out.

“Good night, Mr. Hale, and thanks a lot,” Mary called with her sweetest
smile.

“Hope you’ll all drop in again.” The man had only time to nod before his
attention was again called to the busy little instrument.

Out in the street, there were many more men. As the news of the robbery
had spread by horseback riders and remote ranch telephones, men had
galloped into town eager to offer their services. Now they all stood or
sat their horses, silent, for the most part, as they watched the great
silver bird which was slowly circling round and round over their heads.

The moon had risen above distant peaks and was high enough to make the
street dimly lighted.

“Oh, it _must_ be Harry!” Mary whispered excitedly as she clutched
Jerry’s arm not knowing that she did so. “That plane _is_ as silvery as a
seagull, just as Patsy and Polly wrote us.”

“Wonder why he doesn’t land,” Dick commented.

“I reckon there isn’t but one safe landing place in this town, and that’s
right here where the crowd is standing. This square, out front of the
post office, has been landed on before now.”

“See! Something’s falling from the plane.” Dora pointed upward. “It’s a
small something! What _can_ it be?”

The object fell like a plummet and landed at their feet. “It’s an
aluminum bottle. Oh, look! There’s a note attached to it.” Dora picked it
up.

“Here comes Deputy Sheriff Goode,” Jerry told the others. “Give it to me!
I’ll hand it to him.”

The Deputy Sheriff’s restless horse did not stop prancing while the man
opened and read the note. Then he flung it to the ground, pocketing the
small bottle.

Dick, feeling sure that the message had not been of a private nature,
picked it up and with the aid of his flash he read: “Whirl a lantern,
will you, where I’m supposed to land. A. S. H. H.”

“A. S. means air scout, of course,” Dick said.

“And H. H. is Harry Hulbert. Oh, Dora, think of our meeting Patsy’s
aviator.” Mary’s eyes were shining with excitement.

Jerry could not help hearing Dora’s reply. “_Not_ Patsy’s!” was said
teasingly. “Remember _this_ young hero was chosen for _you_.”

“Oh, silly!” Mary retorted, but her rebuke did not seem to be voicing
displeasure.

“Move back! Move back everyone! Scuttle! Five seconds to clear this
square!” Cowmen on horseback were acting as mounted police and were so
effective that in short order the big square was vacant and ready for the
landing.




                             CHAPTER XXIII
                             A SILVER PLANE


There was an almost breathless silence for a moment as the small silver
plane swooped gracefully down and made an easy landing; then the
enthusiasm of the crowd burst forth in shouts of welcome.

“Say, Kid, _you’re_ all right!”

“That’s the kind of a cayuse to be riding!”

“A silver airship for the silver city!”

“Hurrah for the skidder of the skies!”

Horses on the outskirts of the crowd, unused to such commotion, reared
and pranced on their hind legs. Then, seeming to believe that something
_might_ be lacking in the warmth of their welcome, a cowboy shot off his
gun into the air. Instantly Deputy Sheriff Goode shouted for silence.

“Nixy on that!” he commanded. “All of you fellows get to shootin’ an’ we
won’t do much creepin’ up on the gang.”

“Goodness!” Mary said to Jerry. “He must think those bandits are hiding
somewhere _near here_. They couldn’t possibly hear the shooting if they
were over the border in Mexico, could they?”

The cowboy shook his head. “It’s just that he doesn’t want to take any
chances, I reckon.” Then, generously, he added, “You girls will want to
meet Harry Hulbert, won’t you? He’s talking to the ‘Dep’ now.
Jehoshaphat! That’s too bad. He’s going right up again.”

“I guess the Deputy Sheriff wants Harry to start in scouting and not
waste time visiting with girls,” Dora remarked.

“Back! Back everyone!” the deputized cowboys rode around the square,
clearing it again, for the curious and interested crowd had pressed close
to the plane.

“There, up she goes! Whoopee!” Some cowboy shouted in Mary’s ear. “Me for
the air!” he waved his sombrero so close that it fanned her cheek.

“Ain’t that the plumb-beatenest way to go places?” another cowboy was
actually addressing Dora in such a friendly manner that she replied in
like spirit, “Yes, it’s great!”

Jerry turned to Dick. “Take the girls back to where we left the car, will
you? I’m going to speak to Goode. Be over in a minute.”

“Oh, Big Brother,” Mary caught his hand, “don’t do anything that _might_
be dangerous, will you? It would be terrible for your mother if anything
happened to you.”

Hope and love had, for a moment, lighted the cowboy’s eyes, but the last
part of Mary’s importuning had seemed to be entirely for another, and so,
as he turned away, Jerry’s heart was heavy.

Mary’s gaze, he noticed, had quickly turned from him up to the sky where
a silver plane was still discernible riding toward the moon.

Dick took an arm of each girl and the crowd made a path for them.

“I like these cowmen and boys, don’t you, Dora?” Mary had climbed into
the rumble with her friend. “They have such nice, kind faces and they’re
so picturesque with their wide hats and colored shirts and
handkerchiefs.”

Dora nodded. “There’s a boy over there on horseback. See his leather
chaps are fringed and he has spurs on his boots.”

“They act as though this was some sort of a celebration, don’t they,
Dick?”

The boy was leaning against the car watching the milling throng which was
being augmented in numbers by newcomers riding in from the dark desert.

“What’s the big show?” A weazened, grizzly-headed man in tattered clothes
had suddenly appeared at Dick’s side. He had a canvas-covered roll
strapped to his back and carried a stout stick. His pinched face was
starved-looking and his eyes were feverishly bright.

Dick explained what was happening and, without a word, the queer creature
scuttled out of sight in the crowd.

“That poor man!” Mary exclaimed sympathetically. “What _can_ he be?”

“Don’t ask me,” Dick replied. “I haven’t been out here long enough to
know all the types.”

A pleasant voice said, “That’s a typical desert rat. He digs around and
sometimes finds a little gold, but mostly he lives on sand, I reckon.”

Mary recognized the speaker as a clerk in the grocery store. Before she
could ask more about the poor unfortunate, someone hailed their informant
and he hurried away.

Jerry returned and his face was grave. “I hardly know what to say,” he
began. “I don’t want to frighten you girls unnecessarily, but Deputy
Sheriff Goode thinks it would be unwise for you to return over that
lonely road to Gleeson tonight, or, at least not until the hiding place
of the bandits has been discovered.”

“Oh, Jerry!” Mary’s one thought was concern for her father. “I _must_ let
Dad know that I am safe and that I may not be home at once. Won’t you
please telephone him? You will know best what to say.”

“Yes, I’ll be back in a minute.” They watched him pushing his way toward
the one drug store in the town.

Mary turned toward Dick. “Now, what does _that_ mean, do you suppose?”

“I think it merely means that the ‘Dep’ isn’t sure that the robbers _did_
cross into Mexico. He thinks they may be hiding nearer here than that.”

“I thought as much,” Dora commented, “when he was so upset because a
cowboy started shooting.”

Jerry was not gone long. “I explained to your mother, Dick. She said Mr.
Moore is asleep and that she will not waken him. Her advice is that you
girls take a room in the little old hotel here and wait until morning.”

The girls were relieved as they had neither of them relished the idea of
returning over that desolately lonesome road with bandits at large.

Jerry was continuing. “Mrs. Goode runs the hotel and she’s just as nice
and friendly as she can be. The mothering sort. Dick, you stay here in
the car, will you, while I escort the girls across the road?”

“With the greatest of pleasure!” the Eastern boy said.

Dora teased, as she permitted him to assist her out of the rumble. “You
ought _not_ to say that you’re pleased to have us _leave_ you.”

“Not _that_; NEVER!” Dick assured her, then in a low voice he confided,
“I’ve been wild to be _in_ on all this, and if I’d been sent home with
you girls, I—”

Dora laughingly interrupted. “You might have been _in_ it more than any
of the others.” She shuddered at the thought. “We three might have—”

“_Now_, who’s using her imagination?” Mary inquired. Then, after scanning
the heavens, she added, “Big Brother, the Seagull has flown entirely out
of sight, hasn’t it?”

“I reckon it has. Back in a minute, Dick.”

Mary and Dora were thrilled with excitement and thought all that was
transpiring a high adventure, although they _were_ a little troubled,
fearing that the three boys in whom they were interested might be in
danger before the night was over.

The old adobe two-story building to which Jerry led the girls was across
the wide square from the post office. The large office was filled with
people, most of them women of the town who had gathered there. Many had
come from the lonely outskirts. They had been afraid to stay alone in
their homes while their men were bandit-hunting.

Jerry soon saw the pleasant face of the rather short, plump Mrs. Goode.
He led the girls to her and explained their presence.

“So _you_ are Mary Moore grown up!” the woman said kindly. “I knew your
mother well when she came here as a bride. Everyone loved her in these
parts; they sure did.” Then, to the tall cowboy who stood waiting,
although impatient to be away, she assured him, “I’ll take good care of
them, don’t fear!”

“I know you will. Good night, Mary and Dora.” The cowboy held out a hand
to each then was gone.

Dora thought, “Oho, _something has_ happened. There was no tenderness in
_that_ parting. Hum-m, what can it be? Ah, I believe I see light!”

Mary was saying, “I do hope that Harry Hulbert is all right. Isn’t it the
most heroic thing that he is doing?”

