The Phantom Town Mystery

Mary held out a small white hand. “Go along, Big Brother,” she said, “if you’re sure the rock will hold the rope with your weight on it.”

“Shall we help the rock by holding onto the rope as well?” It was practical Dora who asked that question.

“Yes!” Jerry’s expression brightened. “I wish you would.”

Dora thought, “Mr. Cowboy, I know just what you are thinking. You’re afraid we might go over to the edge and perhaps fall off, but that if you tell us to hold onto the rope here by the rock, you expect we’ll stay put, but you’re mistaken. As soon as I know you’re safely down, I’m going to crawl over the ledge and peer down.”

While Dora was thus planning, she and Mary held to the highest knot in the rope, and Jerry, having removed his boots, went over the edge without the grand flourish that Dick had made.

“Oh, I can’t, can’t hold it!” Mary exclaimed, and then Dora realized that the younger girl had been trying to hold Jerry’s weight.

“Don’t!” she ejaculated. “The rock can hold him. Just keep your hands lightly on the knot and pull only if the rope starts slipping.”

It seemed but a few moments before the girls heard, as from far below, a reassuring call, “All’s well!”

At once Dora let go her hold on the rope and dropped face downward as the boys had done. Mary was not to be left behind. Cautiously, they wormed their way to the edge of the cliff and peered over, being careful to keep hidden. Only their hair and eyes were over the edge, and the boys, intent on examining the skeleton stage coach, did not once glance up.

“Oh-oo!” Mary shuddered. “That black crevice looks as though it went down into the mountain a mile or more.”

“Maybe it does!” Dora whispered. “Jerry said that it’s more than a mile from here to the floor of the desert. The crack in the mountain may go all the way down.”

“Oh, I do wish the boys wouldn’t go so close to the edge of it!” Mary whispered frantically. “Dora Bellman, if Dick or Jerry slipped into that awful place – ”

Dora’s interrupting voice was impatient. “Please don’t start imagining terrible things. Those boys value their own lives as much as we possibly can. Look! See how very cautiously they’re taking hold of the driver’s seat and testing its strength. Blue Moons!” It was Dora’s turn to be horrified. “Jerry is lifting Dick. My, aren’t his arms powerful? Now Dick is resting his left hand on the top of the seat and pulling on that box with his right.”

Mary clutched Dora’s arms, but neither spoke a word as they watched the movements of the boys with startled, staring eyes.

“It’s coming slowly.” Dora’s voice was tense. “Hark! Didn’t you hear a creak as though something about the stage had snapped suddenly?”

“Thanks be!” The words were a shout of relief. “The box is out, but oh, Mary! Not a second too soon! The skeleton stage coach is collapsing! It has dropped right down out of sight.”

The two girls sat up with one accord and stared at each other, their faces white.

Mary was the first to speak. Her tone was reproachful. “And yet you were so sure the boys would do nothing to endanger their lives. If that crash had happened one minute sooner, they would both have gone down with it. Dick couldn’t have leaped back in time, and Jerry would have lost his balance, and you needn’t tell me I’m using my imagination, either, for you know it’s true.”

There was no denying that the boys had had a most narrow escape and Dora willingly acknowledged that they had taken a greater risk than she had supposed they would.

“As though finding that lost Bodil, or even getting money to help the Dooleys, was worth endangering their lives,” Mary continued with such a show of indignation that Dora actually laughed. “Since it’s all over, let’s forget it. I’m terribly thrilled about the box. I feel just as sure as the boys do that there will be something in it that will be a clue, or at least, lead to one.”

“Listen,” Mary said. “The boys are calling to us. See, the rope is swaying.”

Lying flat again, Dora peered over and called, “What do you want?”

Jerry replied, “We’re tying the box to the rope. Can you two girls pull it up? Don’t stand near the edge to do it.”

“Wait!” Dick called. Then he said something to Jerry that the girls couldn’t hear. Dora saw the cowboy laugh and pound on his head. “He’s calling himself a dumb-bell, looks like,” she whispered to Mary. Then Jerry’s voice, “I’ll take back that order. You stand by the rock, will you, and grab the rope if it starts to slip. Dick will climb up and help lift the box. He’s such a light weight, he and the box together won’t be any heavier than I am.”

The girls went back to the rock and saw that the rope held. They knelt by it in readiness to seize it if it slipped. They could tell by the tightening of the rope that Dick was ascending. In another moment, he sprang over the edge, pulled up the box without asking the girls for assistance, then dropped the rope down again. Soon they were joined by a beaming Jerry.

