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 appetiteThey could eat flapjacks all day and all night.Come, come, coma,Coma, coma, kee.Those cowboys, Jerry,Are You and me.”
“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.”
“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, comaWith glee, glee, glee.”
“We’ll coma, coma, coma
With glee, glee, glee.”
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 theynever 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, “Butdotell me whatpossibleconnection 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’msotired—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 moneymustbe 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’msureyou’re a mind reader. Although,” he corrected, “Jerry didn’t just put it that way. But what hedidsay 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,mightgive 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 sheisalive, 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, “Thosemountains 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 theywantedpeople 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, didyouknow we were going up into theseawfulmountains?”
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, andarewe 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. Iknowshe 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.”
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 bythattime 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 theverysame one that the stages used to cross years ago?”
Jerry nodded, but before he could speak, Mary, shining-eyed, rushed on with, “Oh, Dora, Iknowwhy the boys have brought us here!Thisis 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 ofthatfact 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,whata dreadful name!Whatis it?Whereis 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 gradelooksa 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: “Coulda 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, “arethere wild animals now—I mean living here in these mountains?”
The cowboy glanced at Dick before he replied. “None, Little Sister, that will hurtyou. Don’t think about them.”
But Mary persisted. “At leasttell mewhat 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 theremaybe a mountain lion or so up here, and a puma perhaps. That’s sort of a big cat, butit’sa 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, Iknowyou 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 onthisroadthesedays, would there?”
It was Dora who answered, “Mary Moore, youknowthere 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, ifthisis the spot where the stage was held up and where the horses plunged off the road, don’t you think it’s possiblesomethingmay be left of the stage, something thatwecould 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 weoughtto 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!”
“Twocowgirls whomnothingcan stopAre now going over the Devil’s Drop.Come, come, coma,Coma, coma, kee.You may come along ifYou’re brave as we.”
“Twocowgirls whomnothingcan 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.
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,whatif 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,whyare 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, “butdotell us about it. After all these years, whatcanthere 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 thatnowwe are really bent on a mission of charity.” Then, smiling up at Jerry, she held out a hand to him as she said, “That’sthe 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, justeverso 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 averylittle, 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.”
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,nowI 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 hedoesget 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 tryto 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,whatdid 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. “Thatought 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 anythinghereto 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, howimportantit 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 knowjustwhatyouare thinking. You’re afraid wemightgo 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’thold 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 pullonlyif 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, Idowish 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. “Pleasedon’t startimaginingterrible 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 secondtoo 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 yetyouweresosure 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 youknowit’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 endangeringtheirlives,” 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.
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.