“Who’s he, dearie?” Mrs. Goode, having heard, asked. “Oh, yes, the sky
pilot. A nice face he has. I gave him a cup of coffee. His manners are
the best ever. Well, come along upstairs. I’ll give you the front corner
room where you can watch the goings-on, if you’d like that.”

“Oh yes, please do, Mrs. Goode. I never was more thrilled in all my
days.” It was Dora speaking. “I know that I won’t sleep a single mite,
will you, Mary?”

“I don’t intend to try,” that fair maid replied as they followed up the
broad carpeted stairway and entered a plainly furnished hotel room. There
were two large windows overlooking the square below and the girls, having
said good night to their hostess, went at once to look down upon the
crowd.

The men had divided into small groups and were talking earnestly
together. A group of younger cowboys just in front of the hotel, were
making merry. One of them strummed a guitar and several of them flung
themselves about dancing wildly, improvising as they went along. Their
efforts were applauded hilariously.

“No one would guess that they thought they _might_ be going to battle
with bandits before morning,” Mary said. Then she looked up at the
moon-shimmered sky. For a long time she gazed intently at one spot.

“Is that a pale star or is it the little silver plane coming nearer?” she
asked.

Dora watched the faintly glittering object, then exclaimed glowingly, “It
surely _is_ the Seagull. Oh, Mary, _do_ you suppose Harry Hulbert has
located those bandits?”




                              CHAPTER XXIV
                           A LONG NIGHT WATCH


Someone in the crowd saw the approaching plane. A shout went up which was
augmented to a roar of welcome. Once again a space was cleared; this time
without the command from the Deputy Sheriff.

The girls threw open the window and leaned out as the plane landed and
the men closed in about it. How they wished they could hear what was
being said. They saw Harry Hulbert leap out and, by his excited gestures,
the girls were sure that he had made some discovery which he considered
important.

“He seems to be pointing toward ‘The Dragoons.’” Mary looked over the
scattered buildings of the town, across the gray desert to the dull red
cliffs that loomed dark in the moonlight.

Dora caught her friend’s arm and held it tight. “Mary Moore,” she cried,
“if we had gone home tonight, we would have passed the side road that
leads to ‘The Dragoons,’ wouldn’t we?”

Mary nodded, but said nothing. She knew what her friend was thinking.

“Watch what they’re doing now. The sheriff is having the men who are
armed show their guns. Here come boys from the jail bringing more
firearms.” Mary turned a face, white with alarm. “Oh, Dora, don’t you
wish this was all over? Look, Jerry and Dick and Harry are getting up on
horseback. I do hope Harry knows how to ride. Good gracious, Dora, those
three boys are going with the sheriff to lead the posse. Isn’t that
terrible?”

“I don’t know as it is,” was the surprisingly calm reply. “Naturally
Harry would be the one to lead the men to the place where he saw the
bandits hiding.”

Women in the office of the hotel, seeing that their men were about to
ride away, rushed out to bid them goodbye.

The young boys and old men were not taken. After the others were gone,
there was an almost deathlike stillness down in the square. The women
returned indoors. Old men, many of them gray-bearded, stood in groups on
the sidewalks talking in low tones and shaking their grizzled heads
ominously. The boys trooped over to the pool hall. The proprietor had
been among the men who had ridden away and so the boys could play without
charge which they did gleefully.

Mary sank down on a low rocker near the window and her sweet blue eyes
were tragic as she gazed up at her friend. “Dora,” she said “if you were
a boy, would you have dared to ride into a robber’s den the way—”

“Sure thing,” was the brief reply. Dora still stood gazing at the desert
valley. Although the road disappeared from their sight when it first
dipped down from the town, she knew that the riders would again be
visible as they crossed to “The Dragoons.”

“If we can see them crossing the valley, so can the bandits,” she said,
thinking aloud. “Of course, the robbers must have look-outs if that’s
what men are called who spy around to warn the others of danger.”

“There they are! There they are!” Mary leaped to her feet to point. Dark
distant objects were moving rapidly across the moonlit sands of the
valley.

Suddenly Mary turned, a new alarm expressed in her face. “Dora,” she
cried, “now that only old men and boys are left here to protect this
town, what if the bandits should circle around and rob the stores and the
post office—”

“And carry off the beautiful young damsels,” Dora laughingly added, “like
a chapter out of an old-time story-book.”

“It may be amusing to you,” Mary seemed actually hurt, “but things _do_
happen even _now_ that are worse than anything I ever read in a book.”

“Righto! Ah agrees, as Sambo says.” Dora turned and slipped an arm about
her friend, and then, as though trying to change her thought, she went
on, “I wonder if that old darky and Marthy, his wife, will be working at
Sunnybank Seminary next fall when we go back.”

“That all seems so far away and so long ago, almost like a dream,” Mary
replied, as she gazed down at the silver plane which had been left in the
care of the old men. They were walking around it now, looking it over
with frank curiosity.

Dora tried again. “How I do wish Patsy and Polly were here! Pat,
especially, would get a great ‘kick,’ as she’d call it, out of all this
excitement.”

“More than I am, no doubt,” Mary confessed. “My imagination is getting
wilder and wilder every minute. I’m expecting something awful to happen
right here and—what was that?” She jumped and put her hand on her heart.

“Someone knocked on the door.” Dora went to open it. Mrs. Goode, looking
anxious in spite of her smile, said, “Don’t you girls want something to
eat? It’s almost midnight and you must be hungry.”

“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Goode, I suppose we are hungry. We’re so terribly
nervous, I don’t know as we could eat, really.”

“Well, try, dearies. Here’s Washita with a tray.”

Washita was an Indian girl with black, furtive eyes and a red woolen
dress. She also had red rags twined in with her long black braids. She
carried a tray into the room. Silently, she placed it on a table and
glided out. Mary shuddered unconsciously. “Indians give me the
‘shilly-shivers’ as Pat says.”

“Washita is harmless. I’ve had her for two years now. She’s almost the
last of a powerful tribe of Apaches which, long ago, had ‘The Dragoons’
for their fortress,” Mrs. Goode was explaining, when Mary begged, “Oh, do
tell us what you think the outcome of this raid will be. You know we have
three dear friends in the posse.”

Dora thought, “Aha! Harry Hulbert is a dear friend, is he, even before we
have met him.”

Mrs. Goode was replying. “I have a husband and two dearly loved sons
among those men, but, they _must_ do their duty. The life of a sheriff’s
wife is one of constant fear. I am feeling sure, though, that they will
all come back soon with their captives. The jail is ready for the
bandits. Now I must go back to the office. If you want me, ring the bell.
I’ll send Washita up for the tray—”

“Oh, Mrs. Goode, please don’t! Somehow she startles me.” It was Mary
imploring, although she knew her fears were foolish.

Mrs. Goode merely replied, “All right, dear. The tray can wait until
morning.”

Dora moved the kerosene lamp from the bureau to the small table. Then
they sat down and nibbled at the chicken sandwiches which had been
temptingly made. The milk was creamy and Dora succeeded in finishing her
share.

Mary, carrying a half-eaten sandwich, went to the window and looked
across the desert. She whirled and beckoned, then pointed. “Don’t you see
a horseman galloping this way?”

“I do see some object that seems to be coming pretty fast,” Dora
conceded. “Now it’s out of sight below the silver hills.”

Almost breathless they waited until the horseman again appeared. “He’s
probably the bearer of some sort of message,” Dora decided when the man
leaped from his horse and ran into the hotel.

Mary had put the partly eaten sandwich back on her plate and sat with
clenched hands waiting—hoping that they would soon learn the news which
the man brought.

“Don’t expect the worst,” Dora begged.

Although Mary was hoping there would come a knock at their door, she
jumped again when she heard it. Once more it was Dora who went to admit
their caller. A young cowboy, hot and panting, stood there holding out an
envelope.

“The writin’ ain’t in it, it’s on the back of it,” he informed them.

It had evidently been an old letter Dick had found in his pocket as it
bore his name on the envelope. The scribbled note was:

“We’re all right. The worst is over. Surprised the men while they were
all drunk except the sentinels. We’re fetching them in. Be back by
daybreak. Better get some sleep now.” Dick’s name was signed to it.

“Thanks be.” Mary finished her sandwich when the cowboy was gone, while
Dora, who was turning back the bedspread, said, “We’ll take Dick’s advice
and go to sleep or at least try to.”

“Well, I’ll lie down,” Mary was removing her shoes as she spoke, “but I
don’t expect to sleep a wink.”

They removed their outer clothing, then drew a quilt up over them. The
boys from the pool room had crossed to hear the news and many of them
returned to their homes with their mothers. They evidently believed
implicitly that all of the bandits had been captured and so they had
nothing to fear.

The humming of voices in the office was stilled and soon there were no
sounds in the street below.

Dora, no longer anxious, went to sleep quickly and although Mary had been
sure she wouldn’t sleep at all, at daybreak they neither of them heard
the men returning. It was hours later when there came a rap on their
door. Mary sat up looking about wildly. “Who’s there?” she called, almost
fearfully, then remembering that all was well, she jumped up and opened
the door a crack. Mrs. Goode smiled in at her. “Dearie,” she said, “Jerry
sent me up to ask if you girls will come down to breakfast now.”

