“What’s going on downstairs?” Laura came into Nan’s room quietly. “Of course, it’s none of my business,” she went on, “but everything seems to be in an uproar. Your cousin is ranting around as I’ve never seen him rant before, and Walker Jamieson is there and he looks as though everything is wrong with the world.”
“Why, I don’t know,” Nan looked up from the diary she was writing, a diary in which she kept a day by day account of her trip. But she looked worried. Had Walker, after all, told the story that they had promised to keep a secret and was her cousin insisting on getting to the bottom of everything right away?
“What were they talking about?” she asked Laura.
“I don’t know,” Laura answered. “When I came through the room, they stopped, and seemed to be waiting until I got out, before continuing. I got the point and hurried. I was only after a magazine that I had left in the room, anyway. But even for the short time I was in there, theair seemed so heavy with emotion that you could cut it.”
“And you didn’t hear anything?” Nan repeated the thought of her former question.
“I said, ‘no’.” Laura insisted. “Why, what did you expect me to hear?” She looked at her friend intently. As Bess often did in similar circumstances, Laura now felt that Nan knew much more about what was going on downstairs than she wanted to reveal.
“Oh, nothing,” Nan managed to say this airily, as though she truly had had nothing in view when she asked the question. So saying, she screwed the top on her fountain pen, put her diary away, and stamped a letter she had just written home. With these little things done, she turned again to Laura, “Do you know that Grace’s brother and his friends are expected here at the hacienda tomorrow?” she asked.
“Are they? Tomorrow?” Laura had been out in the courtyard watching some Mexican youngsters at play when Grace had told Nan. Now, the information was a surprise to her. “What’s been planned? How many will there be? How long will they stay?” The questions rolled off her tongue one after the other, until Nan stopped her.
“Oh, Laura,” she said, “one at a time, please. We’ve not planned anything definite yet and wedon’t know how many nor how long, but we’re hoping that they can stay at least a week. Isn’t it all going to be fun!”
“Yes,” Laura was almost as excited as Nan. “It’s going to be grand to have them all here. Now, let’s go and get the other girls and plan something.”
But before they could get out of the room, the others came bursting in. “Oh, do you know,” Bess got the words out first, “Walter and his friends probably will arrive tonight.” Amelia and Grace nodded their heads in unison.
“How do you know?” Nan asked.
“Here’s a telegram.” Grace waved it in the air. “It says,” she read, “‘Arriving tonight. Six of us. Anxious to see you. Walter.’ I wonder when they’ll get here.” Saying this, she went over to the windows and looked down into the courtyard as though she expected them at once. Then she turned toward the others again, “How good it’s going to be!” she exclaimed. “I’ve been a little lonesome for someone from home ever since Rhoda’s mother became so ill.”
“Have you, Gracie?” Nan put her arm affectionately around the more timid girl’s shoulder. “I guess we all have been. It will be good to see Walter because he has seen all our parents sincewe left. Now let’s go downstairs and tell cousin Adair.”
But the girls lingered a little while longer, talking and planning. “It must have been fate that kept us there,” Laura laughed afterwards, for one of the very nicest things of all their trip happened just before they departed.
It was Nan who heard it first, that faint far-away sound of the strumming of a guitar. “Sh! Quiet!” she broke in on the hubbub in the room. “What’s that I hear?” They all listened for a second.
“Oh, nothing.” Laura waved the question aside, “and do you think we can get Mr. MacKenzie to go with us again on a mule ride over the estate?” she went on with the planning of entertainment for the boys.
“It is too something,” Nan insisted, for she heard again the sound of music. “Listen!”
“Oh, Nan, you’re hearing things,” Laura perhaps was more impatient than any of the others, for she was intrigued with the idea of asking Adair to get on a mule again, and she wanted to talk about it.
“She isn’t either.” Bess heard the strains now. “I hear something too.”
