But the searchers were soon convinced that Betsy was not hiding to tease. Peyton lighted all of the heavy brass hanging lamps but they did little to illumine the long, dark room. Indeed, their dim light made the corners darker and more ghostly than they had been before. Each girl was carrying a lantern and the room was searched more thoroughly than it had been by Virginia alone.
“Perhaps Betsy climbed out of a window and is hiding out doors,” Babs suggested.
“That would be an impossible feat,” Peyton replied, “for, in common with all Spanish houses, these windows are barred.”
As he spoke the lad turned and walked toward the fireplace. He looked into its cavernous opening and carefully examined the walls and chimney. Turning back into the room, Peyton met Virginia and they exchanged discouraged glances. “I simply cannot understand it,” the boy said in a low tone.
Before Virginia could reply, a startled cry rang out. They both whirled, expecting to see Betsy, but instead it was Babs who was gazing at one of the barred windows as though she had seen the ghost about which she had been talking.
Peyton leaped to her side. “Barbara,” he said, “why are you staring at the window in that wild way? I can see nothing.”
“No, you can’t now,” the girl replied. “It is gone—the face—”
“I believe that mischievous Betsy Clossen is outside peering in at us and laughing to think how she is fooling us all,” Virginia said in almost a natural tone. “I know her of old. She loves to tease.”
But Babs shook her head as she continued to gaze at the barred window.
“It wasn’t Betsy,” she whispered. “It was a dark face. I think Trujillo.”
“Girls, you come back to the kitchen,” Peyton said, “and bar the door after me. I am going to see if Betsy Clossen is really hiding outside. If she is the kind of a girl who would cause you all this concern just to play a prank, I think you would better send her back East when she is found.”
“I, too, thought at first that she was hiding to tease,” Margaret said, “but Betsy really has good common-sense and she would not continue to frighten us in this way. Now, I am sure that something has happened to her.”
Peyton was much more troubled than he wished the girls to know. It was his house and they were his guests, and his sister’s. Too, he had been quietly watching his new Mexican overseer for the past few weeks, as some of his actions seemed very strange.
Then Peyton left the kitchen.
“Oh, how I do wish this mystery was solved,” Margaret declared as she sank down in a rocker, her eyes watching the closed door leading into the front room, but almost instantly she was on her feet again clutching Virginia’s arm.
“Look! Quick!” she whispered. “Didn’t the door open a crack?”
Virginia laughed. “No, no, child,” she replied. “Don’t let your imagination run riot. I am sure there is some perfectly natural commonplace reason for Betsy’s disappearance. You girls know perfectly well that there is no such thing as a ghost. You hear stories about them but you never met a single person who ever saw one.”
Then they were silent, just waiting, they knew not for what.
In the meantime Peyton had gone down to the bunk-house.
The lad knew that the girl could not have left the room by any of the exits known to him. The front door had been heavily barricaded by the Spanish Don on the inside and as Peyton did not use that room, he had not opened the massive wooden doors. The windows were barred and the only door of which he had knowledge was the one leading into the kitchen. Suddenly he recalled that there was another door but he had found it locked, with no key in evidence, and believing it led into a store room of some kind, he had thought little of it.
When Babs had cried out that she had seen a face peering in at one of the barred windows, a dark face that looked like Trujillo’s, Peyton had determined to go at once to the bunk-house and find out the whereabouts of his head rider.
There was a very long adobe building in which the ten peons lived together. Not far from it was one small solitary adobe which had been built for the overseer of the Three Cross Ranch. It was in this that Trujillo slept, although he took his meals with Peyton at the big house. The owner of the ranch felt that this was a courtesy due his head rider, and, moreover Trujillo had served him well by saving his cattle on the day of his first appearance in the wild March blizzard.
As he thought of these things, he rebuked himself for having doubted the loyalty of his Mexican cowboy in whom he had so much faith that he had placed him in charge of the entire ranch, and yet, try as he might to banish it, he could not but agree with Betsy that there was something very mysterious about Trujillo.
The long adobe was lighted and the Mexicans squatting on the floor were intent on a game which they played every evening.
Peyton quietly passed the open door and did not attract their attention. He went at once to the overseer’s adobe dwelling. It was dark. The door was standing open and in the faint light of the rising moon, Peyton could see that the single room was unoccupied.
“Trujillo,” he said softly, but there was no response.
Peyton, troubled indeed, turned back toward the ranch house. He did not inquire of the peons the whereabouts of Trujillo, for the overseer never associated with his helpers although he treated them kindly.
What should he do? What could he do? The lad was thinking as he again ascended the steps and entered the kitchen door. It was then that he heard a crash followed by a shrill cry in the front room.
Instantly the girls were on their feet and they were all staring at the closed door when it burst open and Betsy Clossen rushed in. Her face was very pale and she was so excited that at first she could not speak.
“Betsy, is it really you?” Barbara exclaimed joyfully as she caught her friend in her arms.
“I’m not sure certain it is, myself,” Betsy replied as she sank down in a rocker. “I’ve had the most exciting experience.”
The others gathered about her. “Do tell us just what happened,” Virginia said.