“Of course we will. Thanks a lot.” Still Dora slept on. Mary shook her
laughingly as she said, “Wake up, Dodo! The hour is here at last when we
are to meet Pat’s aviator.”

Dora sprang out of bed and hurriedly dressed. “I feel in my bones,” she
prophesied, “that you and I will _share_ in some excitement today. See if
we don’t!”




                              CHAPTER XXV
                             A CRY FOR HELP


The three boys glanced toward the stairway as the girls descended. Dick
advanced to meet them, then introduced the tall, lithe young stranger as
the “hero of the hour.”

Harry Hulbert’s rather greenish-blue eyes had a humorous twinkle which
softened their keenness. He looked down at the girls with sincere
pleasure in his rather thin face.

“This is great!” he exclaimed. “I’ve heard so much about you from your
friends Patsy and Polly that I feel well acquainted with both Miss Moore
and Miss Bellman.”

“Oh, don’t ‘Miss’ us, _please_!” Dora begged. “It makes me feel old as
the hills.”

“Then I won’t until I’m far away,” he replied gallantly. “I’m really
awfully glad to be able to say Mary and Dora.”

Harry’s glance at the fairer, younger girl was undeniably admiring and
Dora thought, “I wonder if _he knows_ that Pat has given him to Mary.
Poor Jerry, he looks sort of miserable.” Aloud Dora exclaimed, “Dick, do
lead us to the dining-room. I’m famished.”

The cafe was in a low, adjoining building. There had been no pretense at
beautifying the place. It was plain and bare but clean and sun-flooded.

It was late and whoever may have breakfasted there had long since gone so
the young people had the place to themselves. They chose a table for six
though there were but five of them. Harry was at one end with Mary at his
right. He had led her to that place without question. Dick escorted Dora
to the opposite end and sat beside her. Jerry took the seat across from
Mary, at Harry’s left.

“He’s a trump!” Dora thought as she noted how unselfishly Jerry played
the gracious host.

Mrs. Goode took their order, and Washita silently, and, with what to Mary
seemed like stealthy movements, served it.

While they were eating, the curious girls begged to hear all that had
happened, but Dick said, “Why drag it out? Harry saw and we all
conquered. Not a gun was fired, not a drop of blood was spilled. The bags
of ore were discovered and are now locked up in the cellar of the jail.”

“Oh, Jerry,” Mary exclaimed instinctively turning to her older
acquaintance, “how can you be sure that the bandits were _all_ captured?
Couldn’t one or two of them have been away scouting or something?”

“That we can’t tell for sure, of course, but I reckon we got them all.”
Then turning to Dick, he added, “We’d better be getting back to _Bar N_
soon as we can.”

Mary, flushed and shining-eyed, leaned toward the young aviator. “You’re
going to fly over to Gleeson, aren’t you, so that we may get really
acquainted?”

“I’d like to, awfully well, but Jerry tells me that there isn’t a safe
landing anywhere for miles around.”

“Aha,” Dora thought, “Jerry scores there.” But she was wrong, for the
cowboy was saying generously, “I’m sure Deputy Sheriff Goode will loan
you a car. He has two little ones besides the town ambulance. I’d ask you
to ride with us but my rattletrap will only hold four.”

Jerry’s suggestion was carried out. Deputy Sheriff Goode had a small car
he was glad to loan to Harry. The proprietor of the pool hall agreed to
watch the “Seagull” and warn all curious boys to stay away from it.

“I won’t be able to stay long,” Harry told them. “I’ll have to fly back
to headquarters in Tucson this afternoon to report.” Then, glancing at
Mary, invitation in his eyes, he asked, “Must I ride all alone in this
borrowed flivver?”

“Of course not! I’ll ride with you if the others are willing. I mean,”
Mary actually blushed in her confusion, “if you would like to have me.”

For answer Harry took her arm and led her across to the small car which
stood waiting in front of the hotel. “We’ll follow where you lead,
Jerry,” he called to the cowboy.

“Righto!”

Since Dora was already in the rumble, Dick climbed in beside her and
Jerry started his small car and turned toward the valley road. Dora said
not one word but the glance her dark eyes gave her companion spoke
volumes. His equally silent reply was understanding and eloquent.

Harry had a moment’s difficulty in starting his borrowed car and they did
not overtake the others until they were out of the town and about to dip
down into the desert valley. Then, when Jerry’s car was not far ahead,
the young aviator slowed down and smiled at Mary in the friendliest way.

“So this is actually _you_,” he said. His tone inferred that it was hard
to believe. “Pat had a picture of you in a fluffy white dress. That
photographer was an artist all right. He caught the sunlight on your hair
so that, to _me_, you looked, honestly, just like an angel from heaven
come down. I thought the girl who had posed for _that_ picture must be
the earth’s sweetest.”

Wild roses could not have been pinker than Mary’s cheeks. She protested,
“You mustn’t flatter me that way. I _might_ believe it.”

“I rather hoped you _would_ believe it,” the boy said earnestly, then
abruptly he changed the subject. “This is a great country, isn’t it? And
to think that _you_ were born here. It’s all so rough and rugged, it’s
hard to picture a frail flower—”

Mary laughingly interrupted. “You should see the exquisite blossoms that
grow on a thorny cactus plant,” she told him. Then, seeing that Jerry had
stopped his car and was waiting for them to come alongside, she
exclaimed, “I wonder what Big Brother wants. We’re close to the side
road, aren’t we, where you turned last night when you went over to ‘The
Dragoons?’”

“I believe we are,” Harry replied absently, then asked, “Why do you call
Jerry Newcomb ‘Big Brother?’”

“Oh, because we were playmates years ago when we were small and I’ve
always called his mother ‘Aunt Mollie.’ He takes good care of me just
like a real brother,” she ended rather lamely.

Harry was bringing his small car to a standstill near the other. He
leaned close to Mary and said in a low voice, “I’m glad it’s _only_
brother.”

Although the occupants of the other car could not hear the words, they
had seen the almost affectionate way in which the words had been spoken.

Dora thought, “Aviators are evidently lightning workers.”

Jerry’s expression did not reveal his thoughts. He spoke to both Dick and
Harry. “I did something last night, I reckon, I _never_ did before. I
laid my six shooter down on a rock and in all the excitement I plumb
forgot it. Would you mind if we went up this road a piece—”

“Oh, Jerry,” Dora cried, “can’t we go with you all the way and see where
you found the bandits?” Then, as the cowboy hesitated, Dick said, “I
think it would be perfectly _safe_ to go, don’t you?”

“I reckon so.” Jerry was about to start his car when Mary called, “Jerry
Newcomb, I never once thought to ask you or Dick if there were any _old_
men among those bandits, I mean, any who _might_ have been the ones who
held up the stage and kidnapped Little Bodil.”

Jerry replied, “I reckon not. They were too young.” Then he turned his
car into the side road.

Harry, following, exclaimed, “What’s all this about a kidnapping? It
sounds interesting.”

Mary was glad to have something to talk about which could not possibly
suggest a compliment to her. She found it embarrassing to be so much
admired by a boy who was almost a stranger to her. She told the story
briefly, but from the beginning, and Harry was an appreciative listener.
“That’s a bang-up good mystery yarn!” he said. “I’d like mighty well to
be along when Jerry and Dick climb up into that rock house. Gruesome,
isn’t it, knowing that the old duffer buried himself alive? Clever,
that’s what he was, to make up a yarn about an Evil Eye Turquoise that
would keep thieves all these years away from his gold.”

The side road into the mountains was in worse condition than the one they
had left, and so, for some moments, Harry was silent that he might give
all his attention to guiding the car over an especially dangerous spot.
Then he turned and smiled at Mary. “And so _you_ had hoped that one of
those bandits who were captured last night _might_ have been Bodil’s
kidnapper. That would hardly be possible. Such things don’t happen in
real life and, also, as you say, the little girl may have been dragged
away to the lair of a mountain lion.”

Mary’s attention had been attracted by the car ahead. “Jerry’s stopping
again,” she said.

Harry put on the brakes. The cowboy had leaped out and was coming back
toward them. “I don’t believe we’d better try to go any further along
this road,” he told them. “Harry, if you will stay with the girls, Dick
and I will—”

“Hark, Big Brother, _what_ was that?” Mary held up a finger and listened
intently. On their left was a deep brush-tangled arroyo. They all heard
distinctly a low moan that seemed to form the word “Help.”

The boys looked at each other puzzled and wondering. Jerry’s hand slipped
instinctively to his holster and, finding it empty, he held out his hand
for Dick’s gun. Then he went cautiously to the rock-piled edge of the
arroyo. Dora asked, “Does Jerry think it’s one of the bandits, do you
suppose, who tried to get away and was hurt somehow?”

“Probably,” Dick replied. He leaped out to the road and Harry joined him.
They watched Jerry’s every move, ready to go to him if he beckoned.
Suddenly Mary screamed and Harry leaped back to her. They had heard the
report of a gun although Jerry had not fired.




                              CHAPTER XXVI
                             IS IT A CLUE?


The shot undeniably had been fired from the brush-tangled arroyo. Jerry
stepped back that he might not be a helpless target while he conferred
with the other boys.

“I cain’t understand it at all,” he said. “If we missed getting one of
the bandits, he wouldn’t be staying around here. By this time, he’d be
miles away.”

