“Xochimilco or place of flowers. How lovely,” Nan spoke softly in the presence of the beauty before her.
Adair MacKenzie in his desire to introduce the girls to something that would make them forget the bullfight had brought them to one of the prettiest places in all Mexico. Now, he was looking exceedingly pleased with himself.
“Oh, daddy,” Alice too was thrilled at the spectacle before them. “Many, many times I’ve heard of the floating gardens of Mexico and I’ve always wanted to see them.”
“Well, there they are,” Adair said as off-handedly as possible under the circumstances. “Now you see them.”
They laughed at his matter-of-factness.
“If you will allow me,” Walker Jamieson who had deserted the party immediately after the car had been parked, now brought a canoe he had rented and paddled up one of the many canals before them to a stop at their feet. He stood up and held out his arm to Alice.
“Fair lady, you come first.” He said as he helped her in and assisted her to a seat opposite him. “And now, Nan.” So one after the other he helped the members of the party to places in the large canoe.
“H-h-hm,” Adair MacKenzie cleared his throat as he seated his bulk. “Now, I’d say this is more in keeping with what young ladies should like. How about it?” He addressed his question to Grace who was beaming beside him.
She nodded in agreement.
Everyone was completely happy as Walker pushed the canoe off. So the rest of the afternoon was whiled away in paddling lazily through the flower-bordered canals.
“Why are they called floating gardens?” Nan addressed her question to Walker who seemed a fountainhead of information about all sorts of things.
“Simply because they float,” Walker answered as he disentangled his paddle from some lily stems along the side.
“But you can’t actually see them move,” Nan said as she peered earnestly at one of the many islands.
“No, you can’t, now,” Walker agreed. “But there was a time, Miss Curiosity, ages ago when these beautiful gardens actually did float fromplace to place, a time when you didn’t know from one day to the next just where you’d wake up and find a certain particularly beautiful one.”
“Why?” The subject was an intriguing one and Nan wanted to know all about it.
“Oh, they say,” Walker continued quietly, “that the earth of the gardens lies on interlacing twigs. Naturally before the water filled in as it is now, these twigs moved with the current and carried their burden of earth and flowers along with them.
“This was always a beautiful spot,” he continued, “even back before the Aztecs found the eagle on the cactus and conquered the region and settled their capitol. When they did all this and found themselves with leisure on their hands, the nobles made of this place a playground, and the Aztec papa and mama came here with the Aztec child for Sunday picnics.
“Today, if I hadn’t been as energetic as I am,” he paused and grinned at the snort that this brought forth from Alice’s father, “a descendant of these same Aztecs, who still, by the way, speaks the tongue of his forefathers, would have been plying this gondola. The Aztecs still live around here and still preserve many of the ancient customs of their people.”
He rested the paddle on the side of the canoe as he finished and, as water dripped from it makinglittle rings in the canal, he sat idly dreaming. The canoe drifted along and came to rest under an over-hanging willow. No one spoke. It was a magic moment, for the sun was setting and sending low rays over the water. Tropical birds were singing full-throated songs and in the distance they could hear, faintly, the sound of music.
Finally, Alice spoke. “It can’t be very different,” she said, “than it was centuries ago. For the same exotic flowers ran wild here then that do now, and the same birds sang. How queer that makes me feel. Century after century has unrolled and yet this is the same.”
“I know.” Walker looked across at her. “Makes you feel, doesn’t it, that time isn’t so important after all, that a philosophy in which ‘mañana’ is the all-important word is perhaps not such a bad one after all.”
“Here, here,” Adair MacKenzie broke the spell. “Don’t go preaching that mañana business to these girls. They are lazy enough as it is. Look at them now, will you?”
In truth, the girls did all look comfortable and lazy, entirely at peace with themselves and the world and not at all like the busy energetic beings that they were at school.
“The world doesn’t seem real, does it?” Nan looked at Bess as she made this observation.
“No,” Bess answered. “Not real at all. This, I believe, is the most romantic spot we have ever been in.”
“Yes,” Nan agreed idly, and for some reason or other her thoughts drifted back towards home and school and then to Walter, Grace’s brother.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you,” Grace broke in on her train of thought as though she knew what had been going on in Nan’s mind. “Mother said in that letter I got at Wells Fargo’s this morning that she had consented to let Walter go on a motor trip through the West and Mexico with his Spanish teacher.”
“Yes.” Nan’s voice betrayed her interest, and she was conscious as she spoke that all the girls were suddenly more alert. The piece of news was one they were interested in too.
“It seems,” Grace went on, pleased that she had the attention of everyone, “that every year he takes a group down through this district so that they can hear Spanish spoken by the people whose tongue it is. Walter likes Spanish and so he’s going along with them.”
“When will he be here,” Bess asked the question which she knew Nan wanted to ask but wouldn’t in face of the interest that everyone was showing in the matter.
“Oh, mother wasn’t sure,” Grace answered.“It all depends on so many things. They’ll be gone the whole summer and will linger at the places the boys seem to like the best. It seems that the teacher leaves the itinerary almost entirely up to them.”
“Sounds like fun.” Nan tried to be casual and general as she spoke, but she didn’t altogether succeed.
“What’s all this about?” Adair MacKenzie had caught the drift of the conversation. “Who is this Walter anyway?”
“He is Grace’s brother,” Nan answered.
“Yes?” Adair was not to be put off so easily.
“And he went with us to Rose Ranch a few summers ago and met us in London with Grace’s mother and dad last year.” Nan thought it would be better for her to answer the questions.
“Hm-m-m. Think I understand.” Adair appeared to be devoting much thought to this “understanding” business for he said nothing further for a while. Finally, as though he suddenly remembered what they had been talking about, he returned to the subject.
“Why can’t the young hoodlums—I have no doubt but what they are young hoodlums, all boys are—stop at the hacienda with us for a few days?” he asked.