“Well, when you left me standing alone in the dark room, I happened to take a step backward and that caused me to sit down very suddenly in a big mahogany chair. I caught at the arms and I must have pushed a button that was part of the carving. Instantly I realized that I was slowly sinking, although it was so dark I could not tell just what was happening. The floor seemed to have opened under me and very quietly and easily the chair was descending like an elevator. At last I was convinced that I had been let down through a trap-door. I could hear it closing above me. I found myself in a dark room. I didn’t dare leave the chair, however, so there I sat, shouting lustily for help, but I could not make you hear. I must have been there an hour when I decided that I would experiment with the chair. I thought that if by pushing one knob I had caused it to descend into the cellar-like room, there must be another knob that would lift it again. At last I found such a contrivance, pushed it and slowly the chair ascended. I gave a cry of joy when I was once more in the front room, I sprang from the chair, knocking over a small table which fell with a crash and here I am. Now that it’s all over, I am glad that it happened. What an exciting experience it will be to tell Cousin Bob.”
“And so you see, girls, the mysterious Trujillo had nothing to do with it,” Virginia said.
Peyton, however, remembering the unoccupied bunk-house of the overseer was still troubled, but a moment later his fears concerning the loyalty of his cowboy were set at rest. The galloping of a horse’s feet was heard and then a hallooing. Peyton swung open the door and Trujillo stood there.
Rapidly in Spanish he told the other lad that one of the peons had reported early in the evening that a yearling had fallen into a water-hole and that together they had departed to endeavor to rescue it. Luckily there was but little water in the hole and the young cow, though greatly frightened, was unhurt and they had brought it back to keep for a few days in the hospital corral.
This was all so commonplace that it restored the girls to a more normal state of mind and Peyton rebuked himself for having doubted his head rider who was ever serving him so faithfully.
“Now, let’s go to bed, girls, and forget all that has happened. We are quite used to elevators and since we know that the Don, who built this house, needed some way to hide quickly from his pursuers, we can easily understand his descending chair. Tomorrow I intend to take a ride in it.”
Virginia’s matter of fact tone calmed the younger and more nervous girls and soon they retired.
The recent owners of the Three Cross Ranch had built a wing leading from the kitchen. This contained two simply furnished bedrooms which the four girls were to occupy.
Betsy Clossen was the last to fall asleep. She kept wondering where she had seen Trujillo before. Nowhere, that she could remember, and yet, if not, why did she seem to be haunted with the idea that she had seen him.
The next day the girls were awakened by the sun shining in at their open windows; young calves in the near corral were calling to their mothers and the hens in the chicken yard at the back of the house were cheerily clucking as they busily scratched for their breakfast.
This was all so commonplace that the girls arose, laughing as they spoke of their fears of the night before. As soon as their morning meal had been finished, Betsy Clossen wished to visit the scene of her recent adventure, and so all together they entered the dark, silent front room.
There were heavy wooden blinds on all of the windows except the one through which Babs on the night before had seen a dusky face peering.
“Girls,” the little mistress of the Three Cross Ranch exclaimed, “since this is to be my home, I am going to frighten away the ghost by letting in the sunshine. Virg, will you help me unbar these wooden blinds?”
Willing hands assisted and soon the sunshine was flooding in, revealing the wonderful old mahogany furniture. There was dust deep in each of the carvings, while long deserted cobwebs stretched across corners and they, too, were dust laden.
“It is all very fine, I’ve no doubt,” Babs began, as, with arms akimbo she looked about at her new possessions, “but I certainly do wish that the Spanish Don to whom all this grandeur belongs would return and claim it. I’m like Mrs. Hartley, I would just love to have this long, big room furnished in the cozy, comfortable way to which I am accustomed.”
“Well, I certainly would take those paintings down from the wall,” Margaret declared with a shudder. “I would rather have any number of ghosts than those foreign folks watching every move I made. Honest Injun, they give me the chilly shivers staring at one the way they do.”
Virginia laughed. “Where’s Betsy Clossen?” she suddenly inquired.
While the other girls had been busy removing the wooden blinds, that maiden had been experimenting with her “elevator” chair. As Virg spoke, the girls heard a gay shout and turned in time to see Betsy’s head disappearing below the floor. They ran in that direction and reached the spot just as the trap-door closed and snapped into place.
Babs shook her finger at the spot as she declared: “Mysterious chair, this is the very last day that you will operate. I’m going to make this wonderful long room livable and I surely don’t want chairs that will carry some unsuspecting guest down to the cellar.”
Margaret laughed merrily.
“Wouldn’t it be amusing, though, if one did have a solemn, serious caller, a deacon or someone like that, who happened to sit on this chair and suddenly disappear? You had better keep it, Babs, it may come in handy.”
But the little housekeeper vigorously shook her head. “No, my mind is made up once for all. Every bit of this foreign furniture is going to be stored in an outhouse until the rightful owner claims it, and I am going to Douglas when you girls return to V. M. Ranch and buy just the things that I would enjoy having.”
“I wonder why Betsy doesn’t come back,” Margaret remarked. She had been intently watching the trap door to see what would happen next.
The three girls knelt and called in chorus: “Betsy! Are you down there? Why don’t you bring the elevator chair up again?” There was no reply. Not a sound from below could they hear. The girls tried to open the trap-door, but the contrivance that secured it was underneath the floor.