“You’re right about that,” Dick agreed. “My theory is that the man who
called for help was the one who fired the shot.”

Harry said, “Don’t you think that possibly someone is hurt and fearing
that his call wasn’t heard, he fired his gun to attract our attention? He
may have heard our cars climbing the grade. They made noise enough.”

Jerry, feeling convinced that this was more than likely a fact, went
again to the edge of the arroyo, and, keeping hidden behind the jagged
pile of rocks, he looked intently through the dark tangle to the dry
creek in the arroyo bottom. As his eyes became accustomed to the dimness
he saw the figure of an old man lying on his back, one leg bent under
him, his arms thrown out helplessly. One hand held a gun. Undeniably he
it was who had fired the shot.

Without waiting to inform the others of his decision, Jerry leaped over
the rocks and crashed through the brush. Dick and Harry followed a second
later.

As they stood looking down at the wan face of a very old man their hearts
were touched.

“Poor fellow,” Jerry said, kneeling and lifting the hand that held the
gun. “I reckon firing that shot was the last act he did in this life.”

“I’m not so sure.” Dick had opened the old man’s torn shirt and was
listening to his heart. “He’s still alive. Hadn’t we better get him back
to Tombstone to a doctor?”

For answer the boys lifted the stranger who was lighter than they had
dreamed possible and carried him slowly back up to the road. The girls,
awed and silent, asked if they could help, but Jerry shook his head. At
his suggestion the old man was placed at his side. The girls rolled their
sweater coats to place under his head and shoulders. Dick, from the back,
through a tear in the curtain, held him in position.

Turning the cars was difficult but not impossible. Awed and in silence
they returned to town.

Dr. Conrad, luckily, was in his office in a small adobe building near the
hotel. The old man was still breathing when he was carried in and laid on
a couch. Restoratives quickly applied were effective and soon the tired
sunken eyes opened. The unkempt grizzled head turned restlessly, then
pleadingly he asked, “Jackie, have you seen him?”

There was such a yearning eagerness in the old man’s face that Mary hated
to have to shake her head and say, “No.”

Jerry asked, “Who is Jackie?” But the old man did not reply. As though
the effort had been too much for him, he closed his eyes and rested.

Dick exclaimed eagerly, “Jerry, you know that young boy we brought over
with the bandits. Couldn’t we ask Deputy Sheriff Goode to bring him over
here? He would know if this old man belongs to the robber band, although
that boy certainly didn’t look like a criminal.”

The plan seemed a good one and was carried out. The boy, fair-haired and
about nine years old, cried out when he saw the old man and running to
him, threw himself down beside the lounge and sobbed, “Granddad!
Granddad! Oh, _do_ wake up. I’m so glad you found me. I thought _this_
time they’d make away with me for sure.”

Slowly a smile spread over the wan features. The sunken eyes opened and
looked directly at the tear-wet face of the boy. “Jackie,” the old man
said, and there was infinite love in his voice. “Thank God you’re safe!
They’ve ruined me. They _mustn’t_ ruin you. Go to Sister Theresa. Hide
there.” For a long moment he breathed heavily, his gaze on the face of
the boy he so loved. Then he made another effort to speak. “I’m dying,
Jackie. I give you to Sister Theresa. Goodbye. Be—a—good boy.”

The girls, unable to keep back their tears, turned away, but Mary,
hearing the child’s pitiful sobs, went over to him and, kneeling at his
side, put a comforting arm about him. Trustingly he leaned his head
against her shoulder and clung to her as though he knew she must be a
friend.

Later, when the boy’s grief had been quieted, the young people, at the
doctor’s suggestion, took him into another room and questioned him.

“How had he happened to be with the robber band?”

“Who was his grandfather?”

“Where would they find Sister Theresa that they might take him there as
his granddad had requested?”

Still in the loving shelter of Mary’s arm, the boy, at first chokingly,
then more clearly, told all that he knew. His grandfather, he said, had
been a marked man by that robber band. He had done something _years ago_
to turn them against him, Jackie didn’t know what. They had robbed him.
They had destroyed his ranch and his cattle. They had stolen Jackie once
before, but he had gotten away that time, but this time they had watched
him too closely. Granddad had been hunting for him.

Sister Theresa? She was a nun and lived in a convent on the Papago
reservation up to the north, quite far to the north, Jackie thought.

Deputy Sheriff Goode came in and listened to what Jerry had to tell him
of the child’s story. He nodded solemnly. “I know that good woman,” he
said; “she is one of the world’s best. I reckon the kid’s telling the
truth. If you have the time, Jerry, I wish you’d take him over there
right away.”

The combination ambulance and police car was brought out. That it was
seldom used was evidenced by the sand on the seats and floor. Jerry drove
it to a gas station and had the tank filled. Jackie, who clung to Mary as
though she alone could understand his grief, nestled close to her in the
big car.

Harry said to Jerry, “Old man, I think I’d better fly over. The Papago
reservation is close to Tucson, isn’t it, and I must turn in a report.
Then I’ll join you all and come back with you perhaps.”

“Oh, please do!” Mary called to him. “I want you to meet the nicest dad
in the world. He’ll be so interested in hearing about your trip from the
East.”

A crowd of townspeople had gathered in the square and silently watched as
the big police car started and the “Seagull” took to the air.

As they were rumbling along, Dora, across from Mary, silently pointed at
the boy. “He’s asleep, little dear,” she said softly.

Dick was on the driver’s seat with Jerry.

“Dora,” Mary whispered, “how tangled up things are. We _were_ hunting for
one child and find another. Something seems always to lead us farther
away from solving the mystery of poor Little Bodil.”

“I know,” Dora agreed, “but after all, we could hardly expect, I suppose,
after all these years, to unravel _that_ mystery.”

It was not a long ride. The road was smooth and hard. The car rolled
along so rapidly that the forty miles were covered in less than an hour.
Dora, looking out of the opening in the back of the wagon, was delighted
when she saw tepees along the roadside. Also, there were small adobe
shacks with yucca stalk fences and drying ears of corn and red peppers in
strings hanging over them.

“Oh, how fascinating this place is!” she whispered. “Do look! There’s a
Papago family. The mother has her baby strapped to her back.” The convent
was an unpretentious rambling adobe building painted a glistening white.
Jerry turned in through an arched adobe gate over which stood a wooden
cross.

At a side door he stopped, got out and, climbing a few steps, pulled on a
rope which hung there. Almost at once the door was opened by a
sweet-faced nun who smiled a welcome. Jerry asked, “May we speak with
Sister Theresa?”

“Yes, will you come in?” Then, glancing out at the car and seeing the two
girls, she added hospitably, “all of you.”

Jerry lifted out the sleeping boy and carried him into the long, cool
waiting room. The sister who had opened the door had gone to call Sister
Theresa and so she did not see the child.

Mary glanced skyward before she entered the convent and, seeing the
silver plane circling about, wondered if Harry would be able to land.
Evidently he decided that it would be unwise, for he was dropping the
small aluminum bottle once again. Mary ran to the spot where it fell and
read the note. “Unsafe to land on the sand. Will return to Tombstone and
wait for you there.”

Dora glanced at Mary’s face and saw an expression which told her
disappointment. Once again she thought, “Poor Jerry!”

Dick, who had waited for them, said, “He’s a wise bird, that Harry
Hulbert. He takes no chances.” Then they three went indoors and joined
Jerry who, seated on a bench, held the sleeping child.




                             CHAPTER XXVII
                             IT WAS A CLUE


Jackie wakened and opened wondering eyes at the moment when a kind-faced
woman in nun’s garb entered from an inner corridor. With a glad cry he
slipped from Jerry and ran with arms outstretched.

The young people rose and waited, sure that this woman, who had stooped
to comfort the sobbing child, must be the Sister Theresa to whom he had
been given. She was evidently questioning him and brokenly he was telling
that the robbers had carried him off and that Granddad was dead.

She lifted a sorrowful face toward the strange young people and without
questioning their identity, she said, “It was very kind of you all to
bring Jackie to me. Did Mr. Weston send me a message?”

Jerry, realizing that formal introductions were unnecessary at a time
like this, replied, “Yes, Sister Theresa. The old man was so nearly dead
when we found him in an arroyo over near ‘The Dragoons’ that he could say
little. However, he _did_ give Jackie to you.”

The nun had seated herself and had motioned the others to do likewise.
The boy, standing at her side, was looking up into her face with
tear-filled, anxious eyes.

“Poor little fellow,” she said. “His life has been full of fear, but now,
if those tormentors of his grandfather are in prison, he will be free of
the constant dread of being kidnapped.”

“Sister Theresa,” Mary leaned forward to ask, “_why_ did those cruel men
wish to harm so helpless a child?”

The nun shook her head sadly. “It is a long story,” she said, “and one
that causes me much pain to recall, but I will tell you. Years ago this
good man, who had the largest cattle ranch in these parts, was riding
over the mountains carrying about his person large sums of money. He was
overtaken by two highwaymen, who, after robbing him, forced him to
continue with them over a lonely mountain road. When they were at a high
spot, they heard a stage coming and they forced Mr. Weston to hide with
them around a curve. When the stage was almost upon them, the bandits
rode out, shot the driver and stole the bags of gold they found. The
frightened horses plunged over a cliff taking with it the dead driver and
one man passenger. A child, that man’s sister, was thrown into the road.
The bandits thought only of escape, and, for a time, they forgot their
captive. Seeing a chance to get away, he turned his horse and galloped
back toward his ranch. Finding the child in the road, he took time to
snatch her up and take her with him. He brought her to this convent where
she has been ever since.”