“Come—oh, look!” Nan was at a balcony window beckoning the others eagerly. They allclustered round her, and there in the moonlit courtyard below them Walter and his friends were serenading the girls. When they all appeared, the music grew louder, stronger, and the boys harmonized their voices as they sang for the second time,
“Soft o’er the fountain,Ling’ring falls the southern moon;Far o’er the mountain,Breaks the day too soon!In thy dark eyes’ splendor,Where the warm light loves to dwell,Weary looks, yet tender,Speak their fond fare-well.Nita! Juanita!—”
“Soft o’er the fountain,Ling’ring falls the southern moon;Far o’er the mountain,Breaks the day too soon!
In thy dark eyes’ splendor,Where the warm light loves to dwell,Weary looks, yet tender,Speak their fond fare-well.Nita! Juanita!—”
As they swung into the chorus, the girls, laughing but enjoying it all thoroughly, pulled flowers that they had picked that day from the garden from their dresses and threw them down. The chorus ended, and the girls clapped. The boys laughed up at them, and others in the courtyard who had been attracted by the music called for more.
It was all very gay and happy. The boys did sing an encore, and then as Alice and Adair cameout on the veranda they broke off, and Walter went up the steps and introduced himself and his friends. The girls came down and they all had a merry evening together, talking over the million and one things that had been happening.
It was not until the afternoon of the next day, that Nan and Walter had a moment alone together. Then she told him the story of her missing ring.
“Then the cook didn’t actually tell you that he took it?” Walter asked at the end.
“No, but he implied it,” Nan answered, “and I’m as sure he did as I am certain that he is not to be blamed.”
Walter couldn’t restrain the smile that came at this. Nan always trusted people, always felt that there was good in everyone. This was one of the things that first attracted Walter to her. Somehow, she, unlike many others her own age, never found enjoyment in criticising others. She seemed to understand their faults and to be able to explain them sympathetically no matter what they were. Now, in talking of the man whom she felt sure had stolen her ring, she honestly believed that, in doing so, he had been influenced by conditions over which he had no control. She felt sorry for him, and didn’t want to do him anyinjury. This was one of the big reasons why she had pledged Walker Jamieson to secrecy.
“And what does Mr. MacKenzie think of all of this?” Walter asked just before Nan left him to dress for dinner.
“Oh, he doesn’t know anything about it at all,” Nan hastened to explain, “and I don’t want you to say a thing. This is all a secret until—until—until—”
“Until what?” Walter looked at the young girl curiously, as she stopped midway in her sentence.
“Until it’s solved,” Nan smiled at her friend, and then refused to explain further.
“Nancy Sherwood,” Walter spoke seriously now, “if you’re not careful, you’re going to get yourself all involved in a plot that might hurt you. Come, be sensible for once. Either forget the ring entirely, or tell your cousin all that you know about it. Promise?”
Nan shook her head. She couldn’t tell Walter that she and Walker had already made certain promises about the ring and the Chinaman’s part in its disappearance. She couldn’t tell him that the reporter sensed a big story and asked her to protect the details until he had arrived at a solution. She couldn’t tell him, but she wanted to.
Now it was Grace who saved what otherwisemight have been an embarrassing situation. She came out into the corner of the patio where Nan and Walter were standing.
“Nan,” she asked, “did you know that Walker Jamieson left the hacienda early this afternoon and that he took his bags with him?”
“Left the hacienda!” Nan exclaimed, “are you sure, Grace?”
“As sure as I am of anything,” Grace replied, “and if you don’t believe me you can either wait to see if he appears at dinner, or you can go in right now and ask Bess.”
However, it was Bess who sought Nan out, and that before Grace had barely had time to finish divulging her bit of news.
“What did I tell you?” Bess greeted Nan as soon as she could find her.
“What do you mean?” Nan retorted.
“I mean that talk we had some time ago up in your room.”
“What talk?” Nan pretended to have forgotten.
“You know as well as I,” Bess responded impatiently. “I mean that talk about Walker and Alice. It was nice, but it’s all over now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that Walker talked to your cousin sometime yesterday, that your cousin was simply furious, and that Walker Jamieson has left, never to return!”
“Oh, Bess, don’t get romantic about it,” Nan said abruptly. “Now get your breath and tell me actually what you know.”
“I have,” Bess insisted. “Walker wanted to marry Alice and Adair MacKenzie said ‘no!’ Walker left without saying goodby to anyone and nobody knows when he is going to return if at all. Alice has gone to her room, and everybody in the house is all broken up, except the old housekeeper. All she does is shake her head and say ‘You just wait. This will all be all right in the end. Young people are too hasty.’
