Jerry and Dick welcomed them with delighted grins and Mr. Newcomb gave them each a fatherly pat as he passed.
“How will you girls spend the morning?” Jerry inquired. “Dick and I have branding to do and I reckon you wouldn’t care to ‘spectate’ as an old cowboy we once had used to say.”
Mary shuddered. “Icertainly do not,” she declared. “I hope branding doesn’t hurt the poor calf half as much as it would hurtmeto watch it.”
“The thing that gets me,” Dick, still a tenderfoot, commented, “is the smell of burning hair and flesh. I can’t get used to it.” Then, glancing half apologetically toward Mrs. Newcomb, he said, “Not a very nice breakfast subject, is it?”
Placidly that good woman replied, “On a ranch one gets used to unappetizing subjects—sort of like nurses do in hospitals, I suppose. During meals is about all the time cowmen have to talk over what they’ve been doing and make plans.”
“You haven’t told us yet what you’d like to do this morning,” Jerry said, as he glanced fondly at the curly, sun-gold head close to his shoulder.
Mary replied, with a quick eager glance at the older woman, “Aunt Mollie, can’t you make use of two very capable young women? We can sweep and dust and—”
“No need to!” was the laughing reply. “Yesterday was clean-up day.”
“I can do some wicked churning,” Dora assured their hostess.
“No sour cream ready, dearie.” Then, realizing that the girls truly wished to be of assistance, Mrs. Newcomb turned brightly toward her son. “Jerry, I wish you’d saddle a couple of horses before you go. I’d like to send a parcel over to Etta Dooley. What’s more, I’d like Mary and Dora to meet Etta. She’s about your age, dear.” She had turned toward Mary. “A fine girl, we think, but a mighty lonesome one, yetnevera word of complaint. She has four to cook for—five counting herself—and beside that, there’s the patching and the cleaning. Then in between times she’s studying to try to pass the Douglas high school examinations, hoping someday to be a teacher. You’ll both like Etta. Don’t you think they will, Jerry?”
“Why, I reckon she’s likeable,” the cowboy said indifferently. He was thinking how much more enthusiasm he could have put into that reply if his mother had asked, “Etta will like Mary, won’t she, Jerry?” Rising, he smiled down at the girl of whom he was thinking. “I’ll go and saddle Dusky for you,” he told her. “She’s as easy riding as a rocking horse and as pretty a creature as we ever had onBar N.”
When the boys were gone, the girls insisted on washing the breakfast dishes. Then they made their beds. As they expected, they found the saddled ponies waiting for them near the side door.
Mrs. Newcomb gave Mary a flat, soft parcel. “Slip it over your saddle horn, dear,” she suggested, “and tell Etta that the flannel in the parcel is for her to make into nighties for Baby Bess.”
Dusky was as beautiful a horse as Jerry had said. Graceful, slender-limbed, with a coat of soft gray-black velvet—the color of dusk. Dora’s mount was named “Old Reliable.” Mrs. Newcomb smoothed its near flank lovingly. “I used to ride this one all over the range, and even into town, when we were both younger,” she told them.
The girls cantered leisurely down the cottonwood shaded lane and then turned, not toward the right which led to the highway, but toward the left on a rough canyon road that ascended gradually up a low tree-covered mountain.
Brambly bushes grew along the trail showing that the ground was not entirely dry. A curve in the road revealed the reason. A wide, stony creek-bed was ahead of them, and, in the middle of it, was a crystal-clear, rushing stream.
The horses waded through the water spatteringly. Old Reliable seemed not to notice the little whirlpools at his feet, but Dusky put back his ears and did a bit of side stepping. Mary, unafraid, spoke gently and patted his glossy neck. With a graceful leap, the bank was reached. There was a steep scramble for both horses; loose rock rattled down to the brook bed.
When they were on the rutty, climbing road again, Dora laughingly remarked, “Dusky already knows the voice of his mistress.” If there was a hidden meaning in Dora’s remark, Mary did not notice it, for what she said was, “Dora, who would ever expect a cowboy to be poetic, but Jerry surely was when he named this horse, don’t you think so?”
“Yeah!” Dora replied inelegantly. To herself she thought, “That may be a hopeful sign, thinking Jerry is a poet in cowboy guise.”
