Etta’s serious face lighted for a brief moment with a rather melancholy smile as she acknowledged the introduction.
Dora thought, “Poor girl, if that’s the 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, how I’d love it, if it were our own and not charity.”
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 be very nice. 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’m not nice.”
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 that she belonged 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, whoever she 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 I hoped you 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 that she will 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 come
only for charitable reasons. Of course we did in the beginning, but, afterwards, I was so glad 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.
CHAPTER XIX
A GUN SHOT
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 one could be 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 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 surely is torrid 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 there may be 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, “here is something! 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 is your wish, Little Sister?”
Dora thought, “Never a brother in all this world puts so much tenderness into that name. Leastwise mine don’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 could not be 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 really do hear one,” Mary said.
Dora, to be impish, declared, “I’m prophesying that we will hear 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 I know it 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. “We could go 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, that you could 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, you might be directly opposite the o
pen door of the rock house.”
“Well, what of it!” Dick was puzzled, for Dora’s expression was serious and almost fearful.
“That Evil Eye Turquoise might look right out at you!”
“Surely you don’t believe that yarn!” 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. Never put your feet or your hands anywhere that 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, never have 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! We did hear a gun shot.”
The Girl Detective Megapack: 25 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls Page 284