“Imagine that!” Bess ran on indignantly. “She says young people are too hasty, when all the trouble here is caused by Mr. MacKenzie and he certainly isn’t young!”
“Elizabeth Harley, you be careful!” Nan warned her friend. “You don’t know for sure whether what you are saying is true or not. You’ll have everybody in trouble if you don’t watch out.”
“But Nan, I could just cry,” Bess protested. “He is such a nice person and so is she. And now it’s all spoiled.”
“Hush, Bess,” Nan spoke more softly now. Then she looked over at Walter as though begging him to leave them for a few moments which he did.
“Now, see here,” she spoke sternly to Bess when he disappeared. “If there is anything at all in what you say, and I doubt it, there is nothingin the world to be gained by crying and talking and interfering.”
“I’m not interfering!” Bess was indignant.
“Well, then talking about it,” Nan corrected herself. “We can’t do anything about it except sit around and wait. I don’t believe that Walker has gone away for the reason you say he has at all, and if he has, he’ll be back.”
“Well, if he hasn’t gone away for that reason, why has he gone at all?” Bess demanded.
“You can’t tell,” Nan answered lamely. Why was it, she thought, that she was forever running into the secret that she had promised Walker she would keep. She had done the same thing ten minutes ago with Walter. Now she was doing it with her best friend. “You’ve just got to wait and find out,” she added.
“Come on, Bess,” she made a decided effort to change the subject, “let’s go in and get the camera. I want to take some pictures of the boys. Anyway we are neglecting them by staying out here like this.”
“Neglecting them!” Bess exclaimed. “They’ve done nothing all day but sit around and loaf. They’re a lazy bunch, and we all had such high hopes.” She let her sentence die away tragically.
“Why,” she wrinkled up her nose at Nan, asshe spoke, “are boys in general so dumb? Oh, Walter’s all right, but all the rest are just like bumps on a log.”
“No, they aren’t,” Nan denied. “Don’t you remember last night when they were all out there below our balconies? You didn’t think they were bumps on a log then, did you?”
Bess shook her head and her eyes shone. “No, that was grand,” she said. “But today, they just don’t do anything.”
“Maybe they think that we’re neglecting them?” Nan suggested.
“Well, let them,” Bess flounced away from Nan and into the house.
Nan looked bewilderedly after her. “What can be wrong with Bess,” she asked herself and then did go after her camera. If Bess didn’t want any pictures of the visitors, she did.
A few hours later, after an afternoon siesta and a long cool refreshing drink of fruit juices beneath the palms of the courtyard, everyone felt better. Alice’s eyes were red and swollen with crying, but she made an appearance. Adair MacKenzie was even more terse than usual, but he was kinder too. And Bess who had but three hours before found the boys so disagreeable now was surrounded by them. She was telling them in lowtones of the donkey episode of the day before.
It was all very cheerful and pleasant despite the emptiness that was felt because of Walker’s absence. However, no one mentioned his name. In fact, he might have remained away from the hacienda, away from Alice, indefinitely, if it hadn’t been for Adair himself, Adair and Nan.
“Well, well, girls, how do you like your new home now?” Adair MacKenzie was feeling somewhat talkative after his long refreshing drink of loganberry juice. “A pretty nice place, isn’t it?” He looked about himself with a satisfied sort of appreciation. Adair MacKenzie for all of his Scotch blood and his leanings toward economy really liked the good things of life. This southern home pleased him.
“It’s grand, Cousin Adair,” Nan answered for them all. “Perfectly grand. There’s only one thing that’s lacking.”
“And that?”
“We’re missing Rhoda. She was so excited about the plans to come down here that she could hardly contain herself, and now we won’t see her all summer. We won’t see her until we get back to school in the fall.”
“Who said you wouldn’t?” Adair asked suddenly. “Don’t jump to conclusions like that. Just to show you how wrong you are—you’releaving tomorrow morning by plane to visit with this Hammond girl over the week end, and then if it’s at all possible, she is to come back with you to stay here for a week or two. Now, how’s that?”