“It’s lovely up this canyon road, isn’t it?” All unconsciously Mary was gazing about her, contentedly drinking in the beauty of the cool, shadowy, rocky places on either side. Aspen, ash and cottonwood trees grew tall, their long roots drawing moisture from the tumbling brook.
Half a mile up the canyon there was a clearing, and in it stood a very old log hut with adobe-filled cracks. A lean-to on one side had recently been put up. In a small, fenced-in yard were a dozen hens, and down nearer the brook was a garden patch. Two small, red-headed boys in overalls were there busily weeding. Near them, on a grassy plot, a spotted cow was tethered. Back of the house, hanging on a line, was a rather nondescript wash, but, nevertheless, it was clean.
The front door stood open but no one was in sight. Mary and Dora, leaving the road, turned their horses toward the small house.
“I feel sort of queer,” Mary said, “sort of story-bookish—coming to call on a strange girl in this romantic canyon and—”
“Sh-ss!” Dora warned. “Someone’s coming to the door.”
Etta Dooley, evidently unused to receiving calls, stood in the open door, her rather sad mouth and her fine hazel eyes unsmiling. Her plain brown cloth dress hid the graceful lines of her young form. She was wondering and waiting.
Mary and Dora dismounted, and, as the red-headed, ten-year-old twins had come pell-mell from the garden, Mary, smiling down at them in her captivating way, asked them not to let the horses wander far from the house. Then, with the same irresistible smile, she approached the still silent, solemn girl.
“Good morning, Etta,” Mary said brightly, pretending not to notice the other girl’s rather disconcerting gaze. “We are friends of Mrs. Newcomb, and she wanted us to become acquainted with you. I am Mary Moore. I live in Gleeson across the valley and Dora Bellman is my best friend from the East.”
Etta’s serious face lighted for a brief moment with a rather melancholy smile as she acknowledged the introduction.
Dora thought, “Poor girl, ifthat’sthe best she can do, how cruel life must have been to her, yet she isn’t any older than we are, I am sure. I wish we could make her forget for a moment. I’d like to see her really smile.”
Etta had stepped to one side and was saying in her grave, musical voice, “Won’t you come in?” Then a dark red flush suffused her tanned face as she added, not without embarrassment, “Though there aren’t two safe chairs for you to sit on. The children made them, such as they are, out of boxes.”
Mary, ever able to blithely cope with any situation, exclaimed sincerely, “Oh, Etta, it’s so gloriously lovely outdoors today, let’s sit here. I’ll take the stump and you two may have the fallen tree.”
Then, as Etta glanced back into the room, half hesitating, Mary asked, “Were you busy about something?”
“Nothing special,” Etta replied. “I wanted to see if we had wakened Baby Bess. She sleeps late and I like to have her.” Again the hazel eyes were sad. The reason was given. “She hasn’t been well since Mother died.” There was a sudden fierce tenderness in her voice as she added, “I can’t lose Baby Bess. She’s so like our mother.”
Then, as though amazed at her own unusual show of feeling before strangers, Etta sank down on the log and shut herself away from them behind a wall of reserve.
But Mary, baffled though she momentarily was, knew that Aunt Mollie was counting on the good their friendship would do Etta, and so, glancing about, she exclaimed, “I love that rushing brook! It seems so happy, sparkling in the sun and singing all the time.”
Dora helped out with, “This surely is a beauty spot here under the trees. It’s the prettiest place I’ve seen since I’ve been in Arizona.”
“I like it,” Etta said, then with unexpected tenseness she added, “I’d love it, oh,howI’d love it, if it were our own and notcharity.”
Dora thought, “Now we’re getting at the down-deepness of things. Poor, but so proud! I wonder who in the world these Dooleys are. The name doesn’t suggest nobility.” But aloud she asked no questions. One just didn’t ask Etta about her personal affairs.
Dora groped for something that she could say that would start the conversational ball rolling, but, for once, she had a most unusual dearth of ideas.
Luckily there came a welcome break in the silence which was becoming embarrassing to the kindly intentioned visitors.
A sweet trilling baby-voice called, “Etta, I’se ’wake.”
Instantly their strange hostess was on her feet, her eyes love-lighted, her voice eager. “I’ll bring her out. It’s warm here in the sunshine.”
While Etta was gone, Mary and Dora exchanged despairing glances which seemed to say, “We’ve come to a hurdle that we can’t jump over.” Aloud they said nothing, for, almost at once Etta reappeared. In her arms was a two-year-old; a pretty child with sleep-flushed cheeks, corn-flower blue eyes and tousled hair as yellow as cornsilk. Etta’s expression told her love and pride in her little darling.