Grace’s face beamed at this. “Why, how nice!”she exclaimed, “but just think, there will be five of them at least.”
“What of it?” Adair dismissed this as an objection. “Got lots of room. We’ll make a party of it when they come and serve them a real Mexican meal.” Adair seemed to have forgotten entirely that he personally despised Mexican cooking. “Hot tamales, tortillas, everything.” He waved his hand grandly as though the whole world would be at the disposal of the boys for the asking.
“Like boys anyway,” Adair went on. “Girls are a nuisance. Always fainting. Oh, it doesn’t matter,” he glossed over this last part of conversation as he saw the blood mounting to Grace’s cheeks. “Just like to have boys around.” He ended rather weakly. “Now, let’s see. It’s getting pretty dark, better move on.” He motioned to Walker who obediently took the paddle in hand and began the leisurely journey back.
“Oh, yesterday was a grand day!” Nan stretched her arms wide and high as she sat up in her bed the next morning.
“Yes, wasn’t it?” Bess rolled over in her bed and looked at Nan. “It was just full of surprises. I don’t know what I liked the best.”
“I do,” Nan said promptly.
“What?”
“Oh, Cousin Adair. I think he’s a darling.”
“He’d probably roar a mighty roar if he heard you say that,” Bess laughed at the prospect, “but you know, I quite agree with you, even if it isn’t my friend that he has invited to stop at the hacienda.”
“But Walter’s a friend to all of us,” Nan protested.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Bess agreed. “He’s a friend to all of us and a particular friend to you.”
“Bessie, if this big pillow wasn’t so soft,” Nan looked at the pillow she was holding in her hand speculatively, “I’d heave it over at you so fast that you wouldn’t know what had struck you.”
“That’s all right, Nancy,” Bess laughed. “I understand. You don’t like to be teased.”
“Wasn’t it fun last night?” Nan changed the subject completely.
“What was fun?” Bess could remember so many nice things that she really didn’t know which one Nan was talking about.
“Dinner on the bank of the canal at Xochimilco,” Nan answered promptly. “I’ll never forget it. The lights. The flowers. The music. Who would ever think to look at him and hear him talk that Cousin Adair would be romantic enough to think up anything like that?”
“I know it.” Bess idly watched an insect that was buzzing around the room. “I was much surprised. Then I began to wonder if it wasn’t Walker Jamieson’s idea after all. You know he has a clever way of suggesting things to your cousin, so that when your cousin decides what to do it appears as though he thought up the idea originally.”
“Why, Bess.” Nan appeared to be horrified at the thought.
“Oh, you know it’s so.” Bess looked over at Nan. “It’s lots of fun to watch him do it. Do you know, sometimes I think that he’s almost clever enough to make Mr. MacKenzie think that theidea of his marrying Alice was his, Mr. MacKenzie’s I mean, originally. Do you suppose?”
“Bess, if you don’t stop speculating about that, I don’t know what I’m going to do to you.” Nan laughed. “You know you might spoil everything by talking about it,” she ended seriously. “For all you know the idea has never once entered Walker Jamieson’s head.”
Bess hooted at this. “Don’t you ever think that,” she said finally, “because it isn’t true and you know it isn’t.”
“Say, what are you two people doing in bed at this hour?” Laura stuck her head in the doorway and inquired. “Don’t you know that it’s long past time to get up.”
“Oh, bed’s so nice,” Nan answered, “I just hate to get up.”
“Well, all I can say is,” Laura finished before she closed the door, “the temperature downstairs is slightly chilly, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll be out of there in a jiffy.”
“Right-o.” Nan jumped up at this bit of information. “Hi! Laura,” she called after her friend, “come back here a minute. Was there any mail this morning,” she asked as Laura’s red head reappeared.
“Nothing for us,” Laura answered, “but your cousin got something that made him blow up.That’s why I’m telling you to hurry. I gather from certain orders I overheard him giving the chauffeur that he wants to start immediately, if not sooner, for the hacienda.”
“Really?” Bess asked, as she too jumped out of bed. “You mean we are going to leave Mexico City today.”
“That’s the impression I’m trying hard to convey,” Laura responded. “And I think that if you two lugs want any breakfast at all, you better get a hustle on.” With this she closed the door definitely and disappeared.
Needless to say, Nan and Bess hurried as they had not hurried for a long time. “Getting ready for an early morning class in the winter has nothing on this,” Bess laughed as she tied a bright three-cornered scarf around her neck and pulled it in place.
“I’ll say it hasn’t,” Nan agreed, quickly tying the laces in her white oxfords. “A lick and a promise and we’re ready to go.” With this she bounded across the room and opened the door wide for her friend.
“Such energy!” Bess exclaimed as though horrified. She was never one to be as exuberant as Nan. She was always more dignified and more correct. Nan was more natural and more full of fun. She did what she liked to do, for the mostpart, simply because it was fun. Bess was more apt to do things because other people did them. Nan was a leader, and Bess, the follower. That was, perhaps, the reason they had been friends for so long. They were alike in some respects, but totally different in others.
Now, as they came down the broad stairway of the big hotel lobby together, this difference was most plain. Adair MacKenzie, pacing up and down the lobby even as he did in his office when he was at work, stopped to look at them.
“She’ll get by,” he thought with satisfaction as he noted Nan’s bright face and free, graceful walk. “’bout time you two made your appearance,” he said aloud and assumed a grim appearance. “Finished a day’s work myself already. Guess it’s another to get you people started.”
“Started?” Nan questioned.
“Can’t stay here all the time.” Adair answered her question. “Anyway, I just got word that the housekeeper is arriving tomorrow and I’ve got to get down there and have things straightened around before she puts in an appearance. These ornery housekeepers, you know, have to be babied. If you don’t, they leave every time you turn around. Someday, someone will invent a robot that will do the work, and then—”
“You won’t have a housekeeper to scold anymore,daddy,” Alice interrupted and finished for him.