Nan couldn’t answer for a moment, then unexpectedly, even to herself, she threw her arms around Adair MacKenzie’s neck and kissed him.
“Tut! Tut!” he straightened his necktie and adjusted the soft white collar of his shirt after her hug. “Can’t stand for this. What’s the matter? Aren’t you pleased?”
“Oh, dear!” Nan’s face was flushed and her eyes bright as she answered. “There was never in all this wide world a nicer cousin than you are being to me.”
“Wait a second,” Adair was immensely pleased at this outburst. “What will these young men all think of you? Want to make them jealous of an old codger like me? Better watch out.”
Nan looked at the boys sitting around the ground and in the big comfortable chairs and blushed furiously. She had completely forgotten, at the announcement of her proposed journey that anyone else was present beside the girls whom she knew so well.
But her embarrassment couldn’t last long in the face of the excitement.
Nan was going for Rhoda! Nan was going by plane to get Rhoda and bring her back. Nan was going to start the next morning and by Monday she would be back, having flown half the length of Mexico to the border and then from there to Rose Ranch.
It was exciting to think of, but then a thousand, a million times more exciting in reality, for all sorts of unexpected things were to come about as the result of that ride.
Now, Nan could scarcely contain herself as she sat in the group and listened to the little everyday things they were talking about. The only thing that really penetrated her consciousness was the fact that she was leaving and that when she returned Walter and his friends would have left.
Adair brought this fact to life. In his free open, hospitable style, he tried to induce the youngsters to linger. He liked them, liked the excitement they had caused, for in spite of Bess’s complaint to Nan that they were a dull lot, they kept things moving from the moment they serenaded their hostesses until they left.
Through the days there had been hikes, parties, a visit into the interior by auto, and an excursion to a small village where the Indians were celebrating a native holiday. They had seen them dressed in native dress, dancing native danceswith all the abandon of a people freed from the daily routine, and they had witnessed one of their elaborate religious rites in which the ritual of the church and the ritual of pagan ancestors who had worshipped the Sun God were mingled with one another to result in a queer worship that was unlike anything any place else in the world.
Then they all went to a moving picture show where Roberta Taylor, the pretty little American actress whom everybody adored spoke in Spanish. How queer that seemed! They had all seen the film—it was an old one—in a theatre in Chicago, but how different it seemed now with all the conversation translated into Spanish. They giggled when the heroine looked up at her tall American hero and murmured “Señor, Señor,” and when he greeted her with “Buenos Días” and other common Spanish phrases. It was all very charming and amusing and everyone had a grand time.
But now Nan was going to leave and the boys were going to leave. The evening, in spite of the excitement about Nan’s proposed journey, turned a little sad when they all gathered around Walter and his guitar to sing as they had each night since he arrived. The songs they sang were all sad little songs.
By next morning all this was forgotten. The girls were all thrilled over Rhoda’s coming. Theyhad telegraphed to tell her what was happening and she had wired back that her mother was well enough now so that she could carry out the plans that Adair MacKenzie had made with such enjoyment, for he did enjoy doing things for other people. He liked being Santa Claus the year round.
So, by ten o’clock the next day a whole caravan drew up to the airport and Walter, his friends, Bess, Laura, Grace, Amelia, Adair and Alice saw Nan off. How exciting it was, getting the ticket, standing by while the plane’s motors were warmed up, and then, when the passengers started to get in, taking pictures of the plane, of the people around it, and of the crew.
Finally, she was off and Nan was soaring over the heads of all her friends. She looked out the window and waved a big white handkerchief, but already she seemed part of the clouds and those below, waving too, couldn’t see her.
How much fun it was climbing, climbing, climbing. Nan wasn’t worried at all. She looked out. Around her were clouds and beneath her the mountains of Mexico were stretched out. She was higher than the mountains! Her spirits soared with the thought and she looked around at her fellow passengers, two men who were in earnest conversation, a woman with a small child besideher, and another man who seemed to be alone.
None of them looked particularly interesting and Nan returned to her watching of the landscape, so when, after they had traveled for some time, there was a commotion up in the pilot’s cabin and the one traveler who seemed alone stood up and quietly ordered everyone to put his hands up, Nan was taken completely by surprise.