Baby Bess gazed unsmilingly at Dora as though she knew that here was someone who did not care for dolls, then she turned to look at Mary. Instantly she leaned toward her and held out both chubby arms, her sudden smile sweet and trusting.
Dora, watching Etta, saw a fleeting change of expression. What was it? Could Etta be jealous? But no, it wasn’t that, for she gave Mary her first real smile of friendship.
“Baby Bess likes you,” she said. “That means you must beverynice. Would you like to hold her?”
“Humph!” Dora thought as she watched Mary reseating herself on the stump and gathering the small child into her arms, “I reckon then I’mnotnice.”
After that, with the child contentedly nestling in Mary’s arms, the ice melted in the conversational stream. Of her own accord Etta spoke of school. She asked how far along the girls were and astonished them by telling what she was doing, subjects far in advance of them.
Then came the surprising information that her father and mother had both been college graduates and had taught her. She had never attended a school. She in turn taught the twins. Then, in a burst of confidence which Dora rightly guessed was very foreign to her reserved nature, Etta said, “My father lost a fortune four years ago. He made very unwise investments. After that Mother’s health failed and we came West. Dad did not know how to earn money. He grew old very suddenly,” then, once again, despair made her face far older than her years. She threw her arms wide. “All this tells the rest of our story.”
Mary’s blue eyes held tears of sympathy which she hid in the child’s yellow curls. Etta would not want sympathy.
Luckily at that moment there came a welcome interruption. A gay hallooing lower down the road announced the approach of Dick and Jerry.
Dora could see Etta rebuilding her wall of reserve. She acknowledged the introduction to Dick with a formal, unsmiling bow. Baby Bess kept the situation from becoming awkward by welcoming Jerry with delighted crows and leaps. The tall cowboy, his sombrero pushed back on his head, took her in his strong hands and lifted her high. The child’s gurgling excited laughter was like the rippling laughter of the mountain brook. After a few moments Jerry gave the baby to Etta. The twins came around a clump of cottonwood trees leading the horses, their freckled faces bright with wide grins, their Irish blue eyes laughing. Not for them the anxiety and sorrow that so crushed their big sister.
Jerry tossed them coins to pay them for the care they had taken of the ponies. Dora, glancing quickly at Etta, saw that the troubled expression was again brooding in her eyes.
Later, when Mary and Dora had said goodbye to their new friend and were riding away up the canyon road, Dora said, “Jerry, doesn’t it seem queer to you that the boys are so different from their sister? I should almost think thatshebelonged to an entirely different family.”
“A changeling, perhaps,” Dick suggested.
“Me no sabe,” the cowboy replied lightly. He was thinking of a very pleasant dream of his own just then.
Mary said with fervor, “Anyway,whoevershe is, I think she is a darling girl and the baby is adorable. I wish that we lived nearer that we might see her oftener, Dora.” Then, before her friend could reply, Mary added brightly, “Oh, Jerry, I know where you are taking us. You want to show Dick your own five hundred acres, don’t you? It’s the loveliest spot in all the country round, I think.”
Jerry’s gray eyes brightened. “That’s what Ihopedyou would think, Little Sister,” he said in a low voice, which the other two, following, could not hear.
They had gone about half a mile up the winding, slowly climbing road when Jerry stopped. The mountain had flattened out in a wide grass-covered tableland moistened by many underground springs.
Jerry waved his left hand. “This all was blue and yellow with wild flowers after the spring rains,” he told them. Mary turned her horse off the road and went to the edge of the hurrying brook.
“See, Dick,” she called, “this is where Jerry is going to build him a house some day. His granddad willed it to him. It takes in the part of the canyon where the Dooleys are, doesn’t it?”
“Close to it,” Jerry replied. “Their garden is on my line, but Dad and I will never put up fences.”
“Of course not!” Dora exclaimed. “Since you are the only child, it will all be yours.”
“There’s a jolly fine view from here,” Dick said admiringly as he sat on his horse gazing across the valley to the far range beyond Gleeson.
As they rode back down the valley Dora was thinking, “How can Mary help knowing that Jerry hopes thatshewill be the one to live in the house he plans building?” Then, with a little shrug, her thought ended with, “Oh well, and oh well, the future will reveal all.”