“What if the machinery doesn’t work?” Margaret said, looking up in sudden dismay, “Betsy might smother down there.”
“Who is talking about me?” a merry voice called. The astonished girls sprang to their feet and whirled around. There was the laughing Betsy standing back of them.
The other three crowded about. “Did you make any new discoveries? Tell us what happened!”
“Well, when I reached the cellar,” Betsy began, “I hunted about to find the other knob, the one that would lift me again to this room, but lo and behold, it appeared to have lost its magic. I pulled on it and pushed, but the chair did not move. I could hear you calling to me, although your voices sounded faint and far. I replied but I was sure that you could not hear. Then I sat for a few moments thinking what I ought to do next. Of course I knew that you would soon call for help if I did not return and that Peyton would break open the trap. When my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, I thought I saw a door at the far side of the room. Groping my way toward it, I found that it opened easily. Just beyond was a spiral stairway which I ascended. At the top was another door, but it was locked. I was about to pound upon it, when I happened to touch a key which I turned and here I am.”
“Oh!” Virginia exclaimed. “I remember that door. It is the one I tried to open last night when the candle blew out, but I found it locked. Peyton said he supposed that it led into a store room but he had never been curious enough about the matter to investigate.”
Babs was opening the windows, letting in the cool morning breeze. “I’m going to ask Peyton if we can’t have these bars removed,” she declared as she stood peering through them. “I feel as though I were in a jail looking out between bars this way.” Suddenly she uttered an exclamation which took all of the girls hurrying to her side.
“What is it, Babs? What do you see? Why are you staring so intently at the ground?” were the questions hurled at her. Babs whirled about and faced them, her eyes wide with excitement. “This is the window through which I saw a Mexican last night peering in at us,” she said.
The others nodded. “You all laughed at me and declared that I was letting my imagination run riot.” Then she added, exultingly, “Follow me, young ladies, and you will discover that I, too, am a very fine detective.”
Much mystified, the girls trooped out of the kitchen door and around the house. Babs, in the lead, stopped and picked up something from the ground not far from the barred window. Turning she held aloft a peculiarly shaped key.
“This probably will solve the mystery for us,” she declared. “Good, there is Peyton. Hail him, Betsy, will you?”
The lad mounted, was about to start with several peons for the valley pasture when he heard the girls calling. Whirling his horse and bidding the Mexicans wait his return, he galloped up. Dismounting, he asked Babs what was wanted of him. He listened to her story, almost believing that she had been imaginative until she produced the strangely shaped key as evidence that some one had been there.
“Brother, did you ever see that key before?” Babs eagerly inquired.
The lad nodded. “Yes,” he replied. “I saw it lying on Trujillo’s bed yesterday morning when I went to his bunk early to ask his advice before beginning the work of the day. I picked up the key at the time and examined it because of its queer shape, but I made no comment as the matter I had called to discuss was much more important. However, I cannot believe that my trusted overseer would spy upon the actions of my sister and her guests. There must be some other solution of this mystery,” he said. Then he added: “Please say nothing concerning it and I will try to find out the truth about the whole matter.”
Peyton slipped the key into one of his coat pockets and lifting his hat to the girls he rode away.
Betsy Clossen in her role of young detective watched for an opportunity to slip away from the others as she wished to think out some plan by which she might be able to discover the real identity of the mysterious Mexican, Trujillo.
When Peyton had said that he had seen the oddly shaped key only the morning before in the bunkhouse of his overseer, Betsy was more than ever convinced that Trujillo’s presence on the Three Cross ranch was not merely because he needed employment. And yet what could he want? Peyton had no money on the place. Betsy had heard him tell his sister only the night before that he would have to ride to Douglas the following day to visit the bank and procure the money he would need to pay the peons for a month’s work.
There were no treasures in the old Spanish house that Trujillo could wish to possess. The mahogany furniture was valuable, no doubt, but much too heavy for anyone to spirit away, and the only other possible treasures in the room which Babs called haunted were the paintings of the family of Don Carlos Spinoza. Surely no one would wish to steal those. In fact if any one did, Babs would gladly assist them, so eager was she to remove from the walls of her new home the life-sized portraits of those “foreigners.”
“I don’t believe I’m a very good detective after all,” Betsy sighed. “I don’t seem to hit upon the right clue to start from,” she thought as she followed a trail leading, she did not notice where, so intently was she thinking and gazing at the ground.
“I have three main facts to work with,” she told herself. “The first is that Trujillo is mysterious, even Peyton thinks that. The second is the dark face that peered through the barred window last night when the girls were searching for me and the third is that the person who peered dropped an oddly shaped key which Peyton had seen in the room of his overseer.
“The conclusion to be drawn is that Trujillo is remaining at the Three Cross ranch, not because of the remuneration he receives, but in order to obtain some information, since there is nothing valuable to carry away.”
“Three Cross,” she repeated to herself. “That surely is a queer name for a cattle ranch. Oh, I remember now! Peyton said that old Don Carlos was very religious, and that somewhere on the place he had erected a shrine on which were three crosses and that he went there to implore protection from his pursuing political enemies. I must ask Babs where—” Betsy suddenly paused and looked about her. She saw that the trail she had been following seemed to end abruptly in a lonely sheltered hollow among sand hills. In front of the girl stood an old shrine above which were three wooden crosses. One had fallen to the ground, another leaned far over, but the center one was erect and seemed to be more firmly established in the sand than the other two had been.