“Serve her right,” Adair answered as though the housekeeper would be the loser. “Can’t see that she’s any good anyway.”
“So we’re leaving.” Walker Jamieson joined the rest in the lobby. He had been out for an early morning walk and looked fresh and full of life as he came in. “Got your camera, Nan?” he turned to her when he spoke.
“Upstairs,” Nan answered.
“Let’s take a few pictures,” Walker suggested. In the face of Adair’s morning state, this seemed a daring thing to suggest, and Nan looked at Adair to see his reaction. He seemed not to be listening.
“Run along,” Alice gave Nan a little shove. “Dad’s going to be busy for the next half hour or so, finishing up some business here, so if we hurry, we can take all the pictures we want to.”
At this Nan did go upstairs for her camera. She was anxious enough to, but she had hesitated because she never liked to be the one to arouse her cousin.
Now, she almost petted the camera as she returned with it. She loved it and was already looking forward to the day when she could own one herself, for she had made up her mind, sinceWalker had been giving her instructions to learn all she possibly could about taking pictures. This was the reason she took pictures of everyone and everything she saw until Walker declared that the authorities would be questioning her on suspicion that she was a spy of some sort.
“Me, a spy?” Nan laughed at the thought.
“Well, you do look harmless,” Walker agreed, “but then strange things do happen, especially to people who spend all their time taking pictures. How many have you got now?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Nan laughed.
“Come on, ‘fess up’,” Walker urged.
“Let’s see there must be a dozen rolls upstairs,” Nan admitted. “It will cost a fortune to develop them, won’t it?”
“What do you say to my buying some developer and pans and whatever else is needed and taking them along to the hacienda with us?” Walker asked. “We could develop all your films there then, for practically nothing.”
“I’d like that,” Nan agreed enthusiastically, “but I thought you had some big story you were going to work on down there.” “Oh, that can wait.” Walker Jamieson acted as though stories did wait for people and laughed at himself while he did it. “Anyway it will only take a jiffy to teach you all I know about the photography business.”
“All right then,” Nan agreed.
So it came about that Nan and Walker went to the hacienda supplied with everything to develop pictures. How fortunate this was! But then that story belongs to later chapters.
“Well, eagle eye, how’s the camera working this morning?” Laura inquired as Nan and Walker went out into the lovely patio of their hotel. “Want to take some pictures of me draped around one of those tall white pillars?”
“Do one of you strung from that balcony, up there, kid,” Walker offered generously.
“Thank you, kind sir,” Laura replied graciously, “but since I’m going to need my neck for a little while longer, I must refuse—with regret of course.”
“On second thought, perhaps that is best,” Walker agreed. “It would be a shame to spoil this lovely scene this fine morning.”
“It is pretty, isn’t it?” Nan looked about her with great satisfaction. The patio or courtyard so familiar to Spain is a part of the Mexican scene too, and this one where Nan was taking pictures was particularly lovely with its gay flowers, deep green foliage, and pond all surrounded by the pinkish colored walls of the hotel itself.
“Oh, but I hate to leave all this,” Nan remarked when the pictures were taken and she andLaura and Walker were returning to the hotel lobby.
“And so do we,” the other girls chorused, as the party all came together.
“Ah, you go, but you return.” Walker sounded quite poetic as he said this. “And then, remember, you have no conception of the adventures the hacienda holds in store for you.”
“Have you?” The girls looked suspiciously at Walker, when Nan asked this question.
His answer was a mysterious look.
“That must be it over there,” Walker Jamieson pointed to a low rambling building nestled among the hills, as the car swung around a curve in the road.
The party had, despite sundry irritating delays, left Mexico City in the middle of the forenoon, and now, as evening approached they did sight the hacienda, their destination and proposed home for the summer.
“About time,” Adair MacKenzie said curtly. “Hundred miles from Mexico City. Humph! That’s what they told me in Memphis. Hundred miles maybe, as the crow flies, but on this treacherous piece of bandit-infested highway it’s at least two hundred.”
He looked about him, as he finished, as though he was daring someone to gainsay him. No one accepted the dare.
“What’s the matter?” he surveyed the silent group. “All worn out?” Again, there was no answer.
“Say, you,” he looked directly at Nan now,“are you backing down on your old cousin? Don’t know what’s happened,” he continued. “Can’t even get anyone to fight with me any more.” He really sounded pathetic.
At this, the whole group broke down in laughter.
“What is this?” Adair laughed too now, but his face bore a puzzled expression.
“Nothing, dad.” Alice wiped the tears from her eyes.
“Don’t say nothing to me, child.” Adair brandished his cane as though he was going to take Alice over his knee and spank her. “What were you trying to do,” he jumped to the correct conclusion immediately, “give me the silent treatment?”
Alice nodded her head half guiltily, half roguishly. The idea had been hers.
“Your mother tried that years ago,” Adair reminisced. “It didn’t work then, and it’s not working now. It’s better to give me an opportunity to explode,” he advised. “Volcanoes have to erupt or something terrible happens.”
“That’s what I said, sir.” Walker Jamieson agreed with the old man.
“You mean to say, to sit right there and say,” Adair exploded “that you had the gall to liken me to a volcano?”
Walker nodded his head in agreement.
“You-you-you, why, I like you!” Adair thrust out his hand and shook that of the young reporter. “You say what you think no matter how dire the consequences. Maybe you’re not such a bad reporter after all.” He said this as though he was making a great concession.
“Yes, sir. No, sir.” Walker hardly knew what to say in the face of all this unexpectedness.
“Now, come on here,” Adair turned around and addressed this to the driver. “Can’t this old jallopie do more than 15 miles an hour even when it sees its berth in the distance.” He too, pointed to the white buildings that stood out from the green foliage around them.