Down the road Mary was saying, “Jerry, I didn’t give that flannel to Etta. I just couldn’t. I was afraid she would think that we had comeonlyfor charitable reasons. Of course we did in the beginning, but, afterwards, I wassoglad something had given me a chance to meet her.”
A solution was offered by the sudden appearance of the twins by the roadside.
Jerry, slipping the parcel from Mary’s saddle horn, tossed it down, calling, “This is for Baby Bess, tell Sister Etta.”
Mary flashed him a bright, relieved smile as they went on down the canyon road.
Early that afternoon Jerry and Dick drove the small car around to the side door of the ranch house and hallooed for the girls, who appeared, one on either side of a beaming Aunt Mollie.
“We’ve had a wonderful time, you dear.” Mary kissed the older woman’s tanned cheek lovingly.
“Spiffy-fine!” Dora’s dark glowing eyes seconded the enthusiasm of the remark. “Please ask us again.”
“Any time, no onecouldbe more welcome, and make it soon.” After the girls had run down to the car, Mrs. Newcomb turned back into the kitchen where she was keeping Mr. Newcomb’s mid-day meal warm as he had not yet returned from riding the range.
The boys leaped out and Jerry opened the front door with a flourish. He glanced at Mary suspiciously. “You girls look as though you were plotting mischief.”
“Not that,” Mary denied. “We’ve just been composing Verse Eight for our Cowboy Song. You know they have to be forty verses long. Ready, Dora?”
Then together they laughingly sang—
“Two jolly girls and cowboys twainStart out adventuring once again.Come, come, coma,Coma, coma, kee.Come, come, coma,Come with we.”
“Two jolly girls and cowboys twain
Start out adventuring once again.
Come, come, coma,
Coma, coma, kee.
Come, come, coma,
Come with we.”
“Not so hot!” Dick commented. “Wait till I’ve had time to cook up one. Jerry, we’ll do Verse Nine after awhile.”
“Drive fast enough to cool us, won’t you, Jerry, for it surelyistorrid today,” Dora urged as she sprang nimbly into the rumble followed by Dick. “You two have your heads sheltered but we poor exposed pussons are likely to have frizzled brains.”
Dick, sinking down as comfortably as possible in the rather cramped quarters, grinned at his companion affably. “Luckily for us Jerry didn’t hear that or he would have sprung that old one, ‘what makes you think you have any?’”
Dora turned toward him rather blankly. “Any what?” she questioned, then added quickly, “Oh, of course, brains. I was wondering what those cows, that are watching us so intently, think that we are.”
“Some four-headed, square-bodied fierce animal that rattles all its bones when it runs, I suspect, and if they could hear Jerry’s horn, they’d take to the high timber up around the Dooleys’ clearing.”
Suddenly Dora became serious. “Dick,” she said, “isn’t that Etta a strange, interesting girl? Would you call her beautiful?”
“I wouldn’t call her at all,” Dick said sententiously; “I’m quite satisfied with my present companion.”
Ignoring his facetiousness, Dora continued, “Etta told us that her father lost a fortune four years ago. He evidently had inherited it. He couldn’t have made it himself, because, when it was lost, he was simply helpless. He didn’t know how to work and earn more. That implies that he belonged to a rich family, doesn’t it?”
“Possibly. In fact probably,” Dick agreed, looking with mock solemnity through his shell-rimmed glasses at the interested, olive-tinted face of his companion. “Is all this leading somewhere? Do you think that theremaybe rich relatives who ought to be notified of the Dooleys’ plight?”
Dora laughed as she acknowledged that she hadn’t thought that far. “Aren’t you afraid we’ll get sort of mixed up if we try to solve two mysteries at once?” Dick continued. “You know we’re already hot on the trail of a clue that will unravel the Lucky Loon—Little Bodil mystery.”
Dora turned brightly toward him. “Dick Farley,” she announced, as one who had made an important discovery, “hereissomething! Little Bodil is described as having had deep blue eyes and cornsilk yellow hair.”
“Sure thing, what of it? Etta’s hair is dark brown.”
“I’m talking about that Baby Bess, silly!” Dora told him. “Surely you noticed that she had—”
“Hair and eyes? Sure thing!” Dick finished her sentence jokingly, “but, according to my rather limited observation of the infant terrible, it usually starts life with blue eyes and yellow hair. Now are you going to tell me that this baby and Little Bodil have another similarity?”