The listeners, who, one and all had guessed the speaker’s true identity,
could hardly wait until she had finished to ask if she were the long lost
Little Bodil.

Tense emotion brought tears to the woman’s kind eyes. “My dears,” she
said, looking from one to another of them. “My dears, _can_ you tell me
of my brother, Sven Pedersen? I have always thought that he must have
been killed when the stage plunged over the cliff. At first I hoped this
was not true, but when he never came to find me—”

Mary interrupted, “Oh, Sister Theresa, your brother never stopped trying
to find you.”

Jerry said, “He advertised in newspapers.”

The nun shook her head. “We do not take newspapers here and Mr. Weston,
who had a nervous collapse for a long time, was not permitted to read.
Yes, that accounts for it. My poor brother! How needlessly he grieved.”

Jerry and Dick exchanged glances and Dick’s lips formed the word “money.”

The cowboy said, “Sister Theresa, from the tale of an old storekeeper in
Gleeson, who knew your brother well, we have learned that he has a letter
for you written in Danish which tells where he left some money for you.”

“I shall be glad to have the letter,” the woman said, her face
lightening, “not because of the money which I will use for others, as we
here take the vow of poverty, but because of some message I am sure the
letter will contain.”

Mary, thinking of the Dooleys, wanted to ask if the money might, part of
it at least, be used for _them_ but she thought better of it.

The nun, looking tenderly down at the boy who still nestled close to her,
said lovingly, “Poor Little Jackie, how I wish I _could_ keep him here
with me, but that would not be permitted since he is a boy.” As though
inspired, she told them, “If that money is found, I will give a good part
of it to someone who will make a happy home for this little fellow.”

Mary also was inspired. “Oh, Sister Theresa,” how eagerly she spoke. “I
know the very nicest family and they’re in great need. Caring for Jackie
would be a godsend to them and bring great happiness into _his_ life, I’m
sure of that.”

Then she told—with Jerry’s help—all that she knew of Etta Dooley and her
family.

The nun turned to the cowboy. “I like what you tell me about that little
family. If there is money to pay her, I would like to see your friend
Etta.” She was rising as she spoke. A muffled gong was ringing in the
inner corridor. The young people also rose.

“I am sure Etta will come, Sister Theresa,” Mary said.

Jerry promised to try to bring the letter on the morrow. The nun, smiling
graciously at them all, held out her hand to first one and then another,
saying, “Thank you and goodbye.” The little boy echoed, “Goodbye.” He was
to remain with Sister Theresa until she had met and approved of Etta
Dooley.

As the young people were about to leave the convent, the young nun who
had admitted them appeared and said, “Sister Theresa invites you to
lunch. It is long after the noon hour.”

She turned, not waiting for a possible refusal and so they followed her
through a side door, along a narrow corridor which ended in descending
steps. They found themselves in a bare basement room. There were plain
wooden tables, clean and white, with benches on both sides. No one was in
evidence as the noon meal had been cleared away. The young nun motioned
them to a table, then glided away to the kitchen. She soon returned with
four bowls of simple vegetable soup, glasses of milk and a plain coarse
brown bread without butter.

“I hadn’t realized how starved I am!” Dora said when they were alone.

“Isn’t it too story-bookish for anything, our finding Little Bodil at
last?” Mary exclaimed as she ate with a relish the appetizing soup.

“Righto. It sure is,” Jerry agreed.

Dick asked, “Do you think Etta Dooley will be too proud to take the
money?”

“I don’t,” Mary said with conviction. “She won’t suspect that we had
_wanted_ to find some way of giving her the money. She’ll think that our
first thought had been to recommend a good home for Jackie. That will
make it all right with her, I’m sure.”

Dora glanced at Jerry somewhat anxiously. “They can stay where they are,
can’t they? Etta said that if it weren’t for her feeling of being
dependent on charity, she would simply love being there.”

Jerry nodded thoughtfully. “I’m sure Dad will be glad to have them. I
reckon he hasn’t any other plans for that cabin. We could lease them, say
three acres, and if they paid a little rent that would make Etta feel
independent.”

Dora added her thought, “If Etta passes those examinations she’s going to
take in Douglas, maybe she could be teacher in that little school near
your ranch, Jerry.”

The cowboy’s face brightened. “Say, that’s a bingo-fine idea! That school
had to close because we hadn’t any children. All we need are eight
youngsters to reopen it. Let’s see, there are the twins, Jackie will make
three.” Then, anxiously he glanced at Mary. “How soon can Baby Bess go to
school?”

“She’d _have_ to go if Etta did,” was the laughing reply.

Dora suggested, “Couldn’t there be a kindergarten department?”

“I reckon so.” The cowboy’s face was troubled. “Four kids aren’t eight.”

Dick, remembering something Mr. Newcomb told his wife, inquired, “Jerry,
your dad asked your mother if she minded having a cowboy next winter who
had a wife and six children.”

“Jolly-O!” Dora cried. “What did Mrs. Newcomb say?”

It was Mary who replied, “You know what dear, big-hearted Aunt Mollie
would say. I can almost hear her tell Uncle Henry that ‘the more the
merrier.’”

“Of course,” Jerry told them, “even if we can work the school plan, the
salary is mighty small. It wouldn’t more than pay their grocery bill but
it’ll help all right, along with—”

Mary caught the cowboy’s arm, her expression alarmed. “Jerry, _what_ if
there _isn’t_ any money in that rock house after our planning?”

“Tomorrow we will know,” Dick said. Then, as the young nun reappeared,
they arose and thanked her for the good meal. Dora noticed that as Dick
passed out he dropped a coin in a little box labeled, FOR THE POOR.




                             CHAPTER XXVIII
                           A NEW COMPLICATION


In the lumbering old police ambulance, the four young people returned to
Tombstone and found Harry Hulbert sitting in a rocker on the hotel porch
waiting for them. He ran toward them waving his cap boyishly. The
“Seagull” reposed in the middle of the square surrounded by interested
and curious cowboys who had ridden in from the range for the mail. Many
of them had come from far and had heard nothing of the “Seagull’s” part
in the recent raid.

“Where do we go from here?” Harry asked when he had learned of the
morning adventure.

“If you can take Mr. Goode’s small car,” Mary began, but Harry
interrupted with, “Can’t be done! They’re both out, one gone to Bisbee
and the other to Nogales.”

“Oh, Big Brother,” Mary exclaimed, “couldn’t Harry sit in the front side
door of your car? We girls used to ride that way at school sometimes.”

“Sure thing!” the cowboy agreed. “All aboard, let’s get going.”

Mary smiled up at him happily. “If the calf has been milking the cow all
this time, it—”

Jerry shook his head. “No such luck—for the calf. Mother can milk in an
emergency.”

The ride to Gleeson was a merry one. Harry sat, literally, at Mary’s
feet, looking up at her admiringly and directing his conversation to her
almost entirely. Jerry was very silent. No one but Dora noticed that.
When Gleeson was reached, the small car stopped in front of the store and
they all rushed in and astounded the old storekeeper with their exultant
shout, “We’ve found Little Bodil!”

“’Tain’t so!” He stared at them unbelievingly. “Arter all these years!
Wall, wall! I’ll be dum-blasted! So Little Bodil is one o’ them
nun-women.” While he talked, he went behind his counter, took an old
cigar box from a high shelf, opened it and held out an envelope, yellowed
with age. He handed it to Jerry. “Take it to Little Bodil. I’ll be cu’ros
to hear what all’s in it.”

“So are we, Mr. Harvey,” Mary began, then exclaimed contritely, “Oh, how
terrible of us. We haven’t introduced the hero of the hour. Mr. Silas
Harvey, this is the air scout who located the train robbers, Harry
Hulbert. He seems like an old friend to us, doesn’t he, Jerry?”

“Sure thing!” the cowboy replied, then glancing at the old dust-covered
clock, he quickly added, “Dick, I reckon I must be getting along over to
_Bar N_.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Harvey. Glad to have met you.” Harry shook hands with the
old man.

When they were outside the post office, the air scout turned to the
cowboy. “Jerry, can’t I be your letter carrier?” he asked. “While I was
waiting for you in Tombstone I enquired about the stage. I can get back
there in about an hour. Then I must fly to Tucson for a meeting at
headquarters tonight. I can motor out to the convent and be back here
tomorrow morning with the letter translated.”

“Sounds all right to me,” Jerry said.

“And during the hour that you have to wait for the stage,” Mary turned
brightly toward Harry, “you may become acquainted with the nicest dad in
the world.”

Forgetting the presence of the others, Harry replied, “Is _that_ why his
daughter is the nicest girl in the world?”

Mary flushed bewitchingly, but it was evident that she was embarrassed.

Jerry drove them up to the Moore house, waited while Dick bounded indoors
to speak to his mother, then they two rode away, promising to return as
soon as they could the next day.