CHAPTER XIII

A SAND STORM

The return to the car was not without difficulties. At the spot where the natural steps were not close together, Jerry, finding the merest toe-hold in the cliff and only the scraggliest growth to which he could cling, did, however, manage to reach the step above. He then dropped one end of the rope down and Dick ascended nimbly. Then, Jerry made a swing of the lariat. Mary, flushed and laughing up at him, sat in it and was slowly lifted to the ledge above. This, being narrow, could hold no more than three. So Mary climbed still higher, then turned and watched, while Dora was lifted in the swing. The girls were told to return to the car while the boys tied the box on the end of the rope and drew it up over the sheer place.

From the road, Mary looked out far across the desert. “How queer the air looks, doesn’t it?” she said, pointing to what seemed to be a huge yellow cloud of sand which was moving rapidly across the floor of the desert and shutting out the Little Grand Canyon from their view.

Jerry, with the small trunk on one shoulder joined them; Dick, whirling the lariat playfully, was not far behind.

Mary again pointed. “What is that far below there, Jerry? Is it a wind storm?”

“I reckon that’s what it is,” Jerry said. “Carrying enough sand with it to change things up a little. But more’n like, it will blow itself away before we get down to the valley road.” He seemed little concerned about it and the girls, in their curiosity about the small trunk, also forgot it. Where they stood, in a flood of late warm afternoon sun, there was not a breath of air stirring.

“What a queer little trunk,” Mary said, touching the battered top of it with an investigating finger. “What is it made of, Jerry?”

“You’ve got me guessing,” the cowboy replied. “Some kind of a thick animal skin, I reckon, stretched over a frame. It tightened as it dried. Shouldn’t you say so, Dick?”

The boy addressed was helping to lash the small box on the running board of the car. “It looks like a home-made affair to me,” he said. “Probably they brought it over from Scandinavia.”

Dora was peering around it. “There isn’t a lock,” she observed. “I suppose whatever it was tied with rotted away long ago.” Then, as another thought came, “Oh, Jerry, if we had waited, maybe even a week, the stage coach might have crumbled, don’t you think? It couldn’t have stayed together much longer.”

“Righto!” the cowboy continued. Then, with a quick glance at Dick, he said, “Now that it’s over, I’m thankful it has gone, – the stage coach, I mean. Dick and I might have been tempted to come back and look for more clues, and believe me, we came within one of going to the bottom, but Jumping Steers! we didn’t, and it sure was some exciting adventure, wasn’t it, old man?”

Before Dick could reply, Mary said emphatically, “I wouldn’t have let you come back again, Jerry. You call me ‘Little Sister,’ and brothers always have to obey, don’t they, Dora?”

But her friend laughingly denied, “Not my small brother, believe me, NO. When I want him to do a thing, I ask the opposite.”

Jerry had seemed to be too intent on tying knots securely to have heard, but when he turned, his gray eyes smiled at the smaller girl, adoring her. “This Big Brother is the exception which proves the rule,” he quoted. “Command, Little Sister, and I will obey.”

“Bravo!” Dora teased. Then, to the other girl, “Please command that we start for home. I’m wild to get there so that we may look through the trunk.”

Jerry removed the rocks that held the wheels. Dick was glancing about the part of the road where the small car stood. “Do you plan turning here, Jerry?” he asked. “I was wondering, because I heard you say it would be miles out of our way, if we kept going straight on over the mountain.”

Before answering, Jerry stood, looking, not at the road, but down at the valley sand storm which had not decreased in density. In fact it had widened and was hiding the lower part of the mountain on which they stood.

“How much gas have we, Dick?” Jerry asked, making no comment on the sand storm.

“About four gallons. And another five in the storage can.”

“Good!” Again Jerry’s gray eyes looked thoughtfully about. They seemed to be measuring the width of the road between the peak at their right and the edge of the descent at the left. Dick stepped back and through narrowed lids, he also estimated the distance.

“A leetle more than twice the width of the car,” he guessed. “Say, old man,” Dick stepped eagerly toward the cowboy, “let me turn it, will you? Back East, one of the crazy things we did at school was to have contests on car turning. I was pretty durn good at it then. Could turn around on a dime, so to speak.” Still Jerry hesitated. “But you don’t know this car – ” he began, when Dick interrupted swaggeringly, to try to make the girls think the feat would be less serious than it really would be. “Why, my dear vaquero, a wild car is as docile with me as a wild broncho would be with you – knows the master’s touch and all that.”

Then, as Jerry still hesitated, Dick leaped up under the wheel and called to the girls: “Stand back, if you please, and make room for the world famous – ” the engine was starting, the car slowly turning. Dick did not finish his joking speech. He directed all his thought and skill to the turning of the car. There was a tense silence broken by Dora.

“Why, there was lots of room after all!” she cried admiringly.

“Gee whizzle!” Jerry had expected Dick to give up. “I reckon you didn’t rate yourself any too high when you were boasting about your skill.”