Betsy stood looking around, awed by the loneliness of the place, when suddenly, through the stillness there arose a long-drawn-out wail. With a startled cry the girl turned and fled. She ran back over the trail as she had never run before.
When she felt that she was a safe distance away she turned and looked back, almost believing that she would see some ghostly figure pursuing her. Standing on the top of a sand hill, its lean length silhouetted against the bright sky, she saw a lone coyote. She shuddered and looked back again, but at last she was convinced that the wolf of the desert had no intention of following her but had departed for some other haunt.
Slowing her pace, Betsy soliloquized: “Well, I discovered something, even though it may have nothing to do with unraveling the mystery. Now let me see, where did I leave off? Oh, yes; I had decided that Trujillo is staying on this ranch for some reason other than that of employment, and yet it cannot be to steal, for there is nothing on the place that one would want, and—” Suddenly Betsy stood still and stared into space, thinking intently. Then she laughed. “I’m a great detective, I must say. I haven’t given a moment’s thought to the most important clue of all—the key! Trujillo must think there is something around here to unlock, otherwise why did he have the key?” The overseer had arrived in a March blizzard, she had heard Peyton tell, without box or baggage of any kind, nor had he obtained any since his arrival.
“Hum,” thought the would-be detective. “I see it all now. There is a treasure hidden at the house, probably in the front room which has always been kept closed, and Trujillo had planned that night to slip in, unobserved, but having seen a light in the room, he had first peered through the window and had then beat a hasty retreat. Hurray for me!” Betsy concluded exultingly. “The mystery is solved. I do believe.”
She was nearing the house and she saw the girls on the porch beckoning to her.
“Where have you been? Lunch is ready,” Margaret called.
“Oh, just for a walk,” was Betsy’s non-committal reply. She had decided to say nothing of her discovery until she had had time to look around a little more all by herself. But the would-be detective was to hear something that noon which convinced her that she was following the wrong clue.
The girls were seated about the table at one end of the big comfortable kitchen and, it being Margaret’s turn to play waitress, she was passing a dish of frijolies when they heard a horse galloping under the windows. “Peyton has returned just in time,” Megsy announced, but, when the door opened, it was Trujillo who appeared. He seemed to be much excited, but what he said caused a great deal more excitement among his listeners, for in perfectly good English he inquired:
“Senoritas, have you seen an oddly shaped key? It is an antique and of great value to me, though to no one else. I left it in my bunk-house yesterday morning. I recall having seen your brother,” turning to address the astonished Barbara, “when he picked it up and examined it. Since then I have given the key no thought, but a moment ago, chancing to look for it, I could not find it. Believing that Senor Peyton, without thought had slipped it into his pocket, I came here in search of him.”
Barbara cast a helpless glance at the ever calm Virginia, who replied: “Trujillo, the key about which you speak, is, I am sure, the one that we found close to the house early this morning. We gave it to Peyton. He is spending the day at the valley pasture directing the mending of the fence around the grass lands.”
“I thank you, Senorita,” the tall dark lad said, sweeping his sombrero in a courtly manner.
When he was gone in search of his employer, the girls sank back in the chairs from which they had risen, and, one and all uttered some characteristic exclamation.
“Silver fishes in a shining sea,” Betsy Clossen said, and although the remark could mean nothing, it was evident that the speaker meant a great deal. “I surely am a wonderful detective,” she declared. “Every clue I thought I had has vanished.” Then turning to Babs, she added: “Didn’t you tell us that Trujillo could not speak English?”
That maiden looked puzzled. “I don’t seem to recall why I thought he couldn’t,” she confessed. “Probably because he never did in all the time he has been here.”
Virginia smiled: “We haven’t been here two days as yet,” she reminded them, “and we have made no effort to converse with Trujillo. We just took it for granted he wouldn’t understand us. Well, one thing is certain and that is that Trujillo did not peer in the window nor drop the key and I am glad that he didn’t. Everything Peyton has told us about him has been so fine and noble, I would be sorry to discover that he was a spy.”
“Hark! What was that?” Virginia had risen and was listening, intently. There was the sound of something heavy falling in the front room, then a hurrying of feet and the slamming of a door.
Virginia fearlessly entered the room which was flooded with sunlight, since the blinds had been removed. She went at once to the door opening upon the spiral stairway. It was unlocked early that morning. The other girls had cautiously followed and were searching for the something which had fallen. “There it is,” Margaret whispered, pointing.
The something that had fallen with a crash proved to be a rock which had been pried out of the wall of the fireplace.
“Oh, girls,” Betsy said, her eyes glowing. “We’re on the trail of whoever it was peered in last night. There is something in this room that he wants. Of course we have decided definitely that it wasn’t Trujillo, and—”
“I’m not so sure of that.” It was the quiet Margaret who spoke and the others turned toward her.
“Not sure? Why of course we’re sure. If he had dropped the key, he wouldn’t have to ask where it had been lost, would he?” Babs inquired.