“Not a bad looking place, from here.” He went on contentedly. “Supposed to be one of the finest in the district, but you never can tell about such comparisons. Been fooled too many times to believe much of what I hear now. Take everything with a grain of salt.
“Hear that, girl?” He turned to Nan. “Best always not to believe what you hear. Discount at least fifty percent and then draw your own conclusions. That right, Jamieson?”
Walker nodded his head in complete agreement. It was one of the first lessons he had learned as a cub reporter.
Now, as they talked, the car climbed a steep hill. At the top, they turned to the right and came upon the hacienda.
“How perfectly lovely!” Alice’s face was all aglow as she caught her first real glimpse of the place. The buildings were in Spanish style of a stucco material of a color bordering on the pink. There were iron balconies, large windows, and a courtyard or patio complete with palms, a fountain, and seats.
The girls had thought that there could be nothing in the world so pretty as the patio in their hotel in Mexico City, but here already was one that surpassed it.
“Humph!” Adair MacKenzie was as pleased as the others at his first sight of the place, but more cautious than they and more reluctant to let his real feelings be known, he let his “Humph!” be his only comment as he descended from the car and walked with the others through the archway into the courtyard.
There crowds of natives awaited the arrival of the new master, and the overseer of the place hurried forth to greet him.
“Eet ees a pleasure, señor,” he said as he took Adair’s hand and bowed deeply. The rest in the party smiled and hung back at this bit of Mexican courtesy. Walker grinned broadly.
“You, Señorita, are next,” he whispered in Alice’s ear. “Are you prepared to have your hand kissed by a servant who would consider it an honor to die in your service?”
“Be still,” Alice murmured, and then smiled as the overseer did come forward, take her hand and bow deeply. “Buenos días, señorita,” he greeted her. “May your stay here be as pleasant to you as your honoring us with your presence has been to us.”
“Come on, now,” Adair was always impatient with the elaborate courtesies of the south, impatient probably because he never felt at ease with them. “I always suspect,” Alice laughed once when she and Walker were talking about Adair’s abruptness, “that he’s more than a little afraid that some day some one of these strangers will break down and kiss him on the cheek.”
“I wonder what he would do?” Walker paused in speculation.
“You might try it yourself, sometime, and find out,” Alice retorted.
“Do you want to have me ousted bag and baggage from your presence, fair lady?” Walker questioned, but Alice never had a chance to answer, for just at that moment her father came upon the two and demanded all their attention.
Alice smiled over this in recollection now asthey went through the door of the main building and into a spacious entrance hall with its big winding stairway, its high-beamed ceiling, and its pretty tiled floor. Walker caught the smile and guessed at its origin, but he said nothing as they were all escorted up the broad steps to their quarters.
“Ours, all ours?” Bess questioned when the Lakeview Hall girls were conducted to a suite of five rooms overlooking on one side the patio and the other, a river, broad fields, and mountains in the distance.
“Si, si, Señoritas,” the smiling Mexican maid, Soledad, who was to be theirs during their stay, hadn’t understood the question, but “Si, si,” seemed the proper answer. Now she bustled about trying to help them until her curiosity as to what was going on downstairs got the better of her and on some slight pretext she left.
“Just think of it!” Bess exclaimed when she had disappeared. “A whole suite of rooms of our own, a maid, and everything, oh, everything we can wish for. It’s a magic country and Adair MacKenzie is the presiding genie.”
“Well, he is in one way,” Laura admitted dryly. “When he waves his wand things happen.”
“Yes, and he goes up in smoke,” Nan added.
“Right,” Laura laughed, “and there’s no one that can do it more expertly.”
Alone now, the girls went from one to another of their rooms enjoying everything. Even Grace, accustomed as she was to luxury, was greatly impressed. She had never been in a house like this before.
The rooms were big and spacious with heavy oaken furniture, thick rugs, tapestries, and beds so high that it was necessary to climb up a little ladder in order to get to them. Each room had big double windows opening out onto the patio.
Bess stood out on hers and looked down on the courtyard below where maids were already busy setting a table under a tree centuries old. “Do they ever serenade people here,” she directed her question toward those inside.
“I hear that they do, sometimes,” Nan called back. “But you have to wait for a clear night, with a sky that’s blue as blue can be, a moon big and silver, shining low over these pretty buildings, and stars that are bigger and closer to earth than any you have ever seen.”
“Why, Nan Sherwood,” Bess came into the room now. “Where did you learn all these things?”
“Oh,” Nan shrugged her shoulders, “this atmosphere gets into your blood and you just can’t help yourself. There is only one regret that I have.”
“And that?” Bess couldn’t imagine anyone having any regrets at this time. The world seemed just perfect to her now.
“That Rhoda isn’t here with us,” Nan replied promptly. She had been thinking of Rhoda a great deal in the past few days that had been such fun.
“I know,” Grace agreed with Nan softly. “I have been thinking of her too. We should be hearing from her now in a few days because in those last letters that we sent we told her to direct all future mail to this place.”
“I wonder how you get your mail here,” Laura said. “Do you suppose a Mexican caballero comes dashing up on a donkey, sweeps his hat in a wide arc toward the ground, and then deposits the bills and things as though they were special messages from the king of Spain?”
“Oh, Laura, don’t be silly,” Bess was taking her romance seriously and didn’t want it to be spoiled with laughter. “Do you suppose,” she turned to Nan now, “that all those people that we saw down there in the courtyard live on this estate.”
“Probably those and many more,” Nan assented, “but we’ll have to wait for the tour of the estate that’s been promised before we know for sure. And there are a million other things, at least that I want to know about.”
“Me too,” Laura agreed, and the rest chimed in, for this Mexican hacienda was something that captured the imagination of all of them.
“Oh, Bess, you should see yourself now,” Nan laughed the next morning. It was early and the girls were all mounted on mules as they passed through the archway of the patio and out into the gardens with their huge palms and brilliant flowers and birds.