Dora had turned and was looking out over the desert valley, which, for the past half hour, they had been crossing. Dick thought she was offended by his good-natured raillery, but, if she had been, she thought better of it and replied, “I had not noticed any other similarity.”
“Well, neither had I,” Dick, wishing to mollify her, confessed, “except that both of their names start with B.”
The small car had turned on the cross road which led toward Gleeson. As they neared the high cliff-like gate which was the entrance to the box-shaped sandy front yard of Mr. Pedergen’s rock house and tomb, Dick leaned forward and called, “Hi there, Jerry! Dora suggests that we stop and visit Lucky Loon’s estate. We aren’t in any particular hurry, are we?”
The rattling of the car was stilled as Jerry drew to one side of the road and stopped. He got out and glanced up at the sun. It still was high in a gleaming blue sky. “It’s hours yet before milking time,” he replied. Then to Mary, “What isyourwish, Little Sister?”
Dora thought, “Nevera brother in all this world puts so much tenderness intothatname. Leastwiseminedon’t!”
Mary had evidently replied that she would like to revisit the rock house, for Jerry was assisting her from the car. Dick had learned from past experience that Dora scorned assistance. Two girls couldnotbe more unlike.
Before they entered the rock gate, Dick implored with pretended earnestness, “For Pete’s sake, don’t any of you imagine you hear a gun shot, will you?”
“Not unless we reallydohear one,” Mary said.
Dora, to be impish, declared, “I’m prophesying that wewillhear a gun fired before we leave this enclosure.”
The sand was deep and the walking was hard. Jerry, with a hand under Mary’s right elbow, helped her along, but Dora ploughed alone, with Dick, making no better headway, at her side.
“When we first visited this place,” Dora began, “I felt that there was sort of a deathlike atmosphere about it. It’s so terribly still and with bleached skeletons lying around. Now that Iknowit is Lucky Loon’s tomb,” she glanced up at the rock house and shuddered, “it seems more uncanny than ever.”
Dick, having left the others, wandered along the base of the cliff on which stood the rock house. The front of it had broken away leaving a wide gap at the top.
“Here’s where Lucky Loon went up, I suppose.” Dick pointed to irregular steps that seemed to have been hewn out of the leaning rock. “Wecouldgo up these stairs to the top of this rock, but nothing short of a mountain goat could leap that chasm.”
“I reckon you’re right,” Jerry agreed.
Dick was regarding the gap speculatively. “If a fellow could throw a rope from the top of this leaning rock over to the house and make it secure somehow—”
Dora teasingly interrupted, “I didn’t know, Doctor Dick, thatyoucould walk a tight rope.”
“Oh sure, I can do anything I set out to!” was the joking reply. “However, I meant to walk across it with my hands.”
“It can’t be done.” The cowboy shook his head.
“Anyhow,” Dick declared, “you all wait here while I see how far up these old stairs I can climb. From the top I can better estimate how big a goat will be required to carry me over.”
“Dick,” Mary laughed, “I never knew you to be so nonsensical.”
Dora tried to detain him, saying, “If you succeed in climbing up to the top of this leaning rock, youmightbe directly opposite the open door of the rock house.”
“Well, what of it!” Dick was puzzled, for Dora’s expression was serious and almost fearful.
“That Evil Eye Turquoisemightlook right out at you!”
“Surelyyoudon’t believethatyarn!” Dick smiled down at her from the first step, for he had started to climb. He reached up to catch at a higher step with one hand when he uttered a terrorized scream and fairly dropped back to the ground, his arm held out. Clinging to his coat sleeve, perilously close to his wrist, was a huge lizard, a Gila Monster, thick-bodied, hideously mottled, dull-yellow, orange-red, dead-black. It had a blunt head and short legs that were clawing the air. The girls echoed Dick’s scream. Jerry, leaping forward, gave a warning cry. “Don’t drop your arm!” Then the quick command, “Girls, get back of me!” Whipping out his gun, he fired. The ugly reptile dropped to the sand, its muscles convulsing.
Dora ran to Dick and pulled back his sleeve. “Thank heavens,” she cried, “he didn’t touch your wrist.”
“I reckon you’ve had a narrow escape all right, old man,” Jerry declared, his tone one of great relief. Then, self-rebukingly, “I ought to have warned you.Neverput your feet or your handsanywherethat you can’t see.”