“Oh, I know what Margaret means,” Betsy interrupted. “She thinks that in order to throw suspicion away from himself, he would pretend ignorance of the whereabouts of the key. Then, when we directed him to the valley pasture, what could be simpler than for him to pretend to go there, but in reality to wheel back when he was out of our sight and return to procure whatever it is that he seems to want.”
The girls had returned to the kitchen and were huddled as far from the front room as they could get and were whispering together excitedly.
“Well,” Betsy confessed. “I’ve always wanted a mystery to unravel, but I seem doomed to failure now that I really have one. It grows more mysterious every minute.”
Margaret had to laugh at her friend’s dismal expression. “Betsy,” she said to tease, “I’ll dare you to ride down to the cellar room in your elevator chair and see who is hiding there. Someone must be, for he just went down the spiral stairs and locked the door behind him.”
The would-be detective shook her head. “I told you this morning that the machinery is broken. That chair is doomed to remain in the cellar.”
To verify her statement, Betsy drew the reluctant Margaret toward the door, opened it cautiously and peered into the front room. Then she closed it with a bang, and turned a pale face toward the girls. “The chair—it’s in its right place. Someone has ridden up in it and must be hiding in the front room. How I wish Peyton would come. I for one have had enough mystery to last for a lifetime.”
“Here comes brother, and someone is riding at his side. I declare, it’s Trujillo, and so the intruder must be someone else. I do wish they would hurry. I’m expecting any minute that something is going to happen,” Babs declared.
Margaret, who had opened the door leading to the back porch, uttered an exclamation of astonishment, then, turning she beckoned as she said: “Come, quick! Something is happening right this minute.”
What the girls, crowding into the open doorway, saw was the figure of a peon crouching and creeping along behind a hedge of mesquite bushes. He kept watching the trail down which he saw Peyton and Trujillo descending, and, when they were close to him, he lay flat on the sand burrowing as deep as he could in his endeavor to escape detection.
The riders, deeply engrossed in their conversation, were not looking in that direction, and when Margaret saw that they were riding past the mesquite clump without seeing the hiding peon, she ran out on the porch and hallooed to them, making frantic motions. These might not have been understood by the two riders, but the ignorant and greatly frightened Mexican, believing that his hiding place was being revealed, took to his feet and raced for the sand hills. Peyton and Trujillo, seeing him, wheeled their horses and galloped in pursuit, and he was quickly overtaken.
“It is Pinez, whom we recently engaged.” Trujillo said in English, which the peon could not understand. “I have been watching him for several days. Last week I sent him to town for my mail and I was convinced that one of my letters was being withheld from me.” Then turning to the sullen peon, he asked: “Pinez, why were you hiding? Have you a letter that belongs to me?”
“Si, Senor,” was the reply, and from his pocket the Mexican drew an envelope, much soiled from frequent handling.
Trujillo’s face brightened. “It is for this that I have been waiting,” was his remark, which greatly mystified Peyton, but he made no comment.
Then the overseer addressed the peon in Spanish, saying: “Pinez, you are dismissed. Return to Sonora but say nothing of the content of this letter.”
The peon’s manner was deferential in the extreme. Turning, he walked toward the long bunk-house from which, half an hour later, the girls saw him ride away toward the South on the small, mottled horse on which he had so recently arrived.
All through lunch the two boys talked about the affairs of the ranch as though nothing mysterious or unusual had happened. After the noon meal was finished the overseer turned toward the little mistress of Three Cross saying with frank pleasantness: “Senorita, I have heard you speak of a front room that you call haunted. With your kind permission, I would like to visit that room in your company.”
Babs was too well bred to show the astonishment she certainly felt. “Come, let us all go in there,” she replied, rising.
Trujillo stepped aside with Peyton to permit Barbara and her girl friends to enter. Betsy regretted that she had to go ahead as she wished to watch the overseer’s every move, for she felt that now, if ever, she would prove that she was really a good detective. She believed that the moment for solving the mystery had come.
Trujillo walked about, gazing especially at the life-sized portraits upon the walls. Indeed he was so absorbed in one and another that he seemed to quite forget their presence.
He stood for a long time before the painting of a beautiful young Spanish mother with a dark-eyed little girl on her lap and a tall, handsome youth standing at her side.
Trujillo, directly beneath this painting, turned and smiled at the almost breathless girls. He was about to speak, but before he could utter a word, there was a glad cry from Betsy Clossen.
“I know now who you are,” she exclaimed glowingly. “You are the little boy in that painting, grown up!”
Trujillo bowed in his courtly way. “Si Senorita. I am Trujillo Carlos Spinoza. Now I will tell you why I am here.”
When Trujillo announced that he was indeed the lad portrayed in the painting, now grown, Betsy Clossen was overjoyed that she had unraveled the mystery as she had so desired. Notwithstanding the fact that the Spanish youth closely resembled the portrait of the boy in the picture hanging directly above his head, not one of the other young people had observed this.
“Oh, I am so glad!” Babs joyfully exclaimed. “Now you will take all this furniture away, won’t you? Because it really belongs to your family, you know. Mrs. Dartley said that Don Carlos Spinoza asked permission to leave this room furnished, promising to remove everything in it at his first opportunity. That being so long ago we feared no one was ever coming to claim it.”
Before the Spanish lad could reply, Peyton asked: “Trujillo, why did you not tell me at once who you were?”
“Merely because I did not know that I had reached the ranch which had formerly belonged to my grandfather. I believed it to be miles north of here. But, let me begin at the beginning of my story. When we left this place years ago with my grandfather, Don Carlos Spinoza, we all went to Spain, where we remained until recently. The sudden death of my grandfather followed by a financial crash left my mother, sister and me almost penniless. It was then that mother told me that I, as the only living grandson, was really the owner of a large estate in Mexico, which had been a gift to my ancestors from the king of Spain and that this land grant could not be confiscated nor sold except with the signed consent of the heir thereto.
“When I inquired why they had left this rich heritage, for the estate is in Sonora and the mines are of great value, mother told me, for the first time, that we had been political exiles from Mexico. However, she believed that the government had been completely changed and that we might now return with safety and take possession of the land of our fathers. Soon after this we set sail for America, and my mother and sister are now in Mexico awaiting my return.”
“But Trujillo, even yet I do not understand the reason for your sojourn here as my overseer,” Peyton said.
The Spanish youth smiled. “No, but you will as I continue my story. When we reached Mexico City we were welcomed by old friends of the family, who informed us that soon after our flight our estate had been confiscated and occupied by the political enemies of my grandfather. On looking into the matter I found that this family had papers proving, (or so it would seem), that the land grant had really belonged to their ancestors and had been usurped by my great grandfather.
“It was evident that we could not disprove their claim, as we had no papers whatever to show. Then it was that my mother recalled her father’s futile effort on the day that he died to tell her of the location of some very important papers. So overcome had she been with grief that she had been unable to heed even the little he could say, and so, when later she tried to recall what my grandfather had endeavored to tell her, she could not.
“It was then that I determined to ride across the desert, finding, if I could, the ranch to which my grandfather had fled when he became a political exile. I doubt if I would ever have found my way here had it not been that I was driven far from the trail I was following by the wild blizzard which you will recall. I at once accepted your offer, partly because I needed money to send to my mother, and also because I thought I might learn something which would enable me to locate the ranch formerly belonging to my grandfather. When you told me that you had recently come from the East and had obtained the ranch from the Dartleys, in whose family it had been for many years, I did not question you more, not dreaming that this was the place for which I was searching.
“The letter which Pinez was concealing was from my mother telling me that she had suddenly recalled what her father had said in his last hour. ‘The land grant—Three Cross.’
“Of course I had often heard you speak of this place as The Three Cross Ranch and now, when I enter this room for the first time and find myself surrounded with portraits of my family, I realize that this is where the lost papers are to be found.”
“Trujillo, why was Pinez searching for those papers?” It was Margaret who spoke. The Spanish youth turned toward her as he replied: “I believe his plan was to find them and then hold them until I offered him a large reward.” Then smiling directly at Betsy, he added: “Senorita, since you so cleverly discovered my identity, will you not also discover for me the hiding place of my land grant?”
The little would-be detective felt greatly honored to be chosen as aide to the handsome Spanish youth, and she determined to make every effort to find the hidden papers.
Betsy Clossen had hardly slept a wink the night following her discovery of the real identity of the mysterious Trujillo. She kept thinking and thinking of a possible hiding place for the lost papers which, when found, would restore to the family of Don Carlos Spinoza their rightful estate.
“How I do hope I may be the one to find them,” was her last conscious thought at night and her first on waking the next morning.
It was not yet daybreak, but Betsy quietly arose, dressed and tiptoed out of the room without having disturbed Margaret from her peaceful slumber.
Reaching the kitchen, Betsy stood for a moment trying to think where she would begin her search. Then, suddenly, she remembered something. The peon had been trying to pry the stones from the walls of the great old fireplace. There might be a secret opening with a stone fitted in to conceal it. Lighting a lantern, for it was still dark, Betsy stole into the long silent front room, not without many a tremor of fear, for, even now, when the mystery was nearly solved, the place seemed haunted with the many foreign faces gazing down at her from the walls.
Trying not to look at them as they were revealed one by one in the dim light of her lantern, Betsy went at once to the fireplace. She did not attempt to pry out the stones, but tried to find one that looked as though it had not been securely fastened and could easily be removed.
However, each stone within her reach was cemented to its neighbor, and, convinced at last that her search at the fireplace was to be unrewarded, she turned away. Walking to the center of the room, she stood looking about, trying to recall all of the detective stories she had ever read.
There was always a secret panel in the wall which revealed a hidden treasure if one could but find the spring, but these walls were adobe and there were no panels. True, there was the small dark cellar into which the elevator chair descended, and from which spiral ascended, and yet, did she quite dare to go down in that dungeon-like place alone while the rest of the household slept? Betsy suddenly lifted her head and listened intently. She had heard soft foot-steps approaching in the kitchen, then the door opened cautiously. It was Margaret who appeared, pale and wide eyed.
“What in the world are you doing here, Betsy?” she inquired, as she advanced into the room. “I woke up and found you were gone. I thought you might be walking in your sleep. You were so restless all night and kept saying things.”
“What did I say?” Betsy inquired curiously.
“Nothing that made any sense as far as I could tell,” was the reply. “You kept mumbling every now and then, but once you sat right up in bed and said in the queerest voice: ‘Three crosses. That’s where the papers are.’ I shook you and whispered, ‘Betsy, what are you saying?’ but you lay down again and did not reply. Then I realized that you had been asleep all of the time.”
The eyes of the young would-be detective were glowing with sudden inspiration. Seizing the wondering Margaret by the arm, she exclaimed: “Come with me, Megsy!” and before the other girl could realize what was happening, she was being dragged across the kitchen and out of the house where the desert lay silent and uncanny in the deepest darkness of the night, which comes just before the dawn.
Margaret, being of a more timid nature, was truly frightened when she saw that Betsy was dragging her farther and farther away from the ranch house and toward the lonely sand hills. The truth of the matter was that at any other time, Betsy would have been frightened also, but at present she was possessed of just one idea which was that the papers for which they were searching were hidden, in all probability, at the Shrine of The Three Crosses. When Margaret told her what she had said in her sleep, Betsy believed that the message had come to her as an inspiration, and so sure was she of this, that for the moment she had become unconscious of fear; too, she had forgotten the lean, gaunt wolf of the desert, whose long drawn-out wail had so startled her on the occasion of her last visit.
“Betsy, let go of my arm,” Margaret managed to gasp, “and tell me where we are going.” Then a terrible thought came to Megsy. What if Betsy should be walking in her sleep after all, and what if she were taking them both to some place where harm would befall them. So convinced was Margaret that this was the real explanation of her friend’s actions that she whirled about as soon as Betsy loosened the clasp on her arm and raced back toward the ranch house. A light appeared in the small adobe, then, as she was about to pass, the door opened and Trujillo stepped out. In the grey light of the early dawn, Margaret’s flying form was easily seen and the overseer, much mystified by the appearance of one of the girls in such seemingly terrorized flight, quickly overtook her.
“Senorita,” he exclaimed when she turned a white face toward him. “What is the matter? Where have you been? What have you seen?”
“Oh, I am so glad you came,” Megsy replied. “I was going after Peyton. Betsy Clossen is walking in her sleep. I just know that she is, and she’ll come to some harm if we don’t bring her back. She says the queerest things about lost papers being hidden at the Shrine of The Three Crosses. I never heard of such a place. Did you, Senor?”
Trujillo replied in the negative. He had never heard the peons mention a shrine and surely they would know if there were one.
“Wait here, Senorita, I will get horses and we will follow your friend.”
When Margaret had deserted Betsy, for a moment the young would-be detective felt a strong desire to turn and race after her, but she would not permit herself to do this. She was so eager to find the lost papers and she was more than ever convinced, as she thought about the matter, that they were probably near the shrine. This had been the daily haunt of the old Don who had prayed that his estate might be restored to him. What would be more natural than that he would conceal the papers there, believing, as he probably did, that his political enemies when they found him would confiscate the documents, making it impossible for him to prove that the land grant had really belonged to his ancestors.
As Betsy neared the lonely sand hills, she dreaded more and more the moment when she would enter the sheltered dug-out where she had found the shrine. She knew that, loud as she might call, no one would hear.
“Oh, I can’t go on! I can’t! I can’t” she exclaimed, her fearlessness suddenly deserting her. Then it was that she heard something weird indeed.
In a voice that sounded almost like a mournful echo, some one was calling. Then in her heart there was a sudden joyful realization of the truth. Some one was shouting her name and the sand hills were sending back the echo: “Betsy, where are you?”
“Here! Here!” she replied as she ran out to meet the approaching riders. Of course she might have known that Margaret would soon return with one of the boys.
She was glad to recognize that the other rider was Trujillo. As they drew near, the Spanish youth saw that the girl standing alone near the sand hills did not look as courageous as her fearless actions had implied. Instead her face was pale, her eyes wide, although her expression was one of gladness, because she was no longer alone.
Betsy was not asleep, of that Trujillo was convinced. Leaping to the ground, he exclaimed: “Senorita, what mad fancy brought you to this lonely place before the dawning of the day?”
“Oh, senor, the papers! I am sure, as sure as one can be when one does not really know, that they are hidden somewhere near the Shrine of the Three Crosses.”
“Three Crosses?” Margaret repeated. “That is what you said in your sleep.”
“Where is the shrine, senorita?” Trujillo inquired. Betsy led the way between the sand hills to the small dug-out in which were three large wooden crosses. One had fallen to the sand, another leaned over, but the third stood erect. Trujillo bared his head and knelt upon the sand for a moment in prayer. The girls could understand that the lad must indeed feel awed to find himself before the shrine which had been so often visited by his grandfather, Don Carlos Spinoza. He soon arose and when he turned toward them they knew that he had been deeply affected. Then in a tone of conviction he said:
“Senorita, your dream, I am sure, is to be fulfilled. My grandfather’s last words were: ‘The land grant at the Three Crosses.’ If he had meant at the Three Cross ranch, he would not have used the plural.”
Then Trujillo stood gazing about him, thinking intently. He was trying to decide the probable hiding place of the document he sought. Suddenly his thought was interrupted by an exclamation from Betsy, the girl was gazing as though fascinated at the large wooden cross standing erect between the two that had fallen.
“Senor,” she said, “there must be some reason why that cross in the center has stood while the others have not. It must have a firmer foundation. Do you not think so?”
“I do indeed,” was the reply of the youth, who at once knelt and began digging at the base of the cross. The sand on top was soft, but, as he advanced, he found that it became more difficult to remove. The action of the rain and sun during the ten years since the cross had been erected had hardened it until it was the nature of sand stone.
He arose. “Senorita Betsy,” he said, “our surmise was not correct after all. There seems to be nothing holding this cross but the hardened sand.”
Betsy was keenly disappointed, although she was not entirely convinced. Trujillo left the girls standing alone while he advanced farther into the cave-like dug-out. It extended deeper into the sand hills than he had at first supposed. He did not advance far, however, but stopped suddenly and gazed intently into the interior, and then, assuming an attitude of seeming indifference, he returned. He did not wish to startle the girls by telling them that he had seen two green eyes gleaming in the darkness at the back of the cave. He believed the creature to be either a mountain lion or a coyote, which of late had been killing the young calves.
“Senoritas,” he said in a voice which did not betray his real concern, “our friends at the ranch house will be troubled because we do not return. The breakfast hour is long passed. I suggest that we come here later in the day, bringing with us a pick and shovel that we may make a thorough investigation.”
As he spoke, he led the girls away from the crosses to the place where the ponies were.
“Promise me you won’t search for the papers unless I am with you,” Betsy implored. The Spanish youth smiled at the pretty, flushed face of the pleading girl, as he replied: “I promise, Senorita.”
All that morning Betsy watched and waited. She almost lost faith in the promise of Trujillo when, at last, she beheld him returning from the sand hills, accompanied by Peyton, but when she saw that they were armed with guns and did not carry a shovel or pick, she knew that they had been on some other mission.
Trujillo rode to the ranch house and entering the living room, he said to the eager girl: “If you are ready, Senorita Betsy, we will go at once.”
Margaret and Virginia were busily employed in the kitchen, but they glanced up when they heard the cantering of horses’ hoofs beneath the window.
“I wonder where Betsy and Trujillo are going,” Virg said. Margaret, who had been sworn to secrecy, did not reply.
“Oh, I presume they are still searching for the land grant papers,” Megsy said. “I’d heaps rather be in this sunny, comfortable kitchen making pies, wouldn’t you, Virg?”
The older girl smiled. “Perhaps it is well that we have different interests,” she replied. “Some of us like to do adventurous things and some of us like to do the quiet, homely things, but I really enjoy both the desert life and then home life.” Then she added, with one of her radiant smiles: “I do believe, Megsy, that I am a natural born enjoyer.”
“You are indeed,” her friend responded, admiringly. “You always seem so happy and contented, Virg, wherever you are. Tell me your secret.”
Virginia put her arm about Margaret and drew her down to the sunny window-seat, as she replied: “Mother often told me that we ought to let our lives blossom as a flower unfolds, just peacefully and trustingly, enjoying the song of a bird, and the warmth of the sun and whatever beauty is near us. Many people try to force their life blossoms open and are so continually reaching for something beyond, that they never really enjoy the loveliness that is near them and so they become worried and weary. Every morning I ask myself: ‘What happiness can I find and givetodayin the place where I am? That keeps me contented and happy.” Then springing up, she laughingly added: “Yum! Doesn’t the pie smell good? I do hope everyone will be here in time for lunch.” But it was long after the lunch hour before Betsy and Trujillo returned.
In the meantime Betsy and Trujillo had reached the sand hills and were standing in front of the three crosses. Trujillo glanced into the cave beyond the shrine. Little did his companion know that in the darkness there was a newly made grave.
At Betsy’s suggestion he began at once to dig beneath the middle cross. The pick was needed to break the sand stone, but suddenly it struck something that did not break. One corner of an iron box was revealed, which however, was so firmly imbedded in the rock that it took a long time to entirely free it. Betsy, after the first exultant exclamation, had stood silently watching.
How she did hope that this box contained the land grant document that the mother and sister of Trujillo might have their home restored to them.
When at last the box was freed, they both knelt beside it to see if the key hole was as queerly shaped as was the key that the mother of Trujillo had given him. When they found that it fitted exactly, Betsy’s joy could no longer be restrained, and leaping up, she clapped her hands and uttered varied exclamations of delight.
Trujillo glanced at her with a happy smile. “Senorita,” he said, “before I open this box, I want you to promise me something. If the papers are here, and if our home is restored, will you and your friends come some day, and visit us? My mother and my sister Carmelita will welcome you gladly.”
Then the key turned and the box was opened. There was a glad cry from the girl who had been watching breathlessly, for there lay a packet of yellowing papers. Placing them in his pocket, the Spanish lad rose and held out his hand to his flushed and excited companion. “Senorita Betsy,” he said, his melodious voice tense with feeling, “I thank you for your interest and my mother and sister will want to thank you when, with your friends, you can visit us.”
Then leaving the heavy iron box in the sand by the crosses, these two rode back to the ranch house to tell the others that, at last, the long lost papers had been found.