“Feel like a fool myself,” Adair grumbled as he tried to adjust his position on the beast he was riding. And truly, he was a ridiculous figure.
“Well, dad,” Alice pretended that she was trying to mollify him, “you just weren’t made to ride a mule. Nor were you,” she looked at Walker Jamieson’s long dangling legs as she spoke.
“Nor you either,” Walker retorted laughing. “You’re too little. Hey, you,” he broke off his conversation with Alice quickly and called to Nan, “don’t do that.”
“What?” Nan asked innocently.
“You know. Don’t look so innocent.”
“Nan Sherwood!” Bess guessed at what Walker was driving at. “You’re not taking pictures of us intheseoutfits are you?”
“She not only is, but she has,” Walker answered before Nan could say anything. “I saw her sliding that little camera back into its case.”
“Nan, please,” Alice joined in the protest, “have mercy on us and think how our children and grandchildren will laugh if they ever see pictures of us riding mule-back. We’re all perfect sights.”
But Nan had already taken the pictures, so the protests came too late. Now it was Adair MacKenzie who diverted their attention. “Get along there. Get a move on, you slow poke.” Adair was kicking the sides of his mule with real force. But the mule was accustomed to such treatment and he only raised his ears lazily, turned his head slowly and looked at his rider sleepily. Then he stopped, dead in his tracks.
“Get along there, get along, I say,” Adair kicked the mule again. “Can’t you understand plain English?”
“Understands only Spanish, I guess, Mr. MacKenzie,” Walker said. “Try that on him.”
“If he can’t understand English, the best language in the world, he can’t understand anything,” Adair was as stubborn as the mule he was on, but for once all his railing, all his sputtering, all the ordering that he could do, didn’t accomplish a thing. The mule just wouldn’t move.
“Here you,” Adair called ahead to their guidewho had philosophically shrugged his shoulders at the outburst of the new master, and sat now, on his mule on the trail above waiting for the party to move on. At the call, he ambled back to see what was wrong.
“Hey, you,” Adair was impatient with everyone and everything now. “Get a hustle on. It’s today we want to see this blasted estate, today. Not mañana.”
The guide understood one word, ‘mañana.’ His face broke into a broad grin. “Si, si, señor. Si, Señoritas.” He was more than glad that these strangers could speak his language. Now, he broke out into a voluble explanation, all in Spanish of course, as to how to treat a mule.
Walker stood off laughing heartily at the whole situation. Adair MacKenzie did not understand one single word of what was being said to him, but it was coming forth so fast that he could neither interrupt nor stop the flow. For once in his life he looked utterly helpless.
Alice was as amused as Walker. “Poor dear,” she said, “to think that he should come all of this way to be baffled by a mule and a man whose philosophy says ‘tomorrow’, we will do it ‘tomorrow’.”
Adair saw their smiles. It was more than he could stand, more than any man could stand.Awkwardly, he dismounted from his beast, walked around in front and shook his ever present cane at him. The beast did nothing but blink.
“Why, wh-wh-why, you good-for-nothing, senseless, no-count, beast you,” he burst forth in a torrent, “if you think you can stop me, you’re mistaken. You’ll go up there if I have to carry you and you’ll not take a picture of that either,” Adair turned to Nan with this last. It was somehow much more satisfying to explode to Nan than to either the beast or the Mexican.
“No, cousin,” Nan answered as seriously as she could.
“And don’t be meek either.” He brandished his cane again. “Never get anyplace like that.” There was no satisfying the man now. Neither agreement nor disagreement could placate him. Nan kept still.
It was Alice finally, who smoothed his ruffled feelings and got him back on the mule. “Now, daddy,” she said quietly, “if you’ll just sit quietly and wait, the mule will go, but you can’t beat him into action the way you do me.” Saying this she laughed up at him. He stooped over and kissed her.
It was nice to see this father and daughter together. They seemed to understand one another perfectly. Adair, explode as he might, could neverfrighten Alice. She knew how soft-hearted and kind he was underneath all his crust. She had known from babyhood that he wouldn’t intentionally, for all his angry outbursts, hurt anyone.
Now, having smoothed his ruffled feelings some, she let Walker assist her back on her mule. The party moved slowly along the narrow stony trail while huge limbs of great palm trees waved slightly above them.
Reaching the top of a high hill on the estate they looked out over the countryside.
“What’s that?” Laura, ever curious, indicated a point in the distance, something that showed black against the sky and that clearly had been built by man.
Walker drew forth his field glasses and directed his glance toward the object. “Can’t be sure,” he rendered his verdict after some thought, “but think it might be a pyramid. There are several in the district you know. Perhaps the most famous of them all is the one that a hunter down from New York discovered three or four years ago. It’s rather inaccessible, but such an old one that some old codger in the East with a lot of money on his hands donated a considerable sum to have it opened.”
“What did they find?” Nan asked.
“Oh, lots of dried up bones.”
“That all?” Nan sounded disappointed.
“Well, not exactly,” Walker admitted and then stopped. He enjoyed teasing these youngsters.
“Well, what did they find then,” Nan persisted.
“Some jewels. Some gold. Some exceptionally fine pottery.”
“And—” Nan saw that he was still holding out.
“Some poison spiders that killed three members of the excavation party. Now you satisfied?” Walker grinned down at her.
“Well, yes,” Nan agreed. “But I still want to visit a pyramid sometime.”
“Visit those in Egypt,” Walker advised. “There’s nothing more impressive.”
“You been there?” Nan questioned. The path was wide enough so that they could ride now with their mules side by side.
“Yes, years ago, with my father,” Walker answered. “He had a bad case of the wanderlust, so whenever he could scrape a few dollars together, off he would go to some outlandish place.”
“Taking your mother with him?”