“Do you suppose there’s any poison in my coat sleeve?” Dick asked anxiously.
“No, I reckon not,” the cowboy said. “A Gila Monster packs his poison in his lower jaw and he has to turn over on his back before he can get it into a wound he makes.” Then, glancing at Mary and seeing that she still looked white and was trembling, he exclaimed, “Come, let’s go. I reckon it’s too hot in here at this hour.”
Dora, hardly knowing that she did so, clung to Dick’s arm as they waded through the sand to the gate.
“Oh, how I do hope we’ll never,neverhave to come to this awful place again,” Mary said. “To think that Dick might have lost his life here.”
“Well, I didn’t!” Dick replied. Then, with an effort at levity, he added, “Dora,you won! Wedidhear a gun shot.”
As they were nearing Gleeson, Dick leaned forward and called, “Jerry, Dora and I were wondering if we ought to tell old Silas Harvey that we have found Little Bodil’s trunk?”
Not until the small car had climbed the last ascending stretch of road to the tableland and had stopped in front of the ancient corner store did he receive a reply. Then, jumping out, Jerry said in a low voice, “Mary and I have been talking it over and we reckon that we’d better wait awhile before telling.” Then to the girl on the front seat, “Shall I get your mail?”
“And mine! And mine!” a chorus from the rumble.
There were letters and papers but one that especially pleased the girls.
“Another bulgy-budget from Polly and Patsy,” Dora exulted.
“They’re our two best friends back East at Sunnybank-on-the-Hudson where I live.” This she explained to Dick as the little car started to rattle up the hill road through the deserted ghost town.
“I can tell you the rest,” Dick recited. “Polly is fat and jolly and eats chocolates by the box. Patsy is clever, red-headed and a boy-hater. Have I got it right? Anyway I’m sure that’s what you said the first time you told me about them. Oh, yes—all together you call yourselves ‘The Quadralettes.’”
“Righto. Go to the head of the class. Although you did draw one minus. Patsy is no longer a boy-hater. She’s met her conqueror. Or at least so their last letter reported. I’m wild to get home so that we may read this.” Then leaning forward, she called through the opening in the old top which covered the front seat, “Jerry, can’t you boys stay awhile? I’d like to share this letter with you and Dick.”
“Oh, yes, please do,” Mary seconded brightly. “I’m sure it isn’t time yet to milk that cow.” This was teasingly added, remembering what Jerry had said soon after the noon hour.
“You don’t have to plead, Little Sister,” Jerry smiled down into the eager, upturned face that looked so fair to him; “if it was time to milk the cow, I reckon I’d let the calf do it. We only need milk enough for the family and this morning Bossie was extra generous.”
When the Moore house was reached, Mary, anxious to see her dad, hurried indoors and went directly to his room. He had just awakened from his nap and looked so much better that Mary exclaimed gladly, “Dad, you’ll be sitting out on the porch next week. I’m just ever so sure that you will.” Then, to the nurse who had entered, “Oh, Mrs. Farley, isn’t Dad wonderfully improved? Don’t you think he’ll be well enough to go back East with me in October when school opens?”
“I’m sure of it!” the kind woman replied, then, dismissing the girl, she added, “It’s time for the alcohol rub, dearie. Come back at four and you may read to your dad until supper time.”
“Oh, I surely will.” For a long moment Mary’s rosebud cheek pressed the thin wan one she so loved, then she slipped away.
Dick had spoken with his mother a brief moment when Mary had first gone in and she had been pleased to see the deepening tan on his face. The boy had not told her of his recent narrow escape, as Jerry had called it when the Gila Monster had set its cruel jaws on his coat sleeve. Brave as he was, Dick could not recall the terror of that moment without experiencing it all over again. He was sure he would have nightmares about it for a long time to come.
When Dora tripped down from upstairs where she had been to tidy up, she found Dick waiting for her in the lower hall.
“Where are the two Erries?” she asked, then laughed as he looked mystified. “Mary and Jerry. Of course if it were spelled Merry, it would be better.”
“In the kitchen,” Dick replied. “I was told to guide you thence.”
They heard spoons rattling in glasses. “Oh, good!” Dora exclaimed. “That sounds like a nice, cool drink.”
Nor was she wrong. There at the table in the shady corner of the kitchen stood Mary mixing fruit juices she had poured from cans which Jerry had opened.