Dora, who had been watching Jerry’s face, knew that he had been deeply
hurt, but she was sure he would not say anything to influence Mary. Dora
thought, “He wants her to choose the one of them who would make her
happier, I suppose. Believe me, it wouldn’t take _me_ long to decide.”

Mr. Moore had heard nothing of the robbery or the raid. Mrs. Farley had
not wished to cause him a moment’s anxiety about the safety of his
idolized daughter. She had told him that the girls were spending the
night with Mrs. Goode in Tombstone, and, since the wife of the Deputy
Sheriff had been a close friend of Mary’s mother, he had thought little
of it. Even now that it was all over, they decided to merely introduce
Harry as a friend of Patsy and Polly, who had come West to be attached to
the border patrol.

Mr. Moore welcomed the boy gladly, and, for half an hour, they talked
together of the East and the West. Mary and Dora slipped away and
returned with lemonade and a plate of Carmelita’s cookie-snaps.

Then the two girls walked down to the cross road with Harry and waited
until he climbed aboard the funny old ’bus and rode away.

He bent low over Mary at the last moment. Dora had not heard his
whispered words, but she knew by the sudden flush that they had been
complimentary.

Arm in arm they turned and walked back up the gently ascending hill-road
toward their home.

“How do you like the newcomer?” Dora tried to make her voice sound
indifferent.

Mary laughingly confessed, “I’d really like him lots better if he didn’t
flatter me so much.”

Dora replied, “I know how you feel. I’d heaps rather have a boy be just a
good pal. It makes a person feel, oh, as if she were the sort of a girl a
boy thought he had to make love to, or she wouldn’t be having a good
time. I’ve known steens of them, fine fellows really, who came over from
Wales Military to our dances. They thought the only way they could put it
over big was to flatter their partners. You know _that_ as well as I do.
Why, we Quadralettes have compared notes time and again and found the
same boy had said the same complimentary thing to all four of us.” Mary
made no reply, so Dora continued, “Dick and Jerry are the sort of boy
friends I like. They treat us as if we could be talked to about something
besides ourselves. I tell you, the girl who can win the love of Jerry
Newcomb is going to win one of the finest men who walks on this green
earth.”

Dora’s tone was so earnest that Mary laughed. “Goodness!” she teased.
“Why all this eloquence? There isn’t any green earth around here for
Jerry to walk on. It’s all sand.”

Suddenly Dora changed the subject. “Why do you suppose Little Bodil is
called Sister Theresa?” she asked.

Mary replied rather absently, “Oh, I think they give up their own and
choose a saint’s name. Anyhow, I’ve heard they do.”

It was evident she was thinking deeply of something else.

Her thoughtfulness continued until after supper.

“What a wonderful moonlight night!” Dora said as the two girls seated
themselves on the top step of the front porch to gaze out across the
shimmering desert valley, below the tableland on which they lived. “I
wish Jerry and Dick would come and take us for a ride.” Hardly had she
said the words when they saw a dark object scudding along on the valley
road.

“Somebody _is_ coming toward Gleeson from the _Bar N_ ranch way,” Mary
said, and Dora noted that her voice was eager, as though she wanted,
_very much wanted_, to see her silent cowboy lover.

For a long time they sat watching the narrow strip of cross road beyond
the post office. If the car turned, it would surely be coming to the
Moore place. If it passed, it would be going on to Tombstone probably. It
turned. More slowly it climbed the grade.

“It’s the little ‘tin Cayuse,’ all right,” Dora said. She was watching
the eager light in Mary’s face, lovely in the moonlight. Then, suddenly
its brightness was shadowed, went out. Dora saw the reason. On the front
seat with Jerry was another girl, a glowing-eyed, truly beautiful girl,
Etta Dooley. In the rumble with Dick were two freckle-faced boys, the
twins. Their ruddy faces were glowing with grins of delight. “Hurray!”
they shouted as the small car stopped near the front porch. “We’re out
moonlight riding.”

Dick quieted them, remembering that Mr. Moore might be asleep. Mary,
looking pale in the silver light, went down to the car and asked Etta if
she wouldn’t get out. “No, thank you,” that maiden replied, “I’ve left
Baby Bess with Aunt Mollie and we’ve been gone more than an hour now, I
do believe.”

“It hasn’t seemed that long, has it?” Jerry was actually looking at Etta
and not at Mary.

“Oh, indeed not!” was the happily given reply. “It’s a treat for the
twins and me to fly through space. Once upon a time I had a little car of
my own, but that seems _ages_ ago.”

This did not seem like the same Etta Dooley who had been so reserved when
the girls had called at her cabin home. _What_ had happened to change
her, Dora wondered.

When the car turned and the small boys, remembering to be quiet, had
nevertheless performed gleeful antics, Mary went up the steps and into
the house.

“I’m going to bed,” she said and her voice sounded tired.

Dora, wickedly pleased, could not let well enough alone. “I didn’t know
that Etta was so well acquainted as to call Jerry’s mother Aunt Mollie.”
She wisely did not add her next thought, “You’ll have to look to your
laurels, Mary-mine. Etta’s a mighty attractive girl and she simply loves
the _Bar N_ ranch.”

When Dora spoke again, it was on an entirely different subject. “Isn’t it
wonderful, Mary, to think that we’ve solved the mystery of Little Bodil
and that tomorrow, perhaps, the boys are going to defy that Evil Eye
Turquoise.”

“I suppose so,” Mary replied indifferently. Dora turned out the light and
with a shrug got into bed with her friend.




                              CHAPTER XXIX
                             AN OLD LETTER


The next day, directly after breakfast, Mary and Dora began to expect
someone to arrive. The roof of the front porch was railed around and when
they had made their bed and tidied their room they stepped out of the
door-like window and stood there gazing about them. From that high
elevation they had a view of the road coming from Tombstone as it climbed
to the tableland and also they could see for miles across the desert
valley toward the _Bar N_ ranch.

“Who do you think will be the first to arrive?” Dora asked as she slipped
an arm about her friend’s waist.

Mary shook her head without replying. Then, because her conscience had
been troubling her, Dora said impulsively, “Mary, dear, I didn’t mean,
last night, that Harry Hulbert says nice things to you without meaning
them. No one could help thinking you’re—”

Mary laughed and put a finger on her friend’s lips. “Now, who’s
flattering?” Then, excitedly, “I hear a car, but I don’t see it.”

“There it is, by the post office,” Dora pointed, then, in a tone of
disappointment, “Oh, it’s only that funny little Jap vegetable man from
Fairbanks.”

A moment later, when they were looking in different directions, they both
exclaimed in chorus, “Here come Jerry and Dick!”

“There’s the Deputy Sheriff’s little car.”

In through the window they leaped, down the front stairway they tripped
and were standing in the graveled walk between the red and gold
border-beds when the two cars arrived, Jerry’s in the lead.

Mary’s heart was heavy, though she tried to smile brightly, when she saw
that Etta Dooley was again on the front seat with Jerry. Dick, this time,
was quite alone. Harry Hulbert, although in the rear, leaped out and
bounded to Mary so quickly that he reached her first.

Her welcome, though friendly, lacked the eager graciousness of the day
before. Harry, however, did not seem to notice it. “I’ve got the
translation here,” he said, waving the old yellow envelope.

Jerry got out of his car, turned to speak to Etta and then walked toward
the waiting group. Dick had already disappeared into the house in search
of his mother.

Etta, remaining in the car, called, “Good morning” to the girls. Jerry
explained, “I haven’t told Etta the whole story, just the part about
Little Bodil and the rock house. She was so interested, I told her we’d
be glad to have her go with us.”

Mary smiled at him rather wistfully, Dora thought. Then she walked to the
side of the car and said, “Won’t you get out, Etta, while we read the
letter?”

Jerry, who had followed her, said, “Dick wanted us to wait till we got to
the rock house before we read the letter. Can you girls go now?”

“Yes, I’ll get my hat.” Mary turned to go indoors. Dora went with her and
they were back almost at once to find Jerry beside Etta, with Dick
waiting to help Dora to her usual place in the rumble.

Harry, his rather thin face alight with pleasure, took Mary’s arm and,
giving it a slight pressure, exclaimed in a low voice, “The gods are
kind! I hardly dared hope that your old friends would let me have you
today. I’ve thought of you every minute since I left you last night.”

Mary, seated at his side in the small car, turned serious eyes toward
him. “Harry,” she said almost pleadingly, “please don’t talk to me that
way. I—I’d rather you wouldn’t.”

An expression of sadness for a moment put out the eager light in his
eyes, then, good sportsman that he was, he said, “Very well, Mary. I
think I understand.”

After that his conversation was interesting, but general, until they
reached the towering rock gate where Jerry’s car was standing, waiting.

“What a lonely, awesome spot this is!” Harry exclaimed.

“If you think _this_ is awesome,” Mary laughed, “wait until we pass
through those gates.”

Jerry climbed out, helped Etta, then turned to call, “Don’t get off the
road, Harry. The sand’s so soft we’d have a time pulling you out.”

Dora and Dick leaped from the rumble and were joined by Mary and Harry.
“We walk the rest of the way,” Dick told the air scout, “and believe me
it’s hard going.”

Mary glanced ahead, saw Jerry assisting Etta as in former times he had
assisted her when her feet sank ankle deep in the soft, white sand. Harry
gallantly took her arm to aid her. Mary smiled at him wanly. “Thank you,”
she said. “I wish I were the self-reliant athletic type like Dora. She
never needs help.”