“Oh, sometimes. She went up into Alaska when he went to pan gold from the streams. She went down into South America when he went as an engineer on a big industrial project. And she wentwhen he set out for Russia after the revolution, but after that she gave up.”
“You must be like your father,” Nan commented.
“Oh, a little,” Walker admitted. “But I haven’t quite got the wanderlust as much as he has. He could go into raptures over anything that was far away from him. I’ve been thinking of him a lot today, riding over this estate. He spent some time down here in Mexico, and never grew tired of extolling the country. This was after my mother died.
“Though we are not entering the country at all that he was fondest of, I’ve been thinking of his descriptions of it, especially after seeing that pyramid in the distance.
“It was down in Oaxaca and was called, I believe, Tehuantepec. It took days to get there by horseback, according to his account, and the route was through tropical jungles more dense than any others in the world. You see my father never saw mediocre things,” he explained by the way.
“The City itself lay on a river by the same name in a gorgeous tropical setting surrounded by orchards and many gardens, all shaded by flowering trees and palms.
“The population was largely Indian, a tribe that had its own language and preserved its owntraditions, but it seems that above all this particular tribe was known for its beautiful women, more independent, more lovely, and more beautifully dressed than any of the women in other tribes.
“He described them as being tall, well-built, and industrious. Their dresses consisted of long full skirts made of bright colors with a deep white flounce at the bottom, that swept the ground and covered their bare feet. The blouse was short and square-necked and for adornment they wore much jewelry, earrings and long heavy chains hung with ten and twenty American gold pieces.
“They had a graceful carriage, walking straight and firmly with an ease that only those women who have been trained to carry things on their head have. These people, he said, carry their flowers, fruit, and foods to the market in painted gourd bowls perched firmly on the crowns of their heads.
“Ah, yes, those people were perfect, more perfect my father said than any he had ever come across. But then, my father,” Walker admitted boyishly, “always did tell a grand tale.”
“So that’s why you became a newspaper man,” Nan concluded.
“Yes, I suppose so,” Walker admitted. “You know this taste for queer places and queer things is often bred right in your bones.”
“Say, what are you two talking about back there?” Adair MacKenzie suddenly became conscious of the fact that two in his party were paying no attention whatsoever to him and his troubles with his mule. Had he had a horse, he would liked to have galloped back beside them, but with a mule there was no galloping. As it was he turned the mule’s head sharply.
It was just too much. The mule was tired of his burden anyway, so before anyone realized at all what was happening, Adair was deposited firmly on the ground and the mule, with more intelligence perhaps than he had been given credit for, was gazing at him soberly.
“Are you hurt? Daddy, are you hurt?” Alice cried, but even as she did, tears of laughter were rolling down her cheeks. She had never in her life seen her father in such a ridiculous position, which was saying something, for Adair MacKenzie had a knack of getting himself in more absurd situations than anyone else in the world.
“Stop your blubbering.” Adair was thoroughly irritated this time. “I’ll conquer you yet.” He scolded the mule. “Think you can vanquish Adair MacKenzie, do you? I’ll show you.” But to all of this scolding that fell dully on the tropical verdure about them, that sounded harsh and out of place in the soft greenness of the scene, the mule never blinked an eyelash.
“Daddy, are you hurt?” Alice repeated her question as she took hold of one arm while Walker Jamieson took the other.
But their offers of assistance went unappreciated. Adair MacKenzie merely shook off their hands, used his own to push himself up, and then stood, brushing himself off while he continued his tirade.
“Now, you’re going home, and you’re going to stay there.” Adair spluttered off into the kind of scolding that he might have given an erring child. With this, he about faced and walked, leading the mule beside him the three miles back to the hacienda.
It was a quiet party, but one full of suppressed mirth, that wound its way back over the path. The Lakeview Hall girls could scarcely contain themselves until they got in their apartments.
“It was just perfect.” Laura laughed heartily.
“Did you see the way he looked, and the way the donkey looked?” Amelia asked.
“They just stared at one another until I thought that cousin Adair would beat the beast with his cane.”
“I thought of that, too,” Bess said. “But I guess he’s too kind-hearted to do anything like that.”
Bess was right. Adair MacKenzie had never in his life made any attempt to hurt a dumb animal in any way until that morning when he had dug his heels in irritation into the mule’s side. At home, he always had animals about him, a dog that was now well along in years, a stable full of horses, and yes, a mule that he once bought on the street when he saw its master trying to beat it into moving along.
“The crust of that mule,” Laura said slangily. “Did it ever do my heart good to see its stubbornness matched against Mr. MacKenzie’s! I wonder what kind of a character sketch he would make of it, if he had the chance, that is, I mean, if the mule could understand him.”
“Probably, ‘stubborn fool’ and let it go at that,” Nan answered. “Anyway his troubles with that mule will never be forgotten.”
“And ‘stubborn as a mule’, will always mean something to us now,” Nan added. “Now, we’ve got to get ready and get downstairs. Dinner’s going to be ready very shortly.”
So the girls changed their clothes, washed, combed and presented themselves downstairs all clean and neat.
There was no one around. They walked through the great hall and out into the patio. Still they found no one except the servants.
“I never saw so much help in all my life,” Grace remarked. “Why, just millions of people work here. I haven’t seen the same person twice at all.”
“Didn’t you hear Walker Jamieson say that labor’s cheap in this country?” Nan explained. “Everyone has one or two or three servants. But I wonder where cousin Adair and everyone is now.”
She hadn’t long to wait, for just as she spoke they heard loud voices from the direction of the kitchen at the back, and shortly Adair, Alice and Walker appeared.
“There that’s done,” Adair slapped his hands together as though he had just disposed of a mighty problem. “Trouble, trouble all the while,” he looked at the girls as he spoke. “If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. One moment it’s a mule and the next it’s a woman.” He looked utterly worn out, and Nan felt sorry for him.