“Yum! Yum!” Dora exclaimed in high appreciation. “What is better than pineapple and strawberry juice and cold water from the spring cellar?”
“Sounds good to me,” Dick said, smacking his lips with anticipatory relish.
Mary called over her shoulder, “Dora, fetch some of Carmelita’s cookie snaps.” Then, as she placed the four tall glasses around the table, she added, “Sit wherever you want to. When the party is over, we’ll read the letter.” The refreshment lived up to its name and tasted even better than it looked. Dick, being on the outside, cleared away the things and Dora opened the letter.
The languid scrawl which so fitted Polly’s indolent personality was first in evidence, “Dear Absent Ones,” Dora read aloud—
“Greetings from Camp Winnichook in the Adirondacks—(so cool that we have to wear our sweater coats)—to the sizzling sands of desert Arizona.”
Then Patsy’s quick, jerky penmanship interrupted. “Crickets, just reading that made me wipe my freckled brow. Ain’t it awful? Those reddish brown dots that were so piquant on my pert pug nose have soared to my brow, spread to my ears, and dived to my chin. But, even with my beauty thus blemished, H. H. thinks I’m—”
Big sprawling words cut in with, “It must be a case of love them and leave them then, for his winged lordship is about to fly away.” There was a blot of ink at that point as though there had been a struggle over the pen. Evidently Patsy had won, as her small scratchy penmanship followed. “Since H. H. ismyfriend, I consider it my sacred right to reveal all. Harry Hulbert, surely you remember all about him and his perfectly spiffy silver plane, which honestly looks like a big seagull. Oh, misery! I’m getting all tangled up. What I’m trying to say is that we had told you that he’s studying to be a pilot and that when he got his papers, he was to fly West and be an air scout. Well, he’s had ’em and he’s done gone! The whole object of this epistle is to introduce you to Harry before he drops down upon you. Heavens, I hope he won’t do it literally. Wouldn’t it be awful to have an airplane crash through your roof?”
Dora paused and looked glowingly across at Mary. “This flying Apollo is coming to Gleeson, I judge.”
Mary replied, “I’m terribly disappointed. Of course I knew itcouldn’thappen, but Ididwish, ifhecame, he could bring Patsy and Polly along with him.”
Jerry asked, “What’s this flying seagull going to do when he gets here?”
“He’s going to be attached to the border patrol,” Mary replied. “When there’s been a holdup, of a train or a stage, I suppose, Harry Hulbert is to fly over that region and watch for the escaping bandits.”
“Jolly!” Dick ejaculated. “That sounds like a great kind of an adventure to me. Jerry, let’s welcome him like a long lost brother; then, at least, he’ll take us up in his Seagull.”
Before the cowboy could reply Dora had continued reading, “Polly has told you that I’m goofy about H. H. but don’t you believe a word of it. I picked him out foryou, Mary, so take him and be grateful.”
Dora wanted to look up at Jerry, but was afraid it would be too pointed, so she turned a page and exclaimed with interest, “Aha,herewe have him in person. The Seagull’s photograph no less.”
It was an amusing snapshot. Under it was written, “Patsy Ordelle introducing Harry Hulbert to Mary Moore and Dora Bellman—also the ship.”
A pert, pretty girl with windblown hair and laughing eyes was pointing toward the youth at her side, who, dressed in flying togs, stood by his ship. He was making a bow, evidently to acknowledge the introduction, and so his face was not fully revealed. This was remedied by another snapshot of the boy alone standing with one hand on his graceful silver plane. Although not good looking, really, he had a fine, sensitive face, was slenderly built and had keen alert eyes.
“Now I’ll turn the mike over to Polly,” the pert handwriting ended. The languid scrawl took up the tale.
“Guess I was wrong about Pat’s being dippy about the silver aviator. He’s been gone two days and she’s been canoeing with ‘The Poet’ from ‘Crow’s-Nest-Camp’ up in the hills from dawn till dark and even by moonlight. For a once-was boy-hater, she’s going some.
“Well, say hello to Harry for us. He really is a decent kid. Write us the minute he lands. Wish I’d thought to send you a batch of fudge I’d made. Nuts are just crowded in it. Oh, well, up so near the sun it would probably have melted. Tra-la for now.
From Poll and Pat.”
Mary looked thoughtfully at, Jerry. “If Harry Hulbert left the Atlantic coast two days before this letter started, he must be in Arizona by now.”
“I reckon so. A mail pilot makes it in less than three days.”