“Hands up, there, you!” The remark was addressed to Nan when she failed to comply with the first request. She put her hands up. The woman with the baby screamed. The baby cried. Nan put her hands down and moved to help the two.
“Put your hands up there!” the order came again in good American diction. Nan did. The voice meant business.
Now the plane began to rock. It slowed down some and glided down a hill of air to taxi across a field in a place far removed from civilization.
Now, for the first time, Nan was really frightened. Somehow, up in the air, she hadn’t been very scared. It had all happened too suddenly. Now, with her feet on the ground, however, she felt as though she was going to faint. She clenched her fists at her side, gritted her teeth, and stood waiting for the next move.
It came, quickly. Everyone was ordered to surrender his pass to cross the border, told to removehis luggage, and then together, they were hurried over the rough ground to a cabin and locked in.
Shortly, they heard the motors of the great plane again and then the drone as it swung around over head and went off in the direction it was headed for before anything happened—the United States.
The passengers, they were only Nan and the woman with the baby—the men had all been involved in the plot—looked at one another in consternation. What had happened? Were they being kidnapped and why? How long would they be left in this deserted spot?
They tried the doors and the windows. Someone outside yelled a warning to them. They paced the floor and the baby cried a pathetic little cry. They tried to help it, but still it cried, a baffled little cry.
“Passenger plane X 52 headed toward the border missing. Nan Sherwood—”
Walker Jamieson in a newspaper office in Mexico City got no further as the news came over the wire. He grabbed a phone, asked for long distance, and called the hacienda.
Yes, they had received the news. No, they didn’t know anything beyond what Walker did. Nan was traveling alone. Walker breathed a deep sigh of relief at this. He had been afraid that Alice was with her.
It was all a complete mystery. Couldn’t Walker do something? This plea came from Alice herself and it wrung his heart.
“I’ll try.” These were the words with which he hung up and somehow they comforted the young woman on the phone. She turned to her father and said simply, “It was Walker. He’ll help.”
And Walker did. While government planes swooped back and forth again and again across the country looking for a wrecked plane, Walker was busy working out his own theories.
“I tell you,” he was calling his New York editor, “there’s a whale of a good story here, one that’s bigger than anyone has guessed. This is no mere plane accident.
“How do I know? Oh, just smart that way. Can’t tell you more now. Want to go through with it? It will cost plenty of dough. Need a plane and a couple of darn good pilots.
“Sky’s the limit, you say? Okey-doke.” With this he slammed the receiver down and was off.
He went to the United States Embassy, called the hacienda again, hired a plane and zoomed off in the direction X52 was headed for when it disappeared.
For hours he and his pilot combed the district and found nothing that satisfied Walker. Then, along about nightfall a lone shack in a deserted district attracted his attention. The plane dropped down.
Nan heard it, from her shack prison she heard it and thought that it was the X52 returning. While she waited, she didn’t know what she wanted the more—to have the plane come or have it stay away. If it stayed away, she thought, that somehow, some way they could get out of the cabin, but to what end she couldn’t imagine. In the meantime, she was concerned over the child and the fear that it would starve.
She waited tensely as the motor died, as she heard footsteps approaching the cabin.
A voice called.
Where had she heard it before? Could it possibly be—Walker! Was she dreaming? She heard it again. This time she answered and a great flood of relief came over her. It was he! She ran to the door and shook it, although she had done it a dozen times before during the day and nothing had happened. Because Walker was here now, because there was someone out there that she knew, she felt that almost anything might come true. She pushed and shouted and beat upon the door.
Walker called to her again. This time she answered. His relief was as great as hers. She was alive. His hunch was right! He too beat upon the door with all his strength, pulled and pushed, but to no avail. Then he and the pilots got a beam and rammed it into the unresisting blockade. After what seemed hours, the door moved on its hinges, then gave way and Walker found Nan, the pluckiest little girl in the world he said later, unharmed by her experience.
“But Mr. Jamieson,” Nan questioned him as the plane he had brought took to the air with the pilots and the other prisoners, the woman and child, “how did you guess what had happened?”
He didn’t hear her at first. He was already busy planning the release on the tale he had pieced together.