“Oh, daddy, don’t take Mrs. O’Malley too seriously,” Alice tried to ease his worry.
“Too seriously! Well, I like that,” Adair exclaimed. “When the best housekeeper in all Christendom threatens to walk out on you, tell me now, what are you supposed to do? Say, all right, go ahead? Just what would you do, now?” He looked at Alice.
She hesitated.
“There,” he didn’t give her a chance to answer, “she’d walk out on you before you did anything. You can’t hesitate in serious matters like this. You have to act. But never mind,” he turned to his guests, “you don’t need to worry. I have acted. Mrs. O’Malley has promised to stay. The Chinese cook has promised to stay. Everyone’s staying. There’ll be no deserting the shipon this trip.”
“That’s fine, daddy,” Alice complimented him. “And now when do we have dinner?”
“Dinner? Where’s dinner?” Adair was off again. He picked up a bell and rang it forcefully. Everyone, except the famous Mrs. O’Malley and the Chinese cook came running. People came out of doors, in through the arches of the patio, and stuck their heads out from windows. Everyone thought that there was something radically wrong. When they saw that it was just the American again, they disappeared as quickly as they came.
The old women shook their heads. Would he never learn, they wondered, that there was no necessity to rush anything, that if you let things just go their own quiet, placid way, they would eventually work themselves out. They couldn’t understand this man who had come to them as their master. Already, thanks to the guide of the morning, legends about him and his wrath were spreading around the place. The wireless that civilization knows is fast, but the grapevine among the Mexican Indians was even more effective.
When he saw the commotion he had caused, Adair MacKenzie sat down, and shortly dinner appeared, as it would have appeared even though he had done nothing.
The dinner was good and the cool fruit juicesthat followed it were good. And everyone sat, as long as the warmth of the day permitted, in the patio under the tropical sky and talked some, sat silent more, for it was all very peaceful.
“So you’re not going to work on that smuggling story after all?” Adair MacKenzie asked Walker just before they all got up to go in.
“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” Walker answered carefully. “Feel the need of a little rest now and I like this place and I like the people and it’s hard to tear myself away.”
“We thank you, don’t we?” Adair took his daughter’s hand in his. He felt vaguely that there was something more serious in all of this than appeared on the surface, but just now he was too tired to question. He squeezed Alice’s hand.
“Nan, it’s a letter from Rhoda,” Bess repeated the information twice before she got any response at all, and then it was only a grunt. It was the morning after the famous mule-back excursion, and Nan was in her room alone until Bess’s entrance.
“Whatever are you doing?” Bess asked when she saw that Nan, strangely enough, didn’t seem to be interested in her bit of information.
“Oh, Bess, I can’t find it anyplace,” Nan looked as though the world had come to an end. She had all that she could do to keep from crying.
“Find what?”
“Oh, my ring. You know the one I mean, the one old Mr. Blake gave me in Scotland last summer. He said it was a family heirloom and that I should keep it as long as I lived and then see that it was passed on down to my children. Now, it’s gone and I’m sure I left it in this room when we went away yesterday.”
“Are you sure, Nan?” Bess looked worried too, now. The ring was a lovely thing with the bluest of blue sapphires in an old-fashioned gold setting.Bess had coveted it herself, and often wanted to wear it. But she respected Nan’s sentiment about the bit of jewelry enough to have not even asked to try it on.
Now it was gone!
“When did you wear it last?”
“Bess, I had it on yesterday morning before we went on that trip by muleback and I took it off because I was afraid I would lose it. I left it in this box I’m sure, and it isn’t here now. I’ve looked through it a dozen times.” As she finished, she proffered the box to Bess, who took it, opened it up, and carefully looked through the trinkets contained therein. The ring wasn’t there.
“Have you told anybody, yet?” Bess questioned.
“No, but if it doesn’t come to light pretty soon, I’m going to tell cousin Adair. I’m almost afraid to do that, because he values the ring almost as much as I. He saw it once, he said, when he was in Scotland, and he was proud to think that it came to me. Now I’ve lost it, and I’m sure he’ll think that I’ve been very careless.”
“It doesn’t matter what he thinks,” Bess said firmly. “You’d better tell him right away. If someone has stolen it, he’s the only one that can find the culprit. Come on, let’s go downstairs now. Or do you want me to hunt first?”
“Yes, do that.” Nan did dread telling Adair MacKenzie of her loss.
Bess looked thoroughly, but nowhere could she find the ring.
So together, the two girls went down the stairs, Bess this time in the role of comforter.
They found Adair out in the gardens talking as best he could with an old gardener who knew at least a few words of English. Adair looked up at their entrance.
“So you like flowers, too,” he greeted them. Nan nodded her head, and then couldn’t say anything for a few minutes.
“Why, what’s the matter, Nancy child,” Adair was all sympathy as he noted the worried look on the girl’s face. “Nothing serious, I hope.”
“I’m afraid it is,” Nan answered. “You know my ring—”
“The sapphire ring that you brought home from Scotland?” Adair said.
“Yes,” Nan nodded her head to indicate that he was right. “It’s missing.”
“What do you mean, missing?” Adair asked. “Have you lost it?”
“No, it was in my room, and it’s gone now.” Nan said this very positively.
“Gone, gone where?” Adair flared up as usual.
“That’s what I don’t know,” Nan was having a difficult time being patient. “I wish I did.”
“You think it’s stolen.” Adair now had the girls by the arm and was taking them back to the hacienda.
“I don’t like to say that,” Nan hedged.
“If that’s what happened, speak up.” Adair wanted to get to the bottom of this right away and although he was very fond of Nan he wasn’t going to spare her or her feelings any now. The ring, he felt, was a personal loss to him too and as he went into the house, he was determined to find it.
First he quizzed all the girls to find out, if by chance, they knew of anything that would indicate that Nan was mistaken. They didn’t. No one had seen her wearing it after the time at which she said she had put it away.