Harry bit his lip to keep from saying aloud what he thought. Before he
could think of something else to say, Dick looked back and called to him,
“Were you ever any place where there was such a deathlike stillness as
there is in this small walled-in spot?”

Harry shook his head. “Never!” he replied. Then, glad of the
interruption, he asked, “That’s the rock house, up there, isn’t it?”

Dick nodded. “That’s where the poor old fellow they called ‘Lucky Loon’
buried himself alive, if there’s any truth in the yarn.”

“Believe me, that would take more courage than I’ve got,” Harry declared
with a shudder.

Jerry, glancing back, and finding that he and Etta were quite far ahead,
turned and waited, still holding his companion’s arm.

Etta’s intelligent face _never_ had seemed more attractive to Mary. The
melancholy expression, which the girls had noticed, especially, the day
they had called upon her, had vanished. Her eyes were bright with
interest.

They walked on in a close group. “I’m simply wild to know what’s in the
letter Little Bodil translated,” Dora exclaimed.

Dick laughed. “I suppose we will call that dignified Sister Theresa
‘Little Bodil’ till the end of time,” he said.

When they reached the foot of the leaning rock, which had one time been
the stairway to the rock house, they gathered about Jerry who was opening
the yellowed envelope. Intense interest and excitement was expressed in
each face.

Sister Theresa had written a liberal translation between the almost faded
lines of her dead brother’s letter.

  “Dear Little Bodil—

  “In my heart I feel you are alive. I have hunted all over Arizona, New
  Mexico and across the border. No one has heard of you. I can’t search
  any longer.

  “Before I die I want to tell you where my gold is. Silas Harvey will
  tell you where my rock house is. Secret entrance—”

Jerry paused and looked in dismay at the interested listeners.

“What’s up?” Dick asked.

“The old writing was so faded Sister Theresa couldn’t make it out.”

“How terrible!” Dora cried. “How to get _into_ the rock house is the
_very thing_ we need to know.”

“Well, at least we know there _is_ a secret entrance,” Mary told them.
“Isn’t there any more of the translation, Jerry?”

The cowboy had turned a page. He nodded. “Yes, here’s something but I
reckon it won’t help much. There are only a few words.” He read, “Find
money—walled in—turquoise eye.” Jerry looked from one to the other and
said, “That’s all. Doesn’t help out much, does it?”

Mary took the letter. “Here’s a note at the bottom. Sister Theresa wrote,
‘I am sorry I could not make out the entire message. I do hope this much
will aid you in finding the money if it has not been stolen.’”

“Well,” Dick was looking along the base of the almost perpendicular cliff
on which the rock house stood, “I vote we start in hunting for a secret
entrance.”

“O. K.,” Harry said. “Let’s divide our forces, one going to the right and
the other to the left.”

Jerry, as though it were the natural thing to do, said to Etta, “Shall
_we_ go this way?”

Mary turned and started in the opposite direction. Harry was quick to
follow her. Dora and Dick remained standing directly under the rock
house. Dora said, “I’m puzzled! _Not_ about the secret entrance but about
Mary and Jerry.”

“Oh, that’ll come out all right.” It was plain that Dick wasn’t giving
romance much thought, for he added, “I’m going in between the main cliff
and this broken off piece.”

Dora, going to his side, peered into the crack. The winds of many years
had blown sand into it. She was surprised to see Dick start pulling the
sand away from the wall.

“Have you a hunch?” she asked with interest.

“No, not really,” he told her. Then remarked, “Wish I had a shovel.”

“You may have one,” Dora said, “if you want to go back to the road. I saw
a shovel and an axe fastened under the Deputy Sheriff’s car.”

Jerry and Etta, having found nothing, were returning.

“What are you uncovering, Dick?” the cowboy called.

“Say, fetch a shovel, will you?” was the answer he received. “Dora says
there’s one under the ‘Dep’s’ car.”

“Righto.” The cowboy’s long legs carried him rapidly toward the rock
gate. He had returned with the shovel just as Mary and Harry came up.
They had found nothing that could possibly be a secret entrance.

“What’s your reasoning, Dick, old man?” Jerry asked as he handed him the
shovel.

“Well, there’s _something_ here that caught and held the sand,” Dick
replied. “It may not be what we’re looking for but I’m curious to know
what it is.”




                              CHAPTER XXX
                   SECRET ENTRANCE TO THE ROCK HOUSE


The boys took turns in throwing the sand out of the crack. The faces of
the three girls, standing idly near, expressed different emotions. Mary’s
sweet sensitive mouth and tender eyes were wistful, almost sad. She was
not thinking of the secret entrance. Dora, watching her, was troubled and
wished she knew just what Mary was thinking. Etta, alone, watched the
boys as they threw shovelsful of sand out of the crack. Her eyes shone
with a new light. Dora, glancing at her, wondered if she were watching
Jerry’s splendid strength as he hurled the sand. Once he caught her
encouraging glance and smiled at her.

Etta turned and, seeing Mary beside her, she slipped an arm about her.
With a fleeting return of her old seriousness, she said, “You girls can’t
know what it means to me to be included in all this. I’ve been so lonely
for companions of my own age.”

Mary was about to say that she was glad, also, when a shout from the boys
attracted their attention. They hurried toward the crack where the three
diggers stood intently examining something they had uncovered.

It was a huge stone about three feet round which leaned against a hole in
the base of the cliff.

“That hole _must_ be the secret entrance.” Dick glowed around with the
pride of discovery. “The rock caught and held the sand, you see,” he
explained to the girls.

“Not so fast, old man.” Harry Hulbert was measuring the space between the
rock and the hole. “If Mr. Pedersen buried himself alive up there in his
rock house, he _had_ to have room to crawl _into_ his entrance. You’ll
all agree to that.”

They silently nodded, then Jerry said, “I reckon Sven Pedersen was very
thin, sick as he was.”

Etta alertly suggested, “I think the hole might have been uncovered then,
but that the weight of the sand has gradually pushed the rock down
against the opening.”

“Righto!” Jerry’s smile was approving.

Dora remarked, “Since we are not hunting for the old man’s bones, isn’t
the important question whether or not this hole leads up into the rock
house?”

“And the only way to find out is to get this stone out of the way,” Dick
told them. “Now everybody push.”

It was a difficult task and after what seemed a long hard effort, there
was barely room for one of the boys to get in.

Jerry crawled into the hole but backed out almost at once.

“It’s black as a pocket,” he reported. “It would be foolhardy to go in
until we have a light.”

“I’ll get one,” Dick volunteered. “The Deputy Sheriff has a powerful
flash in his car. Back in a minute.”

While he was gone, Jerry told his impressions of the hole.

“It seems to be a slanting tunnel, not high enough to stand in. I reckon
that at some past time it was made by rushing water, it’s worn so
smooth.”

“Oh, Jerry, please don’t go in there all alone.” It was Mary imploring.
“I’m smaller than you are. Let me go with you.”

Jerry’s grateful glance was infinitely tender and so was his voice as he
replied, “Little Sister, I’ll be careful not to run into danger.”

Again he crawled into the hole. The watching young people saw the flash
of the light, then they heard his voice sounding uncanny and far off.
“The tunnel goes up, sort of like a waterfall. I reckon I can climb it
all right, but don’t anybody try to follow me, lest-be I’m gone too long;
more than fifteen minutes, say.”

The color left Mary’s face and she clung to Dora, but she tried not to
let the others see how truly anxious she was.

“One minute.” Dick was looking at his watch.

Harry on his knees peered up into the darkness, but could not even see
Jerry’s light.

“Five minutes,” Dick reported.

Mary asked tremulously, “That couldn’t be the cave of a mountain lion or
a puma or a—”

“Nixy on that!” Dick replied emphatically. “No wild animal, not even my
friend, a Gila Monster, would care to try to climb _that_ smooth toboggan
slide. Puzzle to me is how Jerry is doing it.”

“Hark!” Mary whispered, holding up one finger. “Did you hear—”

Dick plunged in with “a gun shot?”

“Not at all!” Mary flared at him. She ran to the hole and knelt by it and
listened. “I thought I heard Jerry call far, _far_ away,” she said as she
stood up and went back to stand by Dora.

“Ten minutes.” Dick glanced from his watch to Harry. “Go back a way, will
you, and look up at the rock house. If Jerry called, maybe it was from up
there.”

Mary, no longer trying to hide her anxiety, ran beyond the leaning ledge
and looked up. How her face shone with joy and relief!

“It’s Jerry!” she cried, beckoning the others. “He’s up there standing in
the door.”

Harry cupped one hand about his ear. “What say, Jerry? All right. Sure
thing.”

“What did he say?” Jerry had disappeared in the house when the others
joined Mary and Harry.

“He said there’s an old wire ladder contraption that he’s going to drop
down to us,” Harry explained as Jerry reappeared on the ledge. Gradually
a wire-rope ladder slid down the steep cliff.

“Dick, you and Harry come on up,” Jerry called. “It’s safe all right.”

“You girls won’t mind being left alone, will you?” Harry asked in his
chivalrous way, of all of them, although he looked at Mary.

“No, indeed,” she replied. “Go along.”