Dora thought, “Poor Jerry, I ‘reckon’hedidn’t like that part about H. H. being donated to his Mary, but he isn’t going to say so, not Jerry!”
A small clock on the kitchen shelf back of the big stove made four little tingling noises. Mary sprang up. Holding out her hand to the cowboy, she said, “Stay for supper if you think the calf can milk the cow. I’m going to read to Dad for an hour. Then I’ll be back again.”
At five, which was the invalid’s supper hour, Mary emerged from the living-room and heard excited voices from behind the closed door of her father’s study across the hall.
Dora, who had been listening for her friend’s footsteps, threw the door wide. Her olive-tinted face told Mary that something had happened even before Jerry exclaimed: “Little Sister, come here and see what Dick has found. We think it’s a clue.”
“A clue about Little Bodilherein Dad’s study?” Mary’s voice was amazed and doubting.
“Oh, it’s something Dick himself brought into the house. Don’t tell,” Dora implored the boys. “See if Mary can guess.”
The fair girl gazed thoughtfully at the other three. Dick, beaming upon her, was holding something behind his back.
“Hmm. Let me see.” Mary put one slim white finger against her head, as though trying to think deeply. Then she laughed merrily. “I’d like to seem terribly dumb and drag out the suspense for you all, but, of course, it’s as plain as the sun on a clear day. Dick only keptonething from the trunk, and that one thing was a small carpet slipper. But I don’t see howthatcould possibly be a clue.”
“Very well, my dear young lady, we will show you.” Dick handed the slipper to her. “First, thrust your dainty fingers into its toe. Do you find a clue there?”
“No, I do not.” Mary was frankly curious.
“Now, turn the slipper over. What do you see?”
Mary turned the small worn slipper wonderingly and reported, “A loose patch.” Then, gleefully, “Oh, I know, Dick, that patch is some kind of coarse paper and on the inside of it, there’s writing. Is that it? Have I guessed right?”
“Well,” Dick confessed, “you know now as much as we do. We were just about to remove the patch when you came in. Jerry, let me take your knife. I left mine on a fence post over atBar N.”
The four young people stood close to one of the long windows while Dick cut the coarse thread that held the patch.
“Oh, do hurry!” Dora begged. “Your fingers are all thumbs. Here, let me do that.” But Dick shook his head, saying boyishly, “It’s my slipper, isn’t it?”
“One more stitch and we shall know all,” Jerry said, then, smiling across at Mary, he asked, “What doyoureckon that we will know?”
“I can’t guess what’sinthe letter, of course,” that little maid replied, “but itcan’tbe anything that will tell us whether the child was eaten up by wild animals or carried off by bandits.”
The ragged piece of brown paper, which had evidently been torn from a package wrapping, was removed and opened. Although there had been writing on it at one time, it was so blurred that it was hard to decipher. Mary found a magnifying glass in her father’s desk. Dora, Dick and Jerry stood with their heads together back of the younger girl’s chair, and when they thought they had figured a word out correctly, Mary, seated at the desk, wrote it down. After half an hour, they had made out only two words of the message and had guessed at the blurred signature.
“lonesome—write—Miss Burger,Gray Bluffs,New Mexico.”
There were several other words which they could not make out.
Mary took the letter, spread it on the desk before her and gazed intently at it through the magnifying glass. Then, smiling up at the others, a twinkle in her eyes, she said, “This is it—perhaps.
‘Dear Little Bodil,When you reach the strange place where you are going, you may be lonesome. If you are, do write often to your good friend,Miss Burger.’”
‘Dear Little Bodil,
When you reach the strange place where you are going, you may be lonesome. If you are, do write often to your good friend,
Miss Burger.’”
“Well, I reckon that’ll do pretty nigh as well as anything else,” Jerry said. Then, glancing out of the window at the late afternoon sun, he grinningly announced that since the calf, by that time, had milked the cow, he and Dick would accept Mary’s previously given invitation and stay for supper.
“Oh, Jerry!” Mary stood up and caught hold of the cowboy’s arm. “I know by the gleam in your eyes that you think this bit of papermaybe a clue worth following up.”
“Yes, I sure do,” was the earnest reply. “I reckon this Miss Burger, if we got the name right, was a friend to the little girl somewhere, sometime.”
“Shall we write to her now?” Mary dropped back into the desk chair. “If she’s living, she will surely answer.”