Then he quizzed all of the upstairs’ servants. This was done with Walker’s help, since he was the only one in the crowd that knew any Spanish at all. Again, there was no light cast on the mystery.
He called in all the rest of the house servants, with no results. Then he blustered and fumed and threatened, but this to no avail.
Finally, with one last grand threat that hewould find out who the culprit was in spite of everybody, he sent everyone from the room.
The girls went up to their quarters together.
“Now, who do you suppose could have done anything like that?” Bess wondered as they all sat around listlessly and hopelessly, for there was nothing that they could do. “Do you suspect anyone, Nan?”
“No one in this whole wide world.” Nan answered wholeheartedly. “The servants since we have been here have all been just as nice as they could be. I don’t think there is a one of them that would stoop to anything like that.”
“It doesn’t seem possible,” soft-spoken Grace agreed, “but then someone has taken it. We’re sure of that.”
“As sure as we are of anything,” Nan said.
“Is it very valuable, Nan?” Amelia asked.
“Oh, I don’t know that,” Nan answered. “I think, however, that the value is mostly sentimental. It was originally given to one of the Blakes as a reward by the king. It was supposed then to have the power to bring the king’s soldiers to the help of the person wearing it, in whatever trouble he might be.
“There is a story that once, someone who owned it committed treason and was about to be beheaded when he brought forth the ring. It savedhim, even then, and instead of killing him they banished him to another country for ten years. Ordinarily, it would have been death or a life banishment, but the ring’s power was mighty.”
“Maybe then,” Laura suggested, “if you or your cousin will offer a reward, the ring will turn up. The person that stole it probably thought that it was valuable.”
“I thought of that,” Nan answered, “but cousin Adair says ‘no,’ that he will get the ring back without any such monkey business. So I guess we’ll just have to leave it up to him.”
They did leave it up to Adair MacKenzie, and for several days nothing happened. The house was like a morgue, for everyone suspected everyone else and the servants were all under suspicion.
Finally, Nan couldn’t stand it any longer, and decided to do a little investigating on her own. It was Bess who put her on the track.
“I don’t trust Chinamen,” Bess had confided and then felt foolish immediately afterward, for if there was one thing that Nan resented above all others, it was race prejudice in any form.
“Oh, Bess, don’t be silly,” Nan dismissed the statement shortly.
“But I don’t,” Bess persisted.
“Elizabeth Harley,” Nan exclaimed, “if you make that remark again, I’ll never speak to you as long as I live.” Nan was cross and irritable these days, because nothing seemed to be going right and she felt that if she hadn’t said anything about the ring in the first place, everyone would be enjoying themselves.
“But Nan,” Bess put her arm around her friend. “I don’t mean it all the way you think. Ihaven’t liked the cook ever since that first day when he had a fight with Mrs. O’Malley and she’s such a dear too.”
“Oh, but Bess, you know how that happened,” Nan protested. “Mrs. O’Malley went into the kitchen that he had run for some twenty years and tried to tell him what to do. He just wouldn’t stand for it.”
“Even then, I don’t like him.” Bess persisted. “He’s been horrid and mean to all of us ever since we’ve been here. I think he stole your ring, and if you don’t do something about it, I’m going to tell Mr. MacKenzie myself.”
“See here, Bess,” Nan was very serious now. “If you don’t keep quiet about what you have just been saying to me, I’m going to be very angry. I don’t want suspicions being cast on people who haven’t done anything, and I don’t think he has, honestly.”
Bess paused and thought before she said anything further.
“And Bess,” Nan said more softly now, “don’t resent the way I’ve talked to you these days. I feel very troubled.”
Bess felt badly too now. It wasn’t very often that Nan let her temper get away with her, and since she had, Bess thought, she must be more troubled than any of us realize. So the subjectwas dropped between the two friends.
But Bess’s remarks had done their work. When Nan was alone, the thought of what Bess had said, came back to her again and again. She dismissed it impatiently at first, but then little things about the cook began to come to her attention constantly.
Finally she determined to do something about it all and so, one day when she was alone, she went back to the kitchen.
She was just about to open the door and go through when she heard loud voices.
“I tell you it’s not enough,” one, an American voice was saying.
“Alle samee, it’s all I can get.” The voice of the cook came to her in reply.
Nan stopped, startled. This, why, this verified Bess’s suspicions. Nan stood back and listened further, but heard nothing. She had come in on the end of the argument. Shortly, she heard a door slam on the other side of the kitchen, and then there were no more sounds at all.
She waited for some time, and then cautiously opened the door and went in.
Over in one corner, the cook, alone, was busy preparing the evening meal. He looked up as the girl entered, and was on the point of reprimanding her for invading his quarters when he stopped,recognizing her. He waited then, resentfully, for her to speak.
Nan was equally wary however, so there was a moment of embarrassed silence, before either said anything. Then, as they stood waiting, a call outside distracted their attention.
The cook answered it, and when he returned, they both felt more at ease. He brought her a stool to sit on and offered her some of his choice cookies, so before long they were talking to one another. They talked about little things, and Nan went away without mentioning the ring or the conversation she had heard at all.
But she went back the next day. Following this procedure it wasn’t long before the cook poured out his whole sorry tale.
Nan later, when she got Walker Jamieson alone, told it and swore him to secrecy.
“Then he took the ring,” Walker concluded, when the story had all been told.
“He hasn’t said so,” Nan was being very careful that the facts were all understood as they were, not as other people might imagine them to be.
“No, not in so many words,” Walker agreed, “but then, he did. You and I know that, and it’s not necessary to tell anyone at all anything about this yet. It’s a bigger story than you realize,” heended, “and it has many, many more angles than this particular one. Let me work on it awhile without any interference.”
Nan agreed to this, and so the two conspirators parted.