The lead—“Plucky Nan Sherwood Found Alive in Deserted Shack in Wilderness. Gang of smugglers exposed in daring attempt to take plane load of Chinese across the border.”
Sounded good, he was thinking, but they really hadn’t been exposed as yet. He knew how they worked, but he didn’t know who they were. He turned now to Nan to see if he could find a clue.
“What did the men who imprisoned you look like?” he questioned her.
Nan described them briefly.
“Did you hear or see anyone besides the people you saw in the plane?” he questioned.
Nan hadn’t, but as he talked she had an inspiration. “Oh, I know, maybe I can help you!” she exclaimed. Then she told him of the pictures she had snapped before boarding the transport.
The rest of the plane ride was a dash toward a place where the pictures could be developed. One by one they were brought forth from the developing fluid, until it seemed as though the inspiration had not been such a fortunate one after all. But Walker didn’t give up. It was the last one that brought the desired results.
“Why, I know that man.” Walker Jamiesonsummoned forth from his long experience as a newspaperman, the recollection of a story about an aviator who had been discharged from the airplane mail service because of irregularities. Here was a picture of the man.
Nan took it up and studied it. “Why, I know him too!” she exclaimed.
“Of course you do,” Walker agreed. “He was one of the men who held up the plane, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, and not only that,” Nan now divulged a surprising bit of information, “he was present at the bull fight in Mexico City a few days ago.”
“What do you mean?” Walker looked at her intently.
“He was there with a former schoolmate, a Linda Riggs, and he was introduced to Cousin Adair by her.”
“His name?”
Nan searched back in her memory before she answered. “Arthur—”
“Howard?” Walker supplied the name.
“That’s right.” Nan was smiling now, thinking of Bess’s glee when she found out what a position Linda would be in when this story came out.
“So, you perhaps can even locate him,” Walker looked at the amazing youngster beside him.
“Linda is staying—oh, I don’t know.” Nan looked disappointed as she remembered that theyhadn’t exchanged addresses with the girl. But it didn’t matter, before the night was over, Linda Riggs, thoroughly frightened because she had unwittingly entertained and been entertained by an international crook, revealed all she knew about his whereabouts. And before the morning run of the great metropolitan daily that Walker was associated with had gone to press, the story was completed.
Arthur Howard using visitors’ passes stolen at the border and altered to suit his needs passed back and forth freely between the United States and Mexico. He was engaged in smuggling Chinese across and in this particularly daring attempt to finish up a big job had, after he held up the plane on which Nan had been a passenger, loaded it heavily with men who had paid high prices to make the trip.
The Chinese cook at the hacienda had been involved because he had paid a high price to try to get a relative of his across. The ring stolen from Nan was his last desperate effort to finish his payments, payments which had been draining all of his resources for months and had taken all of his life’s savings. This was the part of his story that he had told Nan after she had won his confidence.
Needless to say, Arthur Howard and his gang were rounded up by a group of United States G-menand he received a long prison sentence after a startling trial.
But to Nan and her friends at the hacienda, the most important result of the whole complicated affair was a certain wedding.
“Your cousin just couldn’t be mean after Walker found you,” Bess hugged Nan in her excitement. “And there is to be that wedding that we talked about, and you are going to be maid of honor and we’re all going to be bridesmaids. It will be in the garden and there will be lots of guests from all over the country and maybe Walter will be back here. Oh, Nan, I’m so excited!”
“And that isn’t the half of it,” Nan finished. “Cousin Adair has given this place to Walker and Alice and he’s settled a large sum of money on them and he’s inviting Momsey and Papa down for the wedding. Oh, Bess, and Rhoda’s going to come too, but not by plane,” she added. “Everything is just perfectly grand!”
So, let’s leave Nan Sherwood and her friends to a happy, happy time, to finish out a summer in Mexico that was more exciting than they ever imagined a summer could possibly be.
Transcriber’s NotesObvious printer’s errors were silently corrected. Otherwise spelling, hyphenation, interpunction and syntax of the original have been preserved.
Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious printer’s errors were silently corrected. Otherwise spelling, hyphenation, interpunction and syntax of the original have been preserved.