The boys went up the swaying ladder so easily that Mary, usually the less
courageous one of the two, said to Dora, “I’m going up. Catch me if I
fall.”

The three boys were in the rock house and did not know that the girls had
climbed the ladder until they saw them standing near the open door.

Jerry leaped toward them. “Little Sister,” he said, “_what_ if you had
fallen?”

Dora thought complacently, “Well, I guess _that_ lover’s misunderstanding
is patched up all right. It didn’t matter, evidently, whether or not Etta
fell, and as for Dora Bellman—” she laughed and shrugged her broad,
capable shoulders.

Mary was asking, “Has anyone seen the Evil Eye Turquoise?”

“Not yet. Come, let’s look for it,” the cowboy called, adding, as he
turned to his neighbor, “Etta, I didn’t tell you that part of the story,
did I?”

Smilingly, and evidently untroubled by the recent by-play between the
cowboy and Mary, she replied in the negative. So, standing near the open
door, they all told parts of the tale to the interested listener.

“But if something terrible _always_ happens when that turquoise eye looks
at an intruder,” Etta said, “aren’t you afraid something terrible will
happen now?”

“I reckon I _would_, if I believed the yarn,” Jerry replied. “Let’s see!
Where was it?”

“In the back wall, gazing _straight out_ of the front door,” Mary
reminded him.

“Well, it isn’t there _now_ anyway.” Harry fearlessly had crossed the
small bare room to investigate.

“But it must have been there,” Dick insisted. “Don’t you remember that
Smart Aleky fellow who _did_ climb up and who really _did_ fall over the
cliff, paralyzed, when he saw the Evil Eye?”

“I reckon we do,” Jerry agreed. Having found a stout stick cane in one
corner, he poked it into the sand that covered the floor.

“Hi-ho!” he cried. “I see what’s happened. The Eye fell off of the wall
and is buried here in the sand.”

“Bully for you!” Dick shouted, and before any of them could stop him, he
had seized the fateful stone and had turned the flashlight full upon it.
Mary screamed and clutched Dora, but they had all looked at the Eye and
_it_ had looked at them, yet nothing had happened.

Dora, secretly proud of Dick’s courage, asked, “What is it made of?”

“You impostor!” Dick hissed at the Eye. “You are only adobe with a blue
stone in your middle.” Then calmly he pocketed it as he grinningly
announced, “Nobody objecting, I’m going to keep it for Lucky Stone and a
paper weight.”

“Ugh!” Mary shuddered. “You’re welcome to it.”

Dora was asking, “Where do you think we’d better look for the money?”

“In the old codger’s tomb, I should say.” Harry was greatly enjoying his
share in this rather uncanny adventure.

They all agreed that the walled-in tomb would be the most likely place to
find the treasure.

Jerry looked anxiously at the three girls who stood close together
watching, wide-eyed. “I reckon you all ought to have stayed down below,”
he told them.

Dora replied courageously, “Oh, don’t mind us. Open up the tomb if you
want. There won’t be anything but a skeleton, and we see those every day
on the desert.”

Harry and Dick, prying around, discovered a large stone that was loose,
but when it was lifted out, they found only a small niche. _In it was an
iron box which the boys removed. Then they replaced the stone._ After all
they had not needed to open up the tomb.

When they all had descended the wire-rope ladder, they left it hanging,
believing that some day they might want to revisit the rock house.

“Now,” Jerry said, “let’s take the box to Sister Theresa.”




                              CHAPTER XXXI
                        A WONDERFUL SECRET TOLD


The boys took turns carrying the heavy box back to the cars and the girls
walked three abreast, laughing joyfully in their efforts to keep each
other from stumbling in the sand. They whispered together just before
they passed through the rock gate and when the boys turned toward them,
after having stored the box safely under the seat of the Deputy Sheriff’s
car, Mary made a bow and said, “We’ve forgotten what verse it is, but
we’ll sing for you anyway.” Then merrily Dora and Etta joined her:

  “Three girl sleuths you now behold
  Who have helped you find the gems and gold.
          Come, come, coma,
          Coma, coma, kee.
          To Phantom Town
            For a cup of tea.”

“Which means,” Mary interpreted, “that it’s noon by the sun and I’m sure
we’re all hungry. I told Carmelita to make an extra large tamale pie.”
Then, before anyone could reply, Mary added mischievously: “Dick, I’m
going to ride in the rumble with you.”

Harry chivalrously bowed to the girl nearest him, saying, “May I have the
pleasure?” It was Etta and she flashed him a bright smile of acceptance.

“Poor Jerry!” Dora condoned as she took the seat beside the cowboy. “Some
imp has got into Mary.” But the glance that he gave her was far more
pleased than disturbed.

Carmelita welcomed them at the kitchen door with a beaming smile that
revealed her gleaming white teeth. Jerry introduced the air scout who
surprised the girls by replying in perfect Spanish.

“I’m green with envy!” Dora told him. “I’m going to study Spanish next
fall if it’s taught at our Sunnybank Seminary.”

“So you two are going back East to school this fall,” Harry said as they
seated themselves around the kitchen table, cheerful with its red cloth
and steaming tamale pie.

“Yes,” Mary nodded brightly. “Dad is well enough to go with me, Mrs.
Farley says. Jerry has one more year over at the State University and
Dick is going back East to study medicine. Oh, I forgot to say that Mrs.
Farley is going to stay with us and help me take care of Dad. We three
are going to rent a little house near Dora’s home.”

The conversation changed to the box. “I’m eager to know what is in it,”
Mary said.

“I wanted Little Bodil to be the one to open it,” Jerry explained.

“How shall we get it to her?” Etta asked.

“I have a suggestion,” Harry said. “It will end the suspense sooner than
any other way.”

“What? Do tell us!” came in eager chorus.

“Guess,” Harry turned to Mary.

“_You_ will take the box in your Seagull.”

“Right you are,” Harry told her. Then to Jerry, “If Etta would like to
fly over with me, I’d be glad to have company.”

“Oh, I’d love to fly,” Etta said, “but I ought not to be the one; surely
you, Mary, or Dora—”

“We can all go up later,” said Jerry.

As they were about to start, Jerry drew Harry aside and said: “You
understand we want Etta to believe the plan comes from Sister Theresa.”

Harry nodded. When he was in the car, Jerry called: “When you come back,
you can land in the barnyard at _Bar N_. We’ll all be there.”

“Oh, what _fun_ that will be!” Mary flashed a bright smile at Jerry; then
taking Dora by the hand, she skipped indoors.

When they rejoined Jerry and Dick, after telling Mrs. Farley where they
were going, the cowboy assisted the fair shining-eyed girl up on the
front seat and sat beside her.

There was wistfulness in Jerry’s tones when he spoke. “I reckon you’re
mighty pleased that your dad’s well enough to go back East.”

Mary’s eyes were glad bits of June blue skies. “Pleased isn’t a joyful
enough word.”

When they came to the long road that crossed over the desert for many
miles without a curve, she whispered, “Jerry, let’s fly across.”

The cowboy shook his head. “I reckon you’ve forgotten what happened once
before—”

“No, I haven’t.” Then suddenly changing the subject, she asked, “How long
before the Seagull will get to _Bar N_, do you suppose?”

“I reckon soon after we do,” Jerry said. Dick scanned the sky. Far away
there was a speck growing larger. Lower and lower the circling Seagull
dropped, then landed gracefully and easily. Before the others could reach
them, Harry had helped Etta out of the pit. A small boy clambered out
without help.

“All is well!” Dora said to Dick. “Sister Theresa has given little Jack
to Etta.”

“Oh, it was simply too wonderful for words,” Etta told the girls. “We
went so high that the mountain ranges looked like, well, a row of tents,
maybe.” Then, as Jackie nestled close to her, she told what had happened.
“There was real gold money in that box and Government bonds and beautiful
blue gems. Harry took it all to the bank that looks after the convent’s
finances, and, oh, I guess you’re wondering why little Jack is here.
Sister Theresa asked me if I’d be willing to let him live with us.”

“I’m ever so glad for the little fellow,” Mary hurried to say. “And now,”
she added, whirling to look from one to another, “if no one is too tired,
I want to ride up to Jerry’s own ranch. I want to look at the view from
there before I go.”

Dora and Dick exchanged puzzled glances. They were sure that Mary’s
flushed excitement had something to do with her plan, but _what_? Harry
was enthusiastic as they rode in the shade of the trees. “_What_ a place
for a summer home,” he exclaimed, “so cool and restful.”

Mary and Jerry were some distance ahead. They reached the far-flung ledge
where the cowboy had said he someday planned to build a house. Riding
close to him, the fair girl asked, “Big Brother, _when_ are you going to
build a house here?”

“Never,” the cowboy said, “unless someday _you’ll_ be willing to make a
real home of it.”

Mary put a frail hand on the brown one that held the reins. “Please start
the house,” she said in a low happy voice. “I’ll be ready as soon as I
graduate next June.”




                          Transcriber’s Notes


--Preserved the copyright notice from the printed edition, although this
  book is in the public domain in the country of publication.

--Silently corrected a few typos (but left nonstandard spelling and
  dialect as is).

--Rearranged front matter to a more-logical streaming order and added a
  Table of Contents.







End of Project Gutenberg's The Phantom Town Mystery, by Carol Norton