CHAPTER II THE GHOST TOWN
Safely outside of the wall of rocks, the four young people drew theirrestless horses to a standstill. Mary's nettlesome brown pony was hard toquiet until Jerry reached out a strong brown hand and patted its head.
Mary lifted startled blue eyes. "Jerry, _what_ do you make of that?" sheasked. "We _couldn't_ have imagined that gun shot and surely the horsesheard it also."
Jerry's smile was reassuring. "'Twas the story that frightened you girls,I reckon," he said, glancing about and up and down the road as he spoke."It's hunters out after quail or rabbits, more'n like."
Then, seeing that Mary still glanced anxiously back at the gate in therock wall, Dick said sensibly, "Of course you girls _know_ that SvenPedersen _couldn't_ be in that high house. He _must_ have been dead foryears if he was old when Jerry's father was a boy."
"Of course," Dora, less inclined to be imaginative, replied. Then to thecowboy she said in her practical matter-of-fact way, "Hurry along home toyour milking, Jerry, and Dick, don't you bother to come with us. Now thatyou're working on the Newcomb ranch you ought to be there. It's only afew miles up over this sunshiny road to Gleeson. We aren't the least bitafraid to ride home alone, are we?" She smiled at her friend.
Mary, not wishing to appear foolishly timid, said, in as courageous avoice as she could muster, "Of course we're not afraid. Goodbye, boys,we'll see you tomorrow."
Turning the heads of their horses up a gently ascending mountain road,the girls cantered away. At a bend, Mary glanced back. The boys weresitting just where they had left them. Jerry's sombrero and Dick's capwaved, then, feeling assured that the girls were all right, the boys wentat a gallop down the road and across the desert valley to the Newcombranch which nestled at the base of the Chiricahua range.
"They're nice boys, aren't they?" Mary said. "I've always wished I had abrother and I do believe Jerry is going to be just like one."
Aloud Dora replied, "I have noticed that sometimes he calls you 'LittleSister.'" To herself she thought: "Oh, Mary, how _blind_ you are!"
Dreamily the younger girl was saying--"That's because we were playmateswhen we were little so very long ago."
"Oh my, how ancient we are!" Dora said teasingly. "Please remember thatyou are only one year younger than I am and I refuse to be calledelderly."
Mary smiled faintly but it was evident that she was still thinking of thepast, when she had been a little girl with golden curls that hung to herwaist; a wonderfully pretty, wistful little girl. When she spoke, shesaid, "It's only natural that Jerry should call me 'Little Sister.' Ourmothers were like sisters when they were girl brides. I've told you howthey both came from the East just as we have. My mother met Dad in Bisbeewhere he was a mining engineer, and Jerry's mother taught a little desertschool over near the Newcomb ranch. She didn't teach long though, forthat very first vacation she married Jerry's cowboy father. After thatMother and Mrs. Newcomb were good friends, naturally, being brides andneighbors."
Dora laughed. "Twenty-five miles apart wouldn't be called _close_neighbors in Sunnybank-on-the-Hudson where I come from," she said.
Mary, not heeding the interruption, kept on. "When Jerry and I werelittle, we were playmates. I spent days at the ranch sometimes," hersweet face was very sad as she ended with, "until Mother died when I waseight."
"Then you came East to boarding-school and became like a sister to me,"Dora said tenderly. "Oh, Mary, when you came West to be with your dearsick dad, I wonder if you know what it meant to me to be allowed to comewith you."
"I know what it means to _me_ to have you, Dodo, so I 'spect it means thesame to you," was the affectionate reply.
For a time the girls cantered along in thoughtful silence. The rutty roadwas leading up toward the tableland on which stood the now nearlydeserted old mining-town of Gleeson.
Far below them the desert valley stretched many miles southward to theMexican border. The girls could see a distant blue haze that was thesmoke from the Douglas copper smelters.
The late afternoon sun lay in floods of silver light on the sandy roadahead of them. It was very still. Not a sound was to be heard. Now andthen a rabbit darted past silently.
"How peaceful this hour is on the desert," Mary began, glancing at herfriend who was riding so close at her side. Noticing that Dora was deepin thought, she asked lightly, "Won't you say it out loud?"
"Why, of course. I was just wondering why Jerry hurried us away so fastfrom Lucky Loon's rock house."
"Because he had to do the milking," Mary replied simply.
Dora nodded. "So he _said_." Then she hastened to add, "Oh, don't thinkI'm inferring that Jerry told an untruth, but you know that some eveningshe has stayed with us for supper and--"
Mary glanced up startled. "Dora Bellman," she said, "do you think maybethere _was_ someone up in that rock house watching us all the time wewere there; someone who fired the gun just as we were leaving to warn usto keep away?"
Dora, seeing her friend's pale face, was sorry that she had wonderedaloud. "Of course not!" she said brightly. "That's impossible!" Then tochange the subject, she started another. "Jerry didn't have time to tellus about the Evil Eye Turquoise, did he?"
"Dora, do you know what _I_ think?" Mary exclaimed as one who had made animportant discovery. "I don't believe he will tell us about that. I actedso like a scare-cat all the time we were there, he won't ever take usthere again and he probably won't tell us the story either."
"Then I'll find it out some other way," Dora declared. "I'm crazy aboutmysteries as you know, and, if there _really is one_ about that rockhouse, I want to try to solve it."
She said no more about it just then, as they had reached the old ghosttown of Gleeson. They turned up a side street toward mountain peaks thatwere about a mile away. On their right was the corner general store andpost office. A crumbling old adobe building it was, with a rotting woodenporch, on which stood a row of armchairs. In the long ago days when thetown had been teeming with life, picturesque looking miners and ranchershad sat there tilted back, smoking pipes and swapping yarns. Today thechairs were empty.
An old man, shriveled, gray-bearded, unkempt, but with kind gray eyes,deep-sunken under shaggy brows, stood in the open door. He smiled out atthem in a friendly way, then beckoned with a bony finger.
"I do believe Mr. Harvey has a letter for us," Dora said.
The old man had shuffled into the dark well of his store. A moment laterhe reappeared with several letters and a newspaper.
"Good!" Dora exclaimed as she rode close to the porch. "Thanks a lot,"she called brightly up to the old man who was handing the packet downover the sagging wooden rail.
His friendly, toothless smile was directed at the smaller girl. "Heerdtell as how yer pa's sittin' up agin, Miss Mary," he said. "Mis' Farley,yer nurse woman, came down ter mail some letters a spell back." Then,before Mary could reply, he continued in his shrill, wavering voice,"That thar pale fellar wi' specs on is her son, ain't he?"
"Yes, Mr. Harvey. Dick is Mrs. Farley's son." Mary took time, in afriendly way, to satisfy the old man's curiosity. "Dick has been going tothe Arizona State University this winter to be near his mother. She's awidow and he's her only son. Her husband was a doctor and they lived backin Boston before he died."
"Dew tell!" the old man wagged his head sympathetically. "I seen theyoung fellar ridin' around wi' Jerry Newcomb."
"Dick's working on the Newcomb ranch this summer," Mary said, as shestarted to ride on.
"Ho! Ho!" the old man cackled. "Tenderfoot if ever thar was un. What'sJerry reckonin' that young fellar kin do? Bustin' broncs?"
Mary smiled in appreciation of the old man's joke. "No, Jerry won'texpect Dick to do _that_ right at first. He's official fence-mender justat present."
Dora defended the absent boy. "Mr. Harvey, you wait until Dick has beenon the desert long enough to get a coat of tan; he _may_ surprise you."
"Wall, mabbe! mabbe!" th
e old storekeeper chuckled to himself as thegirls, waving back at him, galloped away up the road in the little deadtown.
On either side there were deserted adobe houses in varying degrees ofruin, some with broken windows and doors, others with sagging roofs andcrumbling walls.
The only sign of life was in three small adobes where poor Mexicanfamilies lived. Broken windows in two of the houses were stuffed withrags; the door yards were littered with rubbish. Unkempt children playedin front of the middle house. The third adobe was neat and well kept. Init lived the Lopez family. Carmelita, the wife and mother, had long beencook for Mary Moore's father.
A bright, black-eyed Mexican boy of about ten ran out to the road as thegirls approached. "Come on, Emanuel," Mary sang down to him. "You may putup our horses and earn a dime."
The small boy's white teeth flashed in a delighted grin. His brown feetraced so fast, that, by the time the girls were dismounting before thebig square two-storied adobe near the mountains, Emanuel was there tolead their horses around back.
Mary glanced affectionately at the old place with its flower-edged walk,its broad porch and adobe pillars. Here her mother had come as a bride;here Mary had been born. Eight happy years they had spent together beforeher mother died. After Mary had been taken East to school, her father hadreturned, and here he had spent the winters, going back to Sunnybank eachsummer to be with his little girl.
Hurrying up the steps, Mary skipped into a pleasant living-room, where,near a wide window that was letting in a flood of light from the settingsun, sat her fine-looking father, pale after his long illness, butgrowing stronger every day.
"Oh, Daddy dear!" Mary's voice was vibrant with love. "You've waited upfor me, haven't you?" She dropped to her knees beside the invalid chairand pressed her flushed face to his gray, drawn cheek.
Then, glancing up at the nurse who had appeared from her father'sbedroom, she asked eagerly, "May I tell Dad an adventure we've had?"
Mrs. Farley, middle-aged, kind-faced, shook her head, smiling down at thegirl. "Not tonight, please. Won't tomorrow do?"
Mary sprang up, saying brightly, "I reckon it will have to." Then,stooping, she kissed her father as she whispered tenderly, "Rest well,darling. We're hoping you know all about--" then, little girl fashion,she clapped her hand on her mouth, mumbling, "Oh, I most disobeyed and_told_ our adventure. See you tomorrow